Weather, zombies and a HUD walk into a valley

The test map is done. Now it rains, things wander, and the screen finally tells you you're starving.

Last time, we tore down a whole town and promised a new one. Good news: the ground is still there, and now things are happening on it. Some of them on purpose.

The test map is finished

Every system in the game needs somewhere to be tested, and a full valley is a terrible place to test anything. You'd spend twenty minutes walking just to see whether a zombie can open a door.

So we built a test map: a compact little slice of Northvale with a bit of everything packed close together. Hills, flat ground, trees, a few buildings and plenty of room to break things. It's not pretty. It's not meant to be. It's the garage where we take the engine apart.

Weather (the sky is now part of the problem)

Northvale has weather now, or it's getting there. Rain rolls in, fog settles into the low ground, and the light changes as the day goes on. It's mostly working, which in game development means it's working beautifully until it suddenly rains indoors.

Weather isn't just decoration here. Fog means you hear the thing before you see it. Rain means you'd really like a roof. And a clear night means everyone on that ridge can see your campfire.

The HUD: telling you you're dying, nicely

Remember all those systems we built under the hood: health, hunger, inventory, building? They work. The trouble is, up until now the only way to see them was a wall of debug text that looked like the game was filing its taxes.

So we're building the HUD and menus: health, hunger and thirst you can read at a glance, an inventory you don't have to squint at, and building menus that don't require a computer science degree. The goal is a screen that tells you what you need and then gets out of the way, so you can see what's coming over the hill.

AI: teaching things to wander

This is the big one. We're setting up the AI for zombies and wildlife, which means teaching a lot of very confused creatures how to move, notice you, and make your evening worse.

• Zombies drift, follow noise and light, and don't give up easily. They're not fast or smart. They're just persistent, and there are a lot of them.
• Wildlife has its own priorities. Some animals run from you. Some don't. Learning which is which is part of the fun.

Early AI is mostly a comedy show: zombies walking into walls with total confidence, a deer standing perfectly still while staring into the middle distance. We're working on it. The deer may be working on something too.

What's next

Finish the weather, put the HUD in front of real eyes, and turn the AI from "confused" into "threatening." After that we'll take all of it off the test map and turn it loose in Northvale.

If you want to be one of the first people the zombies are confused by, sign up for the playtest. See you in the valley. Bring a raincoat.