Old saves are compatible but a new savegame is required for all of these changes to take full effect.
NEW
- Added Firearm Chance To Damage sandbox option, an experimental new method to calculate firearm hits, now based on the chance to damage. It is defaulted to be on, but the previous method remains available in Sandbox. Feedback is welcome on both for future balance. - Chance-to-Damage: Each successfully aimed shot hits. The previous chance-to-hit calculation then determines if damage is dealt. This change aims to eliminate the frustration of “missed shots” and attempts to make every ranged attack feel more rewarding. - Added ability to raise UI render FPS cap to 120, added 60 and 120 options. 60 is the new default. - Added Purify Water recipe, it uses Water Purification Tablets to purify up to 1L of tainted water. - Added blacksmithing recipes: Small Iron Bands; Iron Bands; Mace Heads; Spiked Clubs; Spear Heads; and Long Spear Heads. - Added Report Bug button to MainScreen.lua which opens TIS bug report forum. - Added Can Pipe. - Added craftRecipe for forging the Large Hook item. - Added recipe for carving Planks from a Large Branch. - Added functions to InventoryItem.java to randomize an item's condition, headCondition, Sharpness, and all general conditions, to consistencize loot spawning in ItemPickerJava.java. - Added missing items and craftRecipes for Flax, Spinach, Sunflower and Tobacco seed packets. - Added recipe for forging a Handguard Dagger.
- Added a sandbox setting, "Discomfort Modifier" that, similar to "Muscle Strain Factor", can be used to disable, reduce, or increase the discomfort effect provided by clothing items that provide discomfort. - Added precautions against chickenpocalypse
- Added recipe for making twine using dogbane. - Added a craftRecipe for carving short bats. Needed for spiked club and mace crafting. - Added craftRecipes for splitting circular sawblades into halves (used for crafting some weapons) using a hacksaw, bandsaw, welding torch or forge. - Added missing blacksmithing craftRecipe for forging buckles. - Added craftRecipes for forging spiked baseball bats and cudgels. - Added several new skill books, recipe magazines, and crafting tools, especially "bottleneck" items, to the foraging tables. - Added some similar additions to the randomized world story item pools. - Added recipes for turning an iron band into 4 small iron bands. - Added a recipe for fixing saws and sawblades with a file - Added a craftRecipe to get Long Sticks from Brooms and Mops. - Added a sandbox setting that can be used to set the maximum hours of fuel a campfire, wood stove, charcoal bbq, etc can hold. This defaults to 8 hours. - Added a carved wooden bucket item. - Added Bundled Sterilized Rag item, can be bundled and unbundled through recipes. - Updated Moodles. - Updated Sounds - Several mixing and polishing adjustments. - Footstep sweeteners when walking over garbage on the floor. - Added sounds for animals breaking down fences, log gates, grabbing eggs from hutch, milking animals. - Added OpenBeerBottle sound to timedAction OpenBeerBottle. - Microwave and oven UIs play the ToggleTemp sound when setting temperature. - The oven ui on/off button plays the ToggleStove sound. - ISKnob plays the KnobSwitch sound by default. - Removed calls to play Hammering sound from code. Changed the implementation of the Hammering event associated with building, it is now triggered by the animation.
BALANCE
- Removed death-by-tree. Scratches no longer bleed. Erroneous lacerations taken out. - Zombies climbing through windows now become visible when their head is visible. - Doubled maintenance xp gain.
- Boiling water now 10x faster. - Adjustments to safehouse loot. - Previously survivalist safehouse stories would have better loot after 30 days have passed since the apocalypse; this has been changed to 10 days. - Late stage loot now appears in safehouses and on survivalist zombies after 90 days, not 180. - Safehouses will now spawn skill books, recipes, and firearms/ammunition more reliably. - Halved the muscle strain gain from being over-encumbered. This only occurs when a character is encumbered enough to also take health damage from their encumbrance. - Items with sharpness will now lose sharpness at half the rate they did previously. - Nails will be transferred to main inventory before starting a Barricade action. - Doubled the amount of clay from a bag. - If it is too dark to read but the character is inside a vehicle it will be possible to read as long as the vehicle's battery has charge. - Comics and Magazines will have less of a bias towards recent issues. - Fixed a reference of "Ripped Sheet" instead of "Rag". - Mild nudge-nerf to the sheet scrap metal baseball bat. - Removed the Maintenance level requirements for the glass and toothbrush shiv recipes. - Balanced sharpness reduction when chopping down trees. - Bumped nutrition values on animal meat when butchering. - Dead farm plants now display mouse-over tooltips and the Plant Information window. - Rebalanced several cudgel weapons. - Added the CanPipe item to the story to various clutter pools - Limited numbers of "Hobo" outfit zombies can spawn in "Derelict" roomdefs - Restored BeerEmpty and BeerCanEmpty as clutter items for several stories. - Increased size of landscape flyers from 800x564 to 1616x1131 (same height as portrait flyers) - Crafted clay cement can be used for building, not just concrete. - Added items, recipes, and evolved recipes using forged cooking pot. - Added copper saucepans to pasta and rice recipes. - Reduced fatigue change for cola and soda fluids, from 5 to 2. - Empty beer, pop, and tin cans can be used to boil water. - Made some literature items unreadable - Changed the category of several armor craftRecipes to armor.
- Lowered the amount of zombies in the Forest by 5 - Re-enabled Disinfect Bandage using hot water, added tooltip to inform it needs to be very hot. - Both the Handy trait, and the Repairman profession, grant 1 level in the Carving skill - Removed DangerousUncooked from ChickenNuggets and FishFingers.
- Allow challenge maps to specify the min/max zombies per chunk, so the spawn maps don't need to be recreated. - Ordinarily, "normal" vehicles, being ones that don't have strong/specific theming such as Police vehicles, Ambulances, etc., but "normal"/"civilian"/"non-business" vehicles, have an 8% chance of having one of multiple special loot distributions if a list of special loot distributions is defined for that vehicle. - Added the vehicle script field "specialLootChance", that, if defined, will set the % chance of a vehicle having the above special loot, if their special loot is properly defined. - The camouflage trucks have a 16% chance of having special loot instead of a 8% chance, as above, now, using the specialLootChance field.
- The mural vans now have a specialLootChance of 80% so they should generally have more memorable loot than average. - Added the vehicle script parameter "specialKeyRingChance". - If a vehicle has defined special keyrings in their script, specialKeyRingChance will be used to determine if that vehicle key will spawn with that special key ring if a keyring is generated when that vehicle spawns. - There are other ways vehicle keys can spawn (loot, zombies), in addition to keys spawning in the ignition, so this wouldn't cover every instance. - Added a placeholder distribution table for some "outdoorsy" keyRings so they can spawn outdoorsy keyRing items (compasses, handiknives, P38 can openers) on them. - The Lady Delighter van has a specialKeyRingChance of 100%. - KeyRing type items will provide 85% weight reduction for their contents while they are in their "fake equipped state". - KeyRings are already put into a fake-equipped state whenever they are in a character's main inventory, with their container icon buttons automatically appearing on the right-hand side of the character inventory window. - The Hand Knife item can be put on a KeyRing. - Pocketwatches can be put in a keyring.
- Made camouflage truck spawns more consistent. - Changed the key spawning on zombies for buildings to utilize the better of two rolls, compared to the key spawning chance, to bump up building key spawns on them while still preserving the loot spawn setting functionality. - Paint Bucket will use that specific name now, instead of just Bucket. - Foraging: Clay will Spawn 2 to 4 items instead of just one.
- Increased the rarity of the rat king story. - Characters with the Carpenter, Construction Worker, and Lumberjack Professions start the game with 1 level of Maintenance. - Removed MakeSlugTrap from the Farmer profession bonus recipes; that recipe/item/mechanic didn't manage to make it into the game. - The construction worker profession provides a +3 bonus to the Masonry skill. - WaterDish and BucketWaterDebug now fill with rain. - Removed the IgnoreZombieDensity tag from several firearm and ammunition containers because it was making them too rare; this is probably partially on account of default loot levels changing from 0.6 to 0.4 towards the end of internal testing. - Changed the maximum fuel limit for campfires, fireplaces, and wood BBQs from 6 to 8 hours.
- Bandit outfit zombies with bags will sometimes have armor and weapon recipe magazines and schematics in those backs, but not always. - Survivalist outfit zombie bags should contain more skill books, in tiers 1-3; previously they only could spawn tier 4 & 5 skill books.
- Vehicles that spawn in burnt parkingstall zones will evaluate as a vehicle trapped in a traffic jam for some key spawning purposes. - Adjusted the sheetSlingBag capacity from 12 to 10 from feedback. - Added the Pager and CordlessPhone items to the ground clutter item pool for the Rich Jerk road story. - When knapping a Sharp Flint Flake from a Flint Nodule using the MakeSharpFlintFlake craftRecipe the character should sometimes, the chance being based on their level in the FlintKnapping skill, get a second Sharp Flint Flake. - When a saxophone or trumpet breaks it should spawn the BrassScrap item on the character's square floor. - Lavender, Poppy, and Rose seed packets can spawn in gardening baskets. - Added flower seed packets to the loot that can spawn in gardener/landscaper vehicles. - Adjusted the code for chopping down trees so more LargeBranches and Saplings will spawn. - Modified the tree chopping code to be more generous, scaling by tree size, in possibly dropping branches and saplings. They also drop splinters, so you will always get tinder. - Increased the amount of long sticks or saplings needed for a lean to shelter, for the foundation as per the tile sprites. - Characters with the Veteran occupation/Desensitized trait, should be completely immune to panic. - Pickup trucks, pickup van-trucks and cargo vans (but not passenger vans) have a 40% chance of having special loot instead of default loot, as they are working vehicles. - Previously only StepVans could have Masonry special vehicle loot; now Vans, PickupTrucks and PickupTruckVans can have Masonry loot. This means more Masonry chisels spawn, alongside skill books. - Stepvans now have an 80% chance of having special loot. - Special vehicle loot includes a lot of crafting/skill/recipe resources. - Adjusted the farming xp code so a player cannot get less than 0 xp from harvesting their own crop. - Added a second set of pot/pan pasta/rice putting recipes that use the above FullOfWater flag to require the pot or pan to be full of water to add the pasta or rice without needing water from an exterior source.
