Happy December Thursdoid, and a big hello to all the new survivors who’ve jumped on board in recent weeks. This week we’ll be doing a quick check-in with the various different departments who are at work on Build 42 and providing a little freeze-frame of exactly what’s being worked on.
First though, we would be remiss if we didn’t inform all fans of raccoons, soft toys and ‘both of these things’ that: the Makeship campaign for the Spiffo plush has been EXTENDED for a full extra week due to everyone getting all excited about it.
If you are interested in sliding under a closing door then reaching back for your fluffy Spiffo, like Indiana Jones, then final orders can be made here:
https://shop.makeship.com/3FHlgG8
Okay, so let’s go round the Zomboid houses. Starting with… the sound team?
SOUND DEPARTMENT
Formosa (formerly Noiseworks) have a lot of different things on the brew – work on new music and music systems, all the new actions and items for B42 (switchblade, firecracker etc) and clearly all the animal stuff which they’ll be starting on in due course.
Something else they are starting work on, however, are ‘acted’ character noises – pants and puffs recorded by real life actors to add a little more depth and feeling to the game, not to mention a greater feeling of ‘real’ when you are standing next to a character who has exerted themselves or is being injured in MP.
This will likely be an option you can turn off if you find it intrusive, but the Sound team believe they will provide an extra layer of immersion for Knox Event survivors. The sorts of things they’ll be recording will be: effort noises for window and fence climbs, sleeping noises, pain noises when bitten or scratched, vomiting, sneezing coughing etc.
ANIMS DEPARTMENT
As those who read this blog might recall, we’ve been screaming out for a big brain to come in and lend their clever thoughts to some of the movement bugs and issues in our anims system for a while. Previous attempts to find a Chosen One didn’t work out, and as such since the 41 release we’ve had a significant blocker in terms of improving our animation system and our animation tools.
There has been significant rejoicing, then, that our friends at Ever Curious Entertainment have lent us their own big brain Steve North – who has been deep in AnimZed of late, and should be providing a range of changes and improvements that will help out our animator Martin no end.
In terms of a player-facing end result, this means that in B42 hopefully there’ll be better blends between anims to tighten everything up and make things look smoother. It could also, potentially, improve the responsiveness of controls and give gameplay a slightly tighter feeling. We’ll see how it goes when the fixes go in.
FIRE DEPARTMENT
Work on integration of the previously in-dev fire system continues, this week with the introduction of new mechanics like burnable oily surfaces and development of fire spread in save games and MP code.
We are also experimenting with visuals in that a more pixelated fire looks better in-game, and also will be having a VFX artist joining us for a time in January to further improve its appearance in our isometric illustrate-y looking world. It’s already looking a smidge better though.
MAPPING DEPARTMENT
Lots of fun new locations appearing from Xeonyx and Ayrton in the map channel, including this little doozy…
Over to RJ, resident of a country doomed to failure in a World Cup football match this coming Saturday.
“Right now I’m prepping my stuff so it can be put in front of our testers. I’m trying to improve the ‘meta’ part of the system that governs them when you’re not in their direct presence – primarily how the feeding trough and water troughs are managed while you’re away. That’s my main focus at the moment – but also need to add some polish to the genetics when animals breed, and I’ll be moving onto animal sickness soon also.”
Now onto Turbo, a resident of a country who will most likely be getting spanked by Argentina at the moment this blog goes live at some point this evening.
“I’m getting stuff ready so that other team members can jump into the more stable parts of my craft branch and help expand it, and plug stuff in. First, though, I’m going back over my crafting stations, and doing some refactoring – in essence adding a lot more automation to the way the system works in the code.“
“It should be worth the extra thought that’s going into it though, at the bare minimum you should be able to create a new station purely through scripting alone. If a certain station requires it then custom logic or a custom UI panel or element can easily be added – it should be as great for modders as much as ourselves.“
BLAIR ALGOL DEPARTMENT
If you are/were aware of Blair as a prolific PZ modder, it will come as no surprise that on the team he is a WHIRLWIND of cool ideas and always has multiple gameplay tweaks and features on the go – and has struck up an amazing combo team with our ‘Loot Placement Artiste’ Baph.
Here’s some fun stuff that’s recently gone in for testing from the world of KEYS:
Zombies will now only have a key, or a key ring with a key in it, for suitable buildings that they spawn in or near to. Prison Guards can have Prison keys, inmates cannot. Employees of a business can have a key for it, customers cannot.
More keys will spawn in buildings, not just for the building, but also possibly for nearby vehicles. Sometimes those nearby vehicles may also have a key for that building in the glovebox.
