[h2]LIFES A DRAG[/h2]

Something that, clearly, was fundamental to Build 41 was the new animations system and thus far for Build 42 we havent mentioned any improvements to this.

Importantly, it should be underlined that his work isnt in the internal test build yet (and is certainly unconfirmed as a part of 42 when it first enters an Unstable beta) but were far enough along now with work done in this area that were comfortable to talk about Zacs GrappleTech.

Right now in Build 41 all the animations work perfectly fine in their solo states. This is when one player character, or one zombie, is doing its thing individually and not interacting with others around it.

Where problems can arise, however, is when that human/zed interacts with another human/zed. Bites, pulldowns and shoves happen to the air around their target rather than the character model itself.

This generally works fine enough but can also lead to feelings of graphical non-interaction, game events not being explained to the player efficiently enough, and the whiff of stun-lock.

How to remedy this then?

An extension to 41s anims system, GrappleTech allows us to join two characters in a more personal and combined state.

Essentially on a code level, in vaguely technical terms, we have a Grappler and the Grappled that combine and synchronize their animations together until the grapple is broken.

Whats more, because this is an extension of the Animation system the Grappled state isnt just a single, fixed animation, nor just a non-interactive cutscene. Rather, all the interactivity inherent in the Animation State system remains.

In short: the Grappler character initiates a grapple perhaps with an attack or pull-down of some sort and the Grappled code decides whether the Grapple is to be accepted or rejected.

The grapple system also takes into account whatever variables we desire when making that decision: tiredness, clumsiness, or injuries on either side that could cause the grapple to fail.

As a prototype, and most its likely first application in B42 once the Unstable beta is underway, we made the player able to pick up and drag a corpse.
[previewyoutube=J42QKHxo4us;full][/previewyoutube]
As you can see here, Zac has leveraged the logic in the Animation State system, and has been able to wire up Martins animation variants for picking up a body from the front and back, and then dragging it.

This is fairly rudimentary currently (clearly it would look better with some physics-bobble on the zombie legs as they are dragged around, and we dont have SFX yet) but what we do have running to prove out the system are a raft of player effects: an impact on player stamina, the exhaustion from dragging the heavy corpse, and the trail of blood thatll sometimes drag out behind also.

Super-importantly this whole system also lets Animator Martin, and of course modders, animate two characters interacting in their animation software and then to see that interaction replicated directly in-game. Formerly interlinking character actions would have to be animated separately, which was trickier to say the least.

An instance of this can be seen below which also serves as an example of how we can also tie the Grapple state to other useful gameplay activities: like dumping the corpse out of windows all in one animation sweep. Every stage of the Grappled state is as interactive as any regular state.

We dont usually show animations that arent in-game yet (this is in Zacs test build, but very rough around the edges still) but again, this is a great example of how both character models can now be worked on at once for both Martin and our modding community inside their animation software.
[previewyoutube=oRnrxqM_mjQ;full][/previewyoutube]
Ultimately, the possibilities are exciting and open-ended for this.

While perhaps not for 42, in which we mainly plan to use GrappleTech during the beta period to polish existing rough spots of character interaction in the current game, this is the gateway to all sorts of potential gameplay.

The key word here is potential (potential!) but this does mean that one day well be able to consider stuff like zombies grabbing players and dragging them through windows, dragged zeds being dumped into pits and graves, animal attacks and tramples, or even (maybe? who knows) mountable steeds one day.

It would certainly be extremely helpful for that thing that hilarious meme reviews always demand too, but that aint gonna happen




So some notes on where were currently headed with the gameplay and balance:

• Blacksmithed weapons will generally be the most durable and high quality, but also require the most infrastructure and skill to produce.
  
• Weapons fabricated in a welding shop will be cruder and lower quality, but still durable.
  
• Weapons made out of different kinds of sticks and broken pieces of metal or bones, will generally have a much shorter lifespan.
  
• In terms of more improvised/compound post-apocalyptic weapons, like adding a modification to a baseball bat, for most cases youll be making a trade-off between durability and the ability to inflict more short-term damage.
  
• For the most part in each family of crafted weapons there will be options for all the different sorts of weapon that PZ provides: blunt, small blunt, axes, spears and short blade. That said: long blade is an exception. Were trying to keep swords special, high-tier and high-value partly because they arguably fit the post-apocalypse less neatly and need to feel different, and partly because weve already seen the success of this approach with the katana.
  
• Spears have been rethought, and many of the spears that you may be used to in B41 have been removed. However, there are also many new spears and many different ways to make a spear compared to whats out there currently.
  

• The map teams quest to polish up Louisville, and beyond, continues with an emphasis on rooftops and higher floors.
  

• In general, were trying to add more variety to existing items in the world as well as adding new ones. A good example is that youll be able to find different kinds of generators, all with different characteristics. This has been set up to be as easy as possible for modders to also add new varieties of generators, requiring only a simple item scripts, a tile and some modder ingenuity for whatever cool new features they dream up.
  

Hey all, here again for the March Thursdoid. Lots of stuff from lots of different areas of the game this time, we do hope you enjoy.

[h3]STRIKE A POSE[/h3]
Weve mentioned the fact that Build 42 will have a variety of readable materials that you can loot and inspect, but we hadnt shown them off in-game as quite frankly they didnt look great. They were crammed inside our existing Survival Guide UI, and it really wasnt going to bat for us.

We didnt really want to create a load of individual images that wouldnt be readily translatable into other languages either, and become a massive timesink for our art department who are already pumping out loads of vital stuff elsewhere. So, clever Aiteron got onto the case...

[previewyoutube=o7s_6cKrZxo;full][/previewyoutube]

So what is this?

Well, its a secondary UI API system and with it both ourselves and modders can create readable text UIs in easier and more flexible ways, and whats more reuse templates for them too.

Techie bit: currently, 4 Java elements have been added: Base, Text, Texture, TextEntry, and then based on these weve built a more complex UI in lua thats easily manipulated by us and modders to play around with position, rotation angle, scale, color, animations, text settings, etc.

Alongside this a new RichText system has been added, meaning the media templates can be changed completely in translation files (including size, position of elements and other settings) so we can make great media for our whole international audience.

Video for modders who might be interested here.

How are we using it?

For Build 42 we are using this to create two flavours of lootable reading material, although not all of it will be available in the game we moment we go into unstable beta.

• Newspapers and Community News pamphlets, to help with world-building and to fully flesh out the timeline of the Knox Event.
• Local business flyers, house listing advertisements, restaurant menus and the like. These will all be locations that will be useful to your survival story and reading the flyer will automatically reveal their location on the player map. In this way we will direct new players to helpful looting areas, and some of the communitys favourite safehouse locations.

• Wind, fog and rain, as well as general lighting conditions now have an effect on hit and critical chances. Some of these can be offset by traits or skill levels.
• Ranged shots at targets hidden by dense fog or darkness can be challenging or impossible.
• Maximum firing range has been increased and is no longer affected by skill level (chances of hitting targets at range still is).
• Distance to target has a greater effect on penalties caused by panic, drunkenness, player movement, weather, etc.
• Most penalties are significantly reduced at close ranges.
• Sound radius is increased overall, but with a sandbox option to modify higher or lower. Sound range is reduced when firing indoors.
• Sighting systems have an ideal range they were designed for: a minimum effective range, and a maximum. Outside of this range they are less effective. If the target is close enough that just pointing without aiming would give a higher chance then the sights are ignored (eg a x8 scope on a target 2 tiles away).
• Panic previously didnt actually affect hit chances (just critical and damage). This has been corrected. Remain calm, dont panic, youll be fine.
• Hit chances and critical chances are now calculated in the same way (with exceptions): if something (like panic) effects hit chance, it also effects critical.
• Hit chances are generally increased allowing lower levels to make a successful shot under the right situation. However, avoiding negative conditions is vital, especially panic.
• Ammo weights have been corrected and rebalanced. Mounted flashlights are functional and highly advised for low-light shooting.

Hey all, a good mix of things this doid.

Fun gameplay stuff, and a chunk of info we wanted to flag for modder-awareness and the more tech-minded amongst you. (Feel free to skip that bit to get to the more enticing gun stuff from Fenris thats become its first application.)

Onwards, then.


[h3]HUNKER INNA BUNKER[/h3]
Permanent underground structures are being added to the internal builds map for testing.

As discussed before some basement locations will be randomised to add surprise flavour to your looting, but therell be plenty of ever-present locations that will likely be survivor favourites for taking over and making your own.

Heres a fun example, which also very clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of B42s tech upgrade that governs the realistic spread of light. It really is very dark down there, and with that very claustrophobic and scary

[previewyoutube=m3Tzna-nAM8;full][/previewyoutube]


Another aspect of the underground structures is sound, and now weve got more and more of these in the test build our sound team will be working to cut out wildlife sounds, add muffle, echo, drips and such. Likewise, meanwhile, another focus is adjusting the noise of street level activity when you climb higher in buildings.

Its also worth mentioning that in 42, or at least certainly its unstable release, you will not be able to tunnel or break down the external walls of underground structures. This is something it would be healthy for the engine to be able to do (although wed never have Minecraft-style insta-tunnels in vanilla, clearly) but is probably a can of worms best opened later down the line.


[h3]CRAFTING[/h3]
In amongst the feverish connecting of code wires from others on the crafting team, Turbo has been working on the new interface that will allow for hand-crafting items on in-game surfaces.

Weve got something ready to go into the internal build, but in its current WIP form still needs some polish and probably isnt quite ready to show off before its rough edges have been smoothed out.

In essence though, this work has been to cater for crafting items that arent as straightforward as ripping clothing to make bandages or opening a can of beans (which will always be feasible just in your hands) but dont necessarily need a specialized workstation either.

Activities like preparing a sandwich or making a nailed baseball bat logically require a handy surface to perform the work. The way its being implemented any logical surface will do (tables, counters etc) but this sort of crafting will no longer be possible while standing in the middle of the street with zombies approaching.

In terms of changes in player habits and behaviour going from 41 to 42, this will probably be the one thats felt most keenly. Theres a lot of muscle memory well be scrubbing out here, after all. However we are doing our utmost to keep it logical, and to keep it real.

The current challenge has been to devise an interface that accomplishes all the tasks necessary: providing a handy way of browsing or looking up the recipes, allowing for craftingof multiple objects, allowing the use of tools to modify the quality or success chances of the crafting, and giving access to all the functionality provided in the crafting update.

Were not there yet on this surface level, but functionally on the code level its all there and working and ready to be integrated into the game. Next steps will be to make the UI as clean and convenient as can be, improving and iterating as we go, as its such a core aspect of 42.

(Just to reiterate, however, simple crafts like ripping bandages and so on will still be craftable in the way they are in 41: right clicking the item and clicking the relevant right click menu option. This is still the most immediate and convenient way for a player to do these split second crafts in the midst of action.)

Meanwhile, of course, the results of all this new crafting continue to get pumped through from the art department, prepped and laid into the code. Heres a few that popped through recently.






[h3]MULTIPLAYER[/h3]
We havent heard from the MP bods in a little while so lets go over to Andrei for a little while:

We are very busy on the Multiplayer side of things. When Build 41 MP was first released we had three coders on our team, and now due to the success of 41 we have five.

As many will be aware we have been focused on anti-cheat functionality for the last several months which is now being finalized: preventing cheating with inventory and items by moving their processing from clients to the server.

Clearly simultaneous to this we have also been working on the integration of new 42-specific gameplay most notably adding support for animals into MP.

We have also been moving the team onto the fixes, feature requests and changes we have heard from the community.

Some highlights of this are as follows, but please note that our list is long and not everything will be mentioned! If youve felt it or found it annoying in your MP play then it is probably on our list:

• Privacy and Anti-Cheat work. We are improving our anti-cheat functionality, and adding various new mechanisms.



• Improving synchronization of characters between clients. We are debugging and fixing issues where zombies appear unexpectedly for the player, or players teleport instead of walking.
  
  
• PVP animations and logging. Current hit reactions in PVP lead to unfair and unfun behaviours, likewise there are issues with disconnecting during PVP. We are planning to fix this and extend PVP logging.



• Safehouses. As players will be aware, there are various issues related to exploits and safehouse raids that we need to fix. We also have a lot of things in mind for nice-to-have improvements that we hope to share with you in future blogs.

• Rebalance of how hit chances and recoil are calculated, and general RoF with firearms.
• Improved the target highlighting which was previously misleading, with the colour shifting to green shades with lower hit chances than expected. This is now corrected to go green closer to 80%. Previously only aiming & reloading skills, the distance to target and how long ago you stopped moving had an effect on the highlight.
• Now Strength helps with recoil, Dexterous and All-Thumbs impact on shouldering the weapon, and Eagle-Eyed and Shortsighted can change the optimal sight range.
• Rates of Fire have been increased to more realistic expectations, but it now takes a bit of time to stabilize your aim when initially shouldering the weapon or after each shot. This time is reduced by aiming skill and various traits and conditions. Firing as fast as possible is less accurate then taking your time and lining up the shot. The lighting of the target square is also now taken into account.

Its been a really big week for us, as we merged the second-to-last element of Build 42 into the main codebase across the rest of the team which is the long awaited tech upgrade which brings a whole host of improvements to the engine.

Its currently being tested and the feedback has been super positive so far. This said, its also brought over lots of small bugs, visual glitches, and issues with new depth map clipping items incorrectly. Nothing over-dramatic, but enough stuff to keep testers and coders alike fully occupied.

This is where a lot of our brains have been at recently, so we thought wed give you an update on the engine as it now stands while testers run around kicking its tires alongside some videos they have made along the way.

Likewise, we also have some examples of some of its new capabilities that we will be able to explore in future perhaps during the Unstable beta, perhaps beyond.

So, a run-down of what this tech upgrade brings into the game:


[h3]OPTIMIZATION[/h3]
Weve made huge optimizations to the rendering of the map that should have a huge impact for most lower-midrange and upwards systems. We are now easily able to get a solid framerate even on 4K, or on furthest zoom. The difference in performance is honestly surprising, and extremely satisfying.

For full disclosure, however, weve discovered that a few of the absolutely lowest end systems capable of running our game are still adversely affected. This is because the solution for such large FPS optimization comes at the expense of GPU memory usage for the caching textures used. Cards with extremely low dedicated GPU memory may run into problems.

Were investigating and trying to optimize this further to make sure as many systems as possible can benefit, and worst case scenario these optimizations will be disabled on systems where they would do more harm than good.

However, its still entirely possible that well be able to resolve this completely and provide a large boost to even the most potato systems. More likely, well provide some kind of automatic detection to provide as large a portion of the optimizations as possible for a GPUs available memory. This will be our next task post visual-bug clear out.

Generally we estimate that a huge majority of our playerbase will benefit greatly from the optimizations. Since most of the optimization frustrations we hear come from players who feel their machine should be able to run PZ at a solid framerate, we feel this work will ease the vast majority of performance sadness we see in the community.

[h3]VIEW CONE[/h3]
Another improvement born out of necessity is an improved and smoother viewing cone. Due to the optimizations, it was no longer feasible to alter the lighting of tiles frequently enough to allow for the smooth light changes required for our tile based viewing cone.

As such we needed to implement a completely separate and newly-coded viewing cone that didnt rely on tile lighting which truth be told we were never a huge fan of anyway.

Now we have a much more accurate, smooth and fancy viewing cone and now we have extra hands on it internally feedback is being collated so that we can provide plenty of requested options to allow you to tweak it this way and that. (Making it more or less visible probably being the primary one.)

[previewyoutube=hdklsRfi8zc;full][/previewyoutube]


[h3]LIGHT PROPAGATION[/h3]
The new lighting system is now in full testing, and seems to be working pretty well so far.

This new propagation system allows for much prettier and more convincing lighting of the world, especially now we have basements which would have been extremely unsatisfying with our existing 41 lighting.

41s system basically had an ambient light level that permeated the entirety of the world depending on the time of the day. Then on top of that indoors would get a reduction in ambient light to make them slightly darker than outside.

The new system propagates light from light sources such as bulbs, or the sun, across tiles to simulate reflective light. Its not something cutting-edge that youd expect from the Unreal Engine, or something, but for our purposes its extremely effective. It allows for light from a window to creep across the room, allows for rooms with no natural lighting to be in complete darkness even during the day, allows more immersive coloured lighting, and all manner of other things not previously possible in PZ.

Most importantly of all, it fixes the room lighting issues that plague b41 when room layouts are changed with sledgehammers leaving strange lighting artifacts on the floor, since all lighting is calculated purely based on the geometry of the rooms now.

With this will now come gameplay balance theres debate on the team as to whether the player character should have a little more clarity in the darkness, some internal spots are a little more inky-blue than black, and new gameplay elements like not being able to read in the dark will need finetuning to the new visual.

Also seen in the following video, for extra immersion, doors are now fully animated as discussed last time. This makes a huge difference to the feel of interacting with them during gameplay.

[previewyoutube=BgM3zjtGynE;full][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube=1lf0XaUlE8A;full][/previewyoutube]


[h3]OVERGROUND UNDERGROUND[/h3]
Were still in the process of adding basement spots around the map whether random or permanent. However, as discussed previously, the new upgraded engine allows support for levels from -32 to +32.

This allows for both much more convincingly tall skyscrapers for city locations, as well as for basements and potentially sprawling underground complexes. The mapping and modding is gonna be wild.

Part of this is also strapping in engine capabilities to help us in future and as such please take the following as an EXAMPLE video of what we can now do in PZ.

Our coders and mappers have enough on their plates at the moment, and as such this is not a confirmed feature for when 42 goes Unstable.

It will, however, be feasible within the engine which is why weve chosen to show it.

Essentially, EP has been working on some extra physics engine functionality to allow for the physics to exist on floors other than the ground floor as well as providing new physics shapes that in future will allow for this. This work was also a necessary foothold for other physics-based features we have brewing for future versions.

[previewyoutube=thfgbPM-oRw;full][/previewyoutube]

Please note also, just to quell any mapper fears again, these extensive engine and map data structure changes will not make existing map mods invalid. All maps will need to be reexported in the new versions of the tools when we release them, most likely around the time we put out the Unstable beta, but they wont need to be redone from scratch.


[h3]MEANWHILE...[/h3]
Were waiting on a big commit to fill in some of the gaps in the crafting system process itself, so in the mean-time lets focus on some of the fun stuff thatll be coming out the other end: weapons.



Clearly we already have the more normal and traditional blacksmithed weapons for B42 already, and likewise the more ancient-styled stone axes and such. With these were avoiding anything specific to any period or culture, going for real life examples that were common across history and geography, and that could pass as something reasonably iron age, medieval, or post-apocalypse. We have consulted an expert in these matters regarding the designs and selection, and were also providing them with further weapon designs as we make them for feedback.

But, as we stretch out into our apocalypse we also wanted something a little more apocalypse-y.



As such, currently whats being wrapped up are post-apocalypse improvised weapons. These include classic examples like the nail-spiked weapons, but also weapons that have been constructed with welding and metalshop tools.

With these designs a conscious decision has been made to not think about weapons from other games or zombie media, and instead research was conducted regarding real life improvised /crafted weapons. This included stuff like police collections of seized weapons and trench warfare, with additional inspiration from weapons in Max Mad-style post-apocalypse media.

We also took on something of a procedural approach, where we looked at the weapons and items that existed (or could exist) in the game, and imagined them being combined like Lego bricks to create weapons. Granted in many cases we just re-invented the wheel, but that helped keep things grounded, realistic, and consistent with the rest of the game.



Although we tried to make these weapons realistic and believable, we have allowed for a couple of weapons to be slightly (reasonably) zany. Were allowed to have a little fun, after all, and all those weapons will also have realistic drawbacks when wielded.

Simultaneous to this, we are also adding some broken versions of existing Zomboid weapons. Some of these broken weapons and their parts will be used in crafting other weapons, but these fragments also exist for gory consequences when weapons break when bashing a zombie with them.

I dont quite know why were using this strange moustachioed gentleman to demonstrate these today, but lets have a proper look at him in any case. Curious chap.



[h3]BACK TO ANIMS-LAND[/h3]
Finally, a big welcome to Nick from our colleagues at TEA Games who has joined us to help us implement something we call PenguinTech after the time Zac got two million on-screen dancing penguins into a Wii game.

Originally slated for B41 this will, in essence, be a clever way of optimizing our zombie hordes pooling what states they are in, and then sharing a smaller pool of zombie skeletons for the same anims. With this, fingers crossed, well get better performance when theres a horde on-screen and in turn we can be less dainty with their application in your survival.

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 begancan be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct yourattention to thePZ Wikishould you feel like editing or amending something, and thePZ Mailing Listthat can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitterright 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 winter religious festival if you celebrate it, or if you have it in a months time, or just if you think its nice because you get a few days off while your neighbours drown in eggnog!

Heres the December news round.


[h3]CRAFTING TEAM UPDATE[/h3]

With the last Thurzdoid some people arrived at the mistaken impression that in normal b42 play, the iron ore deposits would exist on the map and be the primary source of metal for crafting. While were not ruling this out in the long term, and itll certainly be the only source of metal to be found within the wilderness map (more on this later), the primary logical source of metal would always initially be found within the now abandoned civilized world itself.




For several builds now, players have been able to dismantle various metal furniture and other objects in the world, including wrecked vehicles, to get metal bars, sheets and scrap. This still exists in build 42, and should serve as the primary source of metalin various sorts and sizesfor crafting.



This also includes taking apart railroad tracks, which is fortunate in that you can use a piece of the track to construct a makeshift anvil.

On the subject of modern metalworking, here are some new workstations, a standing bandsaw, drill press, and arch furnace.

The bandsaw currently can be used to cut metal pieces into smaller metal pieces, which can save you some wear and tear on your hacksaw, and the drill press can be used to put holes into metal, such as fabricating tools such as header tools for making nails or a drawplate for making wire, among other uses. The arc furnace can be used for melting down assorted items to cast various metal ingots and bars. Now this isnt the extend of the uses of these workstations, or the end of what were adding in this vein.





Speaking of other workstations, here are some of the new agricultural stations in b42, herb and crop drying racks, stone quern, and mill, as well as some new crops: Barley, Flax, Hemp (industrial), Hops, Rye, Sugar Beets, Sunflowers, and Tobacco. This gives us a great foundation of resources for textiles, cordage, brewing and oils. We have more crops coming, including some winter crops, garden vegetables, hot peppers, and some pretty herbs.



Moving on to things relevant for the wilderness, here is an example of a campsite made using primitive tier resources. It includes a small worksurface boulder and tree stump, which are naturally spawning workstations that can be used for some basic crafts, including some bootstrapping crafts for getting crafting up and started. Heres also an example of a small cabin that could be built in the wilderness.



Moving on to the blacksmithing and crafted weapon related matters, as some crafted items consist of handles and heads, some that can be sharp,



Appropriate items will track those conditions as such:



There are some other new and very interesting statistics that will be associated with tool and weapon parts, but well discuss this later once its implemented. The goal of these will be to provide much more variety to items, and much greater reward from higher skill crafting, and looting of rarer items.



Aside from being used as part of the guts and bolts of the crafting system, this also allows for a more interesting procedural weapon upkeep and breakage system.

The upkeep stuff is intended to be warm and immersive, but without an excessive amount of micromanagement. With the examples like the hatchet and spear, you can use the classic items like Duct Tape, Wood Glue, or Zip-Ties to repair the handle, or carve a new one and replace it.

Sharpness affects weapon damage and criticals. Weapons at 0 sharpness can still be used to kill, but are less effective, will take longer to chop down a door or a tree, and will accumulate damage faster. Sharpness can be restored using a Whetstone, but is temporarily capped by the weapons Head Condition (or general condition for items like knives). Minor head damage can be repaired with a Whetstone, greater damage with a Grindstone, and a broken blade can be used to make a smaller blade or other item.

With the procedural damage system, Sharpness, Handle Condition, and Head Condition all are affected by usage and combat, with Sharpness generally draining the fastest, followed by Handle Condition. When Handle or Head Condition hits 0, the fun stuff can happen with Procedural Weapon Breakage. With the Hatchet, when the Handle Condition reaches 0, the handle breaks, and the Head goes flying.

With a larger Axe or other weapon, you may end with with a usable crude wooden club in your hands. Spears basically work the same way, but leave you with a broken stick in your hands and can leave the Spear head embedded in a zombie. When Head Condition reaches 0, the Handle still breaks, but a broken Head is left on the ground or in a zombie, which may be salavged to make something new. Broken Handles can generally be carved to make smaller handles or other wooden objects.



This procedural weapon crafting and breaking also serves to give us the bits and pieces to make some nice post apocalyptic makeshift weapons.



Speaking of crafted weapons, Spears are being heavily rethought, reworked, and rebalanced. This is a case where the weapon part and breakage stuff really helps to make Spears more cool and spear-like. You will be able to make simple wooden spears from appropriate items, such as Brooms or Hockey Sticks, as well as Long Sticks, and a Wooden Spear can be Fire Hardened for greater durability and a minor boost to performance . Heres also some crafted blades and the spears and knives made from them:





[h3]THE PROFESSORS PROC-GEN LABORATORY[/h3]

Last time we introduced you to our latest recruit, former legendary modder and Minecraft dev ProfMobius.

We wanted to get him settled into Zomboid in an area he felt comfortable within, and it made sense for him to perform a trick he last played for Mojang. As such, his first port of call is to look into a wilderness procedural generation system.

Please note this isnt full procedural generation and not intended to create random towns and cities, and at least for now, is purely to provide random wilderness. This will serve two important purposes for Build 42.

1) It will allow for the current borders of the premade map to cease to have a black impassible border, and will instead allow players to be able to explore outside the confines of the map a very, very large (though probably not infinite) distance.

This will allow players to establish themselves a greater distance away from the premade map and will expand the scope of wilderness based gameplay, as well as locations for settlements that can exist considerable distances away from the existing towns within the game.

2) The second purpose will be to allow for servers optionally to be able to generate a complete wilderness map with no towns, roads or other signs of civilization.

Not only will this be a good testbed for ensuring that none of our primitive and medieval crafting trees rely upon anything a player would need to loot, but will provide a basis for vanilla and especially modded multiplayer servers to focus entirely around crafting and community building, rather than looting and zombies.

The random map generation will have large biomes (all will be sensible for a Kentucky climate environment for the vanilla map border generation, but we may be able to be more imaginative and less realistic on the complete random map generation, and discussions are still happening about this) to add variety and things to discover.

While we will not be looking to generate fully random maps with buildings, towns, roads etc at this point, its important to point out that the random basement system implemented into Build 42 has required the ability for binary exported buildings from our building editor to be able to be injected or stamped into the game world at run-time, and this functionality will be accessible to modders.

We fully expect modders to have all the power they need to be able to expand the wilderness map with random towns and road networks. It may be something wed consider exploring at some point once the main map is complete, but until then its not something we want to distract from the hand-crafted game world. While we believe random maps would be a cool addition for those who have played the game so much the existing map and popular modded maps no longer feel fresh, we would prefer new players always had the traditional handcrafted map in their first throes of survival.

Heres a quick rough cut of something created with the earliest draft of ProfMobius world generation tool hopefully the start of something cool

[previewyoutube=p6H8jSHWuxU;full][/previewyoutube]


[h3]MANY YEARS LATER[/h3]
Just to underline our continued dedication to handcrafted mapping, we have a backlog of many and varied Challenge maps and spin-off maps waiting in the wings for main game inclusion. The one now stumbling and blinking into the stark and glaring light of day is Xeonyxs Many Years Later.

Given the sparsity of normal looting spots this is due to be another of our testbeds for our revamped post-apocalyptic crafting, but its pretty fun in terms of just how full of despair it feels.

The recent addition of rats and wildlife also really set it off now. Heres a quick vid from recent explorations:

[previewyoutube=_jk3JMXAcGw;full][/previewyoutube]


[h3]CHRISTMAS ANIMALS[/h3]

Finally, Amz, our video producer and the most Christmas tree must be up the day after Halloween Christmassy person in any room thats ever existed has put together this amazing John Lewisesque video! We all love it and hope you will too!

Enjoy!

[previewyoutube=zA7260FI9rM;full][/previewyoutube]

Oh, and in weird bug news we had a problem with infinitely spawning chickens. Things swiftly got out of hand.

[previewyoutube=EjMl595R9tI;leftthumb][/previewyoutube]



[h3]Oh the Humanitz![/h3]

Wed like to point people in the direction of a friend of TISs new zombie survival game thats carving out a slightly different area of the zombie survival niche, a bit more actiony and aiming for something in-between State of Decay and Zomboid in the Venn diagram of zombie survival.

If you have place in your heart for another great zombie game, especially one thats plenty of fun to play in co-op, make sure to check out HumanitZ on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1766060/HumanitZ

Yip yip, hello. Lets dive in.

[h3]SWING BOTH WAYS[/h3]
Another exciting addition to the build 42 tech upgrade branch has just dropped.

The tech upgrade branch is what contains our optimizations, improved view cone, basement/skyscraper technology and now an immersive improvement that weve wanted for a long time, that could potentially lead to many cool additional gameplay opportunities that werent possible before.

[previewyoutube=Ev2genBbzb4;full][/previewyoutube]

Thats right, kids, doors have now entered the third dimension.

Where before doors would just flip instantly on the tile the moment they are opened or closed, now they are animated and use the tech branchs depth buffer.

This is obviously a huge improvement for immersion, but could potentially lead to cool new mechanics in future (note, certainly not b42s initial release) like opening doors at different speeds, doors being left slightly open, peeking, bashing open, one-way fire doors and such.

While easy to overlook, our doors are pretty much unchanged since the 0.1.5d days yet also one of the most fundamental things about PZ gameplay so getting some visual niceness, and some future gameplay opportunities, feels like a win.

