Welcome to Watch Survival

Hello Bloggers and Readers and Survivalists and Gamers! I see you have found your way to Watch Survival. This web space is all about my favorite genre of video games. What you will get on Watch Survival is News and Updates on Current and Up-coming Survival Games.


Saturday, September 29, 2012

The War Z preview from mmorpg.com

Hey guys/girls!  I found a small preview of the War Z on mmorpg.com that talks about some pretty cool things.  You can find the preview at the link below, check it out.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/856/feature/6757/The-War-Z.html

Rocket Update about Dayz Stand-alone

Hello everyone! Rocket just posted some new information about the State of Dayz the stand-alone game and gave us a little information about what's been going on about it. You can read it from the development blog here

http://dayzdev.tumblr.com/post/31347010829/the-integration-begins

or you can read the copy and paste below


---copy and paste-----

The integration begins


It has been a long time since we announced the standalone project, and much has happened. In many ways, DayZ is an “accidental project”, which brings about great opportunities for it but also with some real challenges. Most of the planning has to be done as it goes, with much of the project simply reacting to things that have happened. This is not a good way to start a development project.
Much of the effort has been spent establishing the project, getting the right people setup, a new build process, art pipeline working, contracts and agreements made, legal stuff sorted - all the stuff that is necessary to enable the project to work. During this time I completed a very heavy and protracted public relations tour - I could almost make a fulltime job simply out of doing interviews.
Now for a SCRUM style update:

What has happened

We have setup all the required pipelines to best push the project forward. The standalone engine we are using is a branch of Take on Helicopters, which itself is a branch of ArmA 2 Operation Arrowhead. We chose this because of its stability, ease of development, very achievable optimization, and the fact that our programmers are the architects of the engine - the very people who built it from the ground up over ten years.
Art has been very, very busy. Chernarus has been revamped, with bug-fixing and a great deal more buildings have been made enter-able with a very high standard of work involved.
For design I have spent much time listening, reading through the posts on the forums and the suggestion thread on Reddit. Some outstanding ideas have been gleamed from there.

What is happening now

Now the fun stuff begins, all the data from Bohemia projects is up for grabs - so I am going through and collecting the best assets from the projects and mashing the data together to get it loading into DayZ standalone. With this complete, the mod itself will be ported over and integrated. This then gives us a very solid basis for further development.
Our programmers have been reviewing the way forward on the critical issues, such as bugfixing, hacking, and security. These areas are proving straightforward areas for significant development as a standalone, and as a basis in the next few weeks we will have DayZ fully integrated, with all its required data, secured, and packaged. From here we can then test and begin the more exiting things.
Art is continuing with reviewing all the buildings, making them enter-able, and tidying up the interiors to make them look nicer. Once we have this done, they will look at making the environment much more authentic to the scenario (but first we aim for the functionality!). We are now commencing work on the redevelopment of the infected people (zombie) models themselves. This will be an exciting area of work for our artist who is dedicated to this task. Initially we will be producing male and female, I would like to look at the possibility of children infected - but there are technical (required new skeleton and baked animations), possible legal (rating issues), and even moral (shooting children) issues that need to be faced.

What is blocking us

Probably the biggest stumbling block, is me (rocket). I need to stop doing interviews and focus on making the game. Really, there is very little left to say - now it is up to me and the team to deliver this. Really, in many ways, this is our project to lose. We have great support from the community, developers, and the industry as a whole - it is up to us to deliver for that promise. I think we will, but the next month is going to be really telling for our project.
Beyond that, I simply need to push forward with the integration. Once that is done, I will post some content through on the tumblr so that people can see how the development is progressing.


----end copy paste-----

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Project Zomboid Payment Options Map Steaming, Status Update

Just seen a recently added blogpost to the PZ website and I thought I'd let you guys in on it here. I can't wait to get the new update in my hands and on the website for you guys to watch!

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2012/09/of-pz-payments-map-streaming-and-status-updating-ness/

-----copy and paste of the info the above link provides---


Good morning survivor. It’s cold and rainy on the streets of Britain, but our hearts our full of warmth for you: the Knox County as-yet-uninfected. This is just a quick house-keeping blog about PZ payment for new players, and some information on the next update for existing players who’re still sitting in their safehouses staring at the wall and endlessly re-reading magazines to quell their boredom moodle.
Boring stuff first. We’ve decided to drop Google Checkout as a PZ payment option – now diverting all new players to the charms of Desura. Our thinking is that PC, Mac and Linux users can all purchase from Desura – with some choosing to play through the client, and others (and of course Mac users) using their Desura code on the downloads direct from our site. Having two concurrent payment models in the face of the Steam release seemed a little excessive. Another primary reasoning behind this is the fact that this should free up poor old Mash on the PZ Accounts email help-line, so the tale of woe that were the spam-listing and hiding email addresses (long story) should now be at an end. (We also totally love Desura and their staff to bits, so that helps).
Work on RC3, meanwhile, continues apace. This includes something rather unexpected. While Lemmy and RobertJohnson/Romain were busying themselves with the code it became increasingly evident that memory was again becoming more and more of an issue. Memory demands were dangerously high, and it was looking increasingly likely that people with lower-end systems would suffer come release. Cometh the hour, then cometh the streaming…

