How do everyone. Back again for update #5, heres the highlights of the last few weeks of Project Zomboid Build 41 development compiled from the Thursday blogs that appear at http://www.projectzomboid.com/blog/ and on the PZ Steam boards. First off, a quick vid that shows the current state of the internal test build. Were not going to tell you whats changed beyond the general polish weve been doing, but please make sure your sound/speakers are turned up. https://youtu.be/FXjWIUW1g54 Second up, heres another video showing off some more gameplay but please make sure you make it to the thrilling/chilling dnouement to see some of the more recently tied-in animations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9OyAF-XgCM Please note that, even though these vids are direct from gameplay and lookin pretty cool, we still have a lot of stuff we want/need to get in before we IWBUMS public beta testing. There's body masking and rotational anim tech from Zac, Savegame improvements from Yuri, a fair amount of MP-poking to get it all operational, more optimization and a several other things besides. This is all falling into place at the moment, but right now a playable beta isnt imminent and well only open it up when the time is right and when were at a point at which were able to deal with the flood of new external feedback. Right now theres nothing that we dont already know needs fixing/improving but as soon as its ready-enough, we will let folks in. With that in mind, then, heres some other stuff thats being cooked up in Spiffos workshop. (And please note that all the following vids were done before the SFX work seen above!)

COMBAT RENOVATIONS

Given as were starting from a slightly blanker slate with Build 41 than we usually do, and combat by necessity is changing to match the improved visuals, these past few weeks we've been making some balance changes to the game. The primary goal of this is to bring Zomboid further into line with the fantasy of living in a zombie apocalypse and making the zed threat as real and as valid as those youd see in a Romero movie or The Walking Dead. So, for example, one of our intentions has been to make sure that combat adheres to the more classic zombie philosophy of threats coming not from the front, but from behind with zeds more likely to take a nice chunk out of your neck or shoulder. Heres a quick video with explanatory subtitles as to what were doing. (We think you'll also agree with us that music man Mister Beever has excelled himself with the new tune here too). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li5xZeImf9c You can read a more in-depth account of the balance changes here, but the general thrust of it is to make individual zombies relatively easy to takedown but crowds of two, three or more far more difficult. Likewise targeting the head of downed zombies will be encouraged, and due to feedback from the community on anims vids we've also upped movement and combat speeds a tad to try make things a little less sluggish.

LEGS THAT HURT

Were currently doing a lot of work on walk speeds, run speeds and movement when youre injured, over-encumbered and such. You can see a video detailing our first iteration of this work below, although our regular weekly blog readers can likely expect a more detailed look at more recent stuff in coming weeks. https://youtu.be/qDSc9ySBS0o First off the video you see a scratch cause a light limp and a limping run. Burns will also have the same impact, alongside cuts a new injury type thats somewhere between our existing scratch and deep wound. After this: a deep wound that triggers heavy walk limps. You can still try to run, but it'll be slow on a par with the walk speed with a light limp. Finally in the vid: a fracture. This is currently a heavy limp, but it will forbid a run. This will also be the case if you have glass shards, bad burns or a leg bite.

NEW WEAPONRY

We havent shown off many of the new weapons in a while, so heres a few. Please note this is a far from exhaustive list, there are more in this build and in builds to come. Also we've not yet balanced speeds and anims for all the weapons, and theres been a lot of balance since this vid was taken, so please don't take anything as final: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLnbOwVq9Xc This is the fifth Steam round-up of development news for Project Zomboid, but weekly Thursdoid blogs are posted both onour website and on the Steam discussion boards. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kepthere so you dont have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct yourattention to thePZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and thePZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitterrighthere!Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Thats all for now, keep tabs on our website for more every week!

[ 2019-06-04 13:43:54 CET ] [ Original post ]