So lets have a quick noisy vid in which doors open and slam shut in unison.

[previewyoutube=6Wbt795liVQ;full][/previewyoutube]

(In future we clearly also already have the tech to have doors and visibly opening and closing on vehicles too, its already in the code and used by many mods, however in the main game its always been the plan to couple this to in-car character animations, visible interiors and such.)


[h3]CRAFTING STUFF[/h3]
Were operating in various different areas with crafting, but the one thats becoming most interesting and fleshed out with recipes and new items is definitely blacksmithing which has come a long way in the last month.

So lets head over to Blair to have a chat about the ways in which youll be getting to grips with the creation of some of these beauties.




For blacksmithing in build b42 we have the tiers, workstations, and materials worked out; now most of the crafting recipes have been made as well, and its a case where content is being added almost daily as the art assets are completed.

Most items that one could reasonably expect to be blacksmithed can be blacksmithed, and in most cases the resultant item is a more rugged, crafted version than the default version of the item that you may be used to.




In many cases there are multiple tiers of items, requiring better skills, stations and materials to produce, where it serves the game. Weapons are an example of where this extra attention is being put into the system, where there are distinct tiers of the basic types, that differ in both appearance and performance.



A lot of work still needs to be done with balancing, as well as getting the fun stuff like animations of the character performing the actions, with fire and smoke. Our artists are hard at work making the assets for all the new items needed for this, but otherwise blacksmithing could be considered mostly done; you could say that all of the design hurdles have been crossed, and we have solved the Riddle of Steel.

One conceit of b42 crafting is that you should be able to start on a theoretical all forest map; this isnt a concrete thing that were testing yet, but were providing foundation for it. Steel production from nothing being one of them.



Although iron ore outcroppings are more commonplace in games than in real life Kentucky, we have tiles of them, for use for our own forest maps, and maps of modders.

(ALERT ALERT: we are aware this is quite game-y, and may well refine in future. For now, however, it works for our purposes.)

Once you have smashed them into iron ore, you can dig a charcoal pit, and build a primitive forge and furnace, and use the charcoal to extract an iron bloom from iron ore.

With a stone hammer and some crude wooden tongs (which wont survive the process) workable iron is beaten out of the iron bloom, and that iron can be used to produce simple iron implements such as tongs, smithing hammers, nails, and basic masonry tools.




Eventually you can work your way up to building a proper come kiln, for both making charcoal, and also coke out of the charcoal for steel production, as well as a smelting furnace, and then an intermediary forge and a grindstone. With this you can produce medium-quality iron implements, that benefit from proper hardening and quenching, as well as higher carbon content.

From there one would work there way up to a blast furnace, for producing steel, and then, with the steel, cast and harden a proper blacksmithing anvil and make an advanced forge, and eventually a metalworking bench for making high quality, precision tools and items.



Elsewhere, meanwhile, we have been going through the game and converting existing systems to the new fluid mechanics that come as a part of the crafting system.

A good example of this, as it clearly shows in the end product, are our hair dyes even if they are relatively cosmetic as far as the game-proper goes.

In the following video, then, you see the dyes being transferred to (and used from) any fluid container whether bottles, cans or buckets. Here too you can see them being mixed, and the resulting new colour being applied to the characters hair. (Elements of this still WIP)

[previewyoutube=Si0LoUFXK5s;full][/previewyoutube]

[h3]GAS 2 GONE[/h3]
Weve given you more sandbox power over how much gasoline is stored beneath Knox gas stations, as previous work in the area didnt go far enough. Youll have options to select whether gas pumps are infinite, what their minimum and maximum potential amounts of stored gasoline is, and indeed what the chances are of it spawning completely empty (see image below).

We have also made these a little more user-friendly with better right click feedback on power, required containers, admin info on fuel remaining etc. Weve also added a more visible fuel caps on our car models, and indeed a fuel-side indicator icon on your vehicles dashboard.



[h3]VOICE SETS[/h3]
After the successful integration of the body noises, hey!s and psst!s of a real actor and a real actress we made the call to widen the net a little and get a variety of different people to record specific voice/noise sets for the game.

There will now be four male and four female voices that you can choose at character creation stage, which will also mean that in MP those around you will likely have slightly different puffs, pants and combat exertions.

Likewise having a more particular sound to your voice and character will likely be good for your own personal RP reasons.

(Please note here, again, that exertion noise frequency hasnt been 100% balanced yet.)

[previewyoutube=6N-g3U8EB50;full][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube=P-F606_oiVE;full][/previewyoutube]


[h3]ANIMALS[/h3]
Its relatively easy to slot in new animals to RJs system, the modding scene will likely be fairly extravagant, so while fixing bugs with our chickens, cows, sheep and pigs hes also slipped in some raccoons and wild turkeys to roam alongside the deer.



[previewyoutube=ROhZaTzvSC0;full][/previewyoutube]


[h3]4K PZ[/h3]
Foxs up-rezzing (and slight tidy-up) of all the games many windows, icons, menus and general game furniture continues. In fact, were now at a point in which many aspects of the game can be played at 4k without the need for squinting and a magnifying glass.

Folk with higher-res screens have long-suffered with Zomboid, so were excited to finally put this issue to bed as can be seen in the following 4K video.

Please note, however, that some windows here still feel a little crowded we probably need to loosen up the crafting window that could use a bit more padding, the tabs feel a little close together etc.

[previewyoutube=vrBoz9t1s0E;full][/previewyoutube]

[h3]MAP NICETIES[/h3]
The map expansion, and elevation/lowering, continues apace. Something else we are bringing to your exploration is a little more colour and character to the places you are surviving within as such therell be more variety of things left on whiteboards and chalkboards in schools, universities and laboratories for example.

Meanwhile, theres clearly elements of signage Americana we can use for our game too. Case in point, being a wide range of different signs outside our churches.




Weve also got an, as yet unnamed, Wild West tourist attraction going into the game which could also potentially be a good place to find some of the crafting gear thatll be new to 42. Maybe a couple of cowboy actor zeds shambling about as well, for good measure.



[h3]DRESS UP BOX[/h3]
We generally dont populate the map with Mad Max lookin zeds, but people certainly seem to like having a little more freedom in terms of the threads you choose to go a hunting and a looting in.

As a side project from his crafting duties, then, Blair has worked with animator Martin to improve the clipping issues folk often come up against with certain combinations of clothing. This issue was becoming more and more apparent with the crafted straps and metal shin guards being developed in the blacksmithing aspect of 42, so needed nipping in the bud.

Essentially, now clothing items and body locations can have set definitions which then instruct the game to use alternate clothing models in particular circumstances. So a different arm guard model, for example, will be automatically used if the character is wearing a bulky jacket. We feel that this will have massive potential for modding.

On top of this we have also made it so accoutrements like limb armour (shin pads, for example) can go on either limb; you can wear just one, or a pair, or a mismatched pair. This said, so its not too annoying, theyll appear as matched pairs in loot or on zeds.

Finally, while not entirely linked to this endeavour but still in the same ballpark, helmets/headgear/masks all now affect your vision cone and your hearing (modestly) which weve added as a balancing measure for when crafted helmets are in the game.





Oh, and the above also means we can have (American) Football Shoulder Pads in-game too, so expect some varsity jock zombies wearing those around campus also.

Heres a somewhat silly, but fun, screenie showing a little bit more of what this system can create including a bunch of the new items that will be craftable with the new blacksmith/forge systems.



[h3]NEW HIRES / RETURNING FACES[/h3]
Weve expanded a lot over the past year, and we had called time on anyone else for fear of things running away with themselves.

Clearly Soul Filcher joined recently, and unmentioned in this blog weve got Fenris in the guts of our Discord integration, Patrick with his (very encouraging) experimentation with ragdolls, and theres a hugely experienced guy called Matt who we havent announced before whos putting in foundations for future engine improvements. After all this we mentally shut the door on likely changes and additions, until

Zac, the coding maestro behind 41s animation systems, made his return to work after a long period away this month and is now working the kinks out of issues weve had since he was last with us with character rotation and movement.

Heres a link to show his WIP improvement though it might not be super-perceptible in vid-form. When this is all sorted the in-game character should feel more responsive, and also give us more flexibility when improving on the general animation suite.

He also brings alongside him a lovely guy from Tea Games called Ash, whos helping integrate the video play middleware Bink into the game which will (among other things) help us mix some improvements into our title screen, and to provide combat video examples in our tutorial windows and such.


[h3]THE PROF[/h3]
The other guy, meanwhile, whos burst onto or internal development scene is someone we know as The Prof.

Thomas ProfMobius Guimbretiere comes to us by way of Minecraft, and some players might already be familiar with his mods and work over in block-land. He started modding Minecraft something like 13/14 years ago and co-produced MCP, the predecessor of Forge, before later authoring important mods like Waila, Jabba and Opis.

He was then hired by Mojang themselves for work on Minecraft Java (ooh, Java) and went on to work on oceans, corals, new villager AI, village construction and a full rework of the games world generation. All of which is, clearly, hugely relevant to our interests.

Since his Mojang days, hes been working on the backend of Razzleberries (https://razzleberri.es/) but now hes in the iron grip of Spiffo. To begin, to well be easing him in on something hes familiar with that well probably cover next time. Theres plenty of fun stuff planned beyond that too though.


[h3]HAPPY THANKSGIVING[/h3]
For all you Americans, Amz has made you a Thanksgiving vid. Its got some WIP raccoons in it and everything.

Though, thinking about it, maybe we should have gone with the turkeys. Anyway

[previewyoutube=lsbARFrNig0;full][/previewyoutube]


Many thanks also to everyone kindly voting for us in the Steam Awards. We really appreciate your support and associated reviews, but also if you are in two minds about whether or not to click for us please consider the likes of No Mans Sky or Deep Rock Galactic which are both amazing. Itll still be a while till 42 is in public beta, and wed be more comfortable with the nomination-love once its out, all-singing and all-dancing.



This weeks misty mess from CAPSens Crim. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta begancan be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct yourattention to thePZ Wikishould you feel like editing or amending something, and thePZ Mailing Listthat can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitterright here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here.

Evening all, here we all are again. Lets take a stroll through the development Event zone.

[h3]Crafting Overhaul Recap[/h3]
Now the vast infrastructure overhaul of the crafting systems has been merged and opened up to the rest of the gang, weve had a crack team of coders working solidly on implementing the various new post-apocalyptic profession tech trees, workstations and recipes that will provide for a vast amount of options for crafting and building in B42.

As a summary for anyone who isnt up to date on our overall goals, the crafting overhaul is intended to provide the following things to Zomboid:

Give Zomboid a more feature rich end-game.

At present, long time players of the game often find they run out of objectives once they get a well-stocked and secure safehouse. We want to provide many more objectives a settled survivor can undertake to improve their safehouse, or indeed a community of players.

More things to build. More opportunities to craft. More ways to be creative.

Provide a way for servers to be able to run indefinitely without the need to wipe or respawn loot.

At present the gameplay loop relies so much on looting the map for items that servers run into problems when most urban locations are looted. These either cause servers to rely on unrealistic loot respawning, or to frequently wipe the server.

We want servers to be able to run well into the Alexandria years and for players to experience life much further within the post-apocalypse in an interesting way that feels and plays different to the early chaos.

Provide believable post-apocalypse professions that would emerge in a post-technical post-apocalyptic society.

If its been 30 years since the apocalypse, making a new character who is a burger flipper ceases to make much sense.

As time ticks by from the initial infection, we will retire pre-apocalypse professions and introduce post-apocalypse professions that mirror pre-modern professions such as blacksmithing, tailoring, butchering and so on. We are also tying these skills into relevant modern day professions where applicable.

Provide more community cooperation in multiplayer (and NPCs in B43 and beyond) with different interacting professions that can contribute to a community as well as provide much more extensive crafting and building, encouraging trade and other interesting player interactions.

We want to give players more interesting choices of professions and activities to contribute to a survivor community, and allow for players to cut more unique and interesting niches for themselves within a survivor group or community.

Part of this is reshaping how the skill and XP system work to both make individuals less capable of mastering everything, while making their initial potential a lot higher without grinding if they spec into a particular skill heavily.

Simultaneously, meanwhile, we still need to be providing sandbox options to allow solo players to master more skills and professions so as not to cut solo players from all the new content and things to do.

Provide a framework for players who want to focus more on community building and player interactions than zombie survival, so that they can optionally run servers with a more traditional wilderness map based survival game or extensive tech mods.

While zombie apocalypse will always be our core focus for the vanilla game, we want Zomboid to provide a breadth of survival mechanics and content that, especially with mods, make a solid foundation for many other varied survival experiences outside the looting and zombie gameplay.

This includes making provisions for the full range of possibilities in terms of tech and progression modpacks and overhauls that will add mountains of new ways for the community to play the game.

Our tech tree is built from the ground up with the assumption that it is taking place on a wilderness map without any civilization to ensure that there are no holes.

In normal gameplay, close to the apocalypse, its expected that players would be able to skip huge portions of this tree by using scavenged technology and supplies from the crumbling modern world. However, with the correct knowledge and skills, players will be empowered to fill any gap if that loot and technology is not available to them.

Let the modders be all they can be.

Finally, we also believe that the crafting systems themselves are solid and foundational enough for the amazing modders in our community to run absolutely fucking wild with and we honestly cannot wait to see what they come up with.

Recap over
Now weve recapped our general goals with the crafting overhaul, well introduce you to some of the work on three of the profession trees that weve been in the guts of this month.


[h3]Blacksmithing[/h3]
One of the new post-apocalypse professions that will be available for players, blacksmithing will allow for the comprehensive working of metal to provide players the ability to craft many items that are unattainable outside looting in the current build of the game.

The initial work has been based around providing the ability for someone living in the wild to be able to work with metal using a primitive furnace and forge made using rocks and clay, along with higher tiers being producible later on as players progress.

Of course there will also be modern equivalents of these workstations available within the world map for players to exploit too, but as stated earlier we are filling out the crafting tech tree always from the very bottom, with the assumption that players do not have access to any looted supplies whatsoever.




Please note that we are currently exploring a new design for building mechanics, in our attempt to get away from using right click menus for everything. We are hoping for a nicer building interface since well have a huge number of extra building projects for the player and just cramming them all into right click menus will get more and more cumbersome as time goes on.

With these facilities simple iron implements can be produced, such as nails, as well as the tools required to build the next tier. Additionally it can be used for simple assembly and maintenance tasks.





This second tier is approximately Medieval-ish, the furnaces are built using stonemasonry, consisting of dressed stone blocks and cement; there is a proper blacksmiths anvil; and also a quenching bucket.




With this more complex and durable tools can be crafted, as well as a higher level of maintenance.



And yup, want to be the most popular person on a server? Crank out sledgehammers for your friends!



Finally in this area, for steel production we need to make coke, produced from charcoal.



This dome kiln can be used to produce both coke, and also charcoal from wood.

Wood charcoal is important for this branch of crafting. The heat it produces is good for working metal, but its also carbon and had effects on ferrous metal being forged. It will be able to be produced through other means than just the dome kiln, but can be produced more efficiently in higher quantities when using one.


[h3]Pottery / Stoneworking[/h3]
We featured some of the possibilities with pottery in a previous Thursdoid however a big benefit of working with clay (as well as stone) is for additional options for building.

PLEASE NOTE: theres anims, tile artwork, SFX and lots of other polish missing at present.

[previewyoutube=8L4Ib51XGvk;full][/previewyoutube]

As well as stone or clay full-size walls, the extended building options from these systems will allow for paths, roofs and decorative elements allowing for player built communities to really feel like a settlement and provide options for security to keep the zeds at bay.

This will of course be a balancing concern for us, but we feel with sufficient effort and skill a survivor should be able to (very ultimately) erect walls that zombies do not simply attempt to walk through and bash their heads on until they fall over.


[h3]Brewer[/h3]
The last profession well cover today is the Brewer, who has numerous valuable things to bring to the table. While at present alcoholic drinks may not have too much direct impact on gameplay, we will be providing more benefits and downsides to the partaking in alcohol.

After all, we imagine it would be a likely bit of escapism for many a zombie apocalypse survivor, and thered be more value still added later down the line once the NPCs and the accompanying psychological overhaul we have planned at the same time.

In the first instance of this, however, the Brewer profession also allows for the creation of a rather vital way of preserving food.

[previewyoutube=XqyzF1XPBWc;full][/previewyoutube]


[h3]CAN BE HAPPY UNDERGROUND[/h3]
Last doid we showed you building developments high upwards into the sky, this time were going deeper underground as theres too much panic in this town.

For those unaware, Build 42 will come with two sorts of below ground floor. First off well have the Permanent ones that will always be attached to locations on the map. These will generally be familiar locations, places of interest, businesses and secret military complexes.

Today however, well be looking at our Randomized ones. We currently have 119 of these designed: some empty and desolate, some full of loot beyond your wildest dreams, and some that make you seriously question the mental state of the previous occupant. Heres a fuzzed-up image to whet your whistle.



These will be basements, bunkers, panic rooms and Waynes World sets that you will be delighted to discover spawning on your regular looting sorties and they will appear within whatever houses could potentially fit them in and still look natural. The frequency of their appearances will also be governed by a Sandbox option.

Well also have a long list of designated spots within buildings on the map where a random basement will fit, these spots will be assigned and a random compatible basement will be placed in the world on world creation.

Heres a quick video to show some of our favourites off but first a few familiar words of caution!

This is WIP, stair placement within buildings will improve, and likewise the steps will look more natural in the way that they appear within the house. We may also look at hatches etc as time goes on.

[previewyoutube=EDnTo1O-a-M;full][/previewyoutube]


[h3]MODDING[/h3]
Lovely Aiterons mission of tidying up, reorganising and adding new utility to our front-end UI continues. Notably hes currently improving the Mod Manager which, as an ex-modder himself, he is ideally suited to do.

Heres a quick video showing his changes.

[previewyoutube=suhYxCHKBE8;full][/previewyoutube]

So whats seen here? Well, amongst other things, the following:

• Mod and map order. You will now be able to change the load order of enabled mods and maps, which also comes with an auto-sort for available mods.
• Share your presets. You will now be able to share your preset of mods (with specific mods, and the load order) and your friends and/or players on your server will be able to take it and use it themselves. If some mods are missing, then the game will flag it and show links to the ones that are uninstalled.
• We have added special version tags that will be required for mod compatibility for B42. This is due to the massive changes to the game likely invalidating a large number of mods, and the potential for serious bugs if people attempt to run with those designed for B41. Hopefully in this way things will be clearer through the B42 Unstable process, and sailing can be as smooth as we can all muster it.
• The games use of ModIDs has been altered to be appended by the workshop ID of each mod. This adjustment is aimed at resolving server issues that result in file mismatch errors when users attempt to connect, due to various mod versions sharing the same ModID. This happens on the Steam Workshop a fair bit due to re-uploads and modpacks. Now, with the workshop number attached to the ModID, only the correct version of a mod will be loaded by clients connecting to servers. Were hoping that this will then lessen frustrations with said cursed file mismatch errors whenever youre in an area of mod self-conflict.
• We are also working on a new modding API and new modding guide for 42. Its currently unclear whether itd be released alongside a 42 Unstable. Its certainly in the works though.

• The Sound team hit an impressive milestone the other week, with them hitting the total of 50 music tracks that have been re-written so that they work within 42s new and awesome dynamic music system. Our thanks, as ever, to the fabulous team at Formosa and everything they do for the game.
• Taking over a building, but still a clean-freak even though the worlds gone to shit and appearances no longer matter? Well worry no more, as 42 will allow you to wash away and scrub the grime and graffiti to make your safehouse look and feel spotless. Until the blood starts to drip again, clearly.

So hmm, where were we?

Okay so, recent weeks have seen two mega-merges into our trunk internal testing build.

The first was latest from our MP team, to top up the central development branch with their latest from their ongoing server work to flag up any unexpected issues and to get a few gameplay systems back online in MP.

The second was the guts of the long-awaited crafting revamp from Turbo, which means that the functionality for all our primary crafting stations is now in and its a matter of banging heads together and integrating everything weve had stacked up for it.

To this end were pleased to announce that weve hired yet another stalwart individual from the modding community to aid us in this quest.

We were thinking about the different modders who could give our crafting team a little extra grunt, we have so many amazing ones after all, but the offerings of Soul Filcher stood out as being produce of exactly the sort of brain we needed.

Were really happy to have Soul officially on the team, and while his initial introductory task has been some tidy-up work and minor improvements on our many and varied different traits he should be diving into the new crafting stations with the others in the weeks ahead.


[h3]SKY HIGH[/h3]
The engine upgrade is now in a phase of finding all the edge case issues where something doesnt render correctly due to the new caching rendering method.

Alongside this, very excitingly, the map team are working on larger buildings and basements to be slotted into the game map.

EP tested out the first building to use the increased floor limits, a literal 32 floor skyscraper which looks super impressive to see in-game. This, as yet unnamed, skyscraper also allowed us to get a fun new animation into the mix as well

PLEASE NOTE: Impact with pavement is WIP. Therell be far more crunchy SFX, far less blending issues with the character standing back up, and also more blood obviously. Screaming too.

[previewyoutube=1oQzDorSQ_g;full][/previewyoutube]

Elsewhere we are making the most of the improvements to how sprites are cached and handled. This now allows, for example, sprites to be combined with overlays into a single cached texture.

With this we can create nicer, and more accurate, highlighting and borders when they are selected and moused over. As seen here:



Increasingly with the engine upgrade its become ever more clear that with it well be able to polish up more oddities and visual quirks of Zomboid in the long term.

If youre interested, this is made evident by the testing tools that weve added to Zomboids debug menus that put the new tile depth system through its paces.

[previewyoutube=9ETJCMQzZTA;full][/previewyoutube]

In this video you will see a large debug 3d cylinder that can be moved around to test how it interacts with the map environment.

This now interacts with walls and other objects as if they were bona fide 3D geometry within the iso scene, which was impossible up till now. Previously it would have inserted itself in its entirety between tiles laid on top of each other.

This will allow us to increasingly have a more believably 3D looking world despite using 2D tiles, getting rid of a lot of unsightly glitches and potentially opening up other gameplay avenues in the further future.

To be clear, this vid shows the sort of stuff that were now able to finally nix although whether that will happen prior to 42 going unstable or later on is still an open question.

Oh and heres another player/zed falling vid as we love it so much

[previewyoutube=q1PJog3aXFc;full][/previewyoutube]

[h3]OH, RATS[/h3]
Weve shown rats in blogs before, but previously they didnt have many rules or conditions attached.

Now, as we close out what has internally been dubbed as rat week we can say that rats will procedurally spawn as the world is explored and they will also appear in special randomized rat stories. They can randomly spawn with trash, trash containers, and corpses.

[previewyoutube=yfnmQvfzWUY;full][/previewyoutube]

As the days of the apocalypse tick by we will slowly approach the Maximum Rat Index which is currently two months on default Sandbox settings which is the point at which rats will have the highest chance of spawning and a higher chance of appearing in greater numbers.

In buildings with rat problems we will also be working with the sound team over at Formosa to make sure we have fun stuff like noises for rats in ceilings, rats in the walls, rats gnawing on flesh, rats scuttling over different floor surfaces etc.

Well keep a lid on the majority of our special randomized rat stories, but expect some gross supplies and destroyed loot. That said, are you familiar with the concept of a rat king crown? Google it if not!



Oh, and would you like something to wash down with that bleach?



[h3]MAP LATEST[/h3]
Lots of fun stuff going into the map expansion, not least the 32 level skyscrapers we have going into Louisville.

Our plan is to have a few of these pepper the urban landscape, where appropriate, for 42 and then to come back for more fully-fledged urban replanning later down the line.

If you take in all the new basements required for the new build, and the new swathes of land to the west of Muld that are being finalized, theres a lot of ground to cover for the map team even if so much of it already in the can. We want everything to be good quality, and dont want any aspects rushed.

With that in mind, lets have another more detailed look at Xeonyxs scraper showcased in the first video. What a beaut!




Elsewhere, what better place to explore in an update where lighting and lightsources are going to be far more than an issue than Ayrtons spooky abandoned orphanage in a forest?

All the cool kids will want to hang out there, were sure.



Finally, for a map expansion we need signs for homes and businesses. So expect all sorts of new fun stuff, alongside adverts and map-reveal flyers for them on the radio and in peoples homes.




[h3]ITS A GAS, GAS, GAS[/h3]
Alongside other new clothing, bags, holsters, and functional gear in 42, were also adding fully featured military webbing and SCBA gear.

The webbing provides two hotbar slots that can be used to attach walkie talkies, special new angle headed clip-on flashlights, and appropriate knives. The SCBA gear, meanwhile, provides one. Military webbing also serves as a wearable container that is superior to wearing fanny packs.

Some of this coolness can be seen in the following video alongside the shemagh scarves that will allow British fans of a certain age cosplay as Simon Reeve.

[previewyoutube=WZ8BNG5xoB4;full][/previewyoutube]

As seen in the next video, SCBA gear is also functional in that, when it has an attached tank with oxygen remaining and is turned on, it will protect the wearer from inhaled atmospheric hazards. This also applies to the Hazmat suits.

[previewyoutube=fcMlwffzvuw;full][/previewyoutube]

We have also made Gasmasks functional, although they require filters that are drained by exposure to airborne contaminants, and have added Halfmask Respirators that use different filters that are consumed at a faster rate.

Some other, appropriate, masks will now also provide mild protection from corpse sickness. However, your character will remove and replace their mask when eating, drinking, smoking, taking pills, and such.

Engineer characters, and characters that learn the recipes, can also craft improvised gasmask filters, as well as recharge gasmask and respirator filters. All of these new items spawn in appropriate locations, vehicles, and on appropriate zombies.


[h3]4K REVOLUTION[/h3]
One of the primary complaints we get about PZ, and a rightful one, is our lack of support for higher resolution monitors.

There have always been workarounds, but they havent been effective enough -and on a 4K screen the resolution makes our UI look to be a size that only a furrow-browed ant could use.

Well come 42 unstable (hopefully its a big task) our local hero Fox will have climbed Resize Mountain and up-rezzed our entire UI to make it far more amenable to those lucky folks with super-snazzy monitors. So good news for many, we hope.




[h3]HOLSTERS[/h3]
In 42 not only are we adding visible holsters, in multiple colours, but also special shoulder and ankle holsters.

Shoulder holsters will conceal the holster and handgun when garments like jackets are worn over them, and also can store two pistol magazines as a container. Ankle holsters can only hold the m36 Revolver currently, and the holster and firearm will be concealed by long pants, skirts or dresses.

Youll be able to find them on both existing, and new, zombie costume types and we strongly suggest seeking out a plainclothes police detective zombie. (Might be tricky though).

[previewyoutube=0-EA6LaTwJ0;full][/previewyoutube]


[h3]OTHER STUFF[/h3]

• Following the successful integration of the effort and body noises from real actor people in a real recording studio into the game weve decided to get a load more done (three new men, three new ladies) so we get a range of different-sounding people which in turn will make for more interesting character creation, and for more variety when players stand and fight around each other in MP.
  
• For the longest time, since forever in fact, alcoholic intake hasnt had enough impact on the player outside of some fun stuff when drink-driving. We havent gone as far as implementing a whole new animation set, but as a fun little side project you might find a few extra complications next time youre utterly shit-faced.
  

Hey everyone. Jumping straight in with an update on the new and improved crafting system this time around if thats okay with yall.

As weve talked about in previous Thursdoids, a large part of the crafting overhaul revolves around creating a unified, powerful and expansive system for machines, crafting stations and appliances. This covers all the different things you find around the world, and those crafted by yourself and your friends.

A primary piece of this puzzle has been in the creation of dev systems and methodology that allow for the hugely swifter implementation of far more varied/interesting crafting and devices which in turn is a big thing for modders, and for the nu-medieval post apocalyptic society gameplay we will now cater for.

This has also been built, however, with a framework that will allow for a wide variety of other gameplay aspects some of which will be a part of the initial 42 release, while others will be drip-fed into future 42 builds, and more still in the mainline builds beyond that. (The underlying systems will be available for modders from the word go, however.)

One of the advantages that the crafting revamp brings with it is the opportunity to provide engineering and electronics gameplay with a ton more depth. This system revolves around the concept of components.

An example of this would be a power input component, which provides electrical power to a machine from an external wire. Another would be a crafting component, which would undertake a crafting recipe that can make use of any liquid or item within a machines resource component, that can store items, liquid or power. Importantly, every component also has an associated UI thats been designed for player interaction.

This will mean as our library (and the communitys library) of components grows, we can quickly put them together to create all sorts of in-game machines and appliances. Its also relatively easy to slap a UI skin on to each component (perhaps something already existing from the game, perhaps something new) to make them appear in the most appropriate way.

Components will also be moddable, so modders will be able to add new components that could then be used as parts of a machines in-game functionality and UI.

The end goal is to open this up to the player in-game, having these components as items obtainable through disassembly.

A burglar alarm for example will be comprised of a speaker component, as well as a battery input component and a motion sensor component. A player could feasibly go around collecting the components, removing the motion sensors and installing them around their base, wiring each of them up to lights to act as an early warning system.

Meanwhile the speaker component of the burglar alarm could be similarly wired up to a switch to allow people in the base to create a distraction sound to lure zombies away or into a trap.

These are just two potential gameplay moments plucked from the air, but good examples of a believable utility of scavenging components from real world items.

Putting aside all the new professions and skills coming to B42, this will finally provide engineering and electronic skills with a lot of cool utility and make anyone with these skills a valuable asset to any survivor group.

This system will also be the bedrock for the crafting tree, providing functionality for the various profession workbenches, crafting stations and more primitive machines. For example, for the more medieval constructions, one form of power input available is rotational energy, allowing for mills and other contraptions to power machines and stations.

