Mondoid Reposts

[nasKo]

Hello, a short and sweet Mondoid this week – primarily due to the awesome contained within.

 

First off, you know Build 30? That awesome one with all the Medical advances, the Erosion integration and the cool split-screen bizness? Well it looks like this in a surprisingly well-produced, and consistently French, video as produced and directed by Romain – and aided and abetted by EP! [it’s all pretty cool, but make sure you check out the winterscape timelapse at 3:37]

 

 

Second off, do you fancy playing the build itself? Only we’ve just released it on our IWBUMS branch. You can read details on how to access it here, and report the bugs you find in our bug tracker here, and to read more about build 30 here is the complete changelist. This hasn’t been in internal testing too long (there WILL be weirdness that lies within) but we really need wider feedback on how the split-screen and improved controller support is working – and on any issues Erosion starts throwing at you as your game progresses.

 

Finally, what with yule-tide fast approaching the wonderful Connall is organising a Project Zomboid Community Secret Santa program that we heartily endorse. Check out his thread on the forums here, and get involved!

 

Finally, finally – we wish all our American players a healthy and happy Thanksgiving. (We’ve seen it in the films, and it looks great!)

 

That’s about it for this week. Keep your eyes locked onto the TIS twitter for build updates and testing news, and if you can’t then why not subscribe to our newsletter so that anything and everything exciting can be hand-delivered by an electric postman?

[nasKo]

 
Hello everyone. Quick and lazy Mondoid this week since we had video and release goodness last week. Sorry! We’re all hard at work trying to get build 30 up to scratch so it can be promoted from IWBUMS and rolled out to the masses. However there is some cool stuff to talk about.
 

IWBUMS – Build 30 hotfixes
EasyPickins and RJ have been busy fixing a whole host of issues that have been reported, and the build is shaping up quite nicely. There are still a few issues to iron out though but we hope to get the build ready to pump out to everyone soon!
 

Long Term 1.0 Goals
We’re starting to plan out our final march toward 1.0, which we’re hoping will be within the late first quarter of 2015, possibly creeping into Q2. However that’s not an ETA because you know what dark alleyways ETAs lead us down! But we’re going to start focusing on getting the bigger features in there, and bug fixes and some more modest additions, post 31 we need to try and focus our efforts on these bigger goals.
Here is a list of our priorities over the next few months, after we get build 31 and it’s Kill You Before The End Game evilness we detailed a while back, in the likely guestimate at when they will likely drop into the builds:

Stealth Gameplay – Creeping behind fences, peeking and shooting around corners, and all that good stuff. Will shake up the looting game significantly.

TV + Radio – Keep your character from the brink by watching kids shows on the telly, keep them informed by listening to the news on the radio, or maybe even learn a few cooking and crafting tips?

Vehicles – Finally make the long trip between West  Point and Muldraugh in comfort, mow down zombies en route. Siphon gas, and make sure you have a mechanic within your group!

NPCs – Finally. Yes they are being worked on. They are always being worked on. We know. We know!

UI Overhaul – The old UI has served us well, but we have many ideas to vastly improve the PZ game experience, as well as making joypad specific UIs to give joypad players and split-screeners a more comfortable and fluid gaming experience. We’re in talks with a certain company who made a phenomenal UI for another game, and are excited to think what they will be able to bring to ours.

…and of course the map completion, but it’s not clear at this stage if this will appear in stages throughout other things, or we’ll put it in all at once, so I struggle to figure out where to put it in the list above.

This may mean a slight reduction in frequency of builds after build 31, or it may mean that these builds are more bug fixy in nature and have more modest gameplay additions, along with intermittent huge game changing features. It’s all for the greater good though so we hope people understand we need to focus our efforts.

There are obviously many other things we want to do with the game, and as we’ve said before no one should panic that 1.0 means the end. As long as PZ makes enough money to keep the devs stocked up in fish pies (i.e. makes enough money to pay for development) we’ll try and keep the train going as long as possible.
…and while we’re at it…
 

T-T-T-Turbo
To help us in our efforts in marching toward the 1.0 line, we decided we may need some additional help. So why don’t y’all welcome TurboTuTone to the PZ dev team? I know we have! As his first tentative steps into the behemoth that is the PZ codebase, and tackling integrating Will’s extensive TV and Radio channels into the game. Hurrah! Welcome Turbo! <3

This week’s blog post image was sent in by Hunting Nate, aged 7 (not really aged 7 and we took it off the Steam community screenshots, he didn’t send it in, but whatever).

And once again, we remind you to keep your eyes locked onto the TIS twitter for build updates and testing news, and if you can’t then why not subscribe to our newsletter so that our lovely friend and sys-admin saviour Kirrus can shoot PZ info bullets directly into your inbox?

