Heart of the Wasteland (Public Beta)

ABOUT:

Travelling through broken remains of once great cities will lead you to freedom, where once lively highways have become a nest for the relentless undead and the outskirts have become the only source of community.

A fictional 1955 England has tuned into a post apocalyptic zombie wasteland where dictators govern over their landmarks and survivors flee from the undead. As Jan, uncover the secrets hidden before you as you fight through the living and walking dead in first person combat.

Hallucinate through stories before the mass desecration of England and learn tales of how armed military bases had come to be.

Blaze your way through enemies using a variety of tactical weapons scattered around your surroundings  and search each dark corner for hidden Easter eggs delivering exclusive content to assist you in your journey.

Interact with unique npcs and listen to their dialogue, partake in their commands or choose their fate. Read notes around the ground disperse by once citizens of cities you walk through.

And chose your destined path to walk...

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MINIMUM SPEC REQUIREMENTS: 

OS: Windows® 10 or Windows® 11

Processor: 2.6 Dual Core Processor or Greater

Memory: 6 GB RAM

Graphics: 4 GB Dedicated Video Card or Greater

DirectX: Version 11.0c

Storage: 7GB

RECOMMENDED SPEC REQUIREMENTS: 

OS: Windows® 10 or Windows® 11

Processor:  i5-6600k or Greater

Memory: 8GB RAM

Graphics: GTX 1660 super or equivalent

DirectX: Version 11.0c

Storage: 7GB

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LAUNCH HELP:

1) Unzip the file using 7zip  https://www.7-zip.org as it is free and guaranteed to work whilst other unzipping software's might cause crashing issues. ( Start by right clicking upon it < 7zip < Extract here or Extract files if you want to chose a different location)

2) Open your extracted folder and run the HOTW.EXE file (If you want to, you can take this file out and put it somewhere else on your pc like your desktop as long as you do not delete all the other folder files)

3) You are ready to experience the game! (If you would like to take a look at your fps in game there is a built in frames counter you can activate by pressing either F11 or F12 by default. If for some reason your game is not running properly make sure you extracted all the files properly, Taken a look at the Spec requirements and looked at the Additional help section of this page.) 

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ADDITIONAL HELP:

This section is for users who would like to better self optimize their gaming experience or for those seeking help in fixing crashes & low fps issues.

Low Fps: If you have taken a look at the spec requirements and believe your hardware is within that range there should be no problem in running the game as long as your drivers and updates are up to date.

By default if  Heart of the wasteland detects low frames it will give you a message asking to go into a low quality mode in order to boost your frames to the max, move around ever so slightly in order to trigger it if you have not seen it already. 

The most common issue for low frames is due to the Engines highly outdated graphics card and processor detection, More then likely it will default to your computers standardised launch configuration. In order to counter this you can do a couple things.

1) If you are on Nvidia, go to your "NVIDIA control panel" and change your preferred graphics processor to the one you would like to use.

2) Pick out which graphics card you want to use through your task manager (Go to the performance tab at the top and take note of the units number, EXAMPLE: 0,1)  

go to the "setup.ini " file within your heart of the wasteland folder and open it using notepad, There you should see a bunch of different command lines and numbers.

Look for "adapterordinal=" and input the number you got off your task manager, If you did not manage to figure out the number take a gamble through using these numbers then checking if the fps issue is fixed: 0,1 and 99. (MAKE SURE TO SAVE THE NOTEPAD FILE BEFORE EXITING, IT IS IN THE TOP LEFT CORNER)

Whilst you are already there feel free to put "vsync=" to 1 in order to reduce screen tearing although this will cap your fps and is not necessary.

Look for "dividetexturesize=" and have fun messing around with the values. The higher the number the lower the textures become and so goes the opposite. (if you want to increase the graphics to its optimal form or if you want to highly degrade the graphics do not go to 0 or 99999999999999999 as it will most likely result in a instant death to your game) 

3) The most simple solution, decrease your graphics quality in the settings menu. I know very surprising indeed!

crash prevention: As of now the two most common reasons for crashes are due to the engine processing things slowly and improper extraction of the zip file.

1) If you have any background apps running without need such as steamvr or obs make sure to close them as they reduce the processing power the engine is getting.

2) Do not tab out in-between transition points & cutscenes.

3) Make sure you used 7zip and all the files have been extracted properly (Especially the decals as this is what causes the shooting of guns to crash your game)

4) Run the exe file as administrator as this will prioritise it over other applications.  

5) Make sure all unneeded applications like steam and discord are closed.

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EXTRAS:

-Cover at created by BlxxdBvrn

Heart of the wasteland has been a project in development for  two years by a singular developer with a loyal community who assisted in voice acting, music design, artwork and more.

It was originally supposed to be a game set in 1955 communist Poland where your main goal was to escape and was named "Escape from Warsaw" Although after the first week of development the concept was completely changed yet remnants still lay in the prologue.

The first voice actor apart from Lieutenant knuckles was a youtuber under the name of @Evan Guide who has a passionate love for zombie games and found interest in the early concept of Heart of the wasteland. 

Through the development of Heart of the wasteland many starting voice actors ended up having a small portfolio to their names and being able to work or other projects as a result.

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DEVELOPERS NOTICE: 

Heart of the wasteland is more then a game i chose to develop, Its a end of an Era, a bond stronger then steel and tighter then a rope, a learning experience and a souvenir of what came up along the way.

Through the development of heart of the wasteland friendships were made, feuds were settled and lives were lost. 

I believe that Heart of the Wasteland contributes more then an indie game but acts as a memory, A memory of all that has been done and all that as a community we have went through.

I know that i have not always been very clear with the direction of the game and often resulted in shrugging others off, I know that most of my life i have not been a noble soul and i know the many mistakes i have performed through my path of getting here, I know that anyone close to me inevitably would have been hurt by one or more of my actions. 

Thus i hope this acts as repayment for my hill of sins, 

-Lieutenant Knuckles