- Some extra code for the Bandit Raid story so that if there is a vehicle there is a greater chance of the key spawning on one of the bandit zombies or in the vicinity.
- Double barrel shotguns can spawn as farm storage clutter. - Added a recipe to smash stag skulls in order to get antlers. - Changed "Carve Knapping Tool" into "Carve Knapping Tools" as you should get two of them from a set of antlers, and also increased the carving skill xp. - Sometimes fireplaces can have Bellows and/or Tongs on their square, as well as fireplace pokers. Even though Tongs and Bellows can spawn in fireplaces, and in many other containers in the world, this providing another, visible, opportunity for these smithing items to spawn.
- Added some "new" items (newer than the story) to the Murder Scene story item clutter pool. - Fixed "Key - IGUI_ConstructionSite". - Changed the MakeFirecrakers recipe to accept Scissors by tag, and not only by type Base. Scissors. - Insert Battery recipe now uses tags, keeps the flashlight/electric item instead of destroying it, so that adding items is easier, no longer needs an output mapper. - Improvements to thirst normalization. - Glasses, Hats, and Shoes that are added in stories and world randomization clutter should not be deleted by the player quality of life world item removal system for removing hats and glasses that fall off of zombies. - Added AllowFavorite to a bunch of recipes. - Added InheritFavorite to a bunch of recipes that AllowFavorite. - Characters will only gain unhappiness from taking items from human corpses, and will no longer accumulate stress from the action. However players with fear of blood will still accumulate stress, scaling with how bloody the item is, when transferring items from a container, whether it is a human corpse or not.
- The CrushLimestone craftRecipe now is in the Masonry category and also grants Masonry xp. - Added a similar craftRecipe, KnappLimestone, that also produces crushed limestone, but takes longer, uses knapping tools, and grants knapping xp. - Both of these crafts don't have a skill level or learning requirement, and can be used to grind Masonry and Knapping xp from Limestone, which can be found lying around on the ground.
- Both the Stone Maul head and the Large Stone Axe head now need to be made from a Large Flat Stone, which also can be found lying on the ground. The Large Flat Stone can be used to build a couple of tiles (the grinding slab and stone cabinet), but it's a reasonable ingredient for both crafts and this gives the Large Flat Stone item more utility. - Halved the neck strain from the sewing crafting timed action. - Updated the improvised tent kit recipe to use the stick items that currently exist in the game, as it predated their existence. - Break large stones craftRecipe no longer allows any hammer to be used; it requires a Club Hammer, Sledge, or Stone Maul to perform. - Added Masonry xp to several masonry recipes; these are placeholder values and will need further adjustment alongside the recipes themselves. - Added a recipe to Knapp Large Stone into Stones for Knapping xp training. - Added the CanBeDoneFromFloor tag to several craftRecipe with heavy ingredients, such as logs are large stones. - Increased the xp gained for several weapon craftRecipes. - Fixed some issues with certain combinations of rooms and containers for loot spawning.
- Trailers will sometimes spawn with Masonry special loot in them. - Trailers will always spawn with special loot in them, as a crafting source. - Different kinds of scissors are more or less durable than other kinds of scissors.
- Tweaked distributions to address recipe magazine/skill book issues, as well as some items missing from the tables. - Harvested Flint from Mineral Deposits will now have at least one Sharp Flint Flake in the yield; this is so players who just need a flint flake and not knapping xp can just get one. - Similarly, Harvested Limestone from Mineral Deposits will have at least one Crushed Limestone in the yield. - Added foraging stuff for Whittler and Wilderness Knowledge trait benefits. - Some adjustment nerfs to the Ratchet Wrench and Tire Iron durability values. - Short revolvers can sometimes spawn in purses and handbags. - Boosted the spawns of Whetstones and added them to several new distribution tables so they have more opportunities to spawn. - Boosted the spawns of Masonry Chisels and added them to several new distribution tables so they have more opportunities to spawn. - More opportunities for Whetstones and Masonry Chisels to spawn. - Home Alarms can be an electronics story clutter item. - Relaxed the skill level and tool quality requirements for several "bottleneck recipes": heading tool; metalworking punch; masonry chisel; and masonry trowel. - Butter now require 5L of milk instead of 0.5L. - Relaxed the requirements to forge a Crude Saw (Crude Woodsaw). - Fixed and added missing tooltips and recipe names. Renamed Crude Saw to Crude Woodsaw and Small Saw to Small Hacksaw for clarity - Kitchen tongs can be used as "Crude Tongs" for some blacksmithing recipes; they'll also probably break after the first craft. - Crude/Simple Wooden Tongs have a tooltip explaining that they will break when used for smithing tasks. This is how they work in real life. - Crude/Simple Wooden Tongs can now be used as fire tinder and fuel.
- Added whetstones to the items that can spawn in fishing tackleboxes. - Players with the speed demon trait will sometimes very rarely (1% of the time) spawn with a Speeding Ticket in their inventory. - Consolidated the MakeCrudeKnife and Make_Stone_Knife craftRecipes into one recipe, MakeCrudeKnife.
- Belts can no longer be ripped with the general purpose rip denim/leather clothing recipes anymore, because the OnCreate function for those recipes would also produce a Buckle item when they were used to rip apart belts. - Small iron bands can be produced by scrapping vehicles.
- Added a craftRecipes to forge the File and Auger Drill items. - Added the Heading Tool as a requirement to craft the Metalworking Pliers.
- Added the Tongs items to some more distribution tables, the weight chances will likely need to be adjusted, but this item, like the Mason's Chisle & Trowel, needed more widespread opportunities to spawn. - Removed the maxItemSize parameter for the cashbox item. - Brussel Sprouts can be added to stir-fries and roasts. - Added the Tongs and Masonry tools to more tables so they have more opportunities to spawn. - All non-garage doors in Trashed and Looted house stories should be unlocked. - Barricaded doors in Trashed and Looted house stories should not be smashed. - Rope belts that a character crafts should only provide one left hotbar slot. - If a character has a bleeding neck injury the bleeding moodle will be at it's maximum value; previously only the # of bleeding body parts, regardless of their severity, would affect the moodle level.
- Construction Worker vehicles can sometimes have wallpaper in their trunk/truck bed. - Shiv weapons all require no more than 1 Maintenance to craft. - The FlintNodule and Stone2 weapons are no longer Short Blunt; they aren't a skill-associated weapon anymore, and no weapon skills provide any benefit when using them. - Changed the autoLearn mechanic for learning recipes to be more forgiving. - The Simple Metal Knives/Crude Knives are more durable, not as durable as the long version, but close to it. Previously they were far less durable. Blade versions without a handle are less durable; affixing the handle serves as a shock absorber so there is less stress on the blade itself. - Rebalanced the durability of the Multitool and Handiknife items; they were too fragile previously. - Previously one craftRecipe, "SharpenBone" could be used to produce both small sharp bones and long sharp bones depending on what kind of bone was the input. Now they are two separate crafts, "SharpenBone" and "SharpenLongBone", with differing skill level requirements. - Some minor nerfs to the durability and damage of the long sharp bone. Increased the xp gain for many bone-associated crafts.
- Added the sheet metal snips to some randomized world clutter item pools, foraging definitions, and attached weapon definitions to avoid bottlenecking them. - The Brass Nameplate item can spawn as Antique loot in addition to desktop clutter. - Added some new recipe magazines to the foraging tables.
- Food items is stories that are spawned in using the regular story item spawning functions should now be the proper age for how long it has been since the apocalypse; ie rotten if they can rot and it has been long enough.
- Old generator item is now significantly louder than the good/normal generators. - The cheap blue ValueTech generator is also louder than good/normal generators, but not as loud as the old generator. - Both kinds of generators already degrade at a faster rate than the good generators, the premium brand one also degrades slower.
- The Stone2 weapon was given the same pushback mod and lower damage values as the FlintNodule weapon. - Both Stone2 and FlintNodule have a greater chance of being damaged when used for an attack. - Both Stone2 and FlintNodule will should now drain approximately twice as much endurance as previously, and produce approximately twice as much muscle strain in the code. - Both Stone2 and FlintNodule will do 2 damage to a door per strike versus 1 point of damage previously. They shouldn't be the worst possible weapon to use to beat down a door, and arguably might need a higher value.
- If a character has line of sight to a television and has a TV Remote equipped in one of their hands, they can perform appropriate interactions such as on/off or changing the volume from a distance instead of having to be adjacent to or walk to the TV. - Credits to Skyzoo and https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3399832371 for thinking of this before us :simple_smile:
- Added some missing options for cutting leather in half. - Camping First Aid kits on store shelves should now be stocked. - Reduced the RunSpeedModifier on the keepad items; they were placeholders as it's not currently functional, but also they were excessive. - Added condition bars to some items. - Made crafting a wooden toolbox slightly more relaxed regarding the ingredient requirements.