[nasKo]

 

Hello all. Since we’re all busy with trying to get 30 out the door, we’ll just list off a few of the more recent changes we’ve made in IWBUMS 30.7 which should be released around the time of this Mondoid (perhaps a bit after) – We’ve made the decision to bump up the ‘Kill You Before The End Game’ tweaks into build 30 instead of build 31, since a lot of the sandbox options marched us closer to that goal as it was.

Here are a few of the changes we’ve made in IWBUMS .7.

 

Endurance Revamp

Endurance has been a bit annoying for a long time. While trying to simulate the player getting out of breath, instead it just acted as an arbitrary and occasional timer forcing the player to back up for 10 seconds before resuming combat, and did little to add to the fun of the game. As such we’ve redesigned endurance to model general physical exertion over the course of a day. It will increase as you run around, fight, chop down trees and all that other back breaking toil, but will increase at a much slower rate.

However once you’re exerted it will, instead of requiring 10 seconds of stand-still time, affect you for a much more prolonged period of time and require hours of rest, or sleep, to recuperate. The idea being that your endurance now becomes a day long commodity that you don’t want to spend frivolously, and to cap the amount of zombie fighting during a day you can expect to be able to engage in at low fitness skill levels. This is still being balanced so feedback on IWBUMs will be much appreciated.

 

Shader Changes

We’ve made some changes to the shaders on the game to make for a more moody atmosphere, more realistic saturation and moody contrast. We’ve tweaked light and dark levels and made various changes to make PZ look a bit more moody and atmospheric. Okay, perhaps we were slightly inspired by This War Of Mine, but we’ve tried to be subtle in our inspiration. There may be some who don’t like it, but we ask that you give it a fair chance (it took RJ playing for a while before he decided he preferred it to how it was).

Either way, for this IWBUMs we’ve left not choice in the matter, replacing the shaders on to the new shaders. But in future we’ll look to add different settings for those who prefer the previous more cartoony colouring, and perhaps add a few more visual styles (black and white, vignette etc) since they are really trivial and quick to add. The reason we tweaked this is we felt it was a cheap and quick way we could boost the visuals in the game, make the scene (2D tiles and 3D characters) gel together better, make the world more realistic visually, as well as perhaps reduce the amount of ‘urgh cartoony 2D game’ first impressions that have been one of the biggest barriers to attracting people to the game compared to 3D titles within the same genre.

 

It’s The Zombie Posse

This is a quite substantial change. Now zombies will clump together in ways you’ve never seen before. Instead of single zombies dotted about (though this will still happen to an extent) zombies will constantly be attracted to each other’s groans and movements, which means you’re much more likely to run into a pack of 5-6 zombies over 5-6 zombies dotted around the area. But unlike the old system of spawning the zombies in groups (which was never convincing) the new zombie clumping happens organically and naturally.

 

Joypad Auto Zoom

Another thing we’ve not quite got the options working for and might need a little adjusting to, we’d like to give the auto zoom a quick trial. Never fear, in future we’ll add options to disable or override this, but feel it important to joypad controls since at present zooming in and out is pretty cumbersome on joypad. The idea being that when you’re in interiors of buildings, the camera will zoom to maximum zoom. When outside, or when running, it will zoom out to provide the player a better view of their surrounding.

Also when in combat the camera will zoom in to provide the player the ability to see what’s happening. This will all require more tweaking, so feedback would be much appreciated. We’ll get options to switch this on and off in hopefully before the next IWBUMs release, and certainly before 30 goes out on the main branch.

 

Farming Tweaks

The problem with farming has been that, once you’ve got the necessary kit, it becomes pretty easy to be able to be self sufficient with food. On the other hand the amount of upkeep required for the crops means the player spends a lot of time dealing with them. As such we’ve made two changes to the farming system. First we’ve significantly increased the amount of time it takes to grow crops. Crops are now, as they should, a longer term solution and pushed much further into the late game as to when a player can expect to be able to live off grown vegetables.

Secondly, we’ve decreased the amount of maintenance the crops require, so a player still has time to do other stuff while their crops are growing. We hope these changes will mean that farming will remain an important feature of the game, but will not eat up all the player’s time and turn the game into a farming simulator, as well as mean farming won’t provide a player with food as early in the game.

 

Going North

We also thought we’d give you a little preview at the kind of building density you can look forward as you approach Louisville. We’re still in the outskirts, and haven’t even got to the city itself, but already the area is starting to get pretty dense.

 

This week’s blurry title PUPPPPPPYYYYY image is provided by Lemmy who is getting a new Whippet on Saturday! Weeee! Cally will be joined by little baby Chief. <3

And once again, we remind you to keep your eyes locked onto the TIS twitter for build updates and testing news, and if you can’t then why not subscribe to our newsletter so that you can have all the PZ goings on sent straight to your email?