Ultimately our hope would be any machine or appliance on the map would simply be a combination of these components. Someone skilled enough would be able to remove them and put them together in any way they made sense: each component will have simple item, power, liquid or logic inputs and outputs.

Taking it a step further, it would also give us the option of making functional machines within the various industrial areas of the map providing functional machines that could feasibly be utilized (perhaps even looted and taken back to base) and potentially making factory locations extremely high value targets for looting.

This will also, ultimately, add far more interesting gameplay to base construction and generator usage. We would have pipes and wires to facilitate the wiring and plumbing of machines and home systems together rather than fudging water collector positions to make operable sinks, or just placing a generator next to a building and instantly powering it.

How far could this be pushed?

Well, in testing the systems flexibility, Turbo grabbed some existing sprites from around the map to make sure the system was working okay for both our needs, and those of the modding community.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS VIDEO IS FROM A DEVELOPMENT TESTBED.

Theres no guarantee any of this will make it into B42, and likewise they are all built from random tiles that Turbs has nicked from our industrial sprite collection. This is all a part of testing the speed and simplicity of creating new machines and from that underline how powerful the new system is.

Everything seen in this vid was put together with minimal specific code and largely relied on existing components put together within the machines in the PZ script files along with new items and recipes.

[previewyoutube=RA6gewj2PDU;full][/previewyoutube]

Weve got enough on our plate, so we likely wont have a full suite of replaced existing machines and appliances by the time 42 unstable rolls around but we believe that these new foundations for PZs crafting system will provide great opportunities both for our existing gameplay, and the gameplay we have planned for the years ahead.

This has certainly been the part of 42 thats taken the longest to come together (not helped by dev illness and hospitalization in early development stages) but its also the stuff that we absolutely needed to nail to provide the huge boost in player and community creativity that we know it can provide. Were at that point now, we feel, and look forward to showing off more applications in the near future.

[h3]HELLO PATRICK[/h3]

A big Spiffo welcome to Patrick, an actual real American on the main dev team. Patrick is a software engineer who has been away working in academia on educational games for a fair while but has his roots in more conventional gaming and has had his claws in various Tomb Raiders, Tony Hawk games, Ratchets, and Clanks over the years.

His primary mission is the implementation of ragdolls into the game although initial work and experimentation is still very much exploratory.

We havent had an actual real American who remembers 1993 on the dev team for a while, so it also means he gets to answer a lot of questions about parking lots, drivethroughs and various other Americana. He is coping with this admirably.

[h3]FOLLOW THAT DEER[/h3]

A quick check-in with our (still WIP) animal tracking system. This could probably look a little better in terms of visual variation when it comes to animal tracks and direction, but is shaping up to be pretty fun.

[previewyoutube=abaZnFtOM1Q;full][/previewyoutube]

[h3]HOLSTERS AND WEBBING[/h3]

In B42 not only will holsters be visible, but a new shoulder holster item has been added. Additionally we now have military webbing, which can be worn instead of a shoulder holster, and also occupies the spaces that fanny packs would occupy.

This webbing provides two additional hotbar slots, which we currently have set up for walkie talkies and knives, and also provide superior container option to fanny packs. Not only can these items be found as appropriate container loot, but also can be seen on both existing, and new, zombie outfit types.






[h3]CHARITY SPIFF PLZ BUY[/h3]
Just over a week left if you want to buy yourself a Steadfast Spiffo, and say fuck cancer simultaneously.



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.

The Indie Stone are pleased to announce another crowd-sourced Spiffo plushie through our friends over at Makeship this time raising money for a cause thats dear to all our hearts.

First off, lets meet the raccoon himself.

[h2]INTRODUCING STEADFAST SPIFFO![/h2]



They came for him they still come but he will NEVER yield.

He is: Steadfast Spiffo.

Spiffo is BACK, with maxed out levels of adorability. With his roomy camping backpack filled with useful survival supplies, sturdy axe, and many utility belts, hes prepared for anything and for a limited time, can be added to inventories as YOUR companion in the apocalypse!

Face down the odds. Fight the fight. Survive against the horde all accompanied by a plushably grizzled hug-raccoon!

Interested in putting down money for Steadfast Spiffo? Then visit the crowdfunding page over on Makeship!

Weve timed it so (hopefully) orders will be ready to make for amazing Christmas presents.


[h2]FUNDRAISING[/h2]

All money raised by the Indie Stone from Steadfast Spiffo will go to the Queensland Cancer Council, an Australian cancer charity that brought help and solace to a good friend of ours during very difficult times.



Vicki Ann Woods was the partner of Zac Congo, one of the principal architects of the animation system that made Build 41 (and PZ) the success it is today. Even during a long illness, her love and moral support became a part of what the game has now become.

Sometimes (not always, but sometimes) we get people asking how they can further support Project Zomboid. They say that they paid some money long ago, but have so many hours of gameplay that they want to add a little more. We always tell them not to be daft, and just tell some friends or leave a nice review.

Well, for the next 21 days we have a different answer: please buy this Spiffo!

Buying this Spiffo helps support people like Vicki, and like Zac, during their times of greatest need and to aid research that will help all of us and our families worldwide.

Thank you x

(And heres that link again if you need it)

Lets have a dig into whats happening in everyones favourite apocalypse. (Although other apocalypses are available.

First off a quick check-in with three of the four main pillars of Build 42 the pillars in question being crafting system revamp, MP improvement, the depth/performance/lighting tech upgrade, and finally animals which will have to wait till next time as RJ is only very recently back from his summer hols.

Turbo has been finalizing his machine and crafting station systems for a check-in next week, after we decided on some ways to maximise their utility for both our own devs and modders and give them as broad and solid a foundation as we can. The results are exciting and the design process for machines and the numerous crafting stations continues to expand these systems over the new tech tree and across existing devices over the entire PZ map. (Stuff like gas stations, wells, water pumps etc will also eventually be tied to the new system but maybe not in the initial release.)

Next up: tech upgrade. Lots of stuff going on in codeland for this but the topline additions have been improvements to the new visibility polygon, and continued work on the tile depth addition that will remove annoying character/wall clipping and ultimately make proper addition of lying and sitting down in all four directions feasible for mainline addition. (As well as the rendering optimizations it will entail obv.)

Alongside this the continued whackamole of things broken by the foundational changes made by the engine upgrades stuff like (to grab a few random examples) doors not shaking when thumped, muzzleflash not showing, railings not being cutaway properly, rendering of zeds on hidden floors not working and many/varied other important stuff.

Finally, we now have four coders and two MP-devoted testers beavering away on our multiplayer two coders devoted to the ongoing mission to bring all player inventory operations server-side, and another two knuckling down on general MP bugs and required polish. Over the past two weeks the guys have also been hooking up new for 42 systems, like the revamped fishing, to the netcode and looking ahead to properly wiring up the animals too.

[h3]SOUNDSCAPE IMPROVEMENTS[/h3]
Last week our Formosa UKs primary PZ-dedicated chaps, Michael and Matteo, took the opportunity to do a full new mixing session for the game while they were both on the same island said island being Great Britain.

A proportion of this was done with MP in mind, and especially gunshots, but seeing as multiplayer is currently broken/WIP in our dev build they instead hooked up an in-game barbecue to a long sequence of gunshots and worked around it like that. (Enterprising chaps, these two.)

Were still waiting on some improved occlusion settings for indoor/outdoor, and the like, and some tweaks to player related sounds but otherwise the following has been tweaked and added.

• Re-balanced all the firearms so they make sense in relation to each other
• Changed the firearm inside/outside setup for general improvements
• Rebalanced the ambiance setup (from beds, to fog, to rain, wind etc) to make it all more coherent
• Re-worked some mixer setup/routing for reverb which has made for a very pleasant upgrade, especially with birdsong.
• Brought backsome volume/filter changes on the camera zoom, but still subtle.
• Improvements to zombie voices so when you get bitten to death by a dozen zombies the mix doesnt wig out anymore.
• Zombie vocals, music and animal noises now play more nicely over the music so it all cuts through a bit better.

Today marks a day in history.

It is EXACTLY thirty years since the Knox Event broke out on 6th July 1993. Our thoughts are with everyone impacted on this sad anniversary.

To commemorate this we are allowing everyone to relive the experience IN REAL TIME on the Twitters.

Please follow @TheKnoxEvent to experience a textual timeline of what manifested three decades ago, albeit (one would hope) with a little less inevitable death than the real thing.

[h3]TECH UPGRADE[/h3]
Okay so this week one of the four pillars of the next main PZ build is going back into the spotlight. Weve seen good progress backstage in crafting, MP improvement and animals/wildlife but its the engine upgrades thatve given us something cool and visual to show off this week.

The tech improvements will be supplying basements, the 32 floor limit and new light propagation system but clearly a primary focus of it all has been with performance. Using 88 tile chunks, in the tech branch we are caching areas of the map to speed up drawing the scene dramatically.

The benefit of this is obvious when it comes to FPS, with our own machine averaging over 300 FPS when zoomed out to maximum. (In the end product, once in the game proper, your mileage may differ for better or worse.)

The downside to this, however, is that the upgrades involved meant we would be unable to change the lighting on tiles in front of the player which has always been used to represent the viewing arc and line of sight as the character turns or moves.

With the changes in the tech branch doing this would always invalidate the cached chunks in every frame, thereby rendering the optimizations ineffective.

To replace this in early B42, as a stopgap, we had a much more nave and simpler viewing cone that was drawn over the screen which also allowed you to see what parts of the screen were outside the characters viewing arc. You can see it on the old Light Propagation Demo we posted in the initial 42 Techdoid a while back.

[previewyoutube=9_0TiPQ-JQA;full][/previewyoutube]

However, this was never ideal. With this it was impossible to tell if an obstacle in the world is blocking your view, as it would just blindly extend to the edge of the screen with no concern for obstacles in the world.

As such, EP has been working on a new system that gives all the same information as our old system but without the extreme FPS consequences of it and also far slicker and more accurate than our old tile system. What hes done is pretty cool!

[previewyoutube=sagb4sDQzJU;full][/previewyoutube]

As you can see, theres now much more precise and smooth LOS information than the old tile system ever could muster.

Were now experimenting with different levels of visibility and blur on the effect to make sure it is a) visible enough to convey the line of sight information to the player, but b) not overbearing enough to distract the player as it moves around in real-time.

Where weve got it right now in this second video is still super cool (note the effect when doors and curtains are opened and closed) but its possibly a little too transparent on these lighter tiles.

[previewyoutube=2RLZrfTJ0bg;full][/previewyoutube]

Well continue tweaking until we find something that works best as a default, but as ever well do our utmost to provide settings that will let you adjust it to whatever youre most comfortable with.

[h3]MAPPAGE[/h3]
Its been a big week for the map and art team, as the B42 map expansion has just gone into its first round of testing. It covers a pretty huge area, as is shown in this handily obscured image.




Clearly the Louisville expansion in 41 was very built up, and here theres a lot of grass and wilderness, but that covered 56 cells and what youre looking at here is 430.

Our testers are having a wild old time checking out its many and varied secrets and hideaways, and logging all the map errors they find for future fixing.

As weve discussed previously, a lot of the existing map will be getting a spruce-up too not least with buildings that make the most of the new height limit.

[h3]SANDBOX SETTING SPREE[/h3]
Over our lengthy development, and unending devotion to sandbox settings, things in our front-end have become a little messy. As such Aiteron is currently improving and redesigning our Main Menu UI.

PLEASE NOTE: No design here is final, this is very much a work in progress we want feedback on from players and modders.

First off are changes to the sandbox settings themselves. The layouts been redone, and an advanced tick box has been added that switches over to deeper settings and selections. Weve also mixed in a search and separation of settings by category on the right.

[previewyoutube=uXYCRvvz7R8;full][/previewyoutube]

Next up, an in-depth set of improvement for the mod UI. Here youll find a search function, category filtering, and the ability to add mods as favorites. There are also added presets for mods, which can then be shared with friends using Share and Add buttons.

Aiteron has also improved the mod info panel where youll be able to find out more about the mod contents, and quickly go to the other mods it requires or the relevant website.

He has also made sure to add a parameter for incompatible mods, which will specify exactly which mods your chosen mod wont play nicely with.

Finally, but perhaps most importantly, theres a raft of new info for modders themselves and an expanded functionality for mod.info. Theres options been added for modVersion, author, category, icon, incompatibility and, soon, more besides.

Next up Aiteron will be looking into mod changelog functionalities, and a way to determine mod order which he intends to govern the manual or semi-automatic order of mods being loaded.

Heres what it currently looks like REMEMBER WIP etc! Feedback required!

[previewyoutube=l6lBjGFtOHA;full][/previewyoutube]

[h3]GRUNTING[/h3]
The first results of our recording sessions are now properly in-game: the grunts, groans and wheezes of your survivor are now in-game. Whats more they add a LOT to the experience, and weve got some really positive thoughts coming through from our internal testers.

Weve made some videos for you to demonstrate but before viewing (and listening) please be advised of the following:

Currently the exertion noises play too much especially during extended combat. We definitely need to tone things down or its going to get a little too top tier ladies tennis match. As such we will likely be tying exertion sounds to the exertion levels themselves, which will also be tied into our heavy breathing noises after heavy periods of activity.

So, with that in mind

[previewyoutube=UA6yiHkFrpg;full][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube=s15BU6t0gco;full][/previewyoutube]

[h3]BUGS[/h3]

Look, an aphid. Aint it sweet.



A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta begancan be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct yourattention to thePZ Wikishould you feel like editing or amending something, and thePZ Mailing Listthat can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitterright here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here.

Haylo, heres another dev-log sent down from the mothership.

Few different things form different areas this time around, starting off with an example system update from one of the four main pillars of Build 42 which are the crafting improvements, and the sorts of places they could take the game to.


[h3]CRAFTY BUSINESS[/h3]
For the past few weeks Turbos focus has been on making the new machine scripting system more versatile and easy to use.

As well as creating the crafting stations and machines required for the crafting tree were working on (potters wheels, anvils, woodwork benches and such) our ultimate goal is to allow all machines and appliances on the map utilize this system to unify how machines work within the game.

This overall goal wont be present in its entirety for a first release of B42, but the framework will have been installed that allows for them not only to share the same UI systems to keep them consistent, but also allow for them to be connected together, and allow them to have more complexity of interior parts that could be salvaged and co-opted for other uses. From fire alarms, to clocks, to ovens, to microwaves.

The ramifications of this system will be huge both for the game and for modders, allowing for the machine UI and functionality to be both scriptable with lua and with the object scripting. It will then provide powerful and easy-to-use tools for devs and modders to create interesting machines quickly, cater for slots to place items, and allow for items to interact with these machines in a diverse way with a consistent UI.

Instead of needing to build a bespoke scripted UI, and the complex interactions between the player, machines will be able to be added with minimal code for functionality, and provide higher level details on what goes into them and what comes out. Likewise therell be stardardised knobs and buttons that this backend will allow to be attached for player interaction.

In order to test the versatility of how this system could be applied to vanilla objects within the game (and how far we could push it) we wanted to apply it all to a system that wasnt strictly a crafting station like the more standard one we showed off a month or so ago with some post-apocalyptic pottery.

As such, Turbo put together a test case that could have some fun utilization within a multiplayer settlement in the post-apocalypse and indeed is pretty cool on your general solo survival adventure too.
[previewyoutube=opGQu8LCdEs;full][/previewyoutube]

There will probably be those out there looking at this at face value, perhaps even getting annoyed and asking nggggh, why vending machines?. (Hello, to those out there!)

However, the important aspect to take away from this video are the many unique interactions, systems and features that have been built into the vending machine using this same framework.

What we see here allows for a unique key to unlock the machine, allows it to be stocked with different items (which could be very useful for players on a multiplayer server wanting to run a shop, for example), allows it to take in money and deposit an item from its internal inventory, allows for buttons on the machine to pick particular products, and finally allows for a custom user interface for a particular machine thats FAR easier to create than it is with B41s currently somewhat unwieldly UI system.

That the new crafting / machine framework is flexible enough to be able to accurately create a vending machine is a huge deal to us, and in time to modders and the overall good health of the game as we continue to grow and expand.

Ultimately this framework will be expanded across all machines across the PZ map, as well as those that are craftable through the crafting tree. In turn, this will allow us to open up a ton of interesting crafting and engineering opportunities, as well as open up more and more of the existing machines and gadgets strewn around the PZ map.

As said before though, this is probably a longer term goal, and our focus right now is squarely on the new post-apoc crafting tech tree. This is all, however, our first (big) step towards the longer term goal of unifying how these things work across the entirety of Project Zomboid.

This will then free ourselves, and modders, to have as many possibilities as possible for machinery, and ensure a consistent framework to allow anything created in the game to interoperate with each other, power, liquids and item input/output. Beyond this it will minimize mod conflicts, and overall allow PZ to become a powerful framework for modders to add in all sorts of crazy fun stuff in future.


[h3]SOWING DISCORD[/h3]
Fenris has been working on updating and improving Discord integration, which will allow for powerful features to help roleplay servers and servers running gameplay events, as well as general integration features.

Currently, chat within Discord rooms should be transmittable into the game chat and vice versa but the code used is somewhat outdated and it doesnt work brilliantly. Some may say: not at all. Server owners choose not to use it. With 42, however, everything will be polished and sparkly new.

Whats more server operators will be able to allow discord commands to trigger lua code on the server, for example to begin a timed event and trigger changes in gameplay. Likewise this will also allow for custom lua to trigger messages sent to different discord channels on the discord server.

Another feature we intend to include will allow for admin controlled radio / tv scripts to be executable from multi-line text from the discord server, to avoid admins having to quickly type out multiple pre-written text lines manually in the heat of gameplay.

This is all very limited and walled off, and the game side lua will require custom code to allow for these Discord interactions, so there wont be any security risks associated with this discord interoperability.

For planned roleplay events or custom server game mode events, though, this should provide many cool tools for server operators to play with.

[h3]ELSEWHERE[/h3]
Other mentionable work on the mighty PZ thats happened this week has been:

• Aiteron has been making improvements to our sandbox menu, mod menu general mod settings. Our sandbox settings panels had become so vast and unwieldy that they needed a redesign now with an added search function, simplification in some areas to make things less impenetrable to noobs, and some advanced settings for the long-term survivors amongst us. We will also be improving the server settings interface, simplifying the addition of mods, unifying settings, making it easier to add modded sandbox settings etc.
• Blair reports in for the blog with the unsexy work of remaking farming interactions and its associated UI. Hes currently working out what information you receive, and where, and also at which farming skill level. Hes also sorting out some of the wonkiness you saw in the animations you saw in the last Thursdoid we did.
• Were approaching a new merge from the map team into the internal testing build, probably taking place tomorrow, so our testers can gambol through even more new buildings and locations. Heres a quick video of some of the existing fun places theyve come across.

• New masks. New hats.

A lot of stuff in a WIP state at the moment, so not too many big flashy shiny things in the blog this time round. Hopefully enough to whet your whistle though.

In terms of work on the four central pillars of 42, the next big thing happening will be the next merge-in of the crafting revamp to the central trunk build. This will primarily be the crafting station code, which has had a bit of rewiring and now will also allow for benches/machines etc to (optionally) have parts items that degrade on use and can be viewed/added/removed via a maintenance tab.

Meanwhile, RJ is working on integrating his deer tracking with the foraging/search mode integrated into Build 41, while in our tech upgrade optimization / lighting / more depth & height branch we continue to play a bit of whack-a-mole with issues that have arisen with such foundational changes. So, this week, as an example thats been stuff like: savefile thumbnail creation being borked, zombies spawning on water, the tops of tall tiles showing through the floor above etc.

Finally, in the realms of MP and the continuing mission to bring inventories etc. server-side the gang have been working on getting trapping and nu-fishing working with the new systems, and solving various issues that occur with new object creation also.

[h3]FARMZ[/h3]
Lets pop quickly back into the revamped farming, which this week has had some ease-of-use controls added in to make things less of a click-through-UI nightmare and bring a touch of extra Stardewwy-ness.

This video shows various elements of fun stuff but primarily that by taking a farming tool into your primary, pressing RMB and aiming, and then pressing E will have you go about the farming action. Likewise with sowing seeds, and harvesting.

CAVEAT: Please note that these controls arent final, and also that theres a fair amount of animation polish required to make it all look super-smooth.[/u]

[previewyoutube=zY_-_8guk8A;full][/previewyoutube]

Also, heres a quick timelapse of them plants a growin.
[previewyoutube=Bn9ZD6G88Ak;full][/previewyoutube]



[h3]OTHER STUFF[/h3]

• As previously mentioned, alongside readable newspapers and newsletters, players will now be able to pick up flyers that advertises places of interest on the Knox Event map and then also reveal that location on the players own personal map. This week weve really been knuckling down on this, as weve realized its a great tool to direct new players towards buildings favoured by many in the community for their safehouses. Anyone able to name the following locations from the real estate advertising?

• As well as expanding the current map, were also giving existing areas of the map a loving glow-up. Take this amazing improvement from Ayrton as an awesome example.

• Clearly any new build will also be coming with new clothing, hats and whatnot. Martins also pumping out loads of new fun stuff for you to loot, wear, and also for those tricksy zombies to wear too.

Last time round we checked in with some of the main pillars of Build 42 those things being the crafting and crafting systems update, the tech upgrade, animals/migration and MP.

As such, for todays blog well be dipping into some of the stuff that wider members of the team have been working on for more general improvement elsewhere in the game.

[h3]FARMING[/h3]
First off, lets darken Blairs door and watch him lean over a fence with a piece of straw in his mouth while he outlines what hell imminently be merging into our internal branch for our testers to play around with.



Currently Im working on smoothing out the interface and interactions for the revamped farming. One important part of the interface, and player feedback, are the new plant sprites Mash has produced to represent plant states.

Previously, our far more limited number of plants had sprites for their individual growth stages, as well as some generic sprites to represent trampled plants.

Now, for every single growth stage and for every plant, we have 600 additional sprites to represent whats now grown to 15 crops and 8 herbs. These cover states of:

• Unhealthy due to disease, lack of water, or general low health.
• In the process of dying due to these aforementioned reasons.
• Completely dead.
• Dead-but-also-trampled/crushed. These are for plants that have been crushed by zombie hordes, vehicles etc, and also for dead plants that are degrading over time.

Hello all!

This week well be checking in with three of the main four pillars of Build 42 work on the fourth, the server-side player inventories and general MP improvement, has been fairly business as usual the past month or so and theres not much to talk about thatd be juicy for enough for public consumption.

Steady your loins, then, as first of all we jump into

[h3]ANIMALS AND MIGRATION[/h3]
RJ has been taking a holiday (American translation: vacation) from his work on domestic animals and husbandry, and has taken to the woodland and forests of the Knox Event.

Wild animals will be important to B42 for both reasons of ambiance and necessity it will make your experience feel no end more engaging to see deer skittering through the treeline, but also will make hunting a viable survival technique and one required for some of our advanced crafting recipes when society is long-gone.


[previewyoutube=a3gE3T-nTaY;full]https://youtu.be/a3gE3T-nTaY[/previewyoutube]

What RJ has been working on, in particular, this week is the movement of animals over the map their migration if you will. So if you could all also have a looksee at the following video too, then we can run into it in some more depth afterwards.

Also clearly: USUAL WIP CAVEATS APPLY. Things can and will change through development and testing.

[previewyoutube=dnAFN7gtQPg;full][/previewyoutube]

So what are we seeing here?

Well basically throughout the day our deer will follow paths that our designers (and modders) can map out in our WorldEd tool and in the vid you can see a virtual animal following a path.

Right now, one virtual animal is a group of animals thats been defined in a lua file. Our current group, for example, consists of one buck, several doe and some fawns. Though clearly once they are fully implemented the variation will be greater, and also dependent on stuff like the time of year.

Once players get close to this coded virtual animal these deer will then spawn into the world as real animals and once you retreat away theyll revert to their virtual status so the game can take over their movement and activities once more. If the group has become separated meanwhile, theyll team back up again when their paths next cross.

In their virtual form the animals will move over the map, doing potential set activities at set different places. They are timetabled to have several sleeping and eating periods currently sleeping for a period of half an hour at some point between 12pm and 4pm, eating at some point between 5am and 7am, and eating again for an hour at some point before 4pm and 6pm.

(Clearly, all this is easily changed at the dev-end and can also be adjusted for whatever different animals we choose to add in future)

To aid players who want to be hunters, deer will leave evidence and tracks of where theyve been and what theyre doing. So therell be footprints (with a direction suggested), poop, and broken twigs and undergrowth while flattened plants will indicate a sleeping spot, and grazed areas an eating spot.

The way in which we represent these visibly in-game is currently being worked out, but for now (and perhaps later on too) we will be providing for it in a dual use for eris super foraging mode that was introduced in B41.

A goal for the player, then, might be to follow tracks and work out the deers possible sleep or eating spot, mark them on their map, and then wait near those spots at the correct hours and hope that animals will stop by.

Were also working out on ways for a Tracking skill to be integrated into this, though seeing as the design is still under discussion well probably talk about that at a later date. Something else that were aware should be factored in is human smell and wind direction potentially spooking animals, as it would in real life, but we plan to add that layer in a bit further down the line.

RJ would also like to give out a call of Special Thanks to Inrictus for the time hes spent teaching him how to be a proper huntsman!

Finally, heres another quick video of a survivor setting up camp with our new tents and whatnot (no deer this time) to give a little flavour of what the surrounding gameplay will feel like too.


[previewyoutube=kEey9g7khio;full][/previewyoutube]


[h3]ENGINE UPGRADE[/h3]
Operation Optimization is going very well, easily obtaining several hundred FPS on our dev hardware when zoomed out.

However at the moment we still need to look into optimizations for how our current fog and puddles work both of these are intensive graphical operations that need updating frame by frame. Thus, at the moment, they invalidate our cached chunks and diminish some of the gains from the optimizations.

As such at a later date either before a first public release, or very possibly in a follow up build to it we in particular plan to revisit these systems to optimize them for our new rendering system. Particularly the fog system, in fact, since having a depth map will now provide opportunities to make our visual effects look much better since we will have a solid representation of surfaces and depth to allow us to much improve how it interacts with objects in the scene.


[h3]CRAFTING UPDATE[/h3]
Now the crafting systems are all in place, were starting to fill out the tech tree of recipes and wanted to show whats currently being implemented.

As a reminder to those who perhaps arent as interested in the long term crafting and survival systems we are implementing, these will be completely optional as to whether you want to engage with it.

If youre more interested in evading zombie hordes in the centre of towns and cities then youll still be able to do that.

However, to address our games weaker late game, provide many roleplay opportunities, and provide depth of gameplay outside interactions with zombies were going all out on making the crafting possibilities as exhaustive as possible. Likewise, we are building new and more powerful crafting systems that modders will really be able to get their teeth into.

Remember, our benchmark is that a group of players should be able to build a functioning village even if spawning on a wilderness map with no signs of civilization. We want to make sure every aspect of crafting is covered to give multiplayer communities the opportunity to build and thrive, and provide modders with the tools required to make cool as hell expansive tech mods as seen on Minecraft, allowing Zomboid to become a more diverse survival, crafting and automation game modding platform in future.

An example of this would be working with clay. Clay can be dug up near rivers, and will be used to make bricks, tiles, roofing, pottery, and a whole host of other items and tiles to place in the world.

Those living on a barren map wanting to build a secure home will be overjoyed to be able to use bricks and tiles to make a proper dwelling thats sturdy enough to stop zombies from breaking in. Likewise even on a smaller-scale basis, this craft will prove vital when survivors dont have access to modern cutlery or liquid storage.

So heres a quick video (very WIP still, we have a lot of balance, UI and polish to apply yet) that will show off some of the crafting systems when working with clay.

[previewyoutube=Aa6pgRZ-CSI;full]https://youtu.be/Aa6pgRZ-CSI[/previewyoutube]

In future Thursdoids well try to demo different diverse parts of the tech tree and their related professions as they implemented, as well as UI and quality of life improvements as we make them


[h3]SOME WELCOMES[/h3]
The Indie Stone would like to extend an excited hello to two new fine folks this week Egor who will be joining the MP team as they move ahead with their upgrades, and community fan favourite DaddyDirkieDirk.

Dirk has joined our art team to pump out ever more delectable tiles to give our map more life, and its deepest parts some more intriguing objects to perceive in the darkness and if you are interested in his fantastic work as a modder then we ran a Mod Spotlight on him only last week.

Thanks all!

A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta begancan be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct yourattention to thePZ Wikishould you feel like editing or amending something, and thePZ Mailing Listthat can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitterright here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here.

Hey all, hope this finds you well.

Lots of work on the technical side of the four main pillars of 42 these past two weeks all of which relatively dry, so lets run through that briefly before checking out some of the other items rolling in.

Right now the foundational code to our in-depth crafting systems revamp are being brought into a position where the MP team can better get their hooks into it, while in our optimization/lighting/height channel weve been continuing to polish out cutaway issues, errors thrown and the way our isoregions system handles its newfound 32 potential storeys.

For our MP upgrade, meanwhile, work continues on getting the machinations of player inventories (building, recipes etc) over onto the server while also improving the implementation of our (pretty much fully cooked at this point) new fishing minigames and systems. Domestic animals, meanwhile, are in bug fix mode with additional attention being given to their pathfinding and around animal escapes.

While all this is ongoing other team members are beavering away raising the quality of the game in smaller-scale ways, so lets look at a few of those fun nuggets now.