- Added sharpness property and condition bars to non-weapon scissors items (safety and medical).
- Set up some spawning opportunities for some new literature items. - Some bottleneck items have more spawn opportunities and were added to the foraging tables. - Added some scrap items to the bin junk distribution items; one of them has utility for smelting, and others were added to the game with the intention of them having similar future utility. - Added some bottleneck items, Masonry tools, and Small Iron Bands to appropriate clutter item pools. - Updated the boxed wine, and personal-sized cartons of milk and chocolate milk for the fluid system.
- Added functionality for the Small Hacksaw for several appropriate craft recipes. - Medical Shears can be used instead of other tools for some craftRecipes involving cutting tin cans. They can do that in real life. - Reduced the DoorDamage of the Kettle Maul weapons from 40 to 30. - Increased the DoorDamage of the Bucket Maul from 40 to 50. - More items, including several of the new "Broken [ITEM]" items, can be used to carve medium and small handles. - Replaced the Trim Sapling craftRecipe with a more generic, tag-input based craftRecipe, "Carve Long Stick". - Ice Hockey Sticks can be carved into Long Sticks. - Relaxed the autoLearn requirements for all learnable knapping recipes; they should all be 1 level above the required level, aside from the stone awl that unlocks at the required level. - Removed the maintenance level requirements for disassembling shafted implements. - The survivor zombie and mob that spawn on roads will spawn in a more diffuse crowd than the tight little group they did previously. - Masonry vehicles can spawn concrete powder in their trunks. - Players can now open the world map in the dark if they are in a vehicle that has a battery charge over 0. - Boosted the xp gain for several leather and hide crafting crafts. - Some tweaks to bookstore loot. - Added the AllowDestroyedItem to several craftRecipes for cutting bars in half so broken bars can cut in a half with a hacksaw etc. for 2 100% condition bar-halves. - Added IsoAimingPosition check which includes targets within a threshold to the IsoReticle position. Improves aiming at crawlers in close proximity to the player character.
- Updated Refill Lighter recipe, removed unnecessary OnTest function and fixed it spawning an empty Lighter. - Added Fleshing tool to Giga Mart and other butchering store locations. - Updated recipe for Twine, it now needs 20 Dogbane items, a surface, and craft time increased from 140 to 180. - Successful shotgun hits now grant Aiming XP once per shot, rather than for each pellet that hits
FIXES
- Fixed black screen at start of the game and after "Click to Start" on some AMD GPUs. - Fixed not being able to target animals properly. CombatManager::removeTargetObjects no longer removes IsoAnimal. - Fixed IsoGameCharacter::hitConsequences() awarding Strength XP for Ranged Weapons - Fixed IgnoreDamage awarding Weapon XP. - Fixed character not always attacking a closer zed even with MultiHit on. - Fixed not being able to open some seed packet types. - Fixed 3D items sometimes become gigantic on use for a split second. - Fixed drainable items losing uses after saving and loading. - Fixed many snow tiles not rendering (snow-covered trees, for example). - Fixed Watering Can not filling with rain. - Fixed an exploit with cigarette carton packing craftRecipe. - Fixed some sacks not having the proper tags so they could be ripped up. - Fixed radio and tv shows not properly saving the lastBroadcastID and storing this data on load. This fixes players being able to rewatch a show by logging out and back in after the show ends. - Fixed rendering of the player-at-cursor in DebugChunkState, and added a scale slider. - Fixed attempting to slide a sitting zombie's head away from walls. - Fixed WoodStake blocking movement like a west wall. - Fixed blacksmith recipes that required Base.Charcoal instead of the Charcoal tag. - Fixed boiling water not considering game speed. - Fixed hutch being recreated at x-1. (fix for some metal through spawning inside hutch) - Fixed some packing recipes not allowing for favorites. - Fixed double animal's name rendering in their tooltip. - Fixed aiming at vehicle with a melee weapon but not hitting reducing weapon's sharpness. - Fixed low quality water causing a black shadow around bodies of water - Fixed "Walk To" resetting the game speed to x1. - Fixed bottles of disinfectant only having one use. - Fixed alcohol fluid containers not disinfecting wounds. - Fixed oddness when starting to exercise when crouching. - Fixed item nametags sticking to cursor when the crafting menu is closed. - Fixed campfire not boiling water if : add a pot > light campfire. - Fixed issue with multibuild failing when multiple input items drawn from floor - Fixed related recipes: Building Rain Barrel, Double Wooden Door, Spinning Wheel, Barbedwire Fence, Metal Stairs, Metal Wall, Metal WindowFrame. - Fixed Packing Rags turning all rags dirty. - Fixed the player losing health and getting muscle strain from heavy loads while sitting on furniture. - Fixed ArmorMag4 having 2 duplicate codpiece recipes instead of having recipes for both the codpiece and a gorget. - Fixed the sharp stone fragment being, incorrectly, in the weapon item type; it's not, it's a normal-type item. This would cause crashes when equipped. - Fixed some new weapons incorrectly being Long Blunt and not Short Blunt. - Fixed some undesired results when making spears. - Fixed some weapons improperly being Short Blunt and not Long Blunt. - Fixed female long-tooth necklace weights - Fixed fluids improperly affecting stress when drunk. - Fixed Loot respawn not occurring in basements and also in skyscrapers. - Fixed building randomization and stash system stuff not accounting for z-levels below 0 and above 8. - Fixed an error with shoulder armor recipes having inconsistent tailoring skill requirements. - Fixed Bowl and Clay Bowl having inconsistent categories. - Fixed error when clicking on antibiotics. - Fixed layout of the transfer liquids UI (long container names didn't fit). - Fixed campfires being destroyable by fire. - Fixed buildRecipeCode error building stairs. - Fixed Dried Jalapeno Peppers being able to rot. - Fixed Metal Bandsaw's name on right click. - Fixed every Thumpable which has canPathN/W not being transparent to building - Fixed "Improvized Tent". - Fixed Favorited flashlights not allowing batteries to be inserted. - Fixed glitchy model rendering affecting mods due to not-normalized bone weights. - Fixed CorpseDropByLegs sound not playing for face-down zombies. - Fixed HeadSlice sound playing when a vehicle kills a zombie while the driver has a Katana (or other long-bladed weapon) equipped. - Fixed several smithing magazines having obsolete references to craftRecipe names with spaces and not underscores in them. - Fixed forging a Corkscrew not consuming a small handle. - Fixed an issue with the Occult Activity story and added some more randomization and potential items to it. - Fixed broken branches having too high of a maximum condition. - Fixed creating debuglog.ini file for logging - Fixed error with trunk access with Beckman's building van. - Fixed undesired behaviour with IsEmpty/IsFull inputFlags in some circumstances where it was only evaluating for fluids if an input was explicitly a fluid input, whereas the intention was for evaluating InventoryItem inputs for some fluid cases.
Unstable Branch Hotfix 42.0.2 Released!
HOTFIX 42.0.2
ADDITIONS - Added sandbox multipliers for jamming, weather and moodle effects on hit chance - Added boolean sandbox option to disable headgear vision penalties on hit chance BALANCE - Significantly reduced jamming rates - Adjusted point blank distance to 3.5 tiles - Some HitChance modifiers that were not properly impacted by point blank distance are now taken into account. These include moodles, weather, lighting and headgear. - Reduced moodle hitChance penalties by half - Set default sandbox jam multiplier to 0 FIXES - Fixed weapons with 0 base rate from jamming on rack - Fixed tutorial shotgun from potentially jamming. - Fixed tutorial running to the outhouse step from being broken
Hotfix 42.0.1 - Unstable Release
- Fix for "no UI"/"black screen" at game start (helps with problematic screenresolution.ini file, but not with old AMD cards bug). - Fixed game closing while shooting. - Fixed texture compression being disabled. - Removed placeholder UI sounds - Fixed not being able to open doors when another timed action was being carried out. - Reduced Melee Weapon Muscle strain. It is now 60% of the previous amount. Other sources of Muscle Strain are unaffected. The sandbox value hasn't changed and the reduced value is the new baseline. - Fixed Chickenpocalypse. - Fixed a butchering exploit.
- Fixed a missing floor in cell 16,24 causing the player to fall forever.