[nasKo]

 

Hello brave survivors. First of all, a recap for those who aren’t up to speed with the wonders of Build 30.
 
*Gravel voice*
“Last time, on Project Zomboid…”
*Exciting music*
 
Fast cut #1: A pretty lady smokes a cigarillo and looks a bit suspicious.
Fast cut #2: Build 30 is currently undergoing public testing, and you can find out how to join here.
Fast cut #3: A man shouts at an older man about who his real father is.
Fast cut #4: Build 30 contains the integration of TurboTuTone’s Erosion mod, the new medical system and the reintroduction of split-screen co-op.
Fast cut #5: A car drives off a big ramp in slow motion and looks awesome.
Fast cut #6: Build 30.7 was released last Mondoid tested out some mechanics that would make the game tougher such as our Endurance Revamp and new zombie clumping behaviours – alongside a new shader to make our world look more realistic.
Fast cut #7: The suspicious pretty lady does an evil smile
 
*Project Zomboid theme tune plays* 
 
 
Builds 30.8 and 30.9
We recognise that not everyone watches the forums avidly, so here’s a brief recap of new additions. For the full run-down please click through here.
 
It’s been a really interesting week on our forums as the debate over our new exhaustion system boiled hither and thither – with, we think, a positive result through balancing and making the old system available to everyone via the Sandbox custom options. For a lengthy missive on what we’re doing in terms of Survival mode difficulty then Lemmy’s post on the Steam forums is also a good place to start.
 
The response was generally favourable, but the new exhaustion system hampered the gameplay of those who play the game with repeated melee swings without charging them up [the avoidance of which we will have to communicate better in future, beyond the Spiffo instruction screen]. As such, 30.8  tied endurance lost through swinging weapons to zombie damage instead – which was a necessary solution, even if it was somewhat at odds with realism. Along with 30.9 we also did a lot of general, running, stabbing and stamina regeneration balancing and are pretty happy with how it plays currently – and indeed the overall community response.
 
Amidst loads of bug fixing and zombie behaviour revamps, as part of RJ’s ‘Community Suggestion Coding Day’, we also introduced pickling and canning to the game, so vegetables can be given 2-3 months of extra life through cooking them up inside a jar with water, vinegar and sugar. Because we’re big meanies, we also reduced food spawn rates in general though…
 
 
Upcoming: Build 30.10
We’re now content locked on Build 30, and as such Build 30.10 will consist of balancing and bug fixing. We’re aiming for this week in terms of release, but ETAs etc etc. We hope that this will then become the public release that makes that big fancypants step out of the IWBUMS beta branch and into the public domain.
 
We are also sorry to say report that our watermelons might be alcoholic, and as such will have to be booze-nerfed.
 
 
Beyond!
This week has seen some exciting map work getting underway, as Binky and RingoD began unifying the layout of the new city-approach residential zone with the main map file – more of which [alongside Mash’s cool additions elsewhere] will be covered in a later Mondoid.
 
Initial work on Build 31 is also on course –  alongside Lemmy’s ever-present NPC development and all the other must-haves we require before we break out of Early Access. The focus of the next build will be on stealth – that sneak key is about to get a lot more obvious/relevant – and we already have a build in which it’s possible to hug close to walls and nervously look around corners to provide a view-cone glimpse of what horrors could be shambling nearby. It’s all animated, but still looks a little rough as we haven’t implemented transition anims yet – hopefully we can chuck a video your way when it’s all in though.
 
Finally, new boy TurboTuTone has brought a really interesting (and complex) design for radio transmissions and broadcasts to the table – which will allow for writer Will’s work to spin out in many interesting new ways. That will be their focus in the run-up to Xmas. Oh, and RJ says there’ll be jam-making in a future build too. Which we’d imagine is something of a survival game first?
 
 
Until next Mondoid!
 
This week’s featured screenshot taken by Wick over on Steam.
 
And once again, we remind you to keep your eyes locked onto the TIS twitter for build updates and testing news, and if you can’t then why not subscribe to our newsletter so that you can have all the PZ goings on sent straight to your email?

[nasKo]

 

It’s that very special time of the year. The Indie Stone is getting ready to leave a small glass of bleach out for Santa, and half a rotten carrot for Rudolf, before wrapping up tight in the safe knowledge that by morning jolly St. Nick will have left a shiny new axe beneath the tree.

As such, it’s a brief Mondoid – which we hope you’ll forgive what with impending yule-tide.

In terms of builds then the IWBUMS public beta is nearing completion, with Romain and EasyP’s bug fixes continuing to roll in. We will be making this fully public and releasing it on the primary Steam  roll-out early in the New Year, just to make sure that we can cram in as many fixes as possible and also to ensure that we have all hands on-deck in case of unforeseen hang-ups.