[h3]CURRENT AFFAIRZ[/h3]
One way to give our towns and city more personality is to provide more written literature for you to loot and peruse whether its a fully readable lore item, or simply an interestingly named (if non-readable) book found in a house you loot that might deepen your understanding of the life of the zombie you just bludgeoned downstairs.



Build 42 will feature a range of newspapers, each with a final three or four issues to pick up and read in a separate written content UI. They will contain news articles about the initial build-up to the Knox Event articles, everyday life articles, and even a few breadcrumbs as to whats really been going in.

This will also include smaller scale publications: like town news pamphlets for the smaller settlements that dont quite warrant a full-scale newspaper.

Beyond this weve also had a lovely man called Stuart taking all our teeny-tiny map logos and up-rezzing them into more suitable forms for both in-game and irl usage. Their first use within the game are local business fliers that are also readable via the same printed media UI.



Clearly theres not much zed content that can be made from these, but their gameplay role is to mark up interesting locations (and sources of potentially helpful loot) on the in-game map a function that we feel will be especially handy for new players.

We feel that finding a flier thats a membership advertisement for, say, the West Maple Country Club and revealing it on the players map will give an interesting reason for new players to leave town and explore and likewise a job advert for McCoy logging and a corresponding map reveal might flag a decent place to potentially find an axe.

Theres SO MUCH stuff on the PZ map, and we wanted a way to direct people to some of the locations were most proud of. Especially those lost in the vastness of Louisville.

[h3]PERSONAL READING[/h3]
We also really want you to feel interested in the deceased people whose homes you are raiding, and perhaps even saddened by their demise. From this weve also added a LOT more texture to the names of some of the books, comics and magazines theyve been reading and indeed the photographs theyve been tenderly keeping in an upstairs drawer.

The hope is that when the spawn tags on these 1500 different interestingly titled books/mags (non-readable) combine with the way we guide our RNG looted spawns work then neat little stories will form in your head about the sorts of folks that lived here up until recently and perhaps who you just left dead on the kitchen floor.

Perhaps they were reading a book called Long Term Illness Management by Laura Paloma, which shines a light on the medication in the bathroom.

Perhaps their love of military history ties in with the guns, or maybe its satisfying to know the zombie in the garden used to read trashy thrillers.

Likewise finding photographs that arent simply called photograph in a cupboard wont do much to you, but instead seeing Photograph of a Smiling Family or Photograph of a Wedding Car Arriving at a Church will hopefully do you some emotional damage. Weve got about five hundred of these, and theyre already bringing some amazing (doomed) colour to the average loot run.

Weve also got six new TV channels, a new radio station, and 75 new VHSs ready to mix into the game (all written by Pat_Bren, whos also the architect of all the above alongside coder Blair Algol) so really feel that B42 will broaden the narrative possibilities of the game significantly while also neatly tying into the gameplay in many instances.

Some other changes that are tied into the above:

• The books, magazines and comic books that now have individual titles, will also be persistent. Instead of disappearing after being read, there will be a cooldown period that dictates how much time must pass before the characters moodles can benefit from re-reading said item.
• In conjunction with this revision of literature items, weve gone over the mechanics of the Illiterate traits. Illiterate characters are unable to read literature items, but in some cases, such as Comic Books, Catalogues, Photos, and certain magazines, they will be able to enjoy looking at the item instead of reading it. In build 42 Illiterate characters will also be unable to read or write player generated notes using sheets of paper or notebooks, write notes on maps (although they can still put symbols on them), read the text on the annotated map items, or understand the nutritional information on packaged food.
• Weve done a common sense implementation of needing light to read. If there is insufficient light in a characters square, and they dont have an active light source, they will be unable to read (or look at for illiterate characters) printed matter, unable to read nutritional information on packaged food, and unable to open maps.

Hey all! So were still not at the point of being able to show anything substantial from the crafting overhaul, however we thought wed talk about a few topics that are relevant to our current work and give people a bit of insight into where were going, our ultimate goals and the design challenges were facing. This will be very much a stream of consciousness post, taken from a chat within the crafting team, so forgive if it lacks direction but we hope itll be interesting!

[h3]Inspiration[/h3]
One of our biggest inspirations in terms of what wed like to accomplish with Zomboid ultimately in terms of crafting freedom and possibility, is to provide similar creative and community experiences found playing the extensive tech progression modpacks for Minecraft. Several of the core crafting dev team have periodically dived into Minecraft modpacks for a good chunk of Zomboids development, and spend many hours grinding away decorating our bases, building wonderfully cool machines, laying down pipes, wires and conveyor belts and whatnot to double our ore output or finally get that new power system to power our base. The possibilities we could bring to zomboid have tickled at our brains for many years in this area, and were excited to be finally exploring them.

Obviously though, Zomboid is a post apocalypse survival game and it would be rather silly to say the least if some zombie apocalypse survivor was building a nuclear reactor or casting rituals to open portals, so this shouldnt be taken as a literal 1 to 1 inspiration. What weve taken away from our experiences is more the overall spirit of building, of expanding, of obtaining materials, of navigating a very tall tech tree formed from the availability of resources, that will finally allow you to explore a new tree and open up new areas of gameplay to the player, rather than the literal experiences of making ore crushing machines, nuclear reactors or ender teleporters. As much as we feel Zomboid is an extremely deep game, its never hit the bar weve wanted in terms of this area of gameplay.

Mixed in with that is the heavy focus on roleplaying, especially with multiplayer or later with NPCs, our ultimate vision is somewhat parallel but different to the experiences in Minecraft, with more of a focus on realism and plausibility, as well as leveraging skills, professions and learning to make the experience more cooperative and interesting in a roleplay environment (though solo players need not worry, as NPCs will fill this gap too, and before them well make sure to adequately provide sandbox options, and likely the builder main menu mode, to not lock this stuff out of the single player experience).


[h3]Extensivity vs Believability[/h3]
As we stated a while back, our aim with the crafting overhaul is to provide a framework for us to expand the crafting possibilities within the game massively, to allow for a long post-apocalyptic settlement to create everything they need without relying on looting, to elevate the need for players to ever need to reset their worlds unless they want to, while crucially gating all these extra possibilities in a way that makes sense so you dont get the odd situation where your burger flipper has wacky esoteric crafting recipes involving bees wax or crushed limestone popping up in their crafting panel that seem odd or ridiculous within the context of a zombie survival story.

The best example of this would be for example using metalworking to make a spoon. If youre a metal worker then you should be able to make a spoon. This is a thing that makes sense in terms of what someone with metalworking skills could produce should they wish to. But a spoon is a weird thing to see pop up as a crafting possibility in an urban environment filled with spoons.

Were currently planning on how recipes and crafting possibilities will be presented to the player, how to lock them intelligently behind professions and traits, and more crucially nest them away sensibly within a better interface, while providing enough opportunities to learn them to the player so they dont end up doing generator manual style hunts around the map for many hours. This is not yet set in stone but ideas are forming on a new interface for crafting and building that would provide this stuff to the player in a much more natural way, where we can provide a huge amount of options without drowning the player in recipes that seem completely useless or weird within their current situation.


[h3]Grind vs interesting multi-stage crafting[/h3]
Another challenge were still nailing down is finding the best balance between extensive and interesting crafting of items, involving multiple stages, potentially multiple methods, multiple skills, maybe multiple characters, but not crossing that line where crafting becomes tedious or frustrating, or you get that sinking feeling looking at the steps you have to complete that disincentivises you from undergoing it. Its a hard balance to hit, and in our first more zomboid / realistic pass of the tech tree, weve probably gone a little far over the tedium line in our desire to honour zomboids realism.

Were currently in the process of consolidating some of these steps, still retaining multi-profession or multi-skill or multi-step processes to keep crafting interesting, while removing a few steps that may make for frustrating or repetitive gameplay. Its for this reason weve been a little sheepish about providing a look at our current crafting trees at this time, as we want to make sure we strike this balance first lest we worry people that crafting is going to be an unforgiving grind.




[h3]Learning/Skill Grind[/h3]
Another area were looking into heavily is the process of learning new skills. While we want to retain the process of a player doing stuff to level up in that skill, with the vastly expanded skill list that 42 will be introducing, we want to come up with other ways a player can level up that dont involve building 1000 things after reading a skill book. For one a skill book may not exist if youre generations after the apocalypse, or if youre playing on a blank wilderness map instead (something wed really like to be a possibility, and our test case to make sure our crafting overhaul is comprehensive will be making sure the player literally cannot rely on looted items).

Were still coming up with ideas of how to approach this, but certainly the idea of learning recipes for items or buildable tiles as well as gaining skill xp from observing other players craft them is something were exploring heavily. Again, NPCs will fill this gap for single player, and in the meantime well ensure that builder mode and sandbox provide the tools necessary for solo players to get access to this content without other characters to learn from.

Another aspect of this is that with much more expanded profession and trait possibilities, we hope to provide much meatier skill bonuses from professions, allowing players to come into the game a lot more capable than before at these specific areas of the game, given that there will be many more they are not capable at.

In addition, were exploring the possibility of linking recipes and professions that share common skills or concepts together, allowing characters a head start at performing crafting when they have picked up relevant experience in similar areas elsewhere.


[h3]Modding[/h3]
So heres where we can have our cake and have eaten it. Making a nuclear reactor seems a very silly thing to have in zomboid, but where the modding scene is concerned, hopefully people can go wild here. If a wilderness map becomes a viable way to play, the game no longer reliant on looted items nor a zombie threat to make it interesting (particularly in a multiplayer setting), then modders arent really constrained by the zombie survival theme of the game any more, and could extend our tech tree way beyond what we provide to allow for a much more abstract tech em up survival sim providing factorio and minecraft style experiences along with multiplayer or NPC driven roleplay. Weve kept all the power of crafting within the familiar scripts and lua that people are used to, expanded with item properties and traits based on crafting skills, multi-tile constructions for crafting stations or machines, fluid, item or power transmission for doing logistical networks, and can only imagine the possibilities will balloon dramatically as soon as our incredible modders get their hands on it.

This is where we imagine zomboid could become an even more exciting modding platform, and in no way a small aspect of why we want this framework to exist in the game as wed be extremely excited to see what modders will bring to the table (as we always are).


[h3]So what will you be crafting?[/h3]
Lots of stuff. While it may not be relevant for a player running around in Muldraugh in the 1990s, and while a burger flipper may not have this knowledge, therell be professions that emerge in the years following the apocalypse to cover crafting the majority of non electrical items in the game currently (though with perhaps a more homemade aesthetic), tanning leather, making glue or soap, spinning wool, or making cloth to make clothing, dyes to dye that clothing, bowyers to make bows for the hunters, growing hemp to make ropes, glass-makers, stone masonry to finally make those zombie proof walls (again, we need to think further on the design here to not make this too OP), thatched roofs. Basically everything to make a thriving post-apocalypse town, provide much more opportunities for creative and aesthetic building mechanics, building paths, fences, walls, and the production of goods to keep that town ticking over and potentially trade with others.

In case anyone is not familiar with our plans regarding post-apocalypse professions, this is the concept that in the years after society collapses, we would slowly retire pre-apocalypse professions that have ceased to be relevant in the new world, and bring in new ones that represent professions one would like to have in a more savage and technically regressed post-apocalypse. Single player and multiplayer alike will allow for a player to start much further into the Knox timeline than six months later and provide a vastly different experience, though those who want the current zomboid experience will not be impacted beyond a larger selection of crafting opportunities. Obviously wed be looking to give the world a much more eroded aesthetic if you were playing 100 years after the Knox event, for those hoping for a more Last of Us style degradation of the world over longer time spans, but its unlikely well address this before 42s release as we have a lot on our plate already.

Hopefully this gives an insight into why this has taken so long to get the systems in place, and the design challenge of making all this work within the game.

Its not clear whether well have literally everything weve designed in come first unstable release of build 42, its very possible well get the base stuff in there, and then fill it out over numerous releases during a long unstable b42 release cycle, as there will be a lot of tile and item artwork required, but we want to get the core systems in place and enough crafting potential to elevate the late game dramatically before we get it out there. We need to make sure the foundations are in place first however, as were walking into unfamiliar territory and are as always ever mindful not to disrupt the things that make zomboid what it is.

Its not clear whether well have literally everything weve designed in come first unstable release of build 42, its very possible well get the base stuff in there, and then fill it out over numerous releases during a long unstable b42 release cycle, as there will be a lot of tile and item artwork required, but we want to get the core systems in place and enough crafting potential to elevate the late game dramatically before we get it out there. We need to make sure the foundations are in place first however, as were walking into unfamiliar territory and are as always ever mindful not to disrupt the things that make zomboid what it is.


A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta begancan be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct yourattention to thePZ Wikishould you feel like editing or amending something, and thePZ Mailing Listthat can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitterright here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here. Title image taken from Abby on Steam

Wotcha survivors.

The general pattern for 42 dev is that weve got four main pillars of Build 42 all of which are the big stuff and the fundamental large-scale tech improvements.

These are: moving much of the MP system server-side to give servers more control and less hackability, introducing our deeper and more expansive crafting systems, bringing animal life to the Knox Event and engine improvements to optimize, give far greater height/depth levels to our map, and to provide more realistic light and darkness for your survival adventures.

These are the things we need for release, while other things in development by our dev partners (or staff assigned to more general improvement) are seen as nice-to-haves and some may even fall into patches of 42 when things start to shake out a bit.Going through the pillar features though:

• The lengthy first stage of the MP work (transferring player inventories to the server) is now over, and transplanted very neatly over into the internal test build so now our MP coders are delving deep into stage two. This will see all operations of player inventories (building, recipes, foraging etc) also move into server control, overview and deference.
• In terms of the deeper and more expansive crafting as we mentioned last week the code systems this is all based on has now been merged into the internal test build and as such much of the last week or two has been centred around fixing the longstanding recipes and functions that the new stuff has broken. Were pretty much back at a standard of operational on this, or will be after a commit being made tomorrow, and this too has been a process that was a little smoother than expected. That all said, obviously that has been the focus post-merge, so while progress has been made since its integration, the majority of work has been bug fixing and not much to report otherwise. The team are starting to discuss the next step post merge, and looking forward to it immensely!
• Animal and animal husbandry meanwhile (or at least the cows, pigs and sheep chickens are still a little haphazard) are approaching a stage where theyre fun to play around with for extended periods in SP. Following on from the merge of the music system detailed below into the internal test build, they also now moo, oink and baa which has given them a lot of extra life also!

• Finally, in terms of the tech upgrade were mainly at the bug fixing and further optimization phase with the chunked rendering and variable height systems, but itll likely be the sort of thing thatll spit out bugs and countless betcha didnt think of this scenario? gotchas for some time to come, so its not clear when itll be merged into main. As said last week, it should be mostly smooth when the time comes though.

• You can put a mattress or an un-packed sleeping bag into a tent to make it a better bed.
• You can also use a pillow to modestly increase the quality of a tent bed, including reducing the chance and severity of neck pain. This applies to all other bed as well, including car seats.
• Youre protected from the rain when sleeping in a tent, and the tents look a lot nicer than they used to as well.

Hello all!

A brief and more hastily thrown together Thursdoid this week Im afraid, as were currently at a messy but exciting turning point in b42s development which will be setting us up for the remainder of development, and rather than try to scrape together content for this weeks blog while were in the guts of it, we would rather save what we have for a much more exciting Thursdoid down the line when things are also a little less hectic.

However, well explain the situation this week to give people a better idea of whats happening.

Firstly, months of multiplayer reworking has made its way into the main development build, which is our efforts toward moving a lot more of the codebase to being server authoritative, particularly with a completely server side inventory system, to aid in making future PZ builds a lot more hack proof.

Secondly, the core systems of the massive crafting rework are also being merged into trunk, ready for the wider team to start building on it for the much anticipated deep crafting trees and new post-apocalypse professions for our overhauled crafting systems.

The crafting overhaul is quite huge, changing how recipes and items work on a fundamental level, and will require some work to port over existing items, along with any that have been added elsewhere during the course of the new systems development, and as such touches on many areas of the codebase and is a difficult one to integrate.

As such, things on the main branch are in a bit of temporary disarray as these big systems get integrated into the main line, its going to be a busy week as the team bugfixes and gets the development build ship shape to start pushing forward with all the integrated code toward getting it to a point we can start looking to push it out for public testing.

This new systems allows for:

• Multi tile machines and crafting stations
• Support for networks of items, power, liquids or gases (ultimately a buildings power, heating and plumbing will use these systems for example)
• For items both crafted and looted that have varied statistics and unique properties that alter how they function beyond the simplistic condition of existing versions of the game, and providing much more deep variety to gameplay to crafted and looted items.
• The recipe system has become much more in-depth and customizable allowing for much more interesting crafting processes and possibilities.

Happy March survivors, lets check in with some of the departments we didnt visit in the blogapalooza of two weeks ago.


[h3]FISHING[/h3]
Over to Aiteron for the latest on his fishing additions.

This week Ive mainly been working on a unique random seed that procedurally determines where groups of fish will be located in PZs waterways, the radius of the different zones, and the base number of fish that could be found within them.

Youll see this through splashes of water, which will depend on the groups of fish. So, the more fish in the fish group area, the more splashes on the waters surface of the water. As such finding the best place for you to fish will be a big part of the systems revamp. Each groups will react to the noise by the noise that goes on in the world too. So, if theres a loud noise then the fishing circles will stop being active for a certain amount of time.

If you craft some chum, meanwhile, youll also be able to attract a group of fish for a limited amount of time. In the following video youll be able to see groups of fish (red circles) and a chum area (green circle)

[previewyoutube=XKpTi_y484U;full][/previewyoutube]

The team at Formosa have also been working with me to create new SFX for the fishing revamp, and I am very pleased with the results so far! We are also working on different sounds for different reeling in speeds.

[previewyoutube=ZTzeBluLk4E;full][/previewyoutube]


[h3]MAP EXPANSION[/h3]
We are at a key point in the map expansion in that the work of our various mappers has been merged together, and our test team are roaming its wilds to provide playability and design feedback. They are patrolling its highways and by-ways, and feeding back on anything that seems amiss on a broader scale.

Were not at the point at which we can do full-on testing (theres still a lot to do, to be polished, and have signs erected and whatnot) but we are at the point where we can go on a fun road trip.

[previewyoutube=UGaTsGi67m0;full][/previewyoutube]

[h3]SOUND STUFF[/h3]
Formosa are up to quite a lot at the moment. A big part of their work is in improvements to the music escalation system, which well go into detail about next time, but suffice to say that action music wont carry on for as long as it does post-zed-escape in B42.

We are also in the final stages of organising a recording session in which well be having some real life actors (in Hollywood! In America!) to puff, pant and make I am hurt noises thatll make our survivors feel that little bit more real.

New SFX have also, meanwhile, been delivered for pigs, piglets, chickens, breaking furniture, the emergency broadcast, cork pops and much else besides.

A lot of chickens have also been attacked with hammers.

[previewyoutube=NWvfY4xcpdQ;full][/previewyoutube]

(We will improve visuals on this sort of attack too, so youre not whacking air)


[h3]SURVIVAL FUN[/h3]
The Blair Algol furnace has also been burning bright recently, alongside his farming revamp work that weve discussed in former blogs. So heres a general show of the new camping items thatll be found in places like the games different camp supply shops come B42.


[previewyoutube=Fe7NMwOfIyU;full][/previewyoutube]

• Seen here are matchboxes, insect repellent, tackle boxes, New duffel bags, compasses, magnesium strikers and a fire-starting block.
• New Literature Titles and Names, so its not all generic non-titled books. (These will still act as consumables rather than items for now, however)
• New Food, drink, snack names and a new eating animation.
• New police duffle bag
• An example of how to use the compass
• Campsite scene showing an array of new survival gear items for the casual camper and general survivalist
• New tent function, which no longer requires RMB and now places and gets picked up like a normal decor/furniture object
• New tent storage feature associated with the above change

Hey all, lets chime in with some of the feverish work being done in the musty basements and damp holes in the ground of the Knox Event. First off, some scribbles from the engine room.


[h3]B42 ENGINE[/h3]
To catch up and recap, the main highlights of engine improvements for build 42 are as follows:

• Basements and underground things!
  
• A flexible per chunk 32 height that can be different in each chunk, allowing parts of the map to be at 32 level height, where others in theory go from -31 to ground floor.
  
• New lighting propagation system that has light bounce off walls and leak through windows, doors and other spaces more realistically allowing for more natural ambient light effects and getting rid of those room based lighting issues.
  
• The ability to have negative coordinates on x and y, thus opening up map expansion directions in the three previously missing directions.
  
• New chunk based rendering using a depth map to vastly optimise drawing of the game.

• Crops now take a realistic amount of time to grow before they can be harvested; this can be adjusted to suit the player or server in the sandbox options.
• Crops also feature realistic growing seasons, where theres optimal months to plant your crops, as well as ones where they are doomed to failure; this can be disabled in the sandbox options.
• Attempting to grow anything other than houseplants indoors will also be doomed to failure; this also can be disabled in the sandbox options, and, when the new lighting systems are implemented, then a realistic greenhouse system could be explored, but dont take that as a guarantee.
• Slugs and snails are new garden pests, that can be dealt with using commercial slug and snail killer, or by learning how to make a slug trap out of an empty beer or pop can and some beer. Rosemary plants, and chickens, also serve as means to control slug infestations.
• Plants will also benefit from regular weedings.
• We have herbs, which have shorter growing seasons, and can be repeatedly harvested, and you can also propagate new herb patches with fresh herbs.
• You can use potatoes, onions and garlic as seeds to plant new patches of vegetables.
• I have added contextual actions using the combat stance in combination with the action key. When you have a hoe equipped, and are in the stance, you can use the action key to dig a furrow. Likewise, if you have seeds in your hand, are in the stance, and are facing a furrow you can use the action key to plant seeds. Likewise for watering plots. I plan on expanding this contextual action to include stuff like chopping down trees when an axe is equipped; removing barricade planks when a crowbar is equipped; etc. as well, for consistency.

How do all. Heres a check-in from a few different Build 42 departments, that also occurs in the lead-up to the first in-person meet-up for the wider PZ team since 2018. Were all aflutter about it (and trying to remember everyones real world names instead of online handles) and hope to have lots of good B42 chat in amongst the introduction of an international team to traditional Geordie culture.


Lets pop into a few different areas, then with the caveat that for a fuller B42 overview our last dev blog is probably a better destination.


[h3]FIRE[/h3]
Work continues on the fire rewrite branch with the intention being to bring it up to a state in which it can safely enter our internal test build.

It recently came to mind that a lot of the fire dev chat in blogs took place in the distant past, before we had to reshuffle and our current MP team became what it is today thereby forcing flames into the sidelines for an elongated spell.


As such the guys have made a vid for us today that spells out some of the foundations of what is being done here, in terms of how fire spread, size and duration is governed and indeed the sort of stats that lie beneath the hood that we can balance with, and that the community can mod with.

Thats the first half of the video: done with our old fire effects (which are too transparent and also on fast forward) so please take this aspect as instructional/iterative rather than a fait accompli.

The second part of the video then moves on to show our experimentation with fire visuals, working alongside our VFX artist friend Brian, as we work out different ways to make in-game flame effects better match our particularly coloured iso-world.

[previewyoutube=r8k0GLSAl4Y;full][/previewyoutube]

[h3]MP TEAM[/h3]
As regular readers will know, alongside tidying up smaller multiplayer irritations as they go, our MP team are currently transferring player inventory actions over away from the client and onto the server. They have another three or four weeks set aside for the first stage of this: at which point we will the players inventory loaded from the database on the server, and the server always having an up-to-date player inventory hopefully all working in sync with the progress bars, item move times and expected results you get currently.

At this point the second major part of the code work will be getting underway: having all the item manipulation occurring on the server side, and ensuring that the server no longer trusts clients (those sneaky clients!) so that stuff like item adding cheats are rendered defunct.

After this, clearly, therell be a heap of testing and such but we thought the more technically-minded amongst us would appreciate a catch-up on where the guys are with it.


[h3]FISHING[/h3]
This past week Aiteron has been working with the testers whove been reporting back on bugs and gameplay in the latest version of our revamped fishing and has been largely working on an improved/experimental control system for a more chilled out and less button-holdy-tappy experience.

He has also been working with our aforementioned VFX specialist friend Brian, who has been supplying us with various splashes, bubbles and signs of water movement that will indicate the presence of fish, and also be a suggestion of the size of what lurks beneath. On top of bug fixes, changed recipes and improved items for the system hes also been firming up on exactly what sorts of fish well be adding to the game, and whether theyd be found in rivers or lakes (and definitely not swimming pools).


Theres gonna be lot of bass: largemouth, smallmouth, white, spotted and striped. And lets not even get started on the crappies


[h3]CRAFTING[/h3]
After an awful lot of code-side tinkering, a super WIP version of our crafting improvement has surfaced into something thats viewable in a vid. Please note this is the visible tip of the iceberg, and clearly whats on show isnt final: you do not saw logs in a furnace, and this isnt how you make a hammer.

[previewyoutube=J-RzQP2t5MU;full] [/previewyoutube]


So whats on show here?

Various objects can now be entirely created using the games scripting language thats been made similar to the way items and vehicles etc. are defined.

This covers various currently planned objects that can function as a craft station: stuff like blacksmith furnace, tailoring bench, fletchery, brewing stands, kilns etc. And, unlike the way it is now, these can also be objects consisting of multiple tiles/sprites with various rotations etc.

At a craft station the player is able to use their normal recipes (which may provide a bonus for doing the recipe at a craftstation) but its here that they can use their blueprints and which ones are available will be defined by the associated object script.

Blueprints (working title) are similar to recipes in that they can take inputs, and produce outputs. However they are distinct from your usual recipes in the following ways:

• They have different duration modes in real world seconds, game minutes or can run passively in the background for long periods.
• They may not require the player to be present. For example, a melting process may run on the craftstation while you run off to do other things.
• As well as items, they can take the input (and produce) Fluids and different in-game energies Electric, Heat, Kinetic or Steam.
• When active a Blueprint in progress can store its inputs/outputs, and may have storage capacity for them. For example, a blueprint that needs water as an input may well have an internal storage buffer for water. Well probably show this in a development vid next time.

Hey all, hope youre all doing well and that thus far 2023 has been kind. Lets get straight into it.


[h3]NEW FACES[/h3]
First of all wed like to welcome officially three new people to the full Project Zomboid team.

Fenris_Wolf should need no introduction to the old hands of the Project Zomboid community. He took over and maintained the ORGM mod with great aplomb from the original creator ORMtnMan and will be a name familiar to many.

Right now hes reacclimatizing himself with the PZ codebase, charged with clearing out some of the niggly things that have been on our to do list so he gets his fingers dirty in many and various different areas of the game. Clearly his expertise with guns and the firearms code will likely come into play at some point in his time with us, but for now its all about bedding down and getting comfy in Spiffos hovering mothership.

Also joining us officially, meanwhile, are Amz and Pat_Bren.

Amz is another familiar name from the community, and was a great help to us in the days of 41 MP testing. Shes now officially a full-time tester working with Sasha and Yana, and will also be making cool videos for our blogs and improving our (already extraordinarily professional) social media engagements.

Pat_Bren, meanwhile, has been writing up a storm for Build 42 on a part time basis writing new radio and TV channels and content, new lore for whats going on around the world and much more besides and will now be working other cool future content in an official and ongoing capacity.


[h3]42 STUFF[/h3]
Right now, were probably due an overview of Build 42, so everyone is on the same page about its contents rather than skipping about between them each blog.

42 boils down to four large chunks of deep-rooted work that we want to all come together: the crafting/animals update, the map expansion, the optimization/lighting/basements engine upgrade, and the weighty job the MP team have taken on to move all inventory interactions over from clients to server.

These are all at different stages for example animals are further ahead than a lot of the elements of crafting in terms of being ready to actively test and play with. Right now with the crafting, the work taking place is on the back-end codeside of crafting stations and component UIs.

Meanwhile with the engine upgrade at this point were essentially fixing up various different rendering issues that were broken with our quite fundamental changes to the system up to a point at which its ready to be merged into the test build.

The map team meanwhile continue to pump out new towns, interesting locations and fun places to travel to and hold out in.



Around these big ticket items we also have other coders, writers, artists and 3D modellers working to improve aspects of the current game.

So theres the in-depth fire overhaul, Aiterons revamped fishing, better farming, more imaginative and fun items to find and use, better events to come across, improved recipes, new animations and activities, improved music system and deeper soundscape and general piles and piles of polish and improvement throughout.

So with all that firmly held in mind, lets have a quick dart around some of the different departments of PZ to catch up on a few bits and bobs.

• Our smashing friend Steve N, who were borrowing from EverCurious Entertainment, has been digging into our animation system and working out some longstanding issues that weve been desperate to fix. Were currently jumping into a test build to check nothing else has been broken by his changes, but the result will be a lot more silky smooth turns and 180s in your survival forays.

• The big debate currently in our work with livestock is how to make it clear to players that youll need to designate areas that you want them to occupy and produce within, alongside building them fences they wont escape through. Weve got various ideas for this and will be running our experiments past the testers.
  
  Increasingly were realising just how much more life these non-human and non-zombie creatures bring to the game. To which end we are also experimenting with some non-interactive beasts that will run before you get near, and give the game a smidge more desolate color
  
  [previewyoutube=7tQ_z0cDjZs;full][/previewyoutube]
  
  

• As mentioned before, alongside refinements and improvements to the music system, right now via Formosa/Noiseworks were in the process of getting real life human actors (in Los Angeles! In America!) to record some basic bodily noises to give extra life (and pain) to our Knox Event survivors. Imagine how cool it will be in MP when one of your buddies reaches you, having escaped zombies and run in terror, and you can hear their panicked heavy breathing.
  