- Convert GLSL 330 syntax to 150 when the available OpenGL version is less than 3.3. - This should allow the game to run on MacOS again, in theory. - Replaced GL43.glDepthRangef() calls with GL11.glDepthRange(). - Fixed bink videos not playing when the working directory does not contain the "media" directory. - Fixed glitchy model rendering affecting mods due to not-normalized bone weights. - Fixed garbage creation in several spots. AnimationPlayer.getSkinTransformData() was reallocating bone matrices every frame due to bone counts differing between player models and clothing models. - Reduced memory usage a little. - Radio data XML was kept in memory after parsing. - LosUtil.cachedresults isn't used in singleplayer. - Avoid allocating a few large buffers used only in multiplayer. - Garbage-creation avoided in several places. - Fixed rendering issues starting the game with zoom disabled. - Fixed BallisticsTargets not being cleared. - Fixed array indexing in PZBallistics::getCameraTargets - ModelInstance::getAttachmentWorldPosition normalizes the direction vector - Fixed Zeds playing wrong animation when shoved down. - When bKnockedDown and !hasHitReaction and !bOnFloor and playerAttackPosition = FRONT/BACK, Zed now goes to staggerback-knockeddown. - When playerAttackPosition is not FRONT/BACK, Zed goes to falldown. - attack-network no longer goes to idle when bDead. - staggerback-knockeddown AnimNodes no longer continously check bKnockedDown. - Already in the knockeddown state, no need to keep checking. - Modified the default sandbox options for animals a bit, made milk/wool on Fast by default, Egg hatch is fast, not very fast now tho (meaning it takes 14 days to hatch an egg instead of approx 8 days in the current very fast version) - Fixed recipecode for pack of batteries that spawned in the world. - Fixed multiple recipes in knapping. - Removed the butchering & recipe code fixes since it wasn't wanted for hotfix. - Fixed Make_Stone_Knife requiring Maintenance 5 instead of 1. - Wooden Cudgel renamed to Large Branch. - Added Workshop tags: Animals, Audio, Farming, Skills, QoL, WIP - Traits renamed. - Nervous to Cowardly - Fear of Outdoors to Agoraphobic - Fear of Indoors to Claustrophobic - Outdoorsman to Outdoorsy - Can't Read to Illiterate - Repairer/Repairman to DIY Expert - Fisher to Angler - Adjusted Slow Reader, ThinSkinned, and Disorganized trait descriptions - "Very Long Stick" renamed to "Long Stick". It's still way above average ok. - "Breaded" foods renamed to "Fried" - The libbink64.dylib was rebuilt. - Rebuilt Linux pzbullet libraries. - Updated PZBullet Win32/64 natives
Build 42 Unstable Out Now
Build 42 Unstable is now available to play!
Important
Those who play Unstable must be aware that they’re playing a work in progress.
This Unstable exists so we can collect player feedback to find bugs and improve our game. Some key features, primarily multiplayer, are initially disabled – they will be re-enabled later.
Build 41 saves and mods are NOT compatible with Build 42.
There will be bugs and annoyances, and game balance will likely be way from perfect, particularly with the zombie distribution and combat changes.
Your saves may break after Unstable updates.
We’re aware people have built up a lot of anticipation for the first unstable release, and have done our best to make it an enjoyable experience out the gate. But as those who were present for the first b41 unstable release will attest, it’s in unstable for a reason and our unstable branches evolve a lot during the process, so please be understanding and constructive if you come across issues.
HOW TO PLAY?
The Unstable branch is now accessible to anyone who plays Project Zomboid.
Right click Project Zomboid in your Steam library and hit “Properties”.
Then, navigate to the betas tab and select the “Unstable” branch from the dropdown menu.
If you put it anywhere else (including Discord) then your report will likely get lost.
WHAT’S IN? WHAT’S NEXT?
PLEASE NOTE:
Due to some unavoidable last minute compatibility issues, unstable 42 for Mac will arrive in a subsequent update, very possibly falling in the New Year.
SteamDeck / controller input is still WIP, and currently not recommended for play
MP will be enabled during the Unstable beta process.
Our GOG friends will get access to Unstable very soon too, we’ve just had a lot on our plate but will try and roll the unstable out to GOG asap.
The team is still hard at work improving aspects of the game that will be mixed in during the Unstable beta process.
Initial patching, alongside any major issues that arise from the player community, will concentrate on:
Polishing of Craft and Building UIs
Ingredients tuning
XP gain adjustments
More icons, better tooltips
Various collision issues
None of these areas are finalized, and we welcome your thoughts on all of the above so we can prioritize our patching.
A focus for us during Unstable will be hunting. Currently deer migrate over the map along paths preordained at the game’s start, and they leave poop and broken twigs that those with the tracking skill can follow – which testers seem to have found cool and atmospheric.
These rudiments are fun enough, but to get more of a Call of the Wild feeling we’re going to have to give the deer, their deaths, and the tracking much more focus during Unstable as the animal husbandry side of animals is what has received more than the lion’s share of attention during dev.
CURRENT KNOWN ISSUES
Ballistics system:
Shooting at crawlers / on stairs with the new aim system is problematic. This will be addressed in the new year.
Rare game crash during heavy usage of the M16 (fixing this is a top priority)
Crafting:
Search bar ignores selected categories
Recipes can use Items instead of values (e.g. hunger values)
Batteries can behave oddly
Build Menu:
Tile properties for new player build constructions need to be set up, some moveables can’t be picked up etc
Players can’t disassemble moveable objects and reclaim resources
GrappleTech:
Clipping and minor animation issues while picking up or dropping corpses, dragging on stairs and throwing corpses over window frames and fences
Improvements required for turning animation while grabbing, and arm overtwist while dragging and turning.
Shoving animation currently plays after dropping corpses.
General:
Some missing 3D models and icons for items
Not currently able to look around while seated
Some animal pathfinding bugs present (e.g. animals can walk through closed gates)
Liquids UI improvements needed
Some hitching while dragging/zooming the new spawn map.
Further balance is required for sneaking in different weather and darkness conditions
WhatZ Next
Hello everyone, and Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate.
UNSTABLE PLANS
So what does the Unstable release currently look like, and what will happen during the beta once it’s out there?
Well, the scores on the doors are currently this:
As many have assumed, we are currently working on getting Unstable out before Christmas.
We feel like we will be in a good place for this, but clearly the closer we get – the shorter the window for any necessary patching before the Christmas season.
If we need to, we will choose to delay – but right now the enjoyment we’re seeing from our testers certainly would seem to suggest that the build will be in a good enough state for wider consumption. (And if it were to slip, at this point in time it’s hard to imagine it slipping far into the New Year.)
If anything were to happen to change our minds, you would be the first to know.
INTERNAL BETA TEST IMPRESSIONS
We’ve had around 30 people on the internal beta giving feedback now, and overall the response has been very positive. Which, as we mentioned last time, has been a relief.
With the feedback too has come a clear spotlight on what we need to be polishing, both now while we finalise the build – and what we will be turning our attention to during the Unstable update process.
Testers have certainly seemed to enjoy the way the game feels now – with it playing more smoothly, and the world feeling more ‘alive’.
They universally have responded well to the new lighting, new map additions, new lore, animals, optimization, underground areas, dynamic music, player vocals, corpse dragging, farming and many other of all the manifold things that are in 42.
Our changes to the flow of PZ – with our rebalanced zed spawns, combat building up muscle strain and fresh focus on the player having to sneak by crowds – have also been welcomed.
This said, this is certainly a change likely to cause some debate in the community (it does switch things up quite a lot) but we would much rather balance things within the mainframe once we have something playable out in the wild.
It makes the game a little slower, more tactical and zombies more of a threat – especially now you also have the darkness to contend with. Those who prefer to go a little more Action Jackson might disagree, however, so we’ll see how it all shakes out once everyone gets their hands on it. (And, of course, sandbox will always be available to modify, or disable, aspects that folk don’t like.)
Given that rural and some residential areas have less zeds (though we are still balancing this and pumping a few more in) there’s also a vague feeling that the overall game might be a little easier for experienced players now but, again, we will tighten this up once we have more universal feedback from the playerbase at large.
People really seem to enjoy the animals too – both when running them over, and caring for them. Having deer and rabbits wander along their paths through woodland also gives the world a lot of life, but in terms of the actual hunting gameplay itself there’s a feeling that there’s much room for improvement. As such, this will be a focus during the Unstable process.
Currently deer migrate over the map along paths preordained at the game’s start, and they leave poop and broken twigs that those with the tracking skill can follow – which testers seem to have found cool and atmospheric.
The rudiments are fun enough, but to get more of a Call of the Wild feeling we’re going to have to give the deer, their deaths, and the tracking much more focus during Unstable as the animal husbandry side of animals is what has received more than the lion’s share of attention during dev.
Fishing, meanwhile, has gone down well – but from feedback we’ve already got a few ideas on how to improve it during Unstable also.
OTHER ITEMS
A massive part of the final push for 42 Unstable has been from the crafting team, whose work has – up until this point in time – has generally been kept in a separate room from the closed beta testers while we keep feedback internal.
Much of this work has been to do with improving the various different UIs we were using, which weren’t intuitive enough and didn’t share enough key architecture between them to keep things consistent.
Although this will see some added refinement by the time you get your hands on it, this is the current iteration of the ‘crafting on a flat surface’ UI.
While it could also do with more direct information on what’s in each building recipe (unclear currently if this will make it into Unstable) we are also very happy with how crisp and clear our new Build UI is.
The Build UI overall is intended to remove much of PZ’s reliance on right mouse click – and can also be used to build items such as campfires. In time, perhaps during Unstable, we will also be considering making the movables system a part of this – to cut down on general screen clutter.
In terms of animals, one pain point testers have outlined is the need to manually draw a ‘zone’ for your livestock should you want to move them – farmsteads come with these created on the map, but it’s not immediately obvious to new players.
As such, Prof has come up with a way for each animal to automatically create its own zone to feed, drink and breed within – but in the interests of getting the build out we’ve decided to bump the full integration of this to later during the Unstable process.
This approach is still fairly experimental, we can’t 100% confirm it will get in, but we are optimistic given what we have from it so far.
As such, this is what a PZ sheep’s brain would see, if it were reading the Matrix.
As a part of general animal improvements, meanwhile, we’ve also added a radial menu to help you with care for your livestock.
Something that our initial testers also requested was improved stealth/sneak. The change in zed spawning means that points of interest, and points of good lootage, are now doused in zombies more than ever before.
Given the addition of darkened nights, it felt like it was now time to tie zombie awareness a lot tighter to their surroundings: taking in light levels, cars and fences obscuring their view, and the weather. So yes, this also means that zeds will finally have their senses dulled on a foggy day.