In terms of actual cool dev factoids [in amongst the stealth, NPC, map and general game amelioration work that we've got going on] then perhaps TurboTuTone’s latest project is worth touching on.

Turbo is the guy who first brought seasonal change and wilderness growth to Project Zomboid, first through his Erosion mod and then with EasyPickins and Mash through its Build 30 integration. He’s now working with Will in getting the multiple radio and tv channels that have been written into the game, and ready for you to listen to every morning and afternoon as the world around our disaster zone falls to pieces.

In true Turbo fashion, however, he’s bringing a slightly more complex (and brilliant) system into the game – intent on providing the game with the foundations for fiddling with bandwidth to pick up survivor transmissions, discover military radios for access to scrambled transmissions and sending dialogue out into the world (solo and over a server) at set days/times/moments in your game. A primary part of this will also be the integration of his awesome ApCom Walkie Talkie mod that lets MP players talk to each other over the map.

We’ll get into the nitty-gritty of the system once it’s all in and working, not least because there’s currently some debate as to how we’ll deal with radio and tv channels (whether it should be done in quasi-real time, or whether players will be able to access all shows/news at whatever time of AM or PM that they turn on their discovered broadcast system. We really want to get stuff into an internal build and see how it plays.

With which in mind, TurboTuTone presents the new second cousin to PZ creation tools WorldZed and TileZed… WordZed! Click for full size.

 

 

WordZed provides a simple system for dialogue (and potential localizations) that are correctly categorized, fed into the system and turned it into data that can be fed into Project Zomboid’s framework. We currently have an early version of the tool up and running, and in the New Year Turbo and Will are going to play around with it – and discuss what can be expanded and tweaked, and of course make sure it can handle the thousands and thousands of words that have already been written for it! Then work will begin on getting this stuff in-game!

And with that, we wish you a Merry Christmas – and if you don’t celebrate Christmas then we wish you an enjoyable slightly improved television schedule! And also many thanks to Connall for making the forums feel all Xmassy with his Community Secret Santa!

Join our newsletter if you want these words blasted straight into your inbox, along with notifications for all the game updates beta or release!

[nasKo]

Happy Holidays Mr. Mathas, as a present from The Indie Stone here is a very very quick to make Mondoid video!

Hello everyone! This is a monumentally quick Mondoid cheaply reusing the same banner image as last week (though It’s Spiffo so who’s complaining?) due to the fact that it’s the Christmas holidays. Sorry about that everyone. Can we make it up to you by officially releasing Build 30? Despite it being the holidays the awesome RJ and EasyPickins have still found time to pump out the fixes needed to get build 30 in release shape. It’s become pretty solid in the past few hotfixes so we think it’s ready. Let us know if anything goes amiss!

Here is a Christmas rerun of Romain talking about a few of the main features of build 30!

 

Change-list can be found here! There are other fixes and additions not present but we’ll try and collate all the hotfix changelists into a huge uber changelist in the coming days. We’ll look to get Desura updated ASAP as soon as we’re sure nothing’s broken.

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and see you all in the New Year!

Love,

The Indie Stone!

Join our newsletter for future updates and blogs, likely with more words in them than this one, sent straight to your email inbox!

[nasKo]

It’s the first day back in the office for the PZ team, with plenty of cool stuff on the horizon… but that doesn’t mean that Build 30 isn’t receiving some New Year love.

Today we released 30.13 in the IWBUMS branch [instructions on how to join here] to hopefully address some multiplayer issues that were reported over the Xmas break. It’s in IWBUMS rather than the main branch as we want to be sure it’s all fixed before widening the net, so if you’re a seasoned MP player or server host who’s run into stuttering recently then please give it a whirl and let us know how you get on.

 

Other fixes and tweaks include: scavenging balance, fixed spawn points, improved mushroom recipe usage (!), seasonal fishing, translations and improved controller support – in amongst some other good stuff.

Elsewhere tools are being picked up on map, stealth, radio transmissions, NPCs and more. Fr’instance as well as working on the new stealth system, Lemmy’s been working on the NPC behaviour system, converting the behaviour tree system to read text script files for the NPC behaviours instead of using code spat out by the editor.

 

This means a) future behaviours will be a lot quicker to add and more crucially b) the entire of the NPC’s behaviours will be 100% moddable when they are finally released. Everything from how they move, how they make decisions, will all be accessible to modders. We know it sounds cool but remember: NO ETA NOT DONE YET ETC.

 

The map team, meanwhile, are back at work on the more urban ‘suburbs’ area – while Will is about to have a first exploratory fiddle with WordZed, the awesome-sauce radio transmission tool created by TurboTuTone and discussed prior to Xmas.