When a vehicle spawns a key (in its glovebox, on a zombie, or on the ground) it has a chance of being accompanied by a key for a nearby building as well.
It’s ensured that only cop zombies get the cop car keys – although Survivor zombies could have anything.
Building keys may well come pre-named according to the sort of building or business they unlock.
We are doing more fun stuff with Key Rings in general, watch out rabbits!
So in essence: it will be possible for your survivor to find a locked building, find a key for it in the glovebox of a vehicle parked nearby, and then find a key for that vehicle inside that building. The keys may also be on a Lucky Rabbit’s Foot Keyring.
A Lucky Rabbit’s Foot Keyring may, or may not, have a minimal boost to your Luck. We will never truly let on.
Also: new options to let you mix in your runners with your shambles
OTHER DEPARTMENT
Clearly this isn’t everything – we’ve also got optimizations, basements and other fun stuff lined up for 42 but there’s not a huge amount of news on these beyond ‘it’s all coming along’. Hopefully we’ll have a few more updates on these in our next pre-Xmasdoid.
Fanks all love yus x
This week’s good use of 41 fire from BoinXaysa. 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.
Now, the Block of Italicized Text demands: go and buy Dwarf Fortress on Steam! The original, best and most brilliant simulation there is – and ever shall be. Its development, and developers, bay12games, are LEGENDARY and built the road that Project Zomboid travels on each and every day. Now DF is finally on Steam, and we implore you all to join in the fun!
- Fixed ServerConnectPopup missing the new "Use Steam Relay" option, which led to the +connect argument not working.
UNSTABLE Hotfix 41.78.16 Released
- Fixed ServerConnectPopup missing the new "Use Steam Relay" option, which led to the +connect argument not working.
Hotfix 41.78.15 Released
Fixed being able to still add a split-screen player when AllowCoop is disabled.
Fixed seeing through walls sometimes after loading into a game.
Fixed an error in ISZoneDisplay:getZoneTooltipText.
Fixed players briefly appearing at 0,0 on the in-game map after joining a server.
Fixed displaying players with name ??? on the in-game map. This happened when the client had not received the first full update with the player's name and other info.
Hotfix 41.78.13 Released
[Released to the Stable branch on November 30th]
- Added AllowCoop server option to allow or disallow splitscreen clients. - Added MaxTextureSize (default 256) and MaxVehicleTextureSize (default 512) options to the Display options menu. Each of these can be 256, 512, 1024 or 2048.
- Fixed the propane required for the metal wall upgrade system so that you are capable of making a Mk II metal wall without having to upgrade first. - Fixed sleeping pills not being taken in account with the panic sleep exploit fix. - Fixed some vehicle textures (such as for wheels) being limited to 256x256 instead of 512x512. - Fixed reading ServerList.txt and ServerListSteam.txt with the default system encoding instead of UTF-8. - Fixed being unable to slice or smash a rotten watermelon. - Fixed an error in the farming menu that limited squares watered after the first to 50 water units maximum instead of 100. - Fixed /additem command exception when run from the server console. - Fixed redundant console output from ISInventoryPaneContextMenu.lua. - Fixed distant remote players not being displayed on the in-game map.
UNSTABLE 41.78.13 Released
- Added AllowCoop server option to allow or disallow splitscreen clients. - Added MaxTextureSize (default 256) and MaxVehicleTextureSize (default 512) options to the Display options menu. Each of these can be 256, 512, 1024 or 2048.
- Fixed the propane required for the metal wall upgrade system so that you are capable of making a Mk II metal wall without having to upgrade first. - Fixed sleeping pills not being taken in account with the panic sleep exploit fix. - Fixed some vehicle textures (such as for wheels) being limited to 256x256 instead of 512x512. - Fixed reading ServerList.txt and ServerListSteam.txt with the default system encoding instead of UTF-8. - Fixed being unable to slice or smash a rotten watermelon. - Fixed an error in the farming menu that limited squares watered after the first to 50 water units maximum instead of 100. - Fixed /additem command exception when run from the server console. - Fixed redundant console output from ISInventoryPaneContextMenu.lua. - Fixed distant remote players not being displayed on the in-game map.
Farm of Fear
Let’s get something out of the way first then. Ugh. We feel so unclean doing what we’re about to do. SORRY. SORRY EVERYONE. All the other games were posting Steam Awards links like that, so we did too. Don’t vote for us if you’d rather not, but if you do – well click on the above massive intrusive image and that would be swell.
There may well be another smaller patch, early next week, with some other minor changes – namely a few small anti-cheat measures, a fix for some modded textures and a bit of metal walls weirdness that still needs addressing.
B42 FARMING
This week we’re going over to Blair, and his current mission on overhauling our Farming system. Now, priority number one is to get things more tactile and animation-led with farming: when you use a watering can we want it through a direct mouse-click and not a maze of sub-menus.
Away from this, however, we are also making the overall system more complex, varied and interesting. Elements of this already coded into the 42 mainframe include:
Plants have growing seasons, and for most crops there are one or two optimal planting months. You’ll be able to read the best month to plant your crops on the back of seed packets, and if you plant at the wrong time of year you’ll get a reduced yield, and perhaps the risk of producing sickly plants.
Appropriate plants, such as Potatoes, can be planted using the vegetable itself.
You’ll be able to dry seed Corn and Peas to preserve them for planting next year.
Plants can accumulate slugs and snails for the player to deal with – either using looted pest control, or perhaps using a folksy remedy. Nearby slug repellent plants such as Rosemary will help too.
Rosemary is one of several herbs added as well. They tend to grow more quickly, and when harvested are knocked back a few growth stages – and then can be harvested again later. The herbs you pick can also be used to propagate new herb patches while they’re still fresh, and can be dried as well.
We are expanding the need to water your crops to houseplants. Potted indoor vegetation that players find in the world will now be living – similar, but not identical, to crops. They need to be watered, can fall victim to diseases, and will become visibly unwell before they die and become a dried husk. This also means that they will be another cool signifier of the days that have elapsed since the beginning of the Knox Event – since in time all the plants in homes, shops, the mall etc will wither and die.
Elsewhere, we’ve been seeing what animals look like without their clothes/skin on. We’re thinking that these look realistic but a little too fatty and should have a little more muscle on show – but it’s interesting nonetheless.
These past two weeks we’ve also made a lot of progress with getting the previously shelved fire system back on track, including the ability for the game to have liquid-looking Molotov fire FX on the ground. The actual visuals are going to be fine-tuned and improved soon, so we’d rather not share images of it, but rest assured it’s going to be pretty cool.
Finally, another quick bump for the Spiffo plush that Makeship are creating for us – which is something that the community has been asking for since forever: https://shop.makeship.com/3FHlgG8
If you want one you’ve got two weeks to put your order in.
In case you want to give it for Christmas then Mash has also created a certificate of gifting intent that will hopefully come in useful.
This week’s road-side (well, centre) picnic from Athena. 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.
41.78.12 Hotfix Released
Spiffo Plushie - Orders available for a limited time on Makeship!
ProjectZomboid's ultimate survival companion is here!
This limited edition Spiffo plushie is now available to order and is ready to take on the zombie apocalypse with a usable backpack packed with all the newbie survivor trimmings.
Orders will be live for 21 days only. Makeship will start their production once the campaign ends, with shipments estimated to start on March 4th 2023.
Nothing seems to have exploded just yet, but there will very likely be a hot fix for anything that does crop up. We’ve had a few complaints of visual issues with some clothing that we’d thought we’d fixed for instance, that can probably get a quick look-over again before we move on.
This patch is largely quality of life changes, some MP tweaks and fixes for longstanding annoyances – so hopefully you’ll see a few things in the changelist that make you feel both cherished and warm.
Other than that hot fix, unless we return if circumstances demand it, the final devs who were tinkering in Build 41 will from this point on all be fully aboard the Build 42 train.
BARNYARD FRIENDS
First, let us reiterate – Build 42 is still a long way off. However RJ’s development playpen for the domestic animals that the build will feature is still ticking along quite nicely. This week he has prepared two videos for your delight but first TWO caveats.
First, our animator Martin wants it known that one of the things we’ll be working on will be the way animals turn / turn when they move.
Secondly, clearly what you’re seeing here is debug dev-stuff – especially how it looks and operates when leading an animal around on a rope. We haven’t quite landed on the best way to herd animals around yet, and will likely have to land at a halfway house between realistic, feasible and fun. Likewise, thirdly I guess, UIs clearly aren’t final yet either.
So here’s proof that you can pet the cute little animals in Build 42 of Project Zomboid.
And here’s how to coax them into a trailer so you can cart them off to slaughter them somewhere distant so their loud desperate squeals won’t attract zombies.
MAGICAL WOODLAND FRIEND
Yes, it’s happened. Spiffo merchandise is finally a thing. Behold! More information to come later on down the line. But for now…
To register your interest in crowdfunding a Spiffo plushie visit the Makeship Store! The full campaign begins in less than a week!
This week’s table arsenal from Polaris. 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. No-one is allowed to make a jar-based gag in the presence of our Spiffo plushie, please, as we had to google it and oh dear god no please no.