Finally while, as mentioned above, not as full-on Call of the Wild as we want it to be come the full release of Build 42 – here’s a quick video of some Wild Turkey slaughter to help our American friends celebrate Thanksgiving.
(There’s Wild Turkeys in Unstable too, we forgot to add that to the infographic above).
A full round-up of everything confirmed for Build 42 can be found here. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something. We also live on Twitter/X right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. If you fancy you can sign up to receive PZ blogs in your emails right here.
Hallodoid
Okay, so.
Where We’re At
We have a limited number of external testers running around the current B42, and their first impressions have been positive. Which has been a relief.
There remains, however, much to do. In the coming weeks we will be getting more and more feedback on the more in-depth systems like animals and nu-crafting, and in turn addressing it.
Tester Feedback
Here’s some of the initial feedback we received, though please note that these were not yet from extended multi-week playthroughs.
Darkness
“I found I wasn’t running into zombies like I usually would randomly scattered throughout the place, until an alarm came and that was absolutely brutal. I didn’t think it’d draw so many. And the darkness is unforgiving too, I was scrambling for lampposts for their spotlight trying to fight off what was left chasing me until I was exhausted and finally able to rest.”
“In regards to the darkness: I think it’s perfect, I love the horror feeling of it. You really actually fully need a flashlight. You think: ‘Oh thank fuck I have some light’, rather than ‘Ugh, this barely lights anything’. There was a time flashlights barely had a reason to be in the game at all, so this is better.”
“I had a great moment with the darkness change – I got cocky and had a small horde chase me. I ran into a store with the plan of trying to lose them out the back. I opened and closed behind me a random door inside, to try lose them. I was accidentally now stood in pitch black. I scrambled for the glowing light switch as the door was now being slammed by the chasing horde, only to realise I’d run into the world’s tiniest bathroom.”
Related to darkness, and also because of the spooky season, today we also thought we would show off our new abandoned Sanatorium location – which is a fictionalised version of the real life Waverley Hills.
As with the irl version, it also comes with a ‘death tunnel’ which was once used to carry deceased patients out of the building.
Zeds
“The empty road, felt really rural. Like how I’d expect to drive down my road both currently and in an apocalypse. Then I was just on my way out of Rosewood now, and because it was foggy, I accidentally stumbled into the prison, driving. Holy shit. Outside is crazy, I cannot imagine inside. I barely got out the gate with my car. A true trailer ‘But I would never make it home’ moment.”
“Just started a new game in West Point with the aim of trying Louisville, and noticed the streets outside are very quiet with the occasional zeds dotted about and it gave off cool 28 Days Later vibes. Ran around building-to-building thinking ‘this is too easy, nothing is stopping me’, when after bashing 15 zeds heads in muscle strain kicked in. Felt like a cool way of setting atmosphere without being too easy, feels pretty balanced so far.”
“TRULY, the changes to the grouping are SO GOOD. Probably the most QoL change for me. It really makes the world feel more alive in a way. Instead of having zombies spread out everywhere and having to do the ‘lure away ball up’ rinse and repeat just to get to an area, now it really feels like I can sneak around and explore areas while losing a group instead of knowing that I’m going to run into a ton more and just shouting instead to get it over with.”
As discussed last time, we have put a lot more thought into how, where and why zeds spawn in the locations they do in B42. This was a primary thing we asked the testers to report back on and, as seen above, they seemed to like it.
There are remaining concerns that rural areas might be a little too empty, but we will address this as more feedback comes in. In the meantime the following video gives a good feel for how things compare to B41 – and the second half of it is also is a good demo of the lighting.
General
“I do really like how many different containers can be filled with liquids now. Makes finding a drinking source early way less frustrating. Thumbs up!”
“I like the doors swinging open, and the game actually feels much smoother.”
“Holy fuck. A basement. I wasn’t expecting that. Man it’s awesome.”
“Yeah you guys really fucking hit it out of the park already WHAT THE HELL this is SICK. Even though I’ve played in this area probably a hundred times seeing the stairs going down and then finding this area just made me feel like I was playing the game for the first time again wtf”
“Also SUPER happy with the traits, it was a bit of a shocker, smoker no longer OP.”
“The voiceovers actually helped a lot with immersion, I felt it.”
“I like the brutalness of the combat, in terms of combat fatigue, needing to rest more, and training that skill up as you progress.”
“It felt fun and fresh.”
“Love the density. It’s terrifying.”
“The first thing I noticed was the map in and around Muld. Within 15 minutes I encountered Cortman Medical and was amazed. I actually had to pull out the online PZ map to compare, it was that amazing. This extended to each house I visited, beautiful.”
WHAT WE’RE IMPROVING
Clearly, any playtest won’t all be roses – and the fact that the new testers were PZ mega-fans should be taken into account too. (And also, although there’s a lot of quotes above, it should be noted that the current set of testers is small, and many of these bullet points come from the same people.)
We also got pointers on zed awareness, the discomfort system, and much more on other new additions that we’ll need to keep an eye on as the test pool goes wider.
Likewise, as mentioned before we will also need feedback from more elongated play sessions – and far more contact with the huge new systems like Crafting and Animal husbandry.
Combat tightening
Something that the test sessions revealed were some combat irregularities that needed to be addressed, and were resulting in unfair deaths – and which in turn was limiting peoples’ fun and exploration.
This has led us toward doing a deep-dive into both some issues that have been introduced during 42 dev, and also some legacy issues from B41 that deal with zed targeting.
The latter could explain some of the rare edge-case combat irregularities that seasoned 41 players might have come across during their bouts of survival. It’s our hope that the results of this will bring some added consistency to combat in general.
Crafting
The Crafting UI needs more love, and attention will turn to this once we are 100% happy with the new Build menu. You can see the Crafting UI in its current form in this lovely little video that’s been made for Halloween.
[Skeleton animals not accessible in vanilla game. Debug version shown. Craft speed not final.]
For the past half a year or so we have had six people working on our new vision for crafting. As regular readers will know, delays with it have been a primary reason that things have been held back. During B42 development we didn’t build in enough safeguards should key members of the team become unavailable due to illness or personal matters.
This is now very much a lesson that has been learned and, alongside new production and support staff who have been brought in over the past six months, this is not a beartrap we intend to step into ever again. We’re really, really sorry that it has led to such understandable frustration in the community.
We are currently very happy with the progress being made by the Crafting Team, and can’t wait for the time at which you can all take their work out for a spin.
NOTE FOR MODDERS: Something that has been a long standing frustration for modders is how difficult it was to add new player-buildable-tiles to the carpentry and metalworking right click options. This came into sharp relief for us when it also became frustrating to add new B42 buildables to those same options.
Previously, the code for all of the tile building options was basically hardcoded in lua, and very inflexible. In B42 we are using text file script definitions (similar to how inventory items, vehicles and recipes are defined) to populate the build options versus using hardcoded values. For the most part the buildable scripts use the same format and syntax as the new b42 crafting scripts.
This means that in B42 it should be a far, far simpler matter for modders to add new building options for their subscribers.
Animals
Animals and animal husbandry are currently in polish and bugfix mode, waiting on more extended playtesting. One thing, however, we would dearly like to improve is the current requirement on players to draw their own ‘animal zone’ around sheep/pig/cow enclosures to ensure that they feed, mate and develop while the player is off-screen.
During the development of 42 we have expanded our team and knowledge pool, and can now likely improve this – and as such the Prof is looking into ways to use an algorithm to automate the process around each animal, thereby removing the need for manual zoning from the player.
If we can make this work, however, it will likely be an addition to the Unstable beta – as opposed to being a feature at Unstable launch.
Zed Awareness / Stealth
Something the new lighting and zed spawn has flagged, given as it has is that our ‘zed awareness’ needs some polish.
While its inclusion will likely not be as a part of the Unstable beta, we are rebalancing zombie senses so that they better take into account sneak levels, zombie focus and direction as per usual – but also take into account lighting, low obstacles like fences and bushes, and (yes) weather effects like rain and fog.
Reading Materials
Last time we showed some of the flyers that we’d been creating, which will serve the gameplay purpose of directing players (especially new ones) to interesting locations, good places to loot, and satisfying places to hold out inside.
We received some valid feedback in that, even if supposed to look 90s-ish, some of the graphic design could be improved – and as such this past month got our friend Stuart (who in a former life was the Art Director on various London fashion/celeb mags) in on the case.
While we were overall happy with what we had before, we do feel these are now far improved – and getting completed far more quickly to boot.
[Please note, in the below examples – not all of these would logically be found in a mailbox.]
A full round-up of everything confirmed for Build 42 can be found here.A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something. We also live on Twitter/X right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.If you fancy you can sign up to receive PZ blogs in your emails right here.
Heat of the Night
Hi everyone, it’s been a good month of general work and polish on our closed build. Lots of general required mop and brush up, but as examples of what’s been going on here’s a few items:
Making fishing clearer and easier to follow for new players – making the messaging clearer to the player when fish are present for example via the disturbances on the water, and making it more obvious when a fish has been caught.
Fixing issues with body-dragging, for example bugs with phasing through walls on pick-up and drop.
Improving animal pathfinding to make them act more realistically around walls and map structures, and continued general work on the unseen paths that animals will follow.
Optimization work on the player’s view cone to help the game in busy areas.
Map testing and fixing throughout new towns added to the game, and all the existing areas that have been given a glow up – which are primarily in Muldraugh.
Adding more opportunities for players who generally don’t go to farms and forests to come across animals in-game.