 

Finally, we would really like to direct everyone’s attention to Xeonyx’s absolutely amazing New Denver map. Eleven months in the making, and made in tribute to friends who are sadly no longer with us, it’s an amazing piece of work that deserves the praise and love of the entire PZ community. Ever attentive and fantabulous, meanwhile, is Blindcoder who has already made it a part of his PZ Map Project.

 

Thank you Xeonyx, it’s an amazing feat and a wonderful tribute. The best Christmas present we could have asked for!

 

Join our newsletter for future updates and blogs sent straight to your email inbox!

[nasKo]

 

Hello, one and all. Monday means many things to many people – but to us it means it’s time to unveil Build 31’s intentions for locking and unlocking doors in Project Zomboid!

Here at The Indie Stone we’re all about adding a little bit of door glamour to the start of your week. First though…

 

Finalizing Build 30
The amazing, lovely and slightly beautiful EasyP has been throwing in fix after fix for Build 30, with 30.16 being thrown into public IWBUMS testing only this morning. Once we’re sure it’s firing in all areas, it will be rolled out in the main branch. We’ll then check over the remaining issues to see whether we still need a few more updates, or whether we’re at a point to ‘call time’ on Build 30 and move our full attention onto the next. It’s at this point that we’ll also be able to update the Desura build.

 

Ooh. Shut that door.
Listen carefully, and you’ll hear the tip-tap of gallic footsteps. That’s right everyone, it’s PZ coder Romain ‘RJ’ Dron with the reveal of his first Build 31 feature. Here’s the run-down on what’s new:

 

“You will now spawn with the key of your own house on a key ring. Your key ring can be considered a new container type in your inventory, although only keys can be kept in there. As you loot and explore you’ll find the keys of other houses that have been left for safekeeping in their drawers and cupboards. Sometimes they’ll be on the bodies of the zombies that spawn in those houses too.”

“With a key you can lock and unlock doors all doors that correspond to it, and to check what it will open you can mouse over the key on your inventory key ring and the corresponding doors will highlight on-screen. You can also lock and unlock doors on houses from the inside without owning a key, just as you could in real-life.”

 

“But wait, that’s not all. When you destroy a door, if you have the right key, you can pick up the door knob and rebuild a new door with it – and your key will match!”

 

“And finally, I’ve also introduced padlocks! You can add a padlock onto your hand-made crates to secure them. They’ll be automatically unlocked if you have the key, but in MP others won’t be able to get inside them. Although, of course, if they have a crowbar that’s a different matter.”

 

And here’s a video, so you can see how it all works with your own peepers.

 

 

 

Also of note
Stealth work, NPC work and whatnot continues in the background (as ever) while PZ’s upcoming – and somewhat goliath – map update is another primary and ongoing occupation for the team. TurboTuTone’s WordZed application has also had a lot of work put into it, and he and Will hope to use it to create an initial in-game ‘test’ radio station over the week ahead.

 

 

Cool stuff from elsewhere
Last week we spotlit Xeonyx’s absolutely amazing New Denver map, and this week we’d like to give a quick Mondoid to two other cool PZ fan projects.

 

The first is the return of Thuztor’s Vacation Island that we’d strongly recommend that the community keeps its eyes on.
The second is a super-cool PZ card game that a nice chap called Andrew is creating in Tabletop Simulator. Given that the creation of a card game, of sorts, has been integral in the continuing development of our NPC system – this is proving a really interesting project for us.

 

 

Jerry’s Final Thought
It’s been a shitty seven days in the real world, as we’re sure that everyone is painfully aware. The Project Zomboid community is an amazing one: people of different nationalities, people of different cultures and people of different faiths – all bound together through our weird little game. It’s great, and the way it should be.

 

It’s also a game with a strong French lean in terms of development, and a passionate group of French supporters who’ve been with us since the very start. With this in mind we’d like to extend our support and sympathies to our French audience at this difficult time. No matter what our differences are, bloodshed should never be the answer.

 

 

Do you ever forget it’s Monday, and accidentally make Mondoid a Tuesdoid by checking too late? Maybe you fall even further into Wednesdoid or Thursdoid? Well, never again! With the PZ newsletter all future updates and blogs are sent straight to your email inbox. Mondoid will forever be in its rightful timeslot.

[nasKo]

 
 
This Mondoid and next we will be asking members of the Zomboid development team to the front of the class to give a presentation. It will then be graded for clarity and content, which WILL be a proportion of their final grade. Stop talking at the back please, we need to get through the housekeeping first…


Housekeeping
We need to confer with EasyPickins when Canada wakes up, but Build 30 feels pretty much done in terms of fixes. Once we’re sure he doesn’t have any fingers still meddling inside the engine we’ll slam its bonnet shut [American translation: ‘close the goddam hood’] and Desura can be updated.