  Thats the sort of thing we want to capture, alongside noises of hurt and exertion as you tumble around the landscape. While were there we are also going to get a variety of other spoken TV and radio noises that we can then obfuscate to improve the entertainment system slightly.
  

• Aiteron is back with us and has picked up on his work on fishing. This is its current iteration, which will shortly be mixed into the internal test build. This probably needs some more tweaking with the strain animations and the indications that a big fish is being caught but is really getting there now. Itll be mixed into the internal test build soon, which is also the point at which Formosa can start working on the new sound effects and such.
  
  [previewyoutube=CKH0tYCxH0E;full][/previewyoutube]
  
  

• About a bazillion new items some useful (hose now required for gas siphoning, kids) and some more aimed at making the world feel fuller and more real are also currently going into the internal test build. Here are a few examples.
  
  
  

First off ahem Vote for Project Zomboid in the Steam Awards!

In a fairly mindblowing chain of events, mainly due to the awesomeness of the survivors of the Knox Event, Project Zomboid has been nominated for Labor of Love in the Steam Awards.



We are up against some fantastic other games (vote Deep Rock or No Mans Sky if youre less keen on us those teams are incredible!) but just being on the list is a massive achievement for us and were so grateful for the community for getting our name up in lights like this.

So thanks everyone, it really does mean a lot!

[h3]BLOG BEGINS[/h3]
Weve got a lot of the team away on their Christmas break this week who werent around to prod for contributions, or have a house full of sick people who need attention (thats me, Hi), however the following items were shoved into the blog writers sack nonetheless.

• In preparation for getting real actor-recorded body sounds, huffs and puffs for the game Matteo has been recording his own voice to get a feel for whats required. Hes kept them quite subtle to match the perspective, and the consideration that the player doesnt want to be heard by zombies, so right now theyre not too over the top. We might change the approach with this, but its interesting to consider them and think what theyll bring in terms of immersion to the game.
  
  [previewyoutube=fnspzsy7sXs;full][/previewyoutube]
  [previewyoutube=dpdJJJzEV4M;full][/previewyoutube]
  

• Were currently working on bringing our optimization and basements branch (both mapper-placed underground areas that always appear, and the randomly occurring ones placed as surprise features and treasure/zombie boxes) into a testable state. This is an ongoing process, but a lot of progress has been made this week so its rather exciting nevertheless.



• The integration of fire is still trucking along with most of our attention currently being on making flames fit the scene, we have a VFX artist joining us for a little while early in the new year and in the meantime are experimenting code-side too. Well share some vids when were closer to the finished article.



• Blair is working on a variety of things and is currently super proud of LootLog which he wants advertised so modders are aware of it. This is a dev and modder tool that, once activated, logs every item that spawns around the player rather than wait for the player (or modder/dev) to discover it. Info logged includes a list of items; the room definition in question; the container type in question; and the X, Y and Z coordinates of the container in question.
  
  This is intended as a tool for us and the modding community to evaluate the amounts of loot that spawn, and where it spawns. The blog writer is aware that it isnt super sexy blog content but Blair underlines that it is a niche pleaser so if you are in that niche: consider yourself pleased.



• Also in the Algol pipeline this week: improved profession houses with cars outside that match the profession, new weapons, new zed stories, new filler book items with names dreamt up by dreamy Pat_Bren and the implementation of all sorts of new foods and 3D items.



• RJs animals have entered initial testing, which made for an extremely fun first day of crazy bug reports and oohs and aahs and cuteness. Its amazing what life non-human and non-zombie animated creatures suddenly bring to PZ when you encounter them in-game.
  
  Fun bugs we dealt with included:

THANK YOU to everyone who has already ordered their future survival companion.

Head over to the Makeship campaign page to order your own :spiffo: Spiffo:

https://shop.makeship.com/3FHlgG8

Happy December Thursdoid, and a big hello to all the new survivors whove jumped on board in recent weeks. This week well 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 whats being worked on.

First though, we would be remiss if we didnt 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 lets go round the Zomboid houses. Starting with the sound team?

[h3]SOUND DEPARTMENT[/h3]
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 theyll 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 theyll be recording will be: effort noises for window and fence climbs, sleeping noises, pain noises when bitten or scratched, vomiting, sneezing coughing etc.


[h3]ANIMS DEPARTMENT[/h3]
As those who read this blog might recall, weve 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 didnt work out, and as such since the 41 release weve 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 therell 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. Well see how it goes when the fixes go in.


[h3]FIRE DEPARTMENT[/h3]
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. Its already looking a smidge better though.

[previewyoutube=YE_OsmMyxfI;full][/previewyoutube]


[h3] MAPPING DEPARTMENT[/h3]
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 Im prepping my stuff so it can be put in front of our testers. Im trying to improve the meta part of the system that governs them when youre not in their direct presence primarily how the feeding trough and water troughs are managed while youre away. Thats my main focus at the moment but also need to add some polish to the genetics when animals breed, and Ill 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.

Im 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, Im 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 thats 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.


[h3]BLAIR ALGOL DEPARTMENT[/h3]
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.

Heres some fun stuff thats 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.
• Its 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!

- Fixed ServerConnectPopup missing the new "Use Steam Relay" option, which led to the +connect argument not working.

• 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.

- 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.

Lets get something out of the way first then. Ugh. We feel so unclean doing what were about to do. SORRY. SORRY EVERYONE.
All the other games were posting Steam Awards links like that, so we did too. Dont vote for us if youd rather not, but if you do well click on the above massive intrusive image and that would be swell.

So, back to business, we released some final-ish fixes for the current stable build yesterday the changelist for which can be found here.

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.

[h3]B42 FARMING[/h3]
This week were 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. Youll 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 youll get a reduced yield, and perhaps the risk of producing sickly plants.
  
• Appropriate plants, such as Potatoes, can be planted using the vegetable itself.
  
• Youll 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 theyre 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.

• Propane Torch usage rebalanced for Fixing and Repair scripts to accommodate the change in capacity; all reduced to 2.
  
  
• Added "AllowRottenItem:true" parameter to the recipes to Empty Frying Pans; Griddle Pans; and Roasting Pans. This will allow players to reclaim said pans when they let Stir Fries and Omelettes get rotten.
  
• Recipes such as the Mildew Spray Cure, and Emptying Sacks of produce now have the field "AllowRottenItem:true" which allows rotten items to be used in that recipe.
  
• Fixed the Make Mildew Cure recipe not allowing both regular and Canned Milk; as players were unable to make this cure after all of the normal Milk has gone rotten.
  
• Fixed being unable to use Rotten Milk to make the Mildew Spray Cure.
  
  
• Commented out the "Make Pot of Soup" recipes; they're obsolete given the evolved recipe system which handles this matter better.
  
• Fixed being unable to use Canned Soup to make evolved recipe soup.
  
• Changed the display name of "Canned Soup" to "Canned Vegetable Soup".
  
  • Note: To make Pots of Soup with Opened Cans of Soup you must now add them to a Pot of Water, as an evolved recipe soup. This fixes the Super Soup exploit and will allow players to also add additional ingredients to the Soup. The other way of making Pots of Soup was an obsolete and in many ways incompatible method from before the evolved recipe system.
  
  
• Updated the Clean Tray recipe so it works with trays of Biscuit Dough, and also so that it works with rotten and cooked ingredients, so players can always recover a tray from rotten trays of food.

• Several tweaks to clothing masks.
  
  
• Added missing SetMelee Delay on Pistol Whip animation.
  
• Fixed Hoodie and Vest masks to work properly with base mesh.
  
• Fixed JokeKnife, JokeArrow, BunnyEars, FurryEars, Antlers and GodStar Headbopper to work with all hairstyles.
  
  
• Fixed moodle and heart wiggle-speed, now reduced by half.
  
• Fixed an issue with forageSystem.lua not accounting for the new loot rarity settings.
  
• Fixed the veteran having some duplicate clothing selection options.
  
• Fixed in-game map road that was made curved in cell 35,31.
  
• Fixed print() statement from JoyPadSetup.lua that resulted in unnecessary messages in the console log.
  
• Fixed source files not being loaded in the Lua debugger on Linux.
  
• Fixed mod Lua files not being loaded in the Lua debugger.
  
  
• Fixed being able to purify Watering Cans in an Oven.
  
• Fixed being able to turn Cooked Eggs back into Uncooked Eggs.
  
• Fixed Pizzas having the hasMetal tag.
  
• Fixed error in SliceCooked test.
  
• Fixed PopEmpty2 and PopEmpty3 having DisplayCategory = WaterContainer instead of DisplayCategory = Junk.
  
• Fixed PopEmpty having DisplayCategory = Material instead of DisplayCategory = Junk.
  
• Fixed BeerCanEmpty having DisplayCategory = WaterContainer instead of Junk.
  
• Fixed Buckets not having been updated to use metal filling sounds instead of plastic filling sounds.
  
• Fixed distant players not appearing on the in-game map when the server option allows it.
  
• Fixed Male_Undies not having the "OBSOLETE = TRUE" parameter. Also removed them from the foraging pool.
  
• Fixed not using a language's desired encoding when reading credits.txt.
  
• Fixed non-admins seeing invisible remote players on the in-game map.

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.

Order yours today!

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.

Hello survivors! Three things of note this week.
[h3]FINAL BUILD 41 PATCH RELEASED[/h3]
This afternoon we put out 41.78 to the stable branch, and you can read its changelist here.

Nothing seems to have exploded just yet, but there will very likely be a hot fix for anything that does crop up. Weve had a few complaints of visual issues with some clothing that wed thought wed 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 youll 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.


[h3]BARNYARD FRIENDS[/h3]
First, let us reiterate Build 42 is still a long way off. However RJs 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 well be working on will be the way animals turn / turn when they move.

Secondly, clearly what youre seeing here is debug dev-stuff especially how it looks and operates when leading an animal around on a rope. We havent 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 arent final yet either.

So heres proof that you can pet the cute little animals in Build 42 of Project Zomboid.

[previewyoutube=L3dgSFaFjYk;full][/previewyoutube]

And heres how to coax them into a trailer so you can cart them off to slaughter them somewhere distant so their loud desperate squeals wont attract zombies.

[previewyoutube=yvqykEOswc8;full][/previewyoutube]


[h3]MAGICAL WOODLAND FRIEND[/h3]
Yes, its 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!

To find out how you could win one of two free plushies visit this twitter post!

This weeks table arsenal from Polaris. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta begancan be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct yourattention to thePZ Wikishould you feel like editing or amending something, and thePZ Mailing Listthat can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitterright 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.

[h3]NEW[/h3]

• Added a prompt for the updated Terms of Service as we are a big boy game now and have to fit in with the other biggerer boys.


• Added sandbox option to disable Fake Dead Reanimation. Disabled Fake deads in MP by default.
• Added more control over fake dead behaviour to the sandbox options; having zombies that were "killed" having a chance to become fake dead is an option that is off by default.
• Added sandbox option that allows Corpse Maggot spawning to be disabled or limited to corpse inventory.
• Added sandbox option that allows poisoning food to be disabled, or for poisoning food with bleach to be disabled.
• Added sandbox option to disable the Tainted Water Tooltip/Warning for hardcore play
• Added sandbox option for enabling/disabling XP multipliers affecting passive skills, which is false by default.
• Added sandbox option that prevents survivor vehicles from spawning.
• Added sandbox option "Light Bulb Lifespan". This does not affect Light Bulbs in vehicles, only in light fixture tiles.


• Added "Randomize" options to Zombie sandbox options for Memory, Sight, and Hearing.
• Added loot rarity settings "Incredibly Rare" and "None", as well as a "Super Low" option for Fuel Pump content.


• Items from table stories/randomized stories/etc will still spawn when loot rarity is set to none.


• Renamed Item "Weight" to "Encumbrance" in the UI and context menu.


• Added an Accessibility Option that makes the player character automatically walk to a click container within a short radius of 3 tiles.
• Added the ability to set custom "Good" and "Bad" highlighting colours in the Accessibility Options menu. This is applied to things like traits, tooltips, and the aiming outline.
• Added an option to bind "Walk To" to a key instead of having to go through the RMB menu.
• Added highlighting to clicked Crates so it's easier to tell which crate is selected. This can be enabled or disabled in the in-game Options.
• Added a Context Menu entry that enables/disables Auto-Drink.
• Tiles that are being disassembled will now be highlighted in the "bad colour", red being the default.


• Resolutions higher than 1440p will have their zoom levels adjusted to allow closer zoom-in, bringing it more in line with lower resolutions.
• Disabled some Randomized Survivor Safehouses from occurring in instances where a building has over 10 rooms, or is a spawn location.
  • The limit is 10 for some and 20 for other Randomized Survivor Safehouses.
  • This also means the Toilet Paper story is now disabled in buildings that have over 10 rooms or are spawn locations, which will likely reduce the amount of Reddit posts about it by 50%.
• Added a check to prevent any of the randomized burnt building stories from occurring if the building is a spawn location.


• Changed ISCloseVehicleDoor to play the door closing sound when the action is completed instead of its start. This is to provide better feedback for players in cases where they have unwittingly cancelled this action.


• Added "HasMetal" tag for items. This tag was added to food and water items in metal containers, which will now set microwaves on fire when microwaved.
• Adjusted the mechanics UI so that both the Battery Charge and Condition are included in the Battery entry in the list of parts.
• Modified the vehicle mechanics UI to prominently feature the % of a full tank of gas it has, in addition to the battery charge.


• Added a few more existing clothing options to the character creation.
• Added the ability to destroy only one wall when selecting corner walls.
• Replaced the bucket world static model textures with metal icons and textures and not plastic ones, as buckets are now metal and not plastic.
• Updated the BucketEmpty and BucketWaterFull scripts with tooltips and IsCookable to reflect that they are now metal and not plastic.
• Changed the icon of the Watering Can With Water to match the Empty Water Can and the Watering Can models.
• Added a stale tooltip for perishable food to display, when appropriate, that such food is neither fresh nor rotten.
• Added tooltip to Club Hammers and Mallets explaining that they are unsuitable for driving nails.
• Flatpack model is applied to movable items that use the Flatpack icon.
• Made more food items capable of being added to tacos and burritos.
• Bell Pepper can now be added to Stews.


• Added a check so cooked eggs cannot be used for inappropriate non-evolved recipes.
• Removed the requirement for hot water to make a bowl of oats.
• Changed the Violet FoodType to NoExplicit.


• Trash tiles (Movable items) and Plastic Bags can now be used as tinder and fuel for fires.
• Changed the Sawed-off Shotgun recipes to only use the hacksaw, and not the garden saw; a wood saw would be unable to cut through the metal barrel of a shotgun.
• Added the Meat Cleaver to the Slice Onions recipe. Removed it from the Jack-o'-lantern recipe.


• Changed the Cigarettes script to prioritize using Matches before a Lighter if both are in the same inventory.
• Added a new Doctor's bag and military duffel bag.
• Renamed "Hemophobic" trait to "Fear of Blood".
• Vehicle Spawn Chance rate can now be a float value instead of just an int.
• Added a check to prevent items that "weigh" over 50 units from being put in vehicle seats.
  • This is an ongoing issue with bags/containers that are modded over capacity, which get stuck once placed in vehicle seats when the bag + contents have an Encumbrance of >50.
• Changed translation strings to make bottle names more consistent.


• Changed IGUI_HouseKey from "House Key" to "Key" to avoid issues with non-residential keys.


• Removed the numeric information tooltip provided when selecting eat all/half/quarter food item context options.
• Commented out the tool definitions in ClothingRecipesDefinitions as they currently are nonfunctional and serve no purpose aside from confusing modders.


• Commented out the WoodenLance in the safehouse weapons distro lists; that item is redundant vs SpearCrafted, and also doesn't work with spear recipes. SpearCrafted already spawns with safehouse weapons.
• Replaced AmmoStraps in the safehouse armor distro list with AmmoStraps_Bullets and AmmoStraps_Shells.
• Changed the display name translation string for the wearable AmmoStraps items to Bandolier on account of consistent confusion with the weapon attachment that is also called Ammo Straps.
• Changed the display name translation string for firearm magazines to use the firearm it is for, and not the caliber, as the prefix. Solves having two .308 Magazines, for both the MSR788 and the M14, and also that's how they're named in real life.
• Added a tooltip to firearm magazines that displays the ammunition type that it accepts.


• Added missing models for Candy Corn, Candied Fruit Slices, Hot Sauce, Fountain Cups, JuJubes, Nettles, Shrimp Dumplings, Poached Eggs, Scrambled Eggs, Packaged Corn, Pickled Ginger, Sugar Cookies, Fish Sushi, Radio Receivers,Radio Transmitters, Gummy Bears, Gummy Worms, and Tent Kits.

• Added server option "KnockedDownAllowed" to enable/disable the PVP knockdown.
  • This is a stopgap change to give servers an option to make PVP combat less frustrating before we can address PVP combat more directly in the future.


• Adjusted Type 3 and 5 Anticheat to reduce false-positives.
• Added auto-completion for player nicknames when pressing TAB while typing in the Chatbox.
• Added RCON command "checkModsNeedUpdate" to check for mods that need to be updated.
• Allow other non-admin permission levels to delete items in inventory/containers.


• Added Checksum logging for MP servers, enabled by default for now.
• Extended NetChecksum logs:
  • Client dumps logs into checksum.txt.
  • Client sends logs to server.
  • Server dumps logs into checksum.txt.
  • Server dumps client's logs into checksum- .txt.


• Multiplayer clients will now retry the GettingServerInfo request 3 times.
• DB Viewer userlog will now have the amount field increased for repeated counts of suspicious activity.


• When sorting the relative paths of scripts and Lua files to determine load order, the relative paths are first converted to lowercase. This is to fix platform differences breaking checksums in multiplayer. It also fixes the issue where the same file might be loaded more than once if mods use different capitalization for the same file or folder.


• Fixed the multiplayer "whisper" command corrupting the Lua environment due to multithreading.
• Fixed being unable to claim a safehouse unless standing on the ground floor.
• Fixed not checking upper floors for other players or zombies when claiming a safehouse.
• Fixed an exception on the server when food rots into a new item in a container that isn't in the world any longer.
• Fixed new stubble getting added to remote players after each appearance change.
• Fixed text annotations not appearing on annotated maps in multiplayer.
• Fixed Endurance sync in the Admin Health Tool.
• Fixed a bug that didn't display mods in the mod list of a server in the ESC menu.
• Fixed admins being unable to remove car hoods while inside the vehicle.
• Fixed players being unable to interact with Radios they placed themselves.
• Fixed a safehouse owner always respawning in their safehouse when the option to do so is unchecked.

• Modified the M16 & M14 critical values to be more consistent with other rifles.
  • M16 CriticalChance changed from 30 to 25.
    • Added CritDmgMultiplier 10
    • Added AimingPerkCritModifier 12
  • M14 CriticalChance changed from 0 to 30.
    • Added CritDmgMultiplier 10
    • AimingPerkCritModifier 15
• Disabled the cumulative slowdown until the next shot when firing the M16 in automatic mode. Firing the M16 in automatic mode will cumulatively reduce the chance of a critical with each additional shot. This is intended to represent the loss in accuracy due to recoil.
• Set some traits to be mutually exclusive to remove exploits or illogical combinations.


• Hot-Wiring a vehicle will have a low chance of causing a car alarm. The chance for this is decreased further for higher electronics skill levels.
• Zombies pushing up against a previously unentered stationary vehicle have a chance to set off an alarm.
• Removed the undesired RNG check that made vehicle alarms go off only 20% of the time.
• Fixed car hoods being unable to trigger vehicle alarms.


• Disabled being able to make melee attacks while inside a vehicle with the window rolled down.


• Randomized the fall damage that zombies take. This randomized spread will average out to the previous damage before it was randomized; this will have a minor impact (hohoho) on the damage that zombies that fall suffer, but slightly more of them will be able to be killed by this than before.
• Made it so groin injuries from not-crawler zombies are less common, and that crawlers can also inflict uncommon groin injuries.


• Increased the yield of metal parts when scrapping wrecked vehicles by 33%.
• Added a new procedural container, "CratePropane", to garages and shed.
• Increased the spawn rates for Propane Tanks in the distributions.
• Increased the spawnrate of Thread and added the chance of Sewing Kits to spawn in gloveboxes.


• Trailer capacity now reduces slightly when damaged, as there was no point in repairing them before.
• Changed Bowling Ball Bag capacity from 2 to 8.
• Increase number of Plaster uses to 10, same as Paint.
• Allow plastic bags and money to be used as tinder


• Adjusted duration of the stationary Pistol Whip animation, it's now the same length as the shove animation.
• Adjusted the capacities of pistol and revolver cases from 7 down to 4.
• Adjusted Encumbrance of the sturdy stick item to 1 to be more consistent with other items.
• Adjusted Encumbrance of fire extinguishers to 2, to be consistent with other items.
• Decreased Encumbrance of Walkie-Talkies.
• Adjusted Encumbrance of the TreeBranch item to match that of a crafted spear, to 1.7 from 1;
  • The Encumbrance discrepancy has been remarked upon repeatedly, and this also serves in making item Encumbrance more consistent.
• Adjusted the amount of fuel that spawns in fuel pumps at Low and Very Low.


• Updated the nutritional value for Canned Evaporated Milk. Calories 472; Carbs, Lipids, and Proteins at 23.6
• Changed the days until rotten for Bagels from 2 to 6.
• Gave the Stir Fry and roast script items a default hunger value of 10. This was previously reported as a bug when players spawned the item in instead of making it via the evolved recipe.


• Maggots are slightly more poisonous.
• Fewer maggots spawn, especially in spring and fall (maggots don't spawn during winter).
• Maggots are now a default item in the world item removal lists. Added a comment for the world item removal lists explaining that Base.Maggots should stay in the list due to corpse maggots.
• Additional safeguard to prevent errors when using mods that remove maggots altogether.

• Added a search bar to the LootZed cheat panel.
• Added vehicle distributions to LootZed.
• Improved inventory check-in Check Stats panel.


• Right-clicking on a fuel pump in debug mode will display the amount of fuel in the pump in the right-click context menu.
• Added logging of player injuries caused by zombies to the console when in debug mode.
• Added isStartValid function check for BaseTimedAction. Allows checking if an action is valid before the action starts.
• Added saving ModData from IsoGameCharacter to IsoDeadBody and from IsoDeadBody to IsoZombie.
• Added "OnPlayerGetDamage" event.
• Added event "OnWeaponHitThumpable" (Args: character, weapon, object)
• Added a trigger for the OnFillContainer Event when vehicle part containers are filled.
• Added the tag "CarBattery" which can be used with mod item car batteries so they can be charged with the vanilla car battery charger.
• Added the event "OnThrowableExplode", which transmits the IsoTrap and IsoSquare when one detonates.
• Added a toggle option in the vehicle debug context menu that will show if a vehicle's alarm is enabled or disabled.
• Changed Fast Move cheat in debug. Players can now levitate on different height levels via the PageUP/PageDown keys, and move around via the Arrow Keys on the different height levels.
• Made ImageScale, SeatOffsetY and SeatOffsetX global and not local in ISVehicleSeatUI.
• "Missing translation", "ignoring invalid ItemPicker item type", and "VEHICLE MISSING CONT DISTRIBUTION" console messages will now only appear when using debug mode.
• Exposed the MediaData.MediaLineData class.


• When the Sound.WorldSound.Render debug option is enabled, world sounds are rendered according to the Hearing sandbox option.
  • For Hearing=Random (where each zombie may have a different radius) sounds are rendered using the Hearing=Normal radius.
  • This does not mean that their hearing radius is not randomized, it only means that a world sound radius cannot be rendered on a per zombie basis in debug mode.
  • For Hearing=Pinpoint/Normal/Poor, meta-zombie hearing radius is handled properly.
• FileDifferent, FileNotOnServer, and FileNotOnClient errors will now display the absolute paths of both files. This should make it clearer that a mod might just have been using the wrong capitalization for a folder.


• Fixed characters in godmode still changing body weight.
• Fixed instances of the Cheat Menu not working after a player died.
• Fixed removing bodies via Horde manager not working in SP.
• Fixed being stuck in a vehicle after trying to uninstall/install a car part through the Mechanics Cheat, when a character was inside the vehicle.
• Fixed bug with health panel: Fully healing a body part now also removes its muscle fatigue.
• Fixed mod texture packs being loaded before Core.TileScale was set based on the double-sized-textures option. This would result in 2x texture packs being loaded instead of 1x texture packs.


• Fixed issues with the Tile picker:
  • Fixed being unable to lock Doors placed via Tile Picker.
  • Fixed Tree Tile issues.
  • Fixed electronic tiles (TV, radio, generators, etc).
  • Fixed Garage Doors.
  • Fixed Street Light tiles.
  • Fixed Search Bar issues.
  • Fixed Light Switches.
  • Fixed not showing all tiles.
  • Fixed Fireplace objects.
  • Fixed Wells and Lights.