Adding 42’s new depth textures to scenery and items that testers discover, and that we previously missed out.
There’s clearly a myriad of other fixes and changes going on also. These and all of the above are necessary things, but not particularly sexy in a dev blog – for which we apologise.
We are also navigating the final implementation of better handling of drainables (‘used up’ items in recipes and such) in our revamped crafting system – and providing some neat short-cuts for both our own developers and modders by using input flags for many crafting use cases. Work on the Build Menu, meanwhile, continues apace – though the fundamentals are in the UI isn’t quite there yet, however, so we won’t be showing it off in today’s blog.
Languages
From the very beginning of PZ amazing community translators have brought so many people from around the world to our game, and allowed non-English speakers to better enjoy the Knox Event.
Recently, however, due to the extent and expanse of the full translation sheets over twenty different languages it became clear that it was simply going to be too complicated to keep going in this fashion, especially with the motherlode of B42 content still soon to drop alongside everything that we on the team know still lies ahead.
There’s at least 100,000 words in Build 42, possible more depending on how many new CDs and VHSs we get in, so it’s about a novel’s worth all added up.
Build 42 will see a big shift for us in terms of localization, then, as we are moving to a complete professional translation of the entire game in a full 21 different languages. Chinese, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Spanish and many others.
We have essentially covered all of our most popular playing languages, and all of our most requested inclusions.
This will cover everything in-game: including both new content, and edits to the old. Existing translations have been checked through to ensure consistency and accuracy, and to fill in some of the gaps a few of the translations had due to the sheer vastness of the PZ broadcast system.
Importantly, access to all existing community translations – and prominence of existing community translator game credits – will clearly remain in the game.
We are so grateful to our amazing community translators, and we have worked out some cool ways that we can thank such a hugely complex web of people from all over the world – whether they have worked as individuals, or within smaller circles of co-translators who’ve been dedicated to various different parts of the game during different timeframes over the many years of PZ’s existence.
If you are reading this and you are in this bracket (ie. if you are a credited community translator, or have been in the past) then please go into the translations channel on our PZ Discord for further information about your ‘Thank You’ package, or email nasko[a]theindiestone.com.
Zombie Heat Map
When the game map for a new build approaches final, one of the main jobs we always have to do is update the zombie heat map. This is what governs zombies that spawn outdoors: around buildings, on roads, around farms and fields. The current Build 41 one for Muldraugh looks like this:
Now, a criticism of the current zombie spawn is that it isn’t realistic. We veer away from the feeling of a classic zombie movie slightly because zombies aren’t always in realistic places. Zombies are all over the roads, in random fields and basically… a long way from where they probably died.
With 42’s current (experimental) zombie heat map we are trying to address this a little. The map is more intricate, and we hope feels more real.
Now if you see zombies, it means there are houses, businesses and lootable locations nearby. Zombies also appear in groups more than before, and spawn less on the road – unless there are parked cars or traffic jams.
This also makes for more requirements to sneak by the horde, and a generally more realistic-feeling apocalypse. Random empty spaces will have less zombies, and places of interest and choke points will have far more.
The current experimental 42 zombie heat map for Muld looks like this:
This will require playtesting and closed test feedback. Some areas will feel emptier, but places that you would expect to have lots of zombies (and which you’ll want to loot) will have them in abundance.
This will be far more in keeping with a Romero movie, however, so we felt it an experiment worth taking on for the 42 heat map – but will also clearly have to keep an eye of difficulty levels at the same time. Here’s a quick comparison video from its first WIP iteration.
From the Art Studio
All the newspapers are now finalled, and as such Pat, Unconid and Werlias are moving onto the in-game business flyers – which serve the gameplay function of revealing interesting areas on the player map.
This will in turn encourage exploration, and serve the function of showing new (and existing) players interesting locations that they can journey to and could perhaps prove useful in their continued survival. (Some typos in the following – we will be finalling the first batch of these over the next month).
Meanwhile, we’ve also commissioned a load of new art similar to our primary ‘Bob on Car’ image that everyone knows so well.
These will be used in various different places in-game, such as the background of new screens like the MP connection menu.
Nu_Twiggys
Next up, here’s another quick glow-up video of a survivor-favourite location from the map team – alongside some neat day and night visuals.
Also shown in this video is an example of one of some of the super rare vehicles that will be found spawning in particular towns – there are multiple examples of cool surprises like this that you’ll come across in your travels in B42 that we’ve been dropping into the game as development has gone on.
The Knob Creek Hunting Lodge has also been converted into a log cabin design, which is one of our own favoured places to hang out on the map.
Oh, and we also thought we’d do you up a little showcase of some of the other player animations that you’ll see in 42, but which we haven’t really mentioned or shown before.
Finally, this past month or two has also seen a big, positive shake-up behind the scenes in terms of organisation, issue-tracking and general team communication.
As Build 42 development has continued the team has steadily grown, and we’re now at the point where there’s almost twice the number of people currently working on PZ than there were for Build 41 – and we have been updating our practices to reflect that.
We know that waiting for B42 can be arduous, and that when folks point this out it can feel like they are shouting into the void, but we wanted to let you know that we are listening. While the impact won’t be instant when you’re looking in from the outside, we are putting both processes and personnel in place that we hope will improve matters as we move forward through 42 and beyond.
A full round-up of everything confirmed for Build 42 can be found here. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something. We also live on Twitter/X right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. If you fancy you can sign up to receive PZ blogs in your emails right here.
Tidy Up Time
At the moment we are fixing and polishing our current internal build to get it ready for more formal internal closed testing amongst a slightly wider set of gameplay testers.
There’s still a few items from the crafting revamp still to come in, and some optimization we hope to include, but overall we are pretty much feature complete. The path ahead is predominantly bug fixes, balancing and internal closed beta testing in preparation for an Unstable release.
There isn’t currently a date on the Unstable. This will depend heavily on how many serious bugs we still have to resolve and, once we are into this slightly larger closed testing group, what the feedback is like on things like the big changes to crafting – and how players feel when they are dropped into it for the first time.
Right now there’s elements of B42 that we know aren’t fun. There are also some showstoppers we are in the process of erasing. While the first Unstable beta clearly doesn’t need to be perfect, it does needs to be fun, balanced as much as it could be, not have any broken aspects, and make a good first impression. Especially considering the amount of time it has taken.
It could be we drop the build on closed tester group laps and it goes down a storm, and has relatively few problems. It could be that elements of new systems are annoying or confusing, meaning that we have to go back to make things smoother and more intuitive.
While we desperately want this to be out, and keenly feel the community’s pain, we don’t want to put out a duff build and disappoint anyone after the long wait. So we’ll take the testers feedback seriously, and won’t be shy of investing time into addressing any of the big concerns they may have, or mega-bugs that they may report.
So, please take this as “It’s not going to be out imminently” – but also consider it as a clear roadsign pointing towards us kicking Unstable out of the door, and the light at the end of the tunnel getting brighter.
We’ll go into a bit more detail on some other aspects of 42 dev at the close of the blog, but first a few other items of information/housekeeping.
SINGLE PLAYER UNSTABLE BETA
As many will be aware, the Unstable beta of Build 41 was released with MP disabled. During this time the multiplayer was being rewritten from the ground up to work with the new animation system, and also to improve multiplayer stability and general immersion into the improved animations and gameplay.
This time around, again, we plan on initially releasing the Build 42 Unstable with MP disabled. This is for several reasons, but it will primarily mean that we can address SP issues in the Unstable beta in more bite-sized chunks without drowning in bug and issue reports, and it will also clearly allow the MP team a little extra time to fix up and polish.
A lot of huge changes have been made to improve security of multiplayer, with changes such as server side inventory and countless other anti-cheat measures to make the game more server-authoritative to help secure servers from being sent any kind of spoofed commands that cause issues with cheaters and such.
This will likely all need more testing and issues closed out once the SP is more final, before it’s available for more public consumption in Unstable.
(Please bear in mind though, that we’re a highly moddable java game with at this time no third party anti-cheat software. If c++ compiled AAA games with anti-cheat are still struggling with cheaters, then we would all be naive to assume that cheating would not be an issue. Hopefully we have massively restricted the possible capabilities of cheaters in 42 now though now – seeing as the server is a lot more authoritative in controlling the world state. Our advice will always be to favour playing in a whitelisted community if you want to avoid cheaters or at least be able to permanently remove them from your game. We will however be exploring proper anti-cheat solutions in the longer term and hopefully most cheats will be limited to stuff like ESP, but even so we’ll continue to recommend whitelisted servers for a cheater free experience.)
There will, however, be strict requirements for modders to follow to allow them to do stuff they once took for granted. For example, creating an inventory item will have to be done in a way that’ll allow it to be created on the server.
The MP team are currently working on guidelines and documentation that will explain how modders can work within the updated framework and not upset the anti-cheat measures. Likewise, similar documents are being written for crafting and other new/updated areas of the game.
Finally, how long will an Unstable SP beta last until we drop MP in? Uncertain, but this stuff isn’t being written from scratch – and is already mostly functional. It’s a different situation to the one that saw the lengthy wait for MP integration for 41.
MODPOCALYPSE
With such a huge update to the game, it is inevitable that almost every mod that exists will be invalidated in some capacity. With the new crafting systems, especially, it’s unlikely any mod will work out of the box.
However, what we do have is a new modding architecture which will help a lot in the transition, that’s heavily inspired by the way that a certain game that’s set on a World out on the Rim does it.
Essentially, Aiteron’s been working on heavily improving the mod system to allow for versioned mods to be included in a Workshop item.