In terms of Build 31 stuff, on top of the door locking mechanisms we discussed last week, we’ve been doing some heavy 30 playtesting with Twiggy over the weekend. From this, and some community suggestions, we’ll be working on a few tweaks for 31 over the start of this week. In short: padlocks, blood-cleaning, new zones for farming/trapping and some bug fixes.

There’ll be plenty more to come on the 31 front, but until then let’s listen to what the rest of the team have to say for themselves…


Presentation #1: RingoD

Hello! Apart from replying simply with the word ‘fine’ and an exclamation mark, how are you?
I’m hunky-dory thanks! Keeping warm with coffee in the cold of the north!

So what does this stage of PZ development find you doing?
I’m currently designing large sections of the map that will expand the world north up to our rendition of Louisville. This includes large, dense sections of suburbia, thick woodland with secluded neighbourhoods and everything in-between.

What does that involve?
I use Google maps as a visual tool to help me create the images used by WorldEd. This lets me recreate large sections of the road layouts and vegetation that are true to those found in the parts of Kentucky we’re focussing on. The vegetation is split into 9 different layers: from sand, to short grass to thick woodland. This lets us create quite detailed and accurate isometric representations of their real world counterparts.

What’s the next step in this particular part of the development adventure?
Next up will be completing the outskirts of Louisville along with the industrial district that will run north along the river into the city. Then Louisville itself, you can expect a heavily gridded city area with dirty back alleys and a very claustrophobic feel.

Is there anything audio-visual or picture-y you could supply me with that could make this mini-interview more beautiful? No matter how dull?
For fear of spoilers, here’s an obscured version of what I’ve got currently. Muldraugh is included to give you a sense of the scale of what’s coming up. Click for biggening!



Is there anything else you’ve got on the brew, or another task you’ll be moving onto?
I’m currently keeping my eye on all the brilliant, new map mods (New Denver, Vacation Island, Radcliff et al) being released on the forums. At some point in the near future, with the creators’ permissions, I’ll be looking to stitch together into one big community map mod along with Bedford Falls V3. I already have an idea on how I’ll incorporate this into the vanilla map (as a mod) without breaking the immersion of being in PZ’s version of Kentucky.

Thank you! Bye!
Cheers! I’m off for another coffee! Binky…!


Presentation #2: Mash

Hello! Apart from replying simply with the word ‘fine’ and an exclamation mark, how are you?
Fineamundo!

So what does this stage of PZ development find you doing?
I’m making houses to fill those large areas of suburbia that Ringo described above. *shakes fist at Ringo*
What does that involve?

Well, making houses! There should be a sense of more distinct neighbourhoods, where houses share similar looks, as you head into suburbia from more rural areas.

What’s the next step in this particular part of the development adventure?
MORE houses.

Is there anything audio-visual or picture-y you could supply me with that could make this mini-interview more beautiful? No matter how dull?
A HOUSE.


 
Is there anything else you’ve got on the brew, or another task you’ll be moving onto?
HOUSES EVERYWHERE. CAN ONLY SEE HOUSES. HELP.

Thank you! Bye!
*Weep*


Presentation #3: Lemmy

Hello! Apart from replying simply with the word ‘fine’ and an exclamation mark, how are you?
Fine?

So what does this stage of PZ development find you doing?
NPCs. At this moment I’m putting more work into the AI behaviour system. Basically the huge decision tree AI brain that controls NPCs movement.

What does that involve?
As mentioned a few weeks back I’ve ported the behaviour system to use a text script format to easily allow behaviours to be edited (and reloaded in-game for quick testing). I’m basically adding more and more behaviours to allow NPCs to be able to survive in different situations. Most recently, I’ve added a behaviour to change dirty bandages since this wasn’t a feature when the bandaging behaviour was developed.

Testing at the moment is literally running the game with the player controlled by the NPC brain, and seeing what survival times they can get. The ultimate aim is to get a decent survival time on the 8 Months After scenario to allow the NPCs to be proactive enough to get enough food and water, and have the zombie avoidance / diversion skill necessary to handle insane zombies.

Is there anything audio-visual or picture-y you could supply me with that could make this mini-interview more beautiful? No matter how dull?
This I guess? Not something most people would use, but this is how I debug the behaviours. You can break and step through them step by step, so modders will be able to use this to edit how NPCs behave, and to step through and debug their behaviour in-game. Click to make big!



Is there anything else you’ve got on the brew, or another task you’ll be moving onto?
I might be dropping into this from time to time whenever my brain needs a break from decision trees.

[PLEASE NOTE: In the following sneak peek taster vid, there's no transition animations. These are anims that blend the bone positions between two anims over a second so final product will be way smoother, there are also some specific anims for bending and standing that aren't in yet.]

