Hey everyone!

I’ve been working on the game more, and I hope you’re all excited about the game as I am! Anyway, I wanted to give you guys a quick update about the stuff I’m working.

• Less Lag: a very prominent complaint from the majority of playtesters was the game lagged a lot. Unless you had a very decent computer, most people’s computers struggled to keep up with the game. However, I’ve been refining the world and using an addon for Unity called Simplygon to creates LODs (Level Of Detail). So basically, buildings and props will decrease in quality as you move further away from them. To put it simply, there is less load on your computer, and you will barely notice the difference between the LODs because you are too far away to notice. However, if you have a good computer that can handle it, you can turn the Level Of Detail up in the graphics settings so everything looks prettier.

• New Graphics Settings: In addition to the LODs, there are some new graphics settings avaliable in the pause menu and on the main title screen. The mostly affect the terrain, so things like grass and trees can be controlled in case they’re lagging you out. There is also a new shadow mode called minimal, which will only allow essential shadows (moon, inside resturaunt, etc) to renderer. So if you like shadows but don’t have the world’s best computer, you can decrease their usage throught the game instead of downright turning them off.

• Cars: A few changes have been made to cars. The physics have not been fixed as of yet, but it’s in the works. But basically, thanks to some optimization stuff, cars will be spawned in designated spots when the game starts up. As well as that, the car’s engine sounds will be shut off unless you are driving the car. Also, I have added headlights to cars which are also activated by getting into the car. The headlights have shadows, but they can be disabled by changing your shadow mode to minimal.

• Civilians: I am working on importing more models for civilians. I am going to use Mixamo Fuse to make most of the models. So there will be more diversity with civilians in the next version. Also, you can now kill civilians by hitting them with cars >:D

• New buildings: Since I remade the resturaunt in SketchUp, I was on a bit of a streak. I am going to be primarily designing new buildings in Google Sketchup for the remaining period of development, so the buildings should look pretty clean (unlike the glitchy apartment buildings).

• Other small changes/bug fixes: I have also just made other small general improvements to the code and fixed some bugs. For example, the graphics settings would not load properly because of some bad coding, and that is fixed now. Just other general things and optimization to help the game run a bit smoother.

So guys, that’s what I’ve been working on recently! Hope you guys enjoy your days and I’m hoping to get another version of the game out when I’ve done more work :)

• Romejanic