B41 currently uses the root directory of the workshop files as the mod: it contains a media directory and all the rest that allows the mod to override files in the core zomboid data directory. B42, meanwhile, instead introduces a functionality where a build of the game will query the mod for a subdirectory which contains the most recent compatible version of the mod – and to then use those files.
For example, a subscribed mod could have a 42 directory, a 42.21 directory, a 43 directory and a 43.31 directory. If you run a version of the game that’s 42.1 it’d use the 42 directory, and load that version of the mod. If you then upgraded to 42.25 then it would start using the 42.21 directory, and so on.
Within this there’s also a ‘common’ directory that’s used by any version of the mod and can be used to store large files such as art or sounds, that modders clearly don’t want duplicated over 20 versions of their mod.
(Though this aspect will only truly come into play in versions beyond 41, as we can’t at this point realistically modify Build 41 to use the new mod system – and B41 mods will clearly remain loading directly out of the root directory as they currently do while ignoring the B42+ versioned directories.)
What this will all mean is that when modders update their mods to work with B42, they can leave the B41 files within the mod package and continue to work on B41 content as and when they desire. Simultaneously, however, they’ll be able to support the B42 beta without destroying that compatibility with B41 stable
From that point on they’ll then have much more intelligent versioning to allow for extra power to update their mods, in ways that won’t be destructive to older builds of the game. In addition to this, 42’s new mod load order functionality will make submods and modpacks a lot easier to create.
Finally because of these huge changes, and the likelihood that so few mods at all will work B42 on first release, we currently plan to automatically disable all mods on first load – and B42 will be unable to load any of the B41 mod files until a workshop item has been prepared using a 42 directory. This will be necessary in limiting the amount of bug reports we’d inevitably get from people loading up their B41 mod lists and completely breaking the game.
INTERNAL BUILD NOW
As indicated above, we’re pretty much feature complete with some crafting elements still on their way. There’s various issues lurking in the tester build that need investigation and sorting – this week some unexplained and endless explosions in deer/bunny populations, out of memory issues, and combat irregularities. There’s various things here that need sweeping up.
As we have mentioned in previous blogs, we felt the delay with the crafting overhaul was set to continue longer than anyone was comfortable with, and so decided to release the first beta without the entirety of the ‘nu-medieval post-apocalypse village’ crafting possibilities we intend in the longer term as with blacksmithing, pottery, smelting, weapon-related carpentry, carving etc. there’ll be plenty still to chew on.
The final ‘must have’ feature we have in production for 42 is a Building UI. We’ve never been a fan of the right click menu building system, and along with the sharp increase of new buildable tiles it became necessary to improve how building is carried out. For the expanded test pool and Unstable, then, the final addition will be in taking the current ‘furniture picking up’ icon on the icon strip to the left and turn it into a button to bring up a new panel with the furniture interactions and building choices rolled into it
From this we’ll have a nice categorized building UI the player can keep on-screen as a palette to pick buildable tiles from, which will allow you to browse the various categories and tiles you want to build in the world, click on them if you have the necessary building materials, and then place the ghost tile on the target tile. It’s pretty simple, and backstage a first implementation isn’t taking too long to get operational. In other news:
ANIMAL TRACKERS
As discussed last time, we weren’t happy with the pre-defined and permanent animal paths that deer and other animals would follow that were initially implemented. As such Prof recently added randomized animal paths that are tweakable in lua.
New paths are generated using the seed given when you create a world – they are static in the sense that they don’t self-modify after you started a game, but dynamic in the sense that you will never know what journeys deer will be taking in any fresh world. In future we’ll explore regenerating these paths if they are over-hunted. Here’s a quick vid of them in action.
SEW-SEW
While it’s not a complete tech tree at the moment, tailoring has got some attention and players should be able to grind the first levels from looted or farmed materials. These do not require a specific crafting station, but higher-level options that we’ll add during Unstable will.
[Please note: the crafting window is due another polish pass, and this video also shows a degree of debug/coder-speak wordage. Although performed on a table here, these recipes don’t demand it.]
UPS AND DOWNS
Partly due to current game imbalance, and partly because with the new crafting we didn’t want to replicate the vertically-placed-work-station ‘spam crafting’ that you can sometimes see in games like Minecraft, we spent an afternoon revising sheet rope climbing mechanics while waiting for a crafting blocker to clear.
Previously only drunk players had a chance of falling when climbing a sheet rope, in Build 42 now any player has a chance to fall when climbing a sheet rope to higher floors after an initial grace period has elapsed – the duration of which period, and the chance to fall, is determined by negative moodles, skills such as Strength, Fitness and Nimble, appropriate traits like Dextrous or Gymnast, and professions like Burglar.
Additionally characters will accumulate muscle strain if they climb ropes for enough time, and without resting. There’s a smaller chance of falling from a rope while descending, also, while all of this can be toggled off in Sandbox.
TOOLS UPDATE
In the background to the B42 work, Zac has been overhauling the AnimZed tool that made the success of B41 possible. This will be of great aid when it comes to final B42 polish, and all versions beyond this.
“The core of every good survivor character brain is a logic state network.” He explains. “The player’s character might be walking – and from that they could start running, stop entirely, climbFence, aim, sneak etc. All the animation frameworks for players and zeds need to be keyed into all available potential outcomes that the player or the game might dictate.”
“Our problem increasingly was that our characters’ brains were getting pretty complex. We are adding all sorts of new abilities in both 42 and beyond, and they’re getting bigger and bigger still.”
“Up until now we haven’t had a tool to visualise the network. We’ve been editing the structure manually, by editing xml files. This has led to pain. When trying to incorporate a new feature, or figure out why a character is doing the wrong thing, it’s always taken a lot of manually parsing reams of network circuitry, and it’s slowed integration down.”
“So, we have been building a proper logic network editor, named it AnimGraphZeditor, that should be a big boost in making more and more complex brains. The importance of having a robust logic network editor cannot be overstated for final polish of elements of 42, and everything that lies beyond it: essentially taking the abstract mass of logic conditionals, states, and transitions, and puts them up on the screen as circuit diagrams. From here we can identify problems and faulty circuits, and makes it much easier to implement new features and capabilities.”
While we are in this area, it should also be mentioned that it is still our plan to release AnimZed to the community – and this will most likely follow Build 42 release.
WEAPON TESTING
Finally a quick video compilation of recent in-game weapon testing – featuring all the old familiars, but also a whole bunch of the new items that you’ll be able to crack heads open with in the next version.
A full round-up of everything confirmed for Build 42 can be found here. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something. We also live on Twitter/X right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.
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Cortman by Night
Hey all. Alongside continued crafting work it’s very much a time of mixing/polishing previously announced and described things in the internal test build.
As such please forgive us if things are a little ‘bullet pointy’ and expanded info on things you’ve heard about before. It’s all stuff that needs doing.
CRAFTING
Some of the things we’ve been doing this month on the crafting revamp includes:
On-boarding three of our friends from TEA games to add some firepower to the crafting team and get it all out of the door. While they’ve been getting up to speed with the code they have also been documenting it all with its latest implementation, which in turn will become our guidance for modders upon release.
Working on crafting station animation interactions. In Build 42 you won’t see direct physical movement of player and crafting station when you interact, for example a potters wheel won’t spin. Until we, potentially, one day include 3D models on the map furniture will remain as static sprites as they always have been.
What we do need, however, are natural player movements towards the crafting stations – that will in turn open up their individual crafting menu accompanied by a familiar crafting SFX, and potentially an on/off state dependent on what sort of crafting station it with lights on and glowing etc. They also needed depth textures added to avoid clipping and such, which have now been implemented.
Working out how best to separate out the new skills. We became concerned that we were introducing too many ‘portmanteau’ skills simply for the sake of keeping the skill list slimmed down. There’s still some folding together of craft skills when there’s clear similarities in tools and techniques, but overall it felt wrong to lump too much together.
It won’t be necessary for players to dedicate time and effort into building out these skills for the mostpart, unless they are trying to make a civilization on a forest map and other survivalist circumstances.
Making sure that there’s sandbox settings that cater for faster progression. Sandbox and settings now include settings for Skill XP multipliers for individual skills, so your speed up each different ladder can be directly adjusted.
Addressing undesired and unfun gameplay loops. A common server admin complaint is that the map swiftly becomes barren of furniture and loot containers due to players chasing XP. As such, in B42 scrapping, dismantling and ripping items will no longer grant XP.
We no longer want progression in a skill to involve destroying piles of items or trashing the map; and instead to concentrate on making things. XP for actions such as building structures and repairing clothing has been boosted to adjust for that, and the individual skill XP multipliers in the sandbox settings also offer more means to compensate. (This said, as things stand, XP for dismantling electrical items or wrecked vehicles remains.)
Adding skills for wilderness play. Knapping and Carving have both been added. Knapping is used for fashioning stone blades from the pieces of flint you can find in the world, for making knives, spears, axes, scythes and other tools. Carving involves carving wood and bone for similar purposes.
Some carving will also produce decorative items, especially at lower levels, with more artistic and aesthetic crafting recipes due to be added to help you level up without making the same sharp stick over and over again.
Improving how recipes work and are learned. There are a great many new recipes in B42, and when you become a Level 10 Master Blacksmith it makes no sense that you may not know some of them within that field. As such many of them now come with an ‘Autolearn’ requirement – in which a skill level (or a combination of different skill levels) will automatically know them.
Another, minor, thing we have added meanwhile is making sure that the recipe schematics that can be found alongside the weapons and armor in the randomly spawned survivalist safehouses are generally diagram-based so illiterate characters can also join in the fun.
BASEMENTING
There are two different sorts of subterranean lair in B42 – random ones that could occur in various set places, and permanent ones.
As far as the permanent ones go there’s a range of bunkers, tunnels and cave networks waiting to be discovered – as well as simply new lower floors to some of the map’s more known and recognisable locations.
What we hadn’t done yet for B42, however, is mark all the potential locations for the random basements and then to test them so they’ll all fire off in your game once we hit Unstable beta.
Here’s a map of one of our locations showing the basic spread of what you can expect. Apologies for spoilers, we thought it wouldn’t be too bad seeing as it was only one town. So anyway here’s Brandenburg.
And here’s a quick video showing some, admittedly posed for the camera, testing – in which the same location is shown to have a different basement on a different run. The basements on show here aren’t dazzlingly exciting, but this will of course be the case for most of the ones you find. Part of this testing is also checking the rules that we have in place to match random basement size and orientation to the size of the house.
GRAPPLETECH
Grappletech is, for all intents of purpose, done. This is the update to PZ’s animation tech that allows two characters to directly interact – whether survivor on survivor, survivor on zed, or zed on survivor.
As discussed and shown before, the first use-case of this will be in fixing the jankiness in PZ that’s always surrounded the carrying, moving and disposing of bodies.
In a previous blog we also showed an unimplemented animation of the player throwing bodies through a window, as an example, of where we would take it next – and this has now been added into the system. This can be seen in the following video, alongside some old friends.
PLEASE NOTE: We are aware that after the window chuck the plummet of the corpse doesn’t look great yet. This will be addressed in future, and is separate to what we’re doing with GrappleTech.
PLEASE ALSO NOTE: The ‘effort’ noises the character makes while dragging corpses will be considerably toned down, or absent, in the release version. It’s a bit much here. At present body dragging and window chucking is not in the internal test build, however it will be required at some point for the crafting revamp as this will allow for far more direct animations with irregularly-shaped crafting stations.
We had previously said it wouldn’t be a part of the Unstable beta, but now it’s done and playable feel it’s a potential – dependent on the progress made by the crafting team.
While we’re back at the K&B house by the way, check out how it looks during the day and the night now.
OTHER STUFF
Newspapers have been finalled, and this week have been checked through for authenticity by a local American local news journalist. They will next be added to the game’s loot tables once relevant edits have been made.
We weren’t entirely happy with the predictable way that deer were following our pre-defined paths through forests, and as such with zoning and biome work complete (as seen last month) a natural next step for this system would be to create multiple pathways for wildlife organically.
Work on this is now underway alongside general polish of animal migration, and should make for a more engaging experience come Unstable.
Over with the Sound Team (as well as providing noises and settings for new items, weapons and altitudes) we have tied their work more closely to the map tools.
They will now have the freedom to create building-specific roomtones and oneshots, where as before hey could only generalise between 7-8 roomtones parameter values. So now we could have anything up to 260 different ambiances and reverb settings, which will make for more immersive experiences in key atypical buildings like movie theatres, large churches, more cavernous areas etc.
We are also currently testing the glow-up of Muldraugh, specifically at night-time, and it’s looking pretty awesome to tell the truth. We hope that survivors are going to be tempted out of their bases during moonlit hours a bit more than usual to see it.
A full round-up of everything confirmed for Build 42 can be found here. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here. Happy birthday to Andrei Knorr. 16 today!
The Biomic Man
As discussed last time, in the interests of getting the 42 Unstable out of the door we are limiting the number of new craft disciplines that will be initially available and then dripfeeding others (alongside polish, balance etc) in updates to the beta.
We have done a bit of a stocktake on what we have done, and are aiming to have the following finished off for a first release.
(The contents may settle and change, of course, but we feel this is still a fair assessment.)
Metal smelting and Blacksmithing
Pottery
Weapon-related carpentry skills, such as carving handles and shafts for crafted weapons
Small-scale bone carving to create sewing needles, fish hooks, cutlery and materials for some fun armor types.
The essentials when it comes to agricultural production: flour, oil, thread, twine etc.
Weapon crafting performed on in-game surfaces that don’t necessarily require a particular workstation
Not all of these will come with 100% precise animations at first, and direct character interaction with the larger crafting workstations is reliant on the ‘GrappleTech’ we showed previously with dragged corpses and will therefore be mixed in later down the line.
Craft disciplines we will be bringing in during Unstable will include Brewing, Glassmaking and Butchery. Bowyery meanwhile (which clearly will require far more animation, tech, combat and design work) will be at the back of the queue, and is most likely to appear in a later version.
We also believe that, seeing as we have a good art pipeline running, we can relatively easily introduce a wide range of decorative craftable building items to the mix for Unstable – which will likely be of interest to MP and RP players who want to make their bases a little more personalised.
When we put all this out to the public beta we intend to do so alongside a comprehensive modding guide (as we will also for the MP changes) as the refresh here will be fundamental, and new to all.
In pursuit of this, and to generally expedite the process and aid in polish/fixes, we have also reached out to our friends at TEA Games who are providing some extra manpower.
Finally, a quick look at the current status of the UI that appears when you choose to craft on a surface – a table, a worktop, an exposed tree stump if you’re in a forest and such.
(This will become more refined, clearly, and crafting options will also be available as text rather than icons if you prefer it as such.)
BIOMES / FORAGING
One aspect of 42 is that we no longer have a rigid black border, and instead have generated wilderness at the map’s edges.
As a part of this we also needed ways to ‘zone’ these areas, meaning to automatically mark them as a particular area so that the game knows, for example, which sounds to play and which foraging area to allocate.
Having foraging being mapper-defined, and a laborious job to mark up, has always been an issue. It’s a big annoyance for players who like to stray from the beaten path only to discover they’re no longer in a foraging zone.
Here, for example is an overview of some of the 41 map’s current zoning. To the east is a large swathe of unzoned (and therefore unforageable) land – while the zone squares of dark green forest and light green woodland is lumpy, boxy and unnatural.
Now in B42 then ProfMobius, he of Minecraft origin, has put together a biome system for the inner map as well as the generated map that now runs beyond our usual boundaries. By extension, this also means that foraging will be both fixed throughout the map.
Another big part of this is that it will also be more interesting as you walk through more varied patterns of land-types that are far more clearly visually representative of what they are in real world terms.
So here’s what the above looks like with more detailed, automatically created, biomes. Note the more interesting interplay of woodland and deep forest in, for example, the central south area.
Within these biomes the Prof controls the spawning of specific trees over others. In the screenshots below you can see different kinds of forest environment like a River Birch forest, clusters of more PH resistant trees, deep forest, and even semi urban areas.
There are nine biomes in all: deep forest, organic forest, birch forest, pine forest, farm maintained forest, pollution resistant forest, and three more which are mixes of the above.
Their generation is guided by geographical features such as rivers, roads, neighbouring farms and large bodies of water. The end result is a lot of much-needed variety for all of your off-road adventures.
We are now working to make life for the modders and mappers easier with this, in terms of biome generation and clean/invisible transitions between the vanilla map and the community’s additions, but otherwise all the above is now in the internal test build.
LIGHTING
In the past few weeks we’ve done more work on in-game lights in terms of balance, purpose and mechanics.
There’s still a fair amount to do, this project will likely continue to be updated through the Unstable beta, but we are closer and closer to the atmosphere we first envisioned when we introduced 42’s new light propagation system.
That includes items like streetlights with an orange hue as (in the 90s, most used sodium), plain neon appearing white, halogen lighting being slightly yellow and incandescent and such. Mix in the coloured lighting that we mentioned last time, and all of a sudden you have a far more interesting lighting-scape to encounter on night-time forays before the power finally goes out.
Another part of this has been to make light overlays and adjust values for each light emissive object: things like signs, crafting station and fridges. This paves the way for a lot of cool lighting scenarios, as seen below in some WIP screenshots.
GLOW UP(DATE)
Last time round we showed you some map work that was taking place in familiar locations, like Muldraugh.
The response was largely positive, but some folk correctly worried that they were perhaps a little too ornate and fancy for Muld – which in itself we have always represented as a very ‘normal’ slice of Americana where normal people lead normal lives, and face the normal everyday challenges of life.
Muld, our first town and first love, will always be front and centre for the tone of PZ and as such we decided to take things in a slightly different direction after feedback.
Public buildings like the school (latest version now seen below) have been made to look a little more realistic for a town like Muldraugh, and Cortman’s is a little less fancy. Other locations, however, like the revamped police station will remain as seen last month.
Everything remains super-improved, please do not worry on that account, but we have toned down the ‘newness’ and the ‘poshness’ of what was shown in Muld.
All buildings seen last time will be used elsewhere on the map also, so will still be available to hold out inside but in a different and more appropriate geographic location.
Here’s another glow-up spot, meanwhile, that went through recently.
OTHER STUFF
Nick from TEA is working on edge-case moments of unfairness and mis-targeting that occur during hectic moments in combat and can result in frustrations. It is our hope that (alongside 42’s general improvement and polish to player movement via bugs fixed in the animation system) we can have some pain points removed before we hit Unstable.
Among many and varied other things both big and small, the MP team have been working on smoothening the movement and direction of zeds that are chasing your fellow survivors. While perhaps not something you generally notice in the heat of the moment, as the following video shows it should bring a less-jaggedy feel to general MP zombie pathing.
A full round-up of everything confirmed for Build 42 can be found here. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here