Till next week!
Next week we’ll be listening to nervous, stuttering presentations made by the likes of Will, Turbo, Binky and Romain as they read from the back of a sheet of A4 covered in biro scribble.

In the mean-time, as a special treat, we’ll also be having a SHOCK Thursdoid blog this week when we have a quick chat with lovely New Denver creator Xeonyx about the epic creation of the latest community-created PZ barnstormer.

Fed up with internet browsers? Distressed by inputting web addresses? Why not experience that Mondoid thrill as a part of your daily email inbox routine? Sign up to the PZ newsletter so all future updates and blogs are sent direct! [Disclaimer: web-based email accounts will still require both browsers and address-input, unless it's maybe in your favourites or something.]

[nasKo]

I’ve often wondered what writing Mondoid would be like if I were a Fireman. What background knowledge would it bring to the experience? Would being all rugged and handsome, and being proficient in sliding down poles [other career stereotypes are available] impact on the way I tap it out at the start of every week? Well, I shall wonder no more…

We had originally planned, as indicated last week, to extend the ‘So what you doing?’ team interviews into this Mondoid – but seeing as there’s a lot of ongoing/dull stuff going on under the hood we thought it better to keep it till next time – when there’s more to discuss.

Fret not, however, because we’ve got news on quite a big addition to the game that will have a sizeable impact on the ways you survive in both SP and MP. Starting professions and traits have been left untouched for far too long, and to rectify this we’ve currently got an internal test build being played for balancing/tweaks that should deepen your survival experience considerably. It’s got lots of positive feedback so far, and as such you’ll be seeing it as a part of Build 31.

On top of the big stuff like NPCs, radio broadcasts and vehicles, you’re going to be seeing a lot more of this sort of activity as we make our run-up to 1.0. We need to start rounding off the game so it feels like a game – with progression, a few things to unlock and no area of PZ that feels undeveloped or unfinished. Traits and professions have been one of the worst offenders in these terms for a LOOOOONG time.

 

If you’re reading this Mondoid close to the time of posting then Twiggy is currently streaming with the new system, and will be until the early evening GMT. So click here!

 

[And it should be noted that given his experience in making character builds in tons of survival games, specifically the amazing Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead that has been a huge inspiration, Twigs has been a huge help in this endeavour.]

CAREERS ADVICE

In the new system Professions can now provide supplementary skill points, which directly tie into the learning speed of relevant skills as well as starting skill levels. This is to further diversify character creation, and to make professions feel like a character’s pre-zombies life has genuine impact on their survival experience. Less ‘blank slate’, basically.

Examples:

• Fire Officer (3 blade, axeman)
• Police Officer (3 aim, 2 reload, 1 nimble)
• Park Ranger (2 trap, 2 forage, 1 carpentry)
• Construction Worker (3 blunt, 1 carpentry)
• Security Guard (night owl, 2 sprinting, 1 lightfoot)

Importantly, Professions are not all necessarily free, so we can create the potential for more powerful starting professions that will require negative traits to balance them out. Unemployed gives 8 points to start, which is very important for reasons that will be clear when we talk about the new traits later on.

So, f’rinstance… you may pick the Carpenter profession, and right out of the bat that will give you 3 points in carpentry. This not only means starting on level 3, but the carpenter will gain a 50% boost to XP in that skill. The time that it takes to learn and upgrade Carpentry will then be tied to that multiplier throughout the character’s lifespan.

The big idea is that with the new system ONLY a carpenter with starting carpentry skills can advance in carpentry at a fast speed. Their hopes of becoming an expert farmer any time soon are remote. As such, this further diversifies characters to provide much more varied runs in single player, and provides more potential for teamwork and specific roles in MP – and ultimately in the NPC system.

This all said, a carpenter being doomed to ONLY ever be able to learn carpentry quickly is going to be in deep, deep shit. So, enter stage left…

 

THE TRAIT REVAMP

So… we’ve made a few big changes to how traits work.

First off, all currently non-relevant traits are being removed until NPCs go in and they become relevant again. So that’s stuff like Light Drinker, and other cheesable traits.

Second off, we’ve added a load of new traits. Names currently need some work, and our current internal build is staying that way for a bit primarily because there’s a lot of balance required and many will be OP/UP and may need nerfing or point value changes. Examples you can expect, however, include an Adrenaline Junkie who’ll be able to run faster when it the top panic level, a Packmule who can fit more into bags, someone’s who’s Disorganised who can cram in less etc.

Third, and most interestingly: to counter the fact that a Profession only speeds up levelling in relevant skills – we now have a range of traits that act as Hobbies.

Say your Carpenter had green fingers in his pre-apocalypse life, for example. You’d pick the ‘Gardener’ trait which would then give you a single point in farming – and while that wouldn’t seem like a huge deal in itself it WOULD mean that they’re now learning farming at a 1x speed rate instead of the bargain basement ‘level zero’ 0.333x speed. This then makes Farming a viable skill to train up during a run.

[if you require a frame of reference then think of how Morrowind's minor / major skills worked.]

Some examples:

• Self Defense Class – provides 1 blade guard point, 1 blunt guard
• First Aid – provides 1 Doctor point
• Fishing – provides 1 Fishing point
• Jogger – provides 1 Sprinting and better endurance

With the new system players will be encouraged to pick a few hobbies, or other traits, that round out their character with skills they intend to use – and likely have to build in some bigger disadvantages into their character to compensate. This is why those choosing to be unemployed (crikey, that sounds a bit political) gets you extra points to start. It assumes you’ve had the time to invest in hobbies, which you willl likely need to build from and survive.

 

CHALLENGES

But wait, there’s more. Also in our testing build is a modified version of the Last Stand menu that will allow for particular challenges that use the Last Stand challenge system but are played in the Survival game mode. As mentioned before, when we break out into 1.0 we want to feel like more of a complete game – and the rewrite of this code will provide ways of providing extra unlockable challenges, a feeling of progression and some goals for players who tire of the pure sandbox.

It’s something that will allow our team, or indeed any modder with lua skillz, to throw in fun (and easily created) concepts during idle moments. If you’re at all Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead literate, then you’ll be pleased to know that the test challenge currently in the build is called  ‘A Really CD DA’ – and it’s pretty fun stuff.

 

A CARPENTRY THING

Finally: in the new system we’re testing we’ve made it so that hammers at level 0 in Carpentry can only build barricades. All carpentry recipes are going up one level – except for log walls. Sorry!

 

THE HOKEY-COKEY

Here is a video of some zombies doing the hokey-cokey

We don’t know whether the hokey-cokey exists in places like America, and other similar places that are far away, but if not then consider this part of a vital cultural exchange.

 

 

Do you like emails? Sign up to the PZ newsletter and you will get emails. They mostly come on Mondays, mostly…

[nasKo]

 

Welcome back to the second half of our ‘How’s it goin? U ok Hun?’ PZ dev round-up!

With Build 30 now complete the exact features of Build 31 are currently undergoing something of a crystallization process but, alongside what EP and Romain discuss below, the new skill/trait system discussed last week and the lock/unlock functions mentioned a while before that are definitely part of the bundle. [internal testing of the former is currently underway, by the by, and there is balancing and bug-fixing a-go-go.]

Let’s not dawdle longer though, and instead delve too greedily and too deep into some other major features currently being fed into the Knox Event mainframe.

Presentation #4: Will (and Turbo, technically)

Hello! Apart from replying simply with the word ‘fine’ and an exclamation mark, how are you?

Unlike the others I’m actually going to answer this one with a full response, as was originally intended when I wrote the questions. So: ‘I’m fine, if a little tired due to my son’s recent level-up which granted him the ability to somersault out of his cot and faceplant the carpet’.

So what does this stage of PZ development find you doing?

I’m currently working with TurboTuTone on PZ’s forthcoming radio and television broadcast system, and answering for us both in this Mondoid.

Our narrative posits that the Knox Event zone that players survive inside is, at first, surrounded by a military cordon for 5-7 days. As such people will be able to listen to the world fall apart around them at the start of their games. On top of this, we’re also building a system that will simultaneously allow for multiple frequencies to receive, military and emergency service frequencies, broadcasts triggered by in-game events and player-to-player radio communication in MP.

What does that involve?

Turbo has finished his first pass on WordZed, the utility that my multiple broadcasts are fed into and turned into something that PZ can absorb and understand. He’s now dabbling in his own dev code branch to work out the final presentation of the material, while also creating a radio script manager and working out the best ways to have the new systems interact.

Our plan is for four ‘chunks’ of broadcasts to be available for players to listen into every day over multiple channels/frequencies (current aim for timings: 0000-0600, 0600-1200, 1200-1800 and 1800-0000) and also for the system to allow for ‘live’ coverage of events that happens at particular time within it. This means that I’ve got to double the amount of existing radio/TV written content, but we feel that it will be more than worth it.

What’s the next step in this particular part of the development adventure?

After building the WordZed utility, Turbo is now inside the code-proper and working out the best way to ferry my narrative around your PZ timeline and MP servers. Once this is done his next step will be to go back to WordZed to simplify the process a little, as he’s now making sure that the game itself will be able to deal with some of its complexities. At this point I’ll be able to start feeding lines into it, while Turbs jumps back into his dev branch to polish the delivery system.

Is there anything audio-visual or picture-y you could supply me with that could make this mini-interview more beautiful? No matter how dull?

I’ll let Turbo takes this one, but please note that it’s extremely WIP – and Turbo’s PC doesn’t record stuff so good. [