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!

BLOG BEGINS

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:

Alongside the chickens that keep opening doors, five eggs dropped on a wooden floor created a house full of roosters.
Pigs breeding so fast that a piglet horde started to form before one of our testers eyes.
While not a bug, this one was deliberate, heres also a picture of some cows in a strip club. Merry Christmas.
This weeks festive grave visit from ! 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 gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here. Were also on sale at the moment if any of your mates fancies it x

[ 2022-12-22 23:08:52 CET ] [ Original post ]