Through this new system we’ve saved 400 meg of memory demands, because we no longer need the entire 300×300 map loaded up. It’s something of a relief to have working, in all honesty, and we feel like we’ve dodged something of a bullet.
In terms of the update proper Chris is currently fixing a few issues so that Knox County will react cogently to the new streaming system, while Romain is rejigging NPC interaction to use the new context menus – as well as mopping up a few remaining issues in the game. Will and RingoD are conjuring up some fun new NPC encounters, while Mash and Andy continue in their quest to expand the borders of Muldraugh for a future update.
We’ll radio in with further updates – and bite some fleshy gristle out of your busy schedule with a Community of the Dead and a Modding of the Damned blog later in the week too. Until then!

----end copy and paste-----

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Project Zomboid Status Update

Batsphinx just recently posted in the Project Zomboid update status thread and let us know what's going on. Robert Johnson has been smashing tons of bugs while lemmy continues working on the new interface. Below is the post by Batsphinx showing everything they have fixed so far.  The next PZ release is gonna be soo good. I can't wait!

------copy and paste of Batsphinx Post--------

Time for a quick status update!

While Lemmy has been working to complete the UI transformation, RobertJohnson has been jumping on all those bugs that got brushed aside so many times and made a real impact in his first month working on the team.

Now almost all the red bugs from the megabug thread are fixed, Robert is working on implementing the various commands using the new context menus.

For Lemmy, the UI overhaul is going very well, with the introduction of context menus whether equipping a primary weapon, dumping items in a container, eating some food, barricading a door, ripping bandages, even walking to a location (to make one handed playing much easier), you're never more than two clicks from interacting with anything in the game.

There's still a few more commands to add, and now most of the megabug reds are fixed, Robert is currently busy completing those while Lemmy completes building the new crafting window and various other fixes here and there to make the UI as slick and easy to use as possible.

Meanwhile Andy and Mash continue with Project Real-Estate, although it's not likely to be in RC3, what's going on in that Dropbox folder is very exciting and we can look forward to a lot more of Knox County to explore in the future! I haven't been entirely twiddling my thumbs either and have been writing a few things to feed to the RingoD scripting machine that'll remain secret for now.

And finally, just to keep everyone in the loop, these are the bug-fixes that RJ has pounced upon and fixed in his own words. On top of this there’s some neat gameplay tweaks too, but we’ll keep that secret for now too ;)

- When you eat rotten food it infect you, and you'll die zombified. Fixed (now you just have sickness)
- If you were sick while disconnecting (saving game), by loading you'll have the sickness moodle, but sickness (fake infection lvl), never goes up. Fixed
- At the saving, if you were Fake infected (sickness), at the loading you'll be really Infected (zombie infection). Fixed
- Get zombified don't show the end game screen ("You survived for..."). Fixed
- Sometimes you can play as a Zombie. Fixed (but I liked this glitch :p)
- As a zombie you can interract with item (beds, etc.). Fixed
- You can switch lights on after 30 days (when the power goes out). Fixed
- Lights still turned on after 30 days. Fixed
- Windows maxHealth does not saved properly. Fixed
- You can still choose other skills when you have selected one (and the number of skill points went negative). Fixed
- You can leave the level up screen if you still have skills points (you can store them). Fixed
- When you drink Water Pot it's replace by an Empty bottle of water. Fixed
- The right quick drag arrow in the player's inventory is on the left. Fixed
- Water recipients/pill boxes are refilled every time you load your game, as long as there was water on them when you saved. Fixed
- Thirst is not affected by gameTime speed. Fixed
- Endless acceleration if you die while holding "enter". Fixed
- Moving by using right click allow you to run very fast. Fixed
- Fast forward didn't affect thirst. Fixed
- Health regen problem. Fixed (If you eated food in fast forward, it was staying for a very long time + Health regen now take the gametime speed in calcul)
- Placing a flashlight in the crafting window crashes the game. Fixed
- Trying to craft a tasty soup (soup with 3 ingredients) crashes the game. Fixed
- You can reduce boredom by shouting ("Q" key pressed). Fixed
- Pain is never reduced (except by painkiller). Fixed (now if you're full health, Pain start reduce)
- Condition of items are not saved. Fixed
- You can run for a long time in full speed while keep "Enter" press. Fixed
- Character creation screen: sometimes, pressing backspace or delete crashes the game. Fixed
- Objects are no more outlined on mouse over when reloading. Fixed
- Landing on a solid item (like tree) when moving between cell causes 'lost in the woods' problem. Fixed