• Fixed only being able to add Maple syrup to "PancakesRecipe" and not to "PancakesCraft" or "Pancakes".
• Fixed not being able to make 2 or 4 bowls of Rice or Pasta with a Saucepan anymore.
• Fixed lipstick not being appliable when player had Foundation Makeup in inventory
• Fixed Make-Up not being appliable when in a car.
• Fixes and changes to item categories.
• Fixed destroying a wall with a Lightswitch on it not destroying the Lightswitch too.
• Fixed making 2/4 bowls from a Saucepan returning a Cooking Pot.
• Fixed putting a hat on a Mohawk resetting hair growth timer.
• Fixed not being able to make a Molotov with an Empty Beer bottle.
• Fixed repeatedly building/disassembling some carpentry objects increasing the number of Planks sometimes.
• Fixed Sand/Gravel Bag wall behaviour when built at an angle.
• Fixed selected part of a garment in the "Inspect" UI being too faint.
• Fixed Shirts and other clothing items getting auto-removed from the world.
• Fixed unnecessary extra Muffin recipe. United the two existing Muffin recipes into one.
• Fixed being able to make Cake Batter using rotten ingredients below level 7.
• Fixed unused Zombie Decomposition sandbox option still being listed.
• Fixed NullPointerException in bThump animation variable when the object isn't loaded.
• Fixed being unable to click on open doors in an adjacent room.
• Fixed the starting house in "A Really CDDAy" challenge sometimes not being on fire.
• Fixed possible Lua error in MOBarricade.lua when a barricade sprite is on the east or south edge of a chunk.
• Fixed minor issues in ISZoneDisplay UI and text colours.
• Fixed Foraging icons rerolling when a search focus was selected.
• Fixed ISSearchManager check for valid zoneData when loading icons.
• Fixed not being able to rip Jeans/Leather Jackets when they're on the ground instead of the player inventory.
• Fixed disassembly of Favourited items.
• Fixed randomized crashed cars not having the correct car keys spawned for them.
• Fixed Mouse Trap related collision.
• Fixed sound issue when pressing W and S at the same time.
• Fixed sound issue when switching Seats while Cruise Control was enabled.
• Fixed Refill tool not updating the container visually.
• Fixed incorrectly named recipe for making Wooden Box Traps.
• Fixed several tile and cutaway issues.
• Fixed Lighters draining completely when used with a Molotov.
  • When a Lighter is equipped it will no longer automatically become lit, instead it will do so only if activated using the flashlight keybind or radial menu, or using the inventory context menu option to activate them.
• Fixed evolved recipe error in scripts for Lemons and Lime.
• Fixed Machetes not losing condition when used to craft spears from branches/planks.
• Fixed Empty Beer Bottle using the wrong icons.
• Fixed the space before commas in evolved recipe item names.
• Fixed missing recipe for Opening Canned Fruit Beverage.
• Changed "Canned Condensed Milk" to "Canned Evaporated Milk" because people are really passionate about milk in can lore.
• Fixed melted ice cream not rotting.
• Fixed house keys spawning with a long string of numbers in their display name.
• Fixed climb sheet rope speed.
• Fixed water collision bug when placing Stairs on water.
• Fixed missing textures for Flatpack model.
• Fixed ISInventoryPaneContextMenu.doEvorecipeMenu error.
• Fixed the on-screen keyboard returning asterisks instead of the actual text when entering passwords.
• Fixed microwaves not stopping the StoveTimer sound when turned off.
• Fixed missing context menu translation string for "Item Water Capacity".
• Fixed missing movables translation strings for Oak Bars.
• Fixed missing translation string for foodtype cocoa.
• Fixed wrong tooltip for Onion Slices.
• Fixed pies and cakes being able to be sliced when uncooked.
• Fixed frozen ice cream cones causing boredom and unhappiness; added the "GoodFrozen" tag for such items that should still be enjoyable when frozen.
• Fixed characters not limping when they had their groin bitten.
• Fixed being able to fill a square over its capacity by using the Place Item interface.
• Fixed cooking rotten eggs producing fresh boiled eggs; now if food is rotten and has a "replace on cooked" value, it will not be replaced but will still be cooked, i.e. you will get a cooked rotten egg when you cook a rotten egg.
• Fixed Propane Torch not being used for disassembling objects.
• Fixed Walking and sprinting not burning more calories than standing still.
• Fixed NullPointerExeption when throwing a bomb from above ground level with a controller.
• Fixed not being able to pick items that were dropped to a removed seat slot.
• Fixed being stuck on a seat when trying to change seat twice in different places.
• Fixed being able to do Fitness during sleep and while sitting in a car.
• Fixed the eternal fire after destroying a lit campfire with a sledgehammer.
• Fixed Map objects disappearing when a player aims at a stealthing player.
• Fixed bug with item icons in halo text when foraging.
• Fixed a bug with locking/unlocking doors inside buildings.
• Fixed different values between standard and evolved recipes for Soup.
• Fixed an issue where the interaction between the two different separate zombie population sandbox settings was inconsistent between singleplayer and multiplayer sandbox setting interfaces.
• Fixed equipping "Bandana (face)" placing the bandana on the head.
• Fixed not being able to get a key ring. Some zombies will now have their house or vehicle key in a key ring, and key rings can also sometimes be found in store displays with watches.
• Fixed that it was impossible for a randomized name to be "Pat Bren".
• Fixed adding poisonous berries or mushrooms to an evolved recipe did not make the product poisonous.
• Fixed missing icon for Scrambled Eggs.
• Fixed currently nonfunctional bayonet and gunlight items not being commented out in the distribution files.
• Fixed missing models/textures for Fountain Cups, Recipe Pizza and Recipe Bread.
• Fixed missing "Obsolete" parameter to BakingTrayBread as it's an unused test item without a model.
• Fixed missing checks to prevent buildings with inappropriate randomized dead survivor stories from being alarmed.
• Fixed being able to use the place item option to place infinite items in a floor square.
• Fixed cut and paste error in the unused function HandWeapon.getToHitMod.
• Fixed an exploit where players, especially ones with desensitized, were able to sleep immediately after breaking LOS with zombies.
• Fixed a couple of inconsistencies between the default MP settings and the Apocalypse setting on account of the loot setting changes.
• Fixed CannedMilk not having the parameter CannedFood = TRUE.
• Fixed only pouring 50 units when selecting the option to put 100 units of water into a farming plot.
• Fixed an issue with the vehicle alarm debug tool, BaseVehicle.setAlarmed also needed to set previouslyEntered to false for the vehicle when enabling an alarm.
• Fixed car horns continuing when switching seats while honking.
• Fixed being able to hold down keys while AFKing to grind nimble; now a check is made to ensure that the character has actually moved before awarding XP.
• Fixed error with broken glass script name in distro files.
• Fixed hazmat suit missing blood locations.
• Fixed being able to put uncooked bacon into tacos and burritos.
• Fixed Pink Hair Dye not being in the distribution lists.
• Fixed not being able to put Black Beans into a salad.
• Fixed Strength XP levels causing slower Sheet Rope climbing at certain levels, especially at level 10.
• Fixed bugged interaction with building metal objects and the Propane Torch.
• Fixed not being able to disassemble car wrecks due to a missing Propane Torch, even though it was in inventory. This needs Balance feedback since the usage per Torch was also changed.
• Fixed interaction when pressing shift+e near passenger seat to move to the drivers seat.
• Fixed ISBuryCorpse action validity check.
• Fixed using a firearm to repair another firearm evaporating the ammo, magazine, and attachments of the first weapon. The items will now be placed in the player's inventory.
• Fixed being unable to read in a car when the engine was running.
• Fixed zombies spawning inside buildings when the zombie populations is set to 0.
• Fixed missing world static model for Bag_ShotgunDblSawnoffBag.
• Fixed search window tooltips still appearing on hover when the world map is open.
• Fixed player able to walk away while equipping items to scrap or destroy an object to perform the actions from afar.
• Fixed dismantling floors with the character on top by moving character to an adjacent square where possible.
• Fixed disassembly context menu issue: Added highlighting of target object in world and object texture in disassembly tooltips.
• Fixed reflective and shooting glasses having reversed icons.
• Fixed some events of ZomboidSoundMP.bank not playing for remote clients. This is to potentially fix sounds cutting out when several players are together.
• Fixed players being unable to fire guns from inside vehicles under some circumstances.
• Fixed firearm damage being affected by the distance to the target.
• Fixed the infinite timed-action progress bar being displayed for actions that set useProgressBar=false.
• Fixed recently introduced bug that caused sounds to attract zombies from too far away.
• Fixed WorldSoundManager.getSoundAttract() not using IsoZombie.hearing.
• Fixed masking problems with Hoodie and Poncho being worn together.
• Fixed transparency issue with trouser texture.
• Fixed the rate of moodle and the heart (health panel) icon wiggling not handling ui offscreen rendering and uncapped framerate.
• Fixed incorrect pathing for masks on some clothing items which should fix clipping issues.
• Fixed spamming the 'manual floor attack' and 'shove' keys while aiming resulting in firing empty firearms and shoving distant zombies.
• Fixed not-crawler zombies sometimes injuring the feet or legs.
• Fixed assorted errors in food items' EvolvedRecipe parameters.
• Fixed error with randomized zombie senses.
• Fixed the Disable Bleach Poisoning setting in multiplayer causing issues when adding food to Evolved Recipes.
• Fixed sawing off a Double Barrel Shotgun not changing its encumbrance.
• Fixed not being able to host locally with a nonsteam server.
• Fixed zombie hearing radius being too large.
• Fixed being unable to rip Varsity Jackets.
• Fixed ripping all clothing unintentionally ripping clothing worn by the player.
• Fixed zombie Pinpoint hearing not working as intended.
• Fixed not being able to empty rotten sacks of produce.
• Fixed infinite Propane Torch glitch when disassembling items.
• Fixed Encoding of Radio and TV content for Chinese languages.
• Fixed lightbulb lifespan sandbox value error.
• Fixed in-game map position of a shed in cell 35,32.

Hola, zomberinos. Short-ish blog this week, but some fun info-nuggets none-the-less.


[h3]FINAL 41 PATCH[/h3]
We released 41.78 to Unstable last week, and released a fix-up patch yesterday. Therell probably be another update to it before we consider it safe for a full stable release, but there hasnt been too much to mop up this time around so our thanks to Blair who was the chief coder on this release.

One thing it might be nice to get in before we wrap 41 and the long wait till 42 begins, are the products of our investigations into ways to make it clearer to modders and users alike where errors in their mod setup lies when it comes to different capitalisations in folder paths and different file orders between server and clients.

These often result in error messages that are confusing and/or unclear, making things hard to troubleshoot for modders and our support team. Itd be nice to bring about some clarity before we leave 41 for pastures new so thats the main thing were waiting on now.


[h3]WORK ON 42[/h3]
Slightly technical details from the land of 42, but something that Blair has also been moving onto is working on the architecture of our recipes system to make it more foolproof and effective for both us and modders.

We are streamlining our evolved recipes using templates similar to the tags we use for individual items. This will make it more straightforward and simple for both us and the modding community to add in new evolved recipes and food items.

The system as is in Build 41 has a sizable amount of clunk debt associated with it that gets compounded by the number of food items we have in the game. The way we are restructuring things strips out some of the complexity, and lets us add new stuff easily while simultaneously managing our existing recipes and foodstuffs.

Next up, we also have more ideas about further streamlining this using item tags to offload a lot of the recipe ingredient stuff to tags and templates. Weve also got the roots in place of an Evolved Recipe name system that will notice you putting ham and pineapple on a pizza and call it a Hawaiian Pizza. Or name a sandwich a BLT if youve added bacon, lettuce and tomato.

On top of this theres a lot of wash and brush up of existing features. Theres a lot of big name gameplay stuff going into B42, but when it eventually rolls around we want to underline that therell be a bunch of more iterative improvements on existing PZ too.

For example, right now were working on making the randomized profession house stuff more cool and obvious- right now you probably arent aware when youre in a carpenters or an electricians home as there arent enough indicators. Weve got stuff going in to make it clearer and more thematic. Likewise were improving the procedural loot system to make loot and looting more interesting in of itself.

There are also new zed story events to come across where costumed zombies will tell a story gun store sieges, hillbilly hoedowns, kids party raves in the forests, a variety of campsites to come across etc.

Oh, and well be widening the melee weapons pool a bit also. Theyre not in-game yet, and no SFX for them yet either, but heres a quick look at some of whatll be on offer.



This weeks prison visit from Abby. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta begancan be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct yourattention to thePZ Wikishould you feel like editing or amending something, and thePZ Mailing Listthat can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitterright here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.

[h3]NEW[/h3]
- Added a prompt for the updated Terms of Service as we are a big boy game now and have to fit in with the other biggerer boys.

- Added sandbox option to disable Fake Dead Reanimation. Disabled Fake deads in MP by default.
- Added more control over fake dead behaviour to the sandbox options; having zombies that were "killed" having a chance to become fake dead is an option that is off by default.
- Added sandbox option that allows Corpse Maggot spawning to be disabled or limited to corpse inventory.
- Added sandbox option that allows poisoning food to be disabled, or for poisoning food with bleach to be disabled.
- Added sandbox option to disable the Tainted Water Tooltip/Warning for hardcore play
- Added sandbox option for enabling/disabling XP multipliers affecting passive skills, which is false by default.
- Added sandbox option that prevents survivor vehicles from spawning.
- Added sandbox option "Light Bulb Lifespan". This does not affect Light Bulbs in vehicles, only in light fixture tiles.

- Added "Randomize" options to Zombie sandbox options for Memory, Sight, and Hearing.
- Added loot rarity settings "Incredibly Rare" and "None", as well as a "Super Low" option for Fuel Pump content.

- Items from table stories/randomized stories/etc will still spawn when loot rarity is set to none.

- Renamed Item "Weight" to "Encumbrance" in the UI and context menu.

- Added an Accessibility Option that makes the player character automatically walk to a click container within a short radius of 3 tiles.
- Added the ability to set custom "Good" and "Bad" highlighting colours in the Accessibility Options menu. This is applied to things like traits, tooltips, and the aiming outline.
- Added an option to bind "Walk To" to a key instead of having to go through the RMB menu.
- Added highlighting to clicked Crates so it's easier to tell which crate is selected.
- Added a Context Menu entry that enables/disables Auto-Drink.
- Tiles that are being disassembled will now be highlighted in the "bad colour", red being the default.

- Resolutions higher than 1440p will have their zoom levels adjusted to allow closer zoom-in, bringing it more in line with lower resolutions.

- Disabled some Randomized Survivor Safehouses from occurring in instances where a building has over 10 rooms, or is a spawn location. The limit is 10 for some and 20 for other Randomized Survivor Safehouses.
This also means the Toilet Paper story is now disabled in buildings that have over 10 rooms or are spawn locations, which will likely reduce the amount of Reddit posts about it by 50%.
- Added a check to prevent any of the randomized burnt building stories from occurring if the building is a spawn location.

- Added "HasMetal" tag for items. This tag was added to food and water items in metal containers, which will now set microwaves on fire when microwaved.

- Adjusted the mechanics UI so that both the Battery Charge and Condition are included in the Battery entry in the list of parts.
- Modified the vehicle mechanics UI to prominently feature the % of a full tank of gas it has, in addition to the battery charge.

- Added a few more existing clothing options to the character creation.
- Added the ability to destroy only one wall when selecting corner walls.
- Replaced the bucket world static model textures with metal icons and textures and not plastic ones, as buckets are now metal and not plastic.
- Updated the BucketEmpty and BucketWaterFull scripts with tooltips and IsCookable to reflect that they are now metal and not plastic.
- Changed the icon of the Watering Can With Water to match the Empty Water Can and the Watering Can models.
- Added a stale tooltip for perishable food to display, when appropriate, that such food is neither fresh nor rotten.
- Added tooltip to Club Hammers and Mallets explaining that they are unsuitable for driving nails.
- Flatpack model is applied to movable items that use the Flatpack icon.
- Made more food items capable of being added to tacos and burritos.
- Bell Pepper can now be added to Stews.

- Added a check so cooked eggs cannot be used for inappropriate non-evolved recipes.
- Removed the requirement for hot water to make a bowl of oats.
- Changed the Violet FoodType to NoExplicit.

- Trash tiles (Movable items) and Plastic Bags can now be used as tinder and fuel for fires.
- Changed the Sawed-off Shotgun recipes to only use the hacksaw, and not the garden saw; a wood saw would be unable to cut through the metal barrel of a shotgun.
- Added the Meat Cleaver to the Slice Onions recipe. Removed it from the Jack-o'-lantern recipe.

- Changed the Cigarettes script to prioritize using Matches before a Lighter if both are in the same inventory.
- Added a new Doctor's bag and military duffel bag.
- Renamed "Hemophobic" trait to "Fear of Blood".
- Vehicle Spawn Chance rate can now be a float value instead of just an int.
- Added a check to prevent items that "weigh" over 50 units from being put in vehicle seats.
This is an ongoing issue with bags/containers that are modded over capacity, which get stuck once placed in vehicle seats when the bag + contents have an Encumbrance of >50.

- Changed translation strings to make bottle names more consistent.
- Changed IGUI_HouseKey from "House Key" to "Key" to avoid issues with non-residential keys.

- Removed the numeric information tooltip provided when selecting eat all/half/quarter food item context options.
- Commented out the tool definitions in ClothingRecipesDefinitions as they currently are nonfunctional and serve no purpose aside from confusing modders.

- Commented out the WoodenLance in the safehouse weapons distro lists; that item is redundant vs SpearCrafted, and also doesn't work with spear recipes. SpearCrafted already spawns with safehouse weapons.
- Replaced AmmoStraps in the safehouse armor distro list with AmmoStraps_Bullets and AmmoStraps_Shells.
- Changed the display name translation string for the wearable AmmoStraps items to Bandolier on account of consistent confusion with the weapon attachment that is also called Ammo Straps.
- Changed the display name translation string for firearm magazines to use the firearm it is for, and not the caliber, as the prefix. Solves having two .308 Magazines, for both the MSR788 and the M14, and also that's how they're named in real life.
- Added a tooltip to firearm magazines that displays the ammunition type that it accepts.

- Added missing models for Candy Corn, Candied Fruit Slices, Hot Sauce, Fountain Cups, JuJubes, Nettles, Shrimp Dumplings, Poached Eggs, Scrambled Eggs, Packaged Corn, Pickled Ginger, Sugar Cookies, Fish Sushi, Radio Receivers,Radio Transmitters, Gummy Bears, Gummy Worms, and Tent Kits.


[h3]MULTIPLAYER[/h3]

- Added server option "KnockedDownAllowed" to enable/disable the PVP knockdown.
This is a stopgap change to give servers an option to make PVP combat less frustrating before we can address PVP combat more directly in the future.

- Added auto-completion for player nicknames when pressing TAB while typing in the Chatbox.
- Added RCON command "checkModsNeedUpdate" to check for mods that need to be updated.
- Allow other non-admin permission levels to delete items in inventory/containers.

- Fixed the multiplayer "whisper" command corrupting the Lua environment due to multithreading.
- Fixed being unable to claim a safehouse unless standing on the ground floor.
- Fixed not checking upper floors for other players or zombies when claiming a safehouse.
- Fixed an exception on the server when food rots into a new item in a container that isn't in the world any longer.
- Fixed new stubble getting added to remote players after each appearance change.
- Fixed text annotations not appearing on annotated maps in multiplayer.
- Fixed Endurance sync in the Admin Health Tool.
- Fixed a bug that didn't display mods in the mod list of a server in the ESC menu.
- Fixed admins being unable to remove car hoods while inside the vehicle.
- Fixed players being unable to interact with Radios they placed themselves.
- Fixed a safehouse owner always respawning in their safehouse when the option to do so is unchecked.


[h3]BALANCE[/h3]

- Modified the M16 & M14 critical values to be more consistent with other rifles.
- M16 CriticalChance changed from 30 to 25.
- Added CritDmgMultiplier 10
- Added AimingPerkCritModifier 12
- M14 CriticalChance changed from 0 to 30.
- Added CritDmgMultiplier 10
- AimingPerkCritModifier 15
- Disabled the cumulative slowdown until the next shot when firing the M16 in automatic mode. Firing the M16 in automatic mode will cumulatively reduce the chance of a critical with each additional shot. This is intended to represent the loss in accuracy due to recoil.
- Set some traits to be mutually exclusive to remove exploits or illogical combinations.

- Hot-Wiring a vehicle will have a low chance of causing a car alarm. The chance for this is decreased further for higher electronics skill levels.
- Zombies pushing up against a previously unentered stationary vehicle have a chance to set off an alarm.
- Removed the undesired RNG check that made vehicle alarms go off only 20% of the time.
- Fixed car hoods being unable to trigger vehicle alarms.

- Disabled being able to make melee attacks while inside a vehicle with the window rolled down.

- Randomized the fall damage that zombies take. This randomized spread will average out to the previous damage before it was randomized; this will have a minor impact (hohoho) on the damage that zombies that fall suffer, but slightly more of them will be able to be killed by this than before.
- Made it so groin injuries from not-crawler zombies are less common, and that crawlers can also inflict uncommon groin injuries.

- Increased the yield of metal parts when scrapping wrecked vehicles by 33%.
- Added a new procedural container, "CratePropane", to garages and shed.
- Increased the spawn rates for Propane Tanks in the distributions.

- Trailer capacity now reduces slightly when damaged, as there was no point in repairing them before.
- Changed Bowling Ball Bag capacity from 2 to 8.
- Increase number of Plaster uses to 10, same as Paint.
- Allow plastic bags and money to be used as tinder

- Adjusted the capacities of pistol and revolver cases from 7 down to 4.
- Adjusted Encumbrance of the sturdy stick item to 1 to be more consistent with other items.
- Adjusted Encumbrance of fire extinguishers to 2, to be consistent with other items.
- Decreased Encumbrance of Walkie-Talkies.
- Adjusted Encumbrance of the TreeBranch item to match that of a crafted spear, to 1.7 from 1;
The Encumbrance discrepancy has been remarked upon repeatedly, and this also serves in making item Encumbrance more consistent.
- Adjusted the amount of fuel that spawns in fuel pumps at Low and Very Low.

- Updated the nutritional value for Canned Evaporated Milk. Calories 472; Carbs, Lipids, and Proteins at 23.6
- Changed the days until rotten for Bagels from 2 to 6.
- Gave the Stir Fry and roast script items a default hunger value of 10. This was previously reported as a bug when players spawned the item in instead of making it via the evolved recipe.

- Maggots are slightly more poisonous.
- Fewer maggots spawn, especially in spring and fall (maggots don't spawn during winter).
- Maggots are now a default item in the world item removal lists. Added a comment for the world item removal lists explaining that Base.Maggots should stay in the list due to corpse maggots.
- Additional safeguard to prevent errors when using mods that remove maggots altogether.


[h3]DEBUG / MODDING[/h3]
- Added a search bar to the LootZed cheat panel.
- Added vehicle distributions to LootZed.
- Improved inventory check-in Check Stats panel.

- Right-clicking on a fuel pump in debug mode will display the amount of fuel in the pump in the right-click context menu.

- Added isStartValid function check for BaseTimedAction. Allows checking if an action is valid before the action starts.
- Added saving ModData from IsoGameCharacter to IsoDeadBody and from IsoDeadBody to IsoZombie.
- Added "OnPlayerGetDamage" event.
- Added event "OnWeaponHitThumpable" (Args: character, weapon, object)
- Added a trigger for the OnFillContainer Event when vehicle part containers are filled.
- Added the tag "CarBattery" which can be used with mod item car batteries so they can be charged with the vanilla car battery charger.
- Added the event "OnThrowableExplode", which transmits the IsoTrap and IsoSquare when one detonates.
- Added a toggle option in the vehicle debug context menu that will show if a vehicle's alarm is enabled or disabled.
- Changed Fast Move cheat in debug. Players can now levitate on different height levels via the PageUP/PageDown keys, and move around via the Arrow Keys on the different height levels.
- Made ImageScale, SeatOffsetY and SeatOffsetX global and not local in ISVehicleSeatUI.
- "Missing translation", "ignoring invalid ItemPicker item type", and "VEHICLE MISSING CONT DISTRIBUTION" console messages will now only appear when using debug mode.

- Fixed characters in godmode still changing body weight.
- Fixed instances of the Cheat Menu not working after a player died.
- Fixed removing bodies via Horde manager not working in SP.
- Fixed being stuck in a vehicle after trying to uninstall/install a car part through the Mechanics Cheat, when a character was inside the vehicle.
- Fixed bug with health panel: Fully healing a body part now also removes its muscle fatigue.
- Fixed mod texture packs being loaded before Core.TileScale was set based on the double-sized-textures option. This would result in 2x texture packs being loaded instead of 1x texture packs.

- Fixed issues with the Tile picker:
- Fixed being unable to lock Doors placed via Tile Picker.
- Fixed Tree Tile issues.
- Fixed electronic tiles (TV, radio, generators, etc).
- Fixed Garage Doors.
- Fixed Street Light tiles.
- Fixed Search Bar issues.
- Fixed Light Switches.
- Fixed not showing all tiles.
- Fixed Fireplace objects.
- Fixed Wells and Lights.

[h3]FIXES[/h3]
- Fixed only being able to add Maple syrup to "PancakesRecipe" and not to "PancakesCraft" or "Pancakes".
- Fixed not being able to make 2 or 4 bowls of Rice or Pasta with a Saucepan anymore.
- Fixed lipstick not being appliable when player had Foundation Makeup in inventory
- Fixed Make-Up not being appliable when in a car.
- Fixes and changes to item categories.
- Fixed destroying a wall with a Lightswitch on it not destroying the Lightswitch too.
- Fixed making 2/4 bowls from a Saucepan returning a Cooking Pot.
- Fixed putting a hat on a Mohawk resetting hair growth timer.
- Fixed not being able to make a Molotov with an Empty Beer bottle.
- Fixed repeatedly building/disassembling some carpentry objects increasing the number of Planks sometimes.
- Fixed Sand/Gravel Bag wall behaviour when built at an angle.
- Fixed selected part of a garment in the "Inspect" UI being too faint.
- Fixed Shirts and other clothing items getting auto-removed from the world.
- Fixed unnecessary extra Muffin recipe. United the two existing Muffin recipes into one.
- Fixed being able to make Cake Batter using rotten ingredients below level 7.
- Fixed unused Zombie Decomposition sandbox option still being listed.
- Fixed NullPointerException in bThump animation variable when the object isn't loaded.
- Fixed being unable to click on open doors in an adjacent room.
- Fixed the starting house in "A Really CDDAy" challenge sometimes not being on fire.
- Fixed possible Lua error in MOBarricade.lua when a barricade sprite is on the east or south edge of a chunk.
- Fixed minor issues in ISZoneDisplay UI and text colours.
- Fixed Foraging icons rerolling when a search focus was selected.
- Fixed ISSearchManager check for valid zoneData when loading icons.
- Fixed not being able to rip Jeans/Leather Jackets when they're on the ground instead of the player inventory.
- Fixed disassembly of Favourited items.
- Fixed randomized crashed cars not having the correct car keys spawned for them.
- Fixed Mouse Trap related collision.
- Fixed sound issue when pressing W and S at the same time.
- Fixed sound issue when switching Seats while Cruise Control was enabled.
- Fixed Refill tool not updating the container visually.
- Fixed incorrectly named recipe for making Wooden Box Traps.
- Fixed several tile and cutaway issues.
- Fixed Lighters draining completely when used with a Molotov.
When a Lighter is equipped it will no longer automatically become lit, instead it will do so only if activated using the flashlight keybind or radial menu, or using the inventory context menu option to activate them.
- Fixed evolved recipe error in scripts for Lemons and Lime.
- Fixed Machetes not losing condition when used to craft spears from branches/planks.
- Fixed Empty Beer Bottle using the wrong icons.
- Fixed the space before commas in evolved recipe item names.
- Fixed missing recipe for Opening Canned Fruit Beverage.
- Changed "Canned Condensed Milk" to "Canned Evaporated Milk" because people are really passionate about milk in can lore.
- Fixed melted ice cream not rotting.
- Fixed house keys spawning with a long string of numbers in their display name.
- Fixed climb sheet rope speed.
- Fixed water collision bug when placing Stairs on water.
- Fixed missing textures for Flatpack model.
- Fixed ISInventoryPaneContextMenu.doEvorecipeMenu error.
- Fixed the on-screen keyboard returning asterisks instead of the actual text when entering passwords.
- Fixed microwaves not stopping the StoveTimer sound when turned off.
- Fixed missing context menu translation string for "Item Water Capacity".
- Fixed missing movables translation strings for Oak Bars.
- Fixed missing translation string for foodtype cocoa.
- Fixed wrong tooltip for Onion Slices.
- Fixed pies and cakes being able to be sliced when uncooked.
- Fixed frozen ice cream cones causing boredom and unhappiness; added the "GoodFrozen" tag for such items that should still be enjoyable when frozen.
- Fixed characters not limping when they had their groin bitten.
- Fixed being able to fill a square over its capacity by using the Place Item interface.
- Fixed cooking rotten eggs producing fresh boiled eggs; now if food is rotten and has a "replace on cooked" value, it will not be replaced but will still be cooked, i.e. you will get a cooked rotten egg when you cook a rotten egg.
- Fixed Propane Torch not being used for disassembling objects.
- Fixed Walking and sprinting not burning more calories than standing still.
- Fixed NullPointerExeption when throwing a bomb from above ground level with a controller.
- Fixed not being able to pick items that were dropped to a removed seat slot.
- Fixed being stuck on a seat when trying to change seat twice in different places.
- Fixed being able to do Fitness during sleep and while sitting in a car.
- Fixed the eternal fire after destroying a lit campfire with a sledgehammer.
- Fixed Map objects disappearing when a player aims at a stealthing player.
- Fixed bug with item icons in halo text when foraging.
- Fixed a bug with locking/unlocking doors inside buildings.
- Fixed different values between standard and evolved recipes for Soup.
- Fixed an issue where the interaction between the two different separate zombie population sandbox settings was inconsistent between singleplayer and multiplayer sandbox setting interfaces.
- Fixed equipping "Bandana (face)" placing the bandana on the head.
- Fixed not being able to get a key ring. Some zombies will now have their house or vehicle key in a key ring, and key rings can also sometimes be found in store displays with watches.
- Fixed that it was impossible for a randomized name to be "Pat Bren".
- Fixed adding poisonous berries or mushrooms to an evolved recipe did not make the product poisonous.
- Fixed missing icon for Scrambled Eggs.
- Fixed currently nonfunctional bayonet and gunlight items not being commented out in the distribution files.
- Fixed missing models/textures for Fountain Cups, Recipe Pizza and Recipe Bread.
- Fixed missing "Obsolete" parameter to BakingTrayBread as it's an unused test item without a model.
- Fixed missing checks to prevent buildings with inappropriate randomized dead survivor stories from being alarmed.
- Fixed being able to use the place item option to place infinite items in a floor square.
- Fixed cut and paste error in the unused function HandWeapon.getToHitMod.
- Fixed an exploit where players, especially ones with desensitized, were able to sleep immediately after breaking LOS with zombies.
- Fixed a couple of inconsistencies between the default MP settings and the Apocalypse setting on account of the loot setting changes.
- Fixed CannedMilk not having the parameter CannedFood = TRUE.
- Fixed only pouring 50 units when selecting the option to put 100 units of water into a farming plot.
- Fixed an issue with the vehicle alarm debug tool, BaseVehicle.setAlarmed also needed to set previouslyEntered to false for the vehicle when enabling an alarm.
- Fixed car horns continuing when switching seats while honking.
- Fixed being able to hold down keys while AFKing to grind nimble; now a check is made to ensure that the character has actually moved before awarding XP.
- Fixed error with broken glass script name in distro files.
- Fixed hazmat suit missing blood locations.
- Fixed being able to put uncooked bacon into tacos and burritos.
- Fixed Pink Hair Dye not being in the distribution lists.
- Fixed not being able to put Black Beans into a salad.
- Fixed Strength XP levels causing slower Sheet Rope climbing at certain levels, especially at level 10.
- Fixed bugged interaction with building metal objects and the Propane Torch.
- Fixed not being able to disassemble car wrecks due to a missing Propane Torch, even though it was in inventory. This needs Balance feedback since the usage per Torch was also changed.
- Fixed interaction when pressing shift+e near passenger seat to move to the drivers seat.
- Fixed ISBuryCorpse action validity check.
- Fixed using a firearm to repair another firearm evaporating the ammo, magazine, and attachments of the first weapon. The items will now be placed in the player's inventory.
- Fixed being unable to read in a car when the engine was running.
- Fixed zombies spawning inside buildings when the zombie populations is set to 0.
- Fixed missing world static model for Bag_ShotgunDblSawnoffBag.
- Fixed search window tooltips still appearing on hover when the world map is open.
- Fixed player able to walk away while equipping items to scrap or destroy an object to perform the actions from afar.
- Fixed dismantling floors with the character on top by moving character to an adjacent square where possible.
- Fixed disassembly context menu issue: added highlighting of target object in world and object texture in disassembly tooltips
- Fixed reflective and shooting glasses having reversed icons.
- Fixed some events of ZomboidSoundMP.bank not playing for remote clients. This is to potentially fix sounds cutting out when several players are together.

Evening all.

[h3]NOW[/h3]
We released 41.77 into the stable beta last week, which fixed up linux servers and also improved client to server connections by preferring a direct connection to the server.

It was mission successful in most regards, but a minority of users still had issues connecting which we have been addressing over the past few days via hotfixes in the Unstable beta.

If you were one of the frustrated souls impacted by this, then let us know if you are still suffering on Unstable (hopefully not) on this thread on the Steam Board.

Our current plan is to get these final people back on board the connection train, then move onto releasing the final 41 patch into the freshly vacated Unstable beta next week.

Weve now locked coder submissions to this patch (necessary fixes aside) and the final changelist looks like this.


[h3]LATER[/h3]
Weve blogged a bunch of stuff that were working towards getting into 42 now, but this week we thought it also worth mentioning that work has re-begun on the fire revamp.

The fire revamp is something that got a lot of coverage in doids around two years ago, so it probably predates the knowledge of a fair few readers who have come on board in more recent times during B41s MP launch and consequent hi-jinks.

Work on revamped fire had to be put to one side in favour of bolstering the Multiplayer code team, and ever since then it has been sitting on a dusty shelf and getting a little stale.

The tldr of it when last we left it runs as follows:

• A realistic spread of fire, with combustible materials that make sense.
• A system that takes into account temperature, material types, weight, volume, surface area, heating energy, cooling energy etc
• A set-up on both a solo map and an MP network that means that the game can remember what is going on in terms of a spreading fire when players leave the area.
• Fire spread that uses the direction and speed of the wind, with in-game rain helping with fires being put out.
• Improved effects and visuals.

Compliled changelist (41.74-41.77).
These small updates were intended to address the crashes affecting Linux MP servers and improve the client-to-server connections.


[h3]MP[/h3]

- Improved client connection.
Important for server providers: Servers now have two ports for clients to connect to.
The game port (UDP 16261 by default) is used to handle Steam queries. The additional port (UDP 16262 by default) is used to handle the direct connection. These ports can be configured through the server options.
Clients will first try to use a direct connection. If direct connection fails, clients will try to connect via Steam.
The non-Steam version works as usual.
UPnP rules were changed accordingly (UPnP is used in cases to prevent manual port-forwarding).
The client will show the warning message "WARNING: SERVER HAS PORT %1 CLOSED. PERFORMANCE MAY BE SEVERELY AFFECTED" if the client can't connect through direct connection.

- ZNet libraries rebuilt for Windows, Linux, and Mac.
- ZNet, Connection, and Kick logs are improved.

- Improved Type5, and Type21-24 Anti-Cheat behaviour to reduce false positives.
A note that if you do not run a public server (i.e. a server exclusively for you and your family & friends without the worry of griefing and cheating), you can entirely circumvent any sort of frustration with false positives by disabling all AntiCheat protections in the servers .ini file.

- Split the large ConnectionDetails packet into several smaller packets with one of the ConnectionDetailsPacket.State enum values indicating which data is requested.
- Improved algorithm for the transmission of large files while playing.
- Loading screen now shows the download status of large files when connecting to a server.
- Extended checksum logs for debugging CRC differences.
- Increased kick delay for CRC differences.
- Additional logs were added.

- Fixed ObjectModData packets not being sent while the server was in the FastForward state.
- Fixed bug in world dictionary when an item in a different module but with a similar name as an vanilla item was removed.
- Fixed a new stubble Beard getting added to remote players after each appearance change, which resulted in receivePlayerZombieDescriptors errors.
- Fixed kicks after disabling VOIP.
- Fixed connecting to host after disconnection from a dedicated server.
- Fixed infinite connection attempt to non-steam server when it's not up.
- Fixed the client displaying "Disconnected" instead of "Wrong username or password".
- Fixed players being able to change their saved password for an already created account in some instances.
- Fixed Type21 black screen at connection stage when Type21 anti-cheat check is disabled.
- Fixed the character model always using media/textures/Body/Masks instead a clothing item's UnderlayMasks folder.
- Fixed black screen issues with certain mod constellations.
- Fixed the timed-action progress bar position not being updated during actions without a fixed duration.
- Fixed the animation speed of the timed-action progress bar at different framerates.


[h3]NEW[/h3]

- Added a looping progress bar for timed actions that have no defined end. This is mainly a stopgap "fix" for entering cars, to visualize that there is an ongoing unfinished action until we can have visually open doors, etc.
Specifically added for the scenarios where players reported being bitten through the car door after they had entered a car and interrupted the "enter car" action before it could finish (e.g. by opening the map, etc), i.e. before the door was "closed".
This bar extends to other "infinite" actions like Walk To.


[h3]MODELS[/h3]

- Added new body locations: Jacket_Bulky, JacketHat_Bulky, TorsoExtraVest, and JacketSuit.
- Assigned new body locations to existing clothing items to avoid clipping.
- Tweaked and added many clothing masks to avoid clipping through each other.
- Adjusted several clothing models and bone weighting to improve clipping.
- Removed Bowling shirt model from Bowling shirt definitions and made Bowling Shirt a texture. The model was left in the files in case mods use it.
- Improved base Body mask to help with clipping.
- Re-exported ALICE packs as some straps were missing.

Now then, survivors. Lets do the thing.

[h3]NEXT[/h3]
This week we released version 41.77 into our Unstable beta. This is primarily aimed at fixing the Linux crashes that have been plaguing server hosts, and so far seems to be a mission success in that regard.

It also improves client to server connections by preferring a direct connection to the server. Servers now have two ports for clients to connect to, configurable through the server options. The game port (UDP 16261 by default) is used to handle Steam queries. The additional port (UDP 16262 by default) is used to handle the direct connection.

Weve had a successful wider test of 41.77 with more than 30 people on a server without any crashes, and weve tested a modded setup afterwards as well.

Upon release there were servers running mods with 41.77 just fine, but unfortunately it seemed that some mod setup constellations caused conflicts that resulted in black screens for some servers.

We have just pushed a hotfix we believe will resolve this.

If, however, you run a 41.77 server and you are still experiencing players unable to log on (only seeing a black screen) then please send us: the list of ModIDs (specifically the Mods= line from their server.ini, the workshop= line, and your server logs.

Posting these in the forum release thread or in our Discord techsupport channel would probably be best.

Likewise, any reports of ongoing server instability or general misbehaviour please let us know ASAP.


[h3]THEN[/h3]
Were still adding tweaks and polish to our final B41 patch that well put out once the current network improvements are fully tested, released and stable.

This is the current changelist, with notable additions in the past few weeks on show here if you already read up on what was incoming in our last blog.


[h3]OOH, 42[/h3]
Build 42 will be a very big update, and it will appear a sizable amount of time after Build 41 is fully wrapped. Weve announced most of the things that we currently have brewing for it, but theres one thing weve only hinted at so far and which is very likely to feature.

As regular readers may remember, a while ago we wrote a blog called Techdoid that detailed some of the big engine improvements we have slated for 42.

Amongst them is a new rendering pipeline which allows for entire chunks to be cached with a depth buffer, which will afford us MASSIVE rendering and scene construction improvements and should rid us of all the performance issues weve been plagued with due to the isometric draw order over the years.

[previewyoutube=G6t5h0_Sfqc;full][/previewyoutube]

Theres also a new light propagation system, which allows for light to naturally leak through doors and windows, providing much more atmospheric and believable lighting

[previewyoutube=9_0TiPQ-JQA;full][/previewyoutube]

We also got rid of the 8 storey limit on chunks: specifically we allowed each chunk to have its own unique defined height up to 32 levels.

Finally, we discussed that wed fixed the many areas of the codebase that used static casts to round the players position to determine what chunk or tile they were on to using Math.floors instead. This method allows for negative coordinates to work where prior the calculations would have failed if the player was stood on a tile with a negative coordinate.

This in theory will allow for us, or modders, to build north or west to the same extents as we currently build to the east and south, effectively quadrupling the maximum size the map could be extended to and open up a great deal of extra land to populate should we need to in future.

Whilst all these features are gamechangers in themselves, they were also done in service of another very specific feature weve had planned for a long time, which required each of them to be made feasible in any way.

The current in-game lighting system means that the indoor ambience levels are defined solely by the time of day. If its daytime, the ambient light levels inside a building are above zero, giving just sub-daylight levels, even if there are no sources of natural light that should fall on a tile just by virtue of it being day. That wouldnt work very well if we were wanting to do a certain other feature.

The previous eight level hard limit and high rendering cost of multiple levels was rather restrictive if we were to want to do a certain something.

The lack of support for negative coordinates for character positions? Well that was IMMENSELY restrictive if we were to want to do a certain something.

A few people may have been able to read between the lines of what all these lead toward. Many more will have just watched the video already.

[previewyoutube=1KgbGw9lnW4;full][/previewyoutube]

The plan we have for basements and sub-levels is an interesting one, as it will provide a lot more replayability to the game map, which is otherwise completely static at the moment.

Essentially in 42 we, or modders, can list positions on the map (along with staircase orientation) that have the space for a basement and can be allocated the potential to have one. However, no basements are placed within the map itself.

When an area is streamed in for the first time, an appropriate basement building created in the building editor and exported as a binary file is selected randomly from the list of all possible basements and will be injected into the map as it is loaded.

We could add tags to make it pick an appropriate category of basement to fit the specific house, though right now the code has it set as completely random. Each basement has stairs leading up from its top floor and these stairs will be aligned to the correct position when it is injected into the map.

This means that despite the map being static, any areas with basements will yield surprises in every playthrough. This will also, clearly, cause the least disruption to the existing map development, modded maps and everything else.

Whilst most of the basements will be modest basement rooms, that will have their own unique layout and lootable containers and will change on every new world and be populated with our own collection as well as any collections of mod basements that are subscribed to.

There may be a few, however, which are more extensive, the player could happen upon a super rare and extensive underground complex. We have 32 levels to work with that can be distributed in any way above or below ground per chunk as required, so therell be few limits particularly in what modders can do with this.

We can also hardcode some specific basement levels, so we could say provide key buildings within the map with bespoke basement levels that fit that particular building and will always be the same on every map.

Also, with the new light propagation system, you better bring a torch because unless there are light switches, its gonna be dark even if its daytime!

Were also considering the possibility of other sub-surface structures, such as sewers for locations like Louisville. Were still researching what would be appropriate and sufficiently realistic for this, however, and its not certain what could/would appear in b42 beyond whats discussed above at this stage.


[h3]SPIFFO: BEYOND[/h3]
If you are a Terraria player then right now you are likely enjoying the amazing Labor of Love update, and maybe youve even discovered a certain someone has made the jump into another game heralding the beginning of some sort of Spiffo Cinematic Universe.

Our endless thanks to everyone at Re-Logic for letting our little dude spread his wings (or spin his tail, I guess) and treating him so well.

[previewyoutube=fqmd3c0GwSQ;full][/previewyoutube]

This weeks stunning outdoor scene from Citro. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta begancan be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct yourattention to thePZ Wikishould you feel like editing or amending something, and thePZ Mailing Listthat can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitterright here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games dev and want to work with us, especially if youre an Animations Engineer as Christ alive that would be handy? Details here.

[h3]MP[/h3]
- Improved client connection.
Important for server providers: Servers now have two ports for clients to connect to.
The game port (UDP 16261 by default) is used to handle Steam queries. The additional port (UDP 16262 by default) is used to handle the direct connection. These ports can be configured through the server options.
Clients will first try to use a direct connection. If direct connection fails, clients will try to connect via Steam.
The non-Steam version works as usual.
UPnP rules were changed accordingly (UPnP is used in cases to prevent manual port-forwarding).
The client will show the warning message "WARNING: SERVER HAS PORT %1 CLOSED. PERFORMANCE MAY BE SEVERELY AFFECTED" if the client can't connect through direct connection.

- ZNet libraries rebuilt for Windows, Linux, and Mac.
- ZNet, Connection, and Kick logs are improved.

- Additional logs were added.

- Fixed kicks after disabling VOIP.
- Fixed connecting to host after disconnection from a dedicated server.
- Fixed infinite connection attempt to non-steam server when it's not up.
- Fixed the client displaying "Disconnected" instead of "Wrong username or password".
- Fixed players being able to change their saved password for an already created account in some instances.


[h3]NEW[/h3]
- Added a looping progress bar for timed actions that have no defined end. This is mainly a stopgap "fix" for entering cars, to visualize that there is an ongoing unfinished action until we can have visually open doors, etc.
Specifically added for the scenarios where players reported being bitten through the car door after they had entered a car and interrupted the "enter car" action before it could finish (e.g. by opening the map, etc), i.e. before the door was "closed".
This bar extends to other "infinite" actions like Walk To.


[h3]MODELS[/h3]
- Added new body locations: Jacket_Bulky, JacketHat_Bulky, TorsoExtraVest, and JacketSuit.
- Assigned new body locations to existing clothing items to avoid clipping.
- Tweaked and added many clothing masks to avoid clipping through each other.
- Adjusted several clothing models and bone weighting to improve clipping.
- Removed Bowling shirt model from Bowling shirt definitions and made Bowling Shirt a texture. The model was left in the files in case mods use it.
- Improved base Body mask to help with clipping.
- Re-exported ALICE packs as some straps were missing.

Hello everyone.

[h3]NEXT[/h3]
The situation with Linux server instability remains ongoing, with the MP team working on another update to the Unstable beta and an internal test of their work tonight.

The good news from the Unstable release of 41.76 was that overall network and connection speeds were improved, and will be beneficial to all online players once fully released, but the far more pressing issue was that residual errors in our zombienet library carried over server instability. Getting this, finally, sorted is currently the teams number one priority.

This issue doesnt impact all our players, but we recognise how frustrating it must be for those who play regularly on Linux servers and above all those who operate them. We can only apologise for the continued outage and ongoing work, and recognise that patience has been running understandably thin.

In our travels fixing the issues, the networking has been changed so as to more directly communicate between server and client. The server now has 2 ports to connect to. The game port (16261 by default) is used to handle Steam queries. The additional port (16262 by default) is used to handle the direct connection, and thus circumnavigate the data travelling through the steam network which was impacting latency and throughput significantly. These ports can be configured through the server options.

Were aware this may cause a bit of disruption when we first release this to stable. However, the positive impact this will have on server performance, reducing lag and improving syncing of the game is too great to ignore, and should be just an additional port for server operators to be aware of and shouldnt affect the vast majority of players connecting. The non-Steam version, meanwhile, will just work as usual.


[h3]THEN[/h3]
Most of the non-MP team are now fully on B42 development, but we do have a few brave soldiers working on the final 41 patch thats currently backlogged behind the aforementioned MP fixes.

The intention of this patch is to be as non-disruptive as possible, and to leave 41 in the best possible condition during the next period of extensive Build 42 development.

As such its primarily fix-based and polish, but there are also some expanded sandbox options. You can see the topline of new changes in the screenshot below.



You can thankfully also view the full current changelist by following this hotlink.

This build will go into the unstable beta once MP servers are fully patched up and stable.


[h3]42[/h3]
Weve got a couple of videos from RJ this week to show his current work on domestic animals. They are fairly self-explanatory when you watch them, but PLEASE NOTE everything you see is heavily WIP.

RJ is working in something of a development debug sandbox here, and as such everything will have rough edges and likewise some player actions will have more appropriate animations, animal sizes will be improved, sound effects, further polished UI etc. etc.

[previewyoutube=HPLWnNsQ3QY;full][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube=C3mI85QPcGo;full][/previewyoutube]

Finally, just to give you the shivers, heres a sample of the Sound Teams latest work on sprinter screams. Dont have nightmares.

[previewyoutube=DW2VtgaKpTQ;full][/previewyoutube]

This weeks book club from Kawri. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta begancan be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct yourattention to thePZ Wikishould you feel like editing or amending something, and thePZ Mailing Listthat can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitterright here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games dev and want to work with us, especially if youre an Animations Engineer as Christ alive that would be handy? Details here.

We skipped public testing for 41.75.

The TL;DR of the changes from 41.74 to 41.76 is that the Steam Networking API implementation was improved; Linux crashes should be fixed and overall networking performance has been improved alongside connection stability in internal tests.
In essence, the game will now also use direct communication with dedicated servers, instead of going entirely through Steams own networking API, improving performance and stability for dedicated servers.


[h3]MP[/h3]
- Improved Steam Networking API implementation.
- Selected game data is no longer transmitted through the Steam P2P API but through UDP instead.

- Adjusted Anti-Cheat Types 21-24 to result in fewer false positives.

A note that if you do not run a public server (i.e. a server exclusively for you and your family & friends without the worry of griefing and cheating), you can entirely circumvent any sort of frustration with false positives by disabling all AntiCheat protections in the servers .ini file.

- Split the large ConnectionDetails packet into several smaller packets with one of the ConnectionDetailsPacket.State enum values indicating which data is requested.
- Improved algorithm for the transmission of large files while playing.

- Loading screen now shows the download status of large files when connecting to a server.

- ZNet library was rebuilt on all platforms.

- Fixed ObjectModData packets not being sent while the server was in the FastForward state.
- Fixed bug in world dictionary when an item in a different module but with a similar name as an vanilla item was removed.
- Fixed a new stubble Beard getting added to remote players after each appearance change, which resulted in receivePlayerZombieDescriptors errors.

Okay, so heres a run down on our current basic plans for finalizing Build 41, and then beyond.

[h3]NEXT[/h3]
Weve left Linux server operators hanging out to dry a bit over the last two weeks and feel awful about it especially ones with larger/busier servers.

41.73 came with crashes on Linux servers, and the version with the updated Steam API we put into the Unstable beta in 41.74 turned out to bring in as many issues as it solved.

As such Yuri and Andrei are currently working on another approach that will be going into Unstable beta (and then Stable) as soon as we can muster which will have the crashes fixed, and should also have increased networking performance and improved connection stabilities for everyone. Were hoping to conduct an internal test on it tomorrow.

In essence the game will now also use direct communication with dedicated servers, instead of going entirely through Steams own networking. This should improve things for all players on dedicated servers including the Linux servers that were sadly the canary in the coalmine that flagged up the fact that something needed to be done here.

Again, our apologies to those impacted we are thinking of ways to repair some of the damage done during the outage and appreciate your frustration.

[h3]THEN[/h3]
We have a staging branch backstage that all our coders are feeding aspects of their work that they wouldnt want people to have to wait until Build 42 for so no big features, but instead a lot of fixes and balance.

We will also be trying to limit mod disruption and big/controversial changes, as this will be the version that we leave folks with for quite a while when all of us are 100% working on new features alongside the existing 42 team. (Apart from anything urgent we might need to attend to on 41, clearly).

The sorts of things were currently testing for this patch include: many and various visual issues with the cutaway system, colour blind accessibility options, better crate highlights, many recipe improvements, better ways for the game to handle car alarms and (hopefully) fixes for sounds cutting out in busy MP situations.

Theres also some new 3D models where weve had icon mismatches, new tooltips to better explain what different items can do, weight/encumbrance rebalancing on some items, the lighter/Molotov fix we mentioned last time and many and varied other fixes. Weve also done some work improving the in-game server browser that we would certainly like to include as well.

Theres a lot of other stuff too, but you probably get the gist. Nothing thats going to rock the boat, but also enough stuff to keep the boat sailing until we reach the glittering shores of 42.

[h3]MAP NEXT[/h3]
While we cant and wont go into forensic detail on which towns and what design themes were going for, its perhaps time to talk about the next map expansion which will most likely hit with 42.

Xeonyx and Ayrton are essentially pushing the map out on all sides, apart from beyond the games traditional Ohio River boundary.



The map team are returning to fictionalised versions of real places on the Kentucky map Riverside and March Ridge being entirely fictional. We dont want to name exactly which ones, but it might be worth mentioning one of them will be Ekron.

The location currently commonly known as Ekron within the community is not supposed to be our version of that place, and (for reasons that will become explicit when viewed on the PZ map) is internally known as Fallas Lake. We will erect a sign in Build 42 to make this information more prominent.

Heres a few WIP screens of some of our future locations to keep you all going.






[h3]ALSO[/h3]
Other things currently being worked on for B42 inclusion that we havent mentioned before are:

• The Sound Team are working on sprinter zed growls and screams our first inspirations here will be the Dawn of the Dead remake but we will iterate until we get it right. Formosa have also created a variety of bullet impact noises (on cars, dirt, glass, plastic, trees, walls and wood) that we will be integrating come 42, alongside the further improvement of the dynamic music system. They will also clearly have their hands full with the cows, chickens, sheep, improved fishing and many and various new post-apocalypse items and actions that B42 will bring along with it.
• 
  RJ is currently experimenting with rats, which could also become part of the Knox Event alongside domestic animals. Martin, meanwhile, has been working on animal transportation namely new trailers and potential new vehicles.
• Pat_Bren has been expanding the breadth of different TV and radio channels available to tune into at the start of the outbreak, and is now moving onto some other frequencies that players might be lucky enough to come across later on within the PZ timeline too. Right now hes added Public Access TV, a Music channel, a Sports channel, a movie channel, a new entertainment channel and a radio station called Upper South Radio.

Hey all, weve had our heads deep in MP stuff this past ten days so please excuse a blog thats heavy on busywork and housekeeping.

We released 41.73 to stable last week, which came with an unanticipated issue that saw Linux servers (of which there are many) having frequent crashes generally when multiple users tried to connect at the same time.

This wasnt great, to say the least, so a lot of the B41 teams bandwidth has gone into investigating, testing and finding a solution for this over the last ten days.

Weve recently released version 41.74 to the Unstable beta, which has fixed the crash issue at our end and we would ask that anyone who hasnt been able to play due to linux server crashes to try it out. This includes a full update to Valves latest Steam API.

If you continue to experience crashes on the Unstable branch after this patch, please head to our Discord techsupport channel or forums and send us your hs_err_pid**.log file (youll find this in the server installation folder) in addition to a download link to a .zip file of your Home/Zomboid folder (remove the Saves folder from it to save space).

Doing a wholesale update to the Steam networking interface like this isnt small beans, and it has thrown up a few issues that we will be remedying in the coming days but in the interest of getting folks missing out on their PZ ASAP we have released the fix to Unstable to get people back on-board, and report back on any other misbehaviour.

We will also be making some of the new anti-cheat additions far less twitchy, as these too caused issues for some people on 41.73 launch.

[h3]NEXT PATCH[/h3]
Slightly logjammed behind 41.74 is a wide-ranging patch full of many and various things. To minimise future disruption to B41 players we are thinking that it may well be the last major patch before all coders are moved to B42 and more feature-based development.

Clearly there will still be fixes and maintenance where necessary. Well be wanting to leave 41 in the best state that we can, and with as many annoyances removed as possible. Plans can change of course, but this currently our direction.

Some of the logjammed items ready-coded and awaiting internal integration and testing are:

Note: Parts of this patch were previously released as a 41.73 Unstable hotfix.*
A version bump ensures players running the Stable client get a clearer error (version mismatch) when connecting to servers running the Unstable branch.

This patch addressed the Linux server crashes.
Please let us know about any remaining crashes and the performance you're experiencing.

If you continue to experience crashes on the Unstable branch after this patch, please send us your hs_err_pid**.log file (you'll find this in the server installation folder) in addition to a .zip file of your Home/Zomboid folder (remove the "Saves" folder from it to save space). If you're submitting them outside of our Discord techsupport channel, please make sure to provide a download link from your filesharing service of choice.


[h3]MP[/h3]

[h3]41.73 compiled changelist, also including 41.72 from the unstable branch[/h3]

Due to character limitations, the full changelog can be found on our forums and in the pastebin below:
https://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php?/topic/58075-4173-released
https://pastebin.com/PW9F8TNn


[h3]NEW[/h3]

- Added the MapRemotePlayerVisibility server option for Multiplayer.
1 = Remote players aren't visible on the in-game map
2 = Remote players in the same faction or sharing a safehouse are visible
3 = Remote players are always visible

- The OPT button in the in-game map that was previously visible only in debug mode or for admins is now always visible.
When not in debug mode, these options are available:
- Players
- Remote Players (client only)
- Player Names (client only)
- Symbols

- Added MapRemotePlayerVisibility server option to the server-settings editor and admin panel.

- Added a new volume slider to the Audio options which affects the jump-scare sound.

- Fixed updates to the map causing zombies to spawn inside previously cleared buildings.
- Fixed BuildingDef.calculateMetaID() and RoomDef.calculateMetaID() possibly creating the same ID for different buildings or rooms. This was why zombies would respawn in some already-seen rooms.

- Give zombies that are targeting a player higher priority for pathfinding than other zombies.

- Added new loot maps from Pat Bren.
- Split the single Louisville map-item into nine separate maps.
- Added Louisville maps to the loot tables.

- Gas container tooltip tweaks:
1) When adding fuel to a generator, tooltips show the percentage the generator's fuel percentage will increase.
2) When adding/siphoning fuel to/from a vehicle, tooltips show the item capacity in liters (to match the mechanics ui).
3) When taking fuel from a gas pump, tooltips show the item capacity in drainable units.

- Updated Community Translations
- Added icons + textures for Medical/Trauma Bag and Canned Fruit Beverage.

- Added highlighting to changed Zombie Lore Sandbox Options (options that differ from Apocalypse mode are highlighted).
- Added an "AttachedToGlass" tile prop to fix signs attached to windows not being removed when breaking the window.
- Prevent the loot window from popping open when clicking on objects when using the furniture-manipulation tools.

- Added "Default=" to combobox sandbox-option tooltips.

- Allow empty bottles to store gasoline.
- Added water capacity in context tooltip when filling water container (if only 1 item type)
- Updated community translations.
- Updated credits.

- Improved icon draw for context menu
- Added ISContextMenu.addDebugOption() which adds an option with iconTexture=media/ui/BugIcon.png.
- Added a way to rename a savefile in the load-game "More..." panel.

- Added the various pictures frame missing (not spawning yet, also no inventory icon yet - currently using empty frame icon)

- Allow building double doors inside buildings. This is to fix a bug where double doors couldn't be built on some outer walls of buildings.
- Added checks for wall-like obstacles that should prevent opening or closing double doors.
- Don't allow building stairs where there are walls or obstacles at the top. The player will pass through these when going up the stairs. Building walls or obstacles at the top of stairs was already disallowed.

- Incorporated Baph's latest additions, which include: new movable script items; new modder-orientated procedural distributions tables; new zombie outfit distributions; new vehicle distributions; more through junk tables; new items.
- Longer evolved recipe names; now up to 3 ingredients will be displayed in the display name of compound recipe items.
- Updated ISAddItemToRecipe and translation text with translation string support for new recipe naming system.

- Added a panel to the Attachment Editor (Shift-F7) that is displayed when a "world" attachment is selected. This new panel displays the selected model as it would appear on the ground.

- Removed the -Xss1280k stack-size JVM parameter from Linux ProjectZomboid.json files.
- Increased Linux and Mac -Xmx=2048m to -Xmx=3072m max-heap JVM parameter to match Windows.


[h3]SFX[/h3]

- Updated sound banks.
- New action music track.
- Fixed one male zombie voice looping the Hit sound.
- Added missing sound for taking water from a dispenser.

- Added an ambient sound to the Gas-2-Go pumps.

- Set the value of the FMOD parameter "Generator" on powered items so they play a sound when powered by a generator.

- Added ZombieCrawlLungeSwing and ZombieCrawlLungeHit sounds for zombie fence/window crawling attacks.
- Zombies play their Attack and GettingUp sounds during fence/window crawling attack animation.

[h3]MAP[/h3]

- Full export of the current Knox Event map. This will be the final B41 map update.
- Updates many farms and farmsteads
- Improves upper class areas in Louisville
- Adds many new tiles on the tilesheets
- Fixes many and various community-reported map issues and bugs

[h3]FOOD AND RECIPES[/h3]

- New Ice Cream Cones now melt and produce a Melted Ice Cream Cone item.
- New Gravy Boat, Baloney Slices, Salami, Salami Slices, and Snack Cakes models.
- New Canned Condensed Milk item; can be used for the same recipes as milk.
- Balance adjusted assorted values of food items and recipes.
- Appropriate bottles can now hold gasoline.
- Baloney and salami can be sliced.
- Many food items have more options for being used as evolved recipe ingredients.
- Recipes for Onigiri; Baguette Dough; Biscuit Dough; Meat Patty; Scooping Ice Cream; and Trays of Cookie Dough.
- Crayons can be used to write notes and mark the map.
- Toast can be made from Bread Slices by cooking them.
- New recipe for a Cheese Sandwich item; cook a Cheese Sandwich to make it into a Grilled Cheese Sandwich.
- Evolved Recipes for Ice Cream Cones; Sweet Pies; Bread; Toast; Bowls of Oatmeal; Mixed Beverages; and Glasses of Wine and Beer. This makes it possible to make foods such as Ice Cream Cones with candy and fruit on them, chocolate, cheese, or sunflower seed Bread, Toast with beans or avocado on it, Bowls of Oatmeal with berries and honey, cocktails, and such.
- Whole Pizza item added.
- Glasses and cup items can be filled with water.
- WildGarlic item replaced by WildGarlic2 which is edible; this was done so that Wild Garlic could be a food item and be used in recipes. Otherwise identical to the old Wild Garlic.
- Canned Condensed Milk item; can be used for the same recipes as milk.
- Maggots that spawn with zombie corpses will be mildly poisonous.
- Added evolved recipe item PizzaRecipe; "Pizza(Uncooked)" can be used to make an evolved recipe pizza with toppings.
- When Hot Drink beverages are made using Black Sage, Common Mallow, or Lemon Grass the medicinal properties of those items are transferred to the Beverage, "Herbal Teas".
- For herbal tea purposes, Hot Drinks are more flexible re ingredients and have special naming.
- Coffee and Espresso Machine stoves will now only accept mugs and other appropriate items.
- Added placeholder texture for Bag_MedicalBag.
- Added BrokenGlass tag to broken glass movables and smashed bottle, and added recipecode code for the tag, for modding purposes.
- Added support for the tag "SewingNeedle"; this will allow modders to add new mod items that can perform tailoring and wound stitching tasks.
- More flexible Tag support for writing notes.
- Added Tomato Paste item for pizza crafting.
- Added Prepare Pizza recipe to make a RecipePizza base evolved recipe item.

[h3]BALANCE[/h3]
- Baloney, Salami, Ham, Onions, and Watermelon must be sliced before being able to be used in evolved recipes.
- Watermelon must be sliced or smashed before being able to eat it.
- Values of many food items adjusted for balance, consistency, and QOL purposes such as allowing one instance of an item to be used in more evolved recipe portions.
- Only Bread Slices and Toast can be placed inside Toasters.
- Some recipes now require a bowl as well as a spatula, spoon or fork, to mix ingredients.
- Many recipes adjusted to allow for more ingredient flexibility.
- Hot water is now required to make Bowls of Oatmeal. Tim is now satisfied.
- Added new param to Recipe: "InSameInventory". When this param true items gets only from same outermost inventory. (Need for fix Rip clothing only from player inventory or only from Floor/Container)
- Changed Rip Clothing recipe
- HandWeapon.weaponSprite is saved if it is different than the item-script's value.
- Slightly increased zed attraction to gunshots in MP
- Reduced the endurance loss when missing a hit (especially when pushing).
- Set sprite properties on the "Wood Pegboard" and "Wood Top Workbench" in location_business_machinery_01 so they are movable.
- Added all the missing translations to Moveables_EN.txt. Any missing translations for this are printed to the console when loading a game.
- Added a "Slice Onion" recipe so Fried Onion Rings can be made.
- Made the Composter thumpable by zombies.

- Sometimes the corpses that spawn as the player explores the world will be fake dead.
- As corpses progress in rot stages they have a chance of becoming fake dead.
- Additional appropriate corpses spawned in randomized world stories will rarely be fake dead.
- As corpses progress in rot stages they have a chance of spawning maggots in their inventory and in their square.

- Food value and evolved recipe name adjustments for more flexible recipe usage and shorter compound names.
- Obese is now mutually exclusive with Light Eater and Very Underweight is mutually exclusive with Hearty Appetite at character creations.

- Adjusted weight of Spears
- Floor tiles will now provide a maximum of 1 nail when dismantled.
- Eggs are dangerous uncooked but now with a greatly reduced chance of causing food sickness.
- Ice Cream Cones now melt and produce a Melted Ice Cream Cone item.

- Ginseng now provides an Endurance Buff when used to make a Hot Beverage as a spice.
- Added Basil to more recipes.
- Better handling of evolved recipe item name when they only have spice ingredients.

- Added the ability to install Makeshift Radios into vehicles; this was done for consistency with the requested fix of allowing Makeshift HAM radios to be installed in Ham radio vehicles.
- Allow vehicles that have HAM radios to allow any sort of HAM radio installed in them; Luxury and Modern Cars will also always spawn with Premium Radios installed.
- CDs in Premium radios will transfer to/from the vehicle they are being installed into/uninstalled from.


[h3]ANIMS[/h3]

- Added new fill from bourbon bottle anim
- Changed fill from bourbon bottle xml to use new anim

Emote Wheel adjustments:
- Adjusted some emote bone masks to reduce clipping
- Added some stealth emote versions to reduce clipping and posing awkwardness
- Added emote states for different weapon poses

- Added an eating animation for WaterPotPasta WaterPotRice. The animation is the same as for drinking out of a pot.

Idle extension adjustments:
- Adjusted normal stance extensions bone masks to avoid clipping and awkward poses
- Added normal stance extensions anims, where appropriate
- Added normal stance extension xml for different weapon stances, where appropriate

- Added masks to extended idle xmls to not clip as much,
- Added relevant extended idle anims where needed
- Capped off hoodieUP xfiles to stop transparency
- Adjusted hoodieUP texture for new cap
- Added blood locations to a couple of missing shirts
- Re-exported female and zombie female base textures after eliminating some erroneous pixels causing holes
- Adjusted Hat_Spiffo mask to display properly on character
- re-exported missed zombie body textures that had outlying pixels
- Adjusted male and female HighViz vests to visually work similar to hunting vests
- Reworked Male and Female HighViz vests
- Changed HighViz vest body location
- Tweaked Hunting vest masks to work better with underlying clothes


[h3]MP[/h3]

- Various anti-cheat improvements

- Sync and physics improvements for vehicles.
- Refactored and decreased vehicle physics packet size.
- Vehicle interpolation was refactored and improved .

- Improved towing physics and behaviour.
- Updated PZBullet library on all platforms.
- Rope constraint is added to PZBullet. Now used for vehicles instead of z-offset for point-to-point constraint.


- Optimized Vehicle authorization on exit

- Allow admins to repair clothes via Edit -> Condition, and remove holes when the item is set to max condition when the item is in their inventory.
- Visual data for damaged/fixed clothing will now sync between clients.

- Hit reaction translation length is now calculated by appropriate animation clip

- Use WaveSignal packet on client
- Improve auth/towing for cases with two drivers/swap tow

- Stopped clients updating rotting corpses and fake-dead corpses.
- Added check for IsoDeadBody.getHumanVisual() being null.

- Server will send the success result of recipes checksum validation if the client is untouchable.
- The game will calculate the checksum using the original recipe name.


- The driver now stops the vehicle before they exit from the vehicle or switch seat.
- Added ISBaseTimedAction timed action.
- The BaseVehicle.setForceBrake function was added. Calling this function activates the brakes for 1 second.

- The SystemDisabler.doDisableTunePhysicDelay variable was added

- If FPS is capped the updatePhysic function receives time delta uses the PerformanceSettings.getLockFPS function.

- The game server will not send the PlayerUpdateReliable packets from players who are far away.

- Improvements for some anti-cheat checks
- ServerOptions to enable/disable AntiCheatProtectionType checks for types 21-24 are added.
- Added log message for LUA debugger


- Improve vehicle logging
- Add DebugLogStream noise methods
- Logs can be filtered by severity
- Reformatted log streams for damage, death, and multiplayer log types

- Added server log command for vehicle traces (ex.: "log vehicle trace" or "log ve t" for short)
- Command entered in general chat tab changes severity on the client
- Command entered in admin chat tab changes severity on the server

- Increased allowed map_meta.bin and map_zone.bin file size from 20MB to 50MB in multiplayer.

- Fixed Zed appearance not syncing between players.
- Fixed one player being able to use two radios / walkie talkies.
- Fixed text not displaying above the placed HAM radio if there is a Walkie talkie in your hands.
- Fixed vehicle radio using wrong coordinates.
- Fixed vehicle radio not working in the same way as world placed radio.
- Fixed other vehicle radio issues (radio stations, text, chat, VOIP).
- Fixed vehicle radio text processing.
- Fixed trailer authorizations / floaty trailers.
- Fixed Item Remove tool not removing items from containers on a server.
- Fixed clients sending StopSound packets to the server for zombie vocals.
- Fixed clients sending climb-over-fence sounds and climb-through-window sounds for players and zombies. It seems each client runs the ClimbOverFenceState and ClimbThroughWindowState, so these sounds may be kept local.
- Fixed clients sending climb-over-wall sounds.
- Fixed seat authorizations.
- Fixed null pointer exception in the VehicleManager.serverPacket function.
- Fixed incorrect delay-tuning algorithm.
- Fixed issues with Handle BufferOverflowException sending map_meta.bin and map_zone.bin for servers that use many map mods.
- Fixed issues when characters are hit by trailers.
- Fixed corpses disappeared when killed by trailer
- Fixed issues with vehicle physics debug log messages.
- Fixed Admin being kicked because of incorrect checksum.
- Fixed car changing its place after re-login.
- Fixed normal vehicle not being removable in mods.
- Fixed movement sound when vehicle is stopped.
- Fixed movement sound when player changed seat from driver to passenger. Redundant vehicle packet EngineSound flag is removed.
- Fixed disappearing trailers.
- Fixed physics update limits.
- Fixed a vehicle and towed vehicle having different physic delays right after they were attached, causing clients to see the two closer than they actually were.
- Fixed attached cars being disconnected after re-login.
- Fixed passenger not being able to exit attached car if they occupy driver's seat while the car is being towed.
- Fixed attached trailer twitching after player gets in car. The server gives authorization for a short time to a player if both vehicles don't have drivers.
- Fixed empty RequestGetFull being sent.
- Fixed vehicle passenger could have vehicle authorization after collision.
- Fixed vehicle collision owner.
- Fixed tow re-attach.
- Fixed vehicle seat switching.
- Fixed passengers seeing black boxes at high speeds.
- Fixed vehicle not damaging players after re-login.
- Fixed vehicle local simulation pass through another vehicle.
- Fixed player can't become owner of pushed vehicle.
- Fixed bouncing vehicle authorization at the end of local simulation.
- Fixed player can exit or sleep in moving car.
- Fixed rare incorrect vehicles authorization after towing.
- Fixed engine sound disappearing without a driver.
- Fixed car not stopping when driver changes their place due to cruise control.
- Fixed error when try to type "[" in Item list viewer.
- Fixed bug in the GameTime class. The class had insufficient precision when calculating the time in the syncServerTime function.
- Fixed car stopping condition. The vehicle is stopped if the speed is less than 0.8 kmph.
- Fixed clipping vehicles.
- Fixed remote cars lag. The stepSimulation function will receive fixed update period. This period will not depend from FPS.
- Fixed Vehicle simulation speed depending on locked fps.
- Fixed the server kicking players when SystemDisabler.doAllowDebugConnections variable was set to true.

- Added MapRemotePlayerVisibility server option to the server-settings editor and admin panel.


[h3]MODS[/h3]

- Improved log for lua errors. Now it shows if it modified file error
- Added list of mods in Pause menu + this list show mods that cause errors
- Added additional check to Vehicle Create, Update and Install Radios that may help prevent mods that modify what data is sent to it from causing errors.


[h3]FORAGING[/h3]

- Adjusted the position of foraging pin icons and direction arrows. The arrows always pointed to the northwest corner of a square, which didn't look right for dropped items.

- Turn the player to face a forage item when picking it up.

- Fixed the foraging system not handling non-rectangular zones (i.e., polygon or thick polyline zones).
- Zone.getRandomSquareInZone() now handles polygon and thick polyline zones.
- Zone.getTotalArea() returns the area of polygon and thick polyline zones.
Note this isn't an accurate count of the squares in such zones, it is the sum of the area of each triangle that forms the polygon.
For other types of zones, width * height is returned.
- Added the OnLoadedMapZones event which is called after map_zone.bin is loaded.
As before, the existing OnLoadMapZones event is triggered before map_zone.bin is loaded.
- forageSystem.init() is called by the new OnLoadedMapZones event instead of OnLoadMapZones.
- forageSystem.integrityCheck() checks whether the original map zone represented by each ForageZone still exists.

- Changed double click behaviour of search mode pins to place items into the current selected player inventory panel if possible
- Adjusted the search mode snow cover penalty limit as snowy weather combination could easily hit the penalty cap
- Fixed an exploit with search focus when spamming the search mode button which could force items to change type
- Fixed a visual issue with search focus trigger after spotting items which caused picked up items to sometimes be the original item


[h3]ADMIN/DEBUG[/h3]

- Added Brush Tool for copying, destroying, and building specific Tiles, as well as a Fire, Smoke, and Explosion-Brush. .
- Controls:
- Turn on Brush Tool cheat via the Debug Menu -> "Cheats" -> "Brush Tool"..
- Right-Click on any tile -> "Brush Tool Manager", "Copy tile", "Destroy Tile".
- When a tile was picked from the Bruth Tool Manager -> keys "[" and "]" for scrolling between tiles.

- Added trigger thunder tool (for admins).
- Added respawn new loot in container by RMC-ContextOption on container button (when LootZed cheat on or isAdmin).

- Changed LootZed manager opening on RMC-ContextOption on container button.
- Allowed admin to create any VHS out of spawned VHS-home (like in debug).
- Added sync for Health panel cheats.
- Trailers debug is improved.
- Small fix to Lua closure.
- Improved spawn vehicle menu.
- Added ability to change weight in Player Stats window.

- Added destroying objects without a sledgehammer if building cheat is on.
- Added sliders for change weight and calories in debug panel.
- Added Step Into, Step Over, and Resume buttons to the Lua debugger.


- Improved ContextMenu
- Now you can add icons for context options:
local myOption = context:addOption("My option name", ...)
myOption.iconTexture = getTexture("media/ui/MyIconForOption.png")

- Added new functions for context: insertOptionAfter(...), insertOptionBefore(...), removeOptionByName(...), getMenuOptionNames(...)
- Improved Debug/Admin options.

- Added new options for doors - Now you can set a building ID for doors and force-lock doors inside buildings.
- Added Door Options can be found in the Right-Click Context Menu -> Objects.
- To lock a door inside a building, set a Building Key ID for the door, set Force-Lock to "True" and click "Objects" -> "Door Lock" in the context menu. A key for the door can be spawned via the "Get Key" option.

- Added 'make noise' options to attract zombies.
- Added option for removing all zombies in a zone to the Admin tools.
- Added icons in context menu for ADMIN/DEBUG options.
- Added elapsed time since server started in server statistics info.
- Added access to some Admin tools for moderators.
- Added an external anim debug UI for Martin.

- Removed the line "Press Esc to open Admin panel" from Server toolbox UI

Hello all! Afraid this will be a more hastily put together than usual Thursdoid, usual Thursdoid writer is away this week, and we originally planned to do a stable release today.

Last minute, however, literally a couple of hours ago in fact, we concluded that this would be a bad idea not only in the middle of the Steam Survival Sale, but also a big week long and rather huge Spanish streamer event (go check it out!) that heralded some of our biggest Twitch numbers ever (thanks again to Silithur for organizing it!).

Stable releases are always nerve-wracking, but doubled up with the zombie respawn issues that weve been struggling with on unstable it just felt like a bad time to throw any dice. We believe those issues are fixed, and have done significant internal testing, however throwing it in front of a huge number of players on stable we cant be absolutely sure it wont still cause problems, particularly with mods, so doing a release today under these circumstances seemed a risky endeavour with so many new people being exposed to the game.

As such, we will likely wait until the coming Monday to flip the switch. This gives us a few more days to see if the zombie spawning reports on the unstable branch start to disappear after the fix went live and is probably the safer option, as eager as we are to see the update out and free up the team for bigger commits toward the next update.


[h3]41.73[/h3]

So for those who havent dipped their toe into unstable, heres a few highlights of what to expect:

Haylo survivors.

[h3]41.73 STABLE[/h3]
We have the next patch to the stable branch primed and ready to go, however an issue that our fantastic Unstable beta testers have flagged is keeping it held in its pen for a little longer.

Players reported that some houses theyd cleared were spawning zeds upon booting up the new build, which alerted us to a snag in our map export process not dealing with map boundaries changing with map expansions. All previous map expansions came along with forced save incompatibility so this crept through unnoticed until now.

While its an aggravation rather than a save-breaker, we didnt want to send a build with a known issue out to the masses and have spent the last few days setting up a fix. This will need some testing, after which well be looking to pump out the latest version next week.

If youre interested in the changelist, or want to jump in to try it out, then you can find the unstable release notes for 41.72 and 41.73 behind the hotlinks.


[h3]42 CONTENT[/h3]
One of the focus points of Build 42 is on extended survival in the months and years beyond the initial Knox Event outbreak.

For this, we are revamping our crafting system and Turbos role has been in laying new foundations for a set-up that allows for: crafted items that have more RPG-like variable attributes based on the crafters skill, stats of input items that are reflected in the attributes of a final output item, and the ability of the game itself to recognise all these different attributes when an item is being passed between all of its various different locations and systems.

The next stage of this work, meanwhile, has been in taking this same sort of mentality to the liquids in the game and also making them ever more interesting in our new crafting set-up.


[h3]WET STUFF[/h3]
Lets start with a video, and then move into some explanation.

[previewyoutube=WI8ESJBOZt4;full][/previewyoutube]

So what exactly does this mean for the water, paint, gas, alcohol, washing detergent and bleach of the Knox Event?

Essentially all fluids will be defined and stored in a global registry, which is where we as devs can add new vanilla liquids but also will make the system very moddable.

Each definition will store basic info such as ID, name, colour etc then has different categories it can belong to like Beverage, Alcoholic, Fuel, Flammable and such. Beyond that we also tie in properties per litre of this particular fluid: for example Carbs, Proteins, Alcohol percentage or Energy if its a flammable fuel.

Liquids that are hazardous or poisonous can also have modifiers that configure the maximum poison effect, and how the effect behaves when mixed.

So yes, were going to have the most realistic bleach-drinking ever seen in gaming.


[h3]CONTAINERS[/h3]



Containers are the coding class that actually store the fluids, and are the way in which the game code interacts with the above definitions.

Inventory items, objects found in the world and vehicles will all have a fluid container which will allow them to store and use the liquids/fuels/whatever that they contain. Each container also has information stored with it that shows what particular fluids have been mixed in, and their content percentages relative to each other.

The system calculates and caches the summary of all the containing fluids properties based on their percentages. So, if you add 80% Soda and 20% pure alcohol the mixture fluid in the container will have 80% of the sodas carbs, proteins etc and 20% alcohol. Then, when transferred again, the right ratios will still be maintained.


[h3]USAGE[/h3]
Finally, we hear you cry, cocktail mixing will be a part of the apocalypse!

Yes, but also consider the applications this will bring to post-apocalyptic crafting as well as to more basic stuff like mixing paints to create different colours, providing different fuels and different ways to tamper with said fuels.

Certain versions of our planned workstations, say one for brewing, could have one or more fluidcontainers attached while also allowing other ingredients as item inputs. Likewise we can have recipes that require more precise mixing and concentrations should we desire it.



The system does retain some control over your Georges Marvellous Medicine creations. We can put limits around what can, and cannot, be mixed however were not 100% on how many limitations we will put on things right now. This will probably come through testing later down the line.

Unrestricted mixing would mean, for example, that any Fluid can be mixed with Fuel, which would mean that the energy value property per litre would go down when mixed, and that anything using the fuel such as a car or generator would have its operation and potential damage governed by the sort of fuel that had been put in.

The ability to recognise tampered fuel, poison etc. would (as usual) be gated behind the games professions so a mechanic might smell something suspicious with watered down gas, or a chef might spot something odd with a mild concentration of something nasty in a bottle of juice.

When it comes to poisonous liquids, each has a maximum effect (mild, medium, severe, deadly etc) and control parameters such as a minimum volume and mix ratio. So, if a poison has max effect deadly and the minimum amount required for death is 200ml and you have 100ml mixed into a bottle then the final effect when drinking will most likely be a medium poisoning.

The new system will also add new depth to such things as filling up a vehicle with gas, or siphoning gas from a cars tank but well also retain the games current quick context options like fill bottle from tap to keep things speedy.


[h3]HUTCHES[/h3]
Domestic and wild animals, albeit with fairly basic AI brains, will also be a part of Build 42 and we have already shown our cows, sheep and deer. A fairly realistic take on poultry-keeping will also be part of this.

Please note the following UI is super WIP! We may well end up with icons instead of the 3D chickens.



Based on our own experiences with keeping chickens if you have a henhouse you will have to close its door every night after your brood have gone in to roost. Otherwise theres a very real chance of Fantastic Mister Fox paying a visit and stealing a few, and potentially leave others dead in their pen.

Youd be advised not to forget to let your hens back out in the morning either for fear of them losing their condition, and adding to the mess in the henhouse that will need cleaning out.

Hens will also enter the nesting boxes within the henhouse to lay their eggs, and from which youll have to collect the eggs on a regular basis if you havent collected recently then hens will choose to lay outside in their pen instead, where theres an added risk of them being eaten by wild animals or going bad.


[h3]OTHER STUFF[/h3]
While were going in DEEP (as is generally our way) on stuff like the above Build 42 will also feature all manner of other improvements to the game engine, MP systems and general zombie survival and early game stuff too. So dont fret too much if aspects of the above dont exactly match your own play-style.

It should also be said that its still some ways off partly because of dev illness (and recovery!) that weve discussed before, and partly because a proportion of the team are still maintaining and improving Build 41.

From now on youll likely notice the changelist of 41 patches shrink a little, as team members are taken off 41 and plugged into work on features within the 42 matrix.


[h3]JOB AD AGAIN[/h3]
We are back on the hunt for an Animations Engineer / Technical Wizard most likely someone from the AAA game development space who has pines for joining a close-knit team of indie devs. If this is you, or someone you know, then our job page lives here!

This weeks forlorn firemen from OtakuYazawa. 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 dev and want to work with us? Details here.

Barring any necessary hotfixes, this will likely be the last unstable patch before pushing the contents of 41.72 and 41.73 into the main stable branch.


[h3]NEW[/h3]

[h3]NEW[/h3]

Today we are releasing version 41.72 to the Unstable beta.

If you need directions to this, then heres a handy gif!



As always with the Unstable beta be aware that some mods might break.

We dont anticipate a huge amount of disruption with 41.72, but should any of your workshop mods become non-operational then please inform the relevant creators and be patient while they find the time to update their wares. They have jobs / families / lives too!

So whats in 41.72? Well the changelist can be found here on our forums, and theres a lot of small tweaks and fixes to scroll through, but well detail the main stuff here also.

Its always HUGELY helpful for us when people, and server owners, jump over to the unstable beta so please dive in and let us know how you find it.

[h3]41.72[/h3]

Hello survivors! Today marks the beginning of one of the most significant and important periods in the modern worlds social and religious calendar: the Steam Summer Sale!


Because of this, all you existing survivors will no doubt get a little swamped with all the fresh meat turning up for the PZ grinder.

The Zomboid community has always been amazing in terms of supporting new players, and this time wont be any different, but our tech and support teams will be working flat-out most likely.

As such we just thought wed say that (entirely fictitious and non-existent) bonus Spiffo points will be available for those who jump into threads to give advice or survival tips to survivors fresh to the Knox Event.

Likewise if you are one of the aforementioned noobs: hello! This is a dev blog we do every two weeks.


[h3]PATCH 41.72[/h3]
We are still working on the next update to Build 41, which we are hoping to release to an Unstable beta as soon as we possibly can.

The hold-up (we were originally planning to put this out two weeks ago) is due to us wanting to smoothen out MP issues that arise when driving alongside (or in the same car as) players with a far higher or lower ping than yourself. It becomes very stop-start, and quite unplayable.

These are essentially the edge-case ramifications of the necessary decision we made to remove physics-calculations from the server, but there are a lot of people playing PZ these days so edge-cases arent an inconsiderable number of players.

The MP team have put a LOT of work into improving this over the past two weeks, and as soon as weve had a successful internal test with their latest changes we will feel in a position to punt the build out into unstable.

A top line of major changes in 41.72 includes: fellow players optionally visible on the in-game map, new loot maps, new SFX and a new music track, polished emotes and a new way for players to be able to identify exactly which mods are misbehaving when they throw errors. Also an admin brush tool letting server chiefs paint items and walls etc. onto an ongoing game, and reams of small issue bug fixes.

Additions that have gone in over the last two weeks also include:

Hey all, heres a quick update on what we are all up to.

Our initial plan was to release our next 41.72 patch to the Unstable beta today, but annoyingly last nights internal playtest had too many niggles with vehicle gameplay for us to comfortably let you loose on it.

This is slightly annoying in terms of todays blog, but probably not quite as annoying as you happily downloading the new version only for MP passengers to be stuck revving on the tarmac while their drivers whizz off towards Louisville.

Still, once the MP Strike Force have checked everything out and weve had another (more successful) test then this is some of the stuff that will be punted out for you to try out:

• As mentioned in the last blog, the opt-in ability to see fellow MP players in your faction or safehouse on your in-game map.


• A huge range of new and improved admin powers that should breathe a little more life into online play. First and foremost of these is a brush tool that will allow admins to create tiles, walls, fire, smoke, water etc. in-game.
  
  Theres also the ability to easily trigger thunder, a more synced health panel, improved spawning of vehicles and trailers and the ability to change player weights. Also, also are more zombie-attracting options, improved zed spawns and some powers over whether doors are locked or not.
  
  Heres a quick video Aiteron has made to show it all off:
  [previewyoutube=re09QALrvl8;full][/previewyoutube]


• Another more minor, but quite pleasant all the same, addition from Aiteron is the possibility of adding icons to the context menu. As seen here.

• New loot maps. Previously we didnt have any loot maps for Louisville, but Tim has now integrated a bunch from the hand of Pat_Bren into the loot table. There are nine different maps in all, which means that as well as the usual treasure map aspects you will be able to reveal a ninth of the Louisville map upon reading them.




• Also of note in .72 is an improvement to the way in which mod errors are reported. We have added a list of mods to the pause menu, and if one of them is causing errors and the red box of doom then the culprit will be highlighted within the list.


• Perhaps of greater import to mod authors and our tech support team, however, is the improved lua error log that goes with the above: this will show if any files reported in call stacks are overridden by mods. We hope that this will allow modders, players and our own community liaison peeps to easier find mod conflicts and other issues.

• Improvements to how the sound system deals with multiplayer characters and sound priorities. Primary work here is to try and solve the issues where sounds drop out due to clashes in sound priorities and limits when multiple players are around.
• Expand the reactive music beyond action moments. The ultimate goal is to allow the other non-action tracks to evolve and change: triggered by walking into buildings, looting a container, or any other little action that may trigger a change in the track thats playing. Likewise making sure that they all also blend more organically between each other.
• Gameplay related sound effects, like modelling the realistic effects of using firearms in enclosed spaces without ear protectors. Also: improved noises for large crowds of zeds, sprinters and bullet world impacts if the coding team can provide their support for implementation.

Hey all, heres a Thursday round-up. We released version 41.71 last Thursday. Were big on Thursdays around here.
41.71 contained a huge range of stuff, but topline features included: new and improved dynamic action music, a raft of improvements for Steam Deck players, new items, scarecrows, less wobbly and less performance-costly 3D items on your safehouse floor, loads of MP improvements under the hood, the fabled one-watch VHS video fix, new ambient and shutdown noises, modding improvements and tons more.

Better to read the forum release post than a long paragraph in the blog, I guess, if you are in need of a catch-up.

Since last week we hotfixed some issues with sound cut-outs on busy servers and with rapid-fire weapons, and so now we find ourselves moving onto


[h3]41.72[/h3]
Seeing as we already have a fair amount of MP changes, fixes and balance in the pot for .72 at the moment it feels like it wont be too long until we move it into the Unstable beta unless of course a more disruptive feature comes to the boil over the next week or so and requires added internal testing.

The current changelist for what we have in this patch can be seen here if you are interested.

Primary items of note involve a lot of fixes and polish to radio use in-game, improvements to the representation of weapon-part upgrades in 3D models, and various issues with generators and batteries.

Also in the patch will be the opt-in ability for fellow faction and safehouse members to be visible on your in-game map.



And also some support for our colour-blind survivors, who will now be able to choose their favoured new text colours instead of BAD RED and GOOD GREEN. Thanks to Fox for this one.





[h3]BEYOND[/h3]
There are many advantages of having a tight small team when making a game like PZ. However, one of the biggest disadvantages is that when serious irl stuff happens to any of us it makes aspects of development difficult. Weve never really mentioned it before, and still wont go into any detail, but this was one of the reasons that Build 41 itself took a long time to come to complete fruition.

The reason we are bringing this up is because one of the primary architects of the revamped B42 crafting system, Turbo, has been very ill (and often hospitalized) for much of the last three-four months.

Turbs said it was okay to let you all know this, as it clearly has meant that while RJs work on domestic animals and some roaming beasts has been rocketing on ahead Turbos own work on the post-apoc crafting, tech-trees and recipes has had to be on hold.

We are so, so relieved and happy that Turbos treatment led up to an operation and a complete return to health to the extent that he has been back working with us again this week. Its been awesome having him about the place again.

We dont yet know how much this will impact on build content, timings etc, and will be working out whats what in the week or two ahead tho B43 stuff is being worked on in parallel, so it hasnt been detrimental to that.

Sorry if this has been a bit of a too much info update, its probably not something youd catch in a Call of Duty blog, but with Turbos permission, we thought it would give everyone a more accurate insight into where were at with things.

We also hope that everyone will join us in wishing Turbs continued good health a phrase for which the Dutch probably have their own term for and that we will google later on.

To circle back around to more developmental matters-at-hand, heres an image from RJ and Tims work on ways in which our non-domestic animals will roam the map. These are AnimalZone paths that share points, and allow for both long paths that cross cell boundaries and branching paths too.




[h3]MAPPING[/h3]
We love seeing the maps our community produces each with their own flavours, design and challenge. To support all our mappers today we are releasing almost 1500 buildings and associated assets of our own in-game housing, garages, sheds and patio sets for use in community maps.

These should help map-builders flesh out their worlds without having to rely purely on their own constructed (and shared community) houses, flats and outbuildings.

If you are a mapper then you can find the released assets here.

We are not releasing special and governmental/military buildings but there are many, many houses, apartments, sheds, shacks, shops and restaurants here for folks to use in their own apocalyptic zombie nightmares.

In terms of our own future map improvement and expansion, meanwhile, check out what Ayrton has been doing to our Louisville rich districts.

To bring more diversity to some locations of Louisville, I am converting some streets or blocks into Victorian-style districts, it should enable us to add a new layer of complexity to the urban plan with areas that are more/less wealthy, ancient, etc. Those new tiles are also being added across existing relevant buildings.




Elsewhere Aiteron is playing around with his improved fishing system to mix in some added fun quota alongside the improved anims/visuals we showed last time round. Long-term work on server-side items and timed actions for MP continues, and the Noiseworks/Formosa soundscape revolution continues with their next missions due to be discussed in the coming week.

Pat_Bren is also, meanwhile, crafting a bunch more annotated survivor maps to bolster our current stock and also to cover Louisville and other newer areas of the Knox Event map.


[h3]JOB AD AGAIN[/h3]
Following the success of Build 41, we find ourselves in a position where we can hunt down other experienced Games Programmers to join the Project Zomboid team.

We are looking for coders willing and able to refresh some of our older systems, polish the existing ones and then to delve further into the features that will be part of the Knox Events exciting future.

Interested applicants should check our jobs page, but we should underline that we currently dont have any entry-level positions available. You will need to have a fair amount of experience we are afraid.

This weeks touching crime scene from hp.tf. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta begancan be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct yourattention to thePZ Wikishould you feel like editing or amending something, and thePZ Mailing Listthat can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitterright here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.

41.71 compiled changelist

(Includes changes from builds 41.69 to 41.71 from the unstable branch.)


[h3]NEW[/h3]