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

The Dead Linger Gun Renders Preview

Just noticed Dead Linger posted a little while ago on their website showing off some of the games gun graphics.  I can't wait for Alpha for this game to be released so that we may get our hands on it.

http://www.thedeadlinger.com/archives/1038















Video showing Pistol Reloading Animations Alpha Can be found here
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH-OWhAweUo

Ok That's enough information overload for today!  Whew!

State of Decay Huge info from PAX

There was a huge amount of State of Decay news from PAX.  This game is looking up to be a really great survival game. The Link to the State of Decay PAX info can be found here

http://undeadlabs.com/2012/09/news/the-news-from-pax/

Below I'll list links to the individual information posted in that news update For the lazy to check out easily.

Machinima State of Decay Video Interview

Gamecritics.com State of Decay Preview

Hands-on State of Decay from Offical Xbox Magazine

State of Decay Video from IGN

Playunwired State of Decay Preview

4playerpodcast State of Decay Interview

State of Decay Ghostrobo Video

theverge State of Decay Preview

Destructoid State of Decay Preview

Whew ok,  That covers pretty much most of it I think.  This should keep everyone busy for quite a while. Can't wait for this awesome zombie survival game.

Dayz (Rocket shout out to everyone to help free two friends in Greece Prison)

Just found out about this. Apparently two of  rockets close friends and fellow game developers themselves have been Imprisoned in Greece. He is shouting out to fans and friends to perhaps help them get released. This link will take you to Rocket's tumblr which will give you more information.  Pretty crazy stuff. I hope everything gets worked out.

http://rocketkiwi.tumblr.com/post/31744919816/my-friends-are-in-prison

Minecraft Minecon coming soon, Tickets Selling like Hotcakes.

Hey everyone just incase some people wanted to see information about minecon or perhaps have thought about going I thought I would post a link showing everyone a few things.  They are selling like crazy and selling out really fast. If you plan on going you better get yours quick. Here is the link from minecraftforum.net for more information.

http://www.minecraftforum.net/news/606-minecon-2012-tickets-going-up-soon/

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Watchsurvival Minecraft Hardcore Episode 1

Hello everyone! I started my let's play for Minecraft Hardcore today! This is episode 1 of many more to come. The next episodes will be better quality and I'll be sure to upload them at full size instead of half size. Please comment or post your thoughts on here or youtube and be sure to +like it on youtube if you would like to see more.  Thanks everyone! Enjoy

  

 

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Minecraft New Snapshot 12w37a and Pretty Scary Update 1.4 info

Minecrafts new snapshot became available. It fixes some good things and added much needed things to the game. Pumpkin Pie!!!  Finally a reason for pumpkin farms besides massive golem armies!  They also added XP for fishing which is a great past-time.  More info can be found here.

http://www.minecraftforum.net/news/600-snapshot-12w37a-available-for-testing/

It's just the starting of the content they are adding for 1.4 version labeled "The Pretty Scary Update"  info for that can be found here.

http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Pretty_Scary_Update

This is great stuff. Just another reason to keep me addicted to this game always something to do.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Project Zomboid Status Update

This is post two for Project Zomboid today but I felt it should be posted. This is the current status update on what they are working on.  Everything is really taking off for PZ and I can't wait to try the new update. It may take them a while but the finished result is going to be sooo worth it! I can't wait to start my Let's play for watchsurvival when this update releases.

-------Status Update Posted by Lemmy------

Just a quick update on current goings on:

  • Now we have Mr RobertJohnson on the case, things are moving a lot faster. Hurrah for him! It also affords us to bump up the schedule for the new UI which was originally probably going to be a month or two away, and now (at least the inventory stuff) is looking more like a few days to a week (**NOT LEGALLY BINDING :P**). We could possibly get a build out sooner if we didn't do that, but to be honest there are so many bugs with the existing system at the moment we would need to fix which would be largely wasted time fixing stuff that's soon to be replaced. And wasted time is the last thing we need at the moment. While I'm working on that Robert is fixing a lot of bugs and also making changes to systems to make them more interesting (you will finally be able to overdose, for example!) so big progress is happening. :)
  • Our philosophy with this build is it's gotta be close to as right as possible. No more broken builds or excuses. I'm sure there will be a couple of hotfix patches after, but after the whole 'best playing old version' philosophy of the last few patches we need to ensure that the next one is the defacto version everyone wants to play. It's heart breaking to see people going back to Q for one reason or another and we need to fix that. This is why we're mostly unapologetic in any delays this time around since another slightly broken and buggy build will not suffice and an 'It's ready when it's ready' attitude is needed to get the quality of the next build as high as possible.
  • Things are looking very good for Greenlight! Both the votes we have received and the progress on the build now I'm not a one man code army. We've never felt more upbeat about PZ or its future.
  • Stuff like graphical glitches are 100% sorted. No more flashes or graphical glitches at all, hurrah! However we'll need to do some closed testing on low spec machines to make sure this hasn't caused any performance drop before we can rest easy on that.

--------------------------------------

Project Zomboid Greenlit on steam

Project Zomboid has been approved for steam! This is nothing but great news for the community and for the developers.  Current owners of the game will also be receiving a steam key for the game as well so those with steam may add it to their collections and receive updates automatically. This link here shows more info

http://theindiestone.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=10071

Below is a copy and paste of the above link in case you don't feel like changing websites.

-----------Post from Lemmy-------------
Following is a road-map to Steam.

This list doesn't contain bugs for now (largely because a lot of the biggies are fixed) but we'll add those when we get a better idea of what's going on.

There is more stuff that we may do, stuff that's in progress in the background at the moment and may be in or left until after we launch on Steam, but this serves as the core minimum we need to get onto Steam and we won't commit to anything that doesn't NEED to be there at the moment. If anyone thinks something else should be on this list that we've forgotten, please let us know. :)

  • Kate and Baldspot
    • Fixed existing story up until Raider.
    • Creation of pages / triggers for new tutorial system.
    • Fixing save bugs for K&B story.
    • Story completion for K&B.
  • UI
    • New inventory system.
    • New tutorial system.
    • New tool tip system.
    • New crafting window in-line with new inventory system.
    • Right click context menu for most game functions (barricade/eat/rip bandages etc)
    • Options menu. Resolution changing etc in-game.
    • Title screen, pre-title screen logos and whatnot.
    • Reintroduce 'This is how you died' onto game load screen.
    • Fix character creation screen with new characters.
  • Reintroduce rain.
  • New fire + smoke graphics in-line with new lighting engine.
  • Make game reset to main menu properly after death.

This is assuming the majority of the UI stays how it is, and only the inventory and crafting has the overhaul. Though it's unclear whether we'll go and do the whole surfaces system at this stage or just have proper timed actions using a new UI but essentially the same.

Chances are we'll complete the UI overhaul across everything before Steam but these we consider the minimum requirements and would rather get all this completed before starting any of the others.

We'll keep this list updated as we go. Although inventory system is labelled as green it's still not quite complete, but should be in the next day or two.

There will be releases before all this list is completed, don't worry. 

----------------------------------



Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Project Zomboid new interface sample and chat with developers

Found this on youtube channel today fellow survivalists and thought I 'd post it up for all to see. This is a pretty amusing video made by Lemmy and Binky showcasing the new interface management and talking with us about a few things coming soon to project zomboid and just all around having a fun time. I'm so so excited for the new inventory I've wanted a new inventory for this game for a very long time (read since I've started playing it) and it's gonna be great to finally have an UI that works WITH the game instead of against it. I'll be seeing myself playing the new Zomboid update for many many hours. Which of course will be recorded and displayed here on watchsurvival for everyone to see. So expect watchsurvival zomboid let's play here in the near future when the update is released.  Keep up the great work Indiestone!!

 

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Pc Gamer Panel at Pax 2012

Hello again survivalists, I thought I would post this video from PAX that I had the pleasure of viewing.  It isn't so much directly about any video game but picks the brains of some great minds behind some of the games we enjoy here on watchsurvival.  Minecraft and Dayz for example.  There is some really great discussion going on here in this video about storyline and the future of telling stories and what can be improved upon. In general I just thought it was great seeing Dean Hall and Notch  bouncing ideas and thoughts at the same table and connecting to each other.  They are honestly both two of my favorite people in the video game industry at the moment and seeing them at the same table discussing things was a great watch.


Friday, September 7, 2012

Minecraft New Snapshot is ready for testing

Hey everyone, Minecraft has released their newest snapshot of the game for those who own the game to try it out. Looks like they are adding some really cool stuff to help with decorations. This is snapshot 12w36a which also includes the spawning of the new Wither Mob.

http://www.minecraftforum.net/news/595-snapshot-12w36a-ready-for-testing/

  • A new scary decoration block
  • The “secret” from previous snapshots is now spawnable
  • A new mob variant in the Nether
  • Minor changes to the leather dye (the colors will attempt to maintain intensity, and not dilute as much)
  • The “work in progress block” is now called “Beacon
  • Carrot on a stick!
  • And, of course, numerous bug fixes

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Dayz (arma2mod) Hotfix Build 1.7.2.6 Rolling Update

This was just released recently for the Arma2 Mod Dayz

http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/87636-hotfix-build-1726-rolling-update/

Build Notes

Affected addons:
* dayz 1.something.somethingelse
* dayz_code 1.7.2.6
* dayz_server  (server admins only)

Developer's Note:
* To change your DayZ UI options, go to OPTIONS > GAME OPTIONS > DayZ UI. This will only affect the DayZ UI elements, unfortunately it is not saving to the config file so each time you restart ArmA2 you will need to change this setting.
* You will receive a serialization warning in game when changing the DayZ UI option, just ignore it by clicking continue it will be gone in next update.
* DayZ UI Debug option is not working properlly (no debug indicator at the moment). deal-with-it.jpg

Changelog:
* [NEW]  Bear trap has chance to spawn on infected hunters
* [FIXED]  Graphical glitches with dead bodies (Bodies should now not display graphical glitches)
* [NEW] Three UI options available: Default (indicators only), Debug (indicators + debug window), None (only base ArmA2 UI)
* [FIXED]  Converting between magazine types resets ammo count (Now only contains previous number of rounds)
* [FIXED] Vehicle and tents not saving (Now they save correctly) (* Missed from original build notes accidentally*)


It's really awesome that the ammo glitches have been worked on recently and people will actually have to start looking for ammo the correct way more often now instead of duplicating all of it. Vehicle and Tents not saving was really getting annoying and players were also using tents not saving as an exploit for duplicating items so its great news that is fixed as well.  This is great news for the Legit Dayz players like myself that get tired of getting killed by cheaters.  This is why I really can't wait for the stand-alone Dayz because they can only fix so much with the Arma2 Engine and a lot of things that need to be fixed will probably not be fixed until the real Dayz game is released.  Thankfully though Rocket is really trying to smooth things out even for the mod.  I think it really shows how he cares for the game and his fans when he's trying to create and run a stand-alone Dayz game and fix the Dayz arma2 mod all at the same time.  I often wonder if he ever gets to leave his computer. Lol

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Minecraft team 1 hour Pax 2012 Video Panel

Found a nifty little video on Minecraft others may want to see. It talks a lot about the Minecraft team and their involvement of Minecraft and how Bukkit became officially attached to Minecraft ect. Most Minecraft fans should probably enjoy this and want to check it out. Warning the crowd cheering can become a little loud.

 

Project Zomboid's New Coder has been chosen!

Hello everyone,
 Just a quick update on Project Zomboid, I posted a blog a little earlier last month stating that PZ was looking for a new coder to help them smooth out bugs faster and chug out updates more often. Well they recently announced that they found the man they was looking for, and he was a part of the community all along!

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2012/09/the-ascent-of-robertjohnson/

Congrats to Romain aka RobertJohnson.  I've always been a fan of his work and he's been great for the modding community with mods for PZ like

Cannibalism and dismemberment

Campfires and Tents

The Farming and Planting Mod

Its obvious he knows the game well and understands the workings of it and loves the game and I think Indiestone made a fine choice in choosing him to join their team. He's already hard at work, stomping on some bugs.  Congrats again RJ! Looking forward to your additions to the game/team.

Monday, September 3, 2012

The WarZ Gameplay videos

A few videos are roaming around the internet for The Warz showing off some gameplay footage. I thought I'd post them here and let you guys check them out.  I'm honestly trying to hold my judgement for this game off until I actually get to play it myself, but truth be told these videos didn't impress me much and being a dayz player I see a lot of things that just seem like blatant ripping off of Dayz and it seems like they are just trying to cash in on Dayz's current success.  I'll hopefully get into the beta and get to play the game firsthand myself and decide then if I'm going to like it or not. As it stands and from what I've seen, my money will most likely go to Dayz the Stand-alone game before I purchase this title.  It's giving me bad vibes. The developer is giving me bad vibes  The ripping off of Dayz and trying to cash in on it's success is giving me bad vibes.  I'm trying not to hate it before I play it but it's not off to a great start.  I'm hoping it kicks a lot of butt and will totally turn my view around but only time and actually playing the game will tell.  Here's hoping they prove me wrong and make me eat my words after playing it. anyways on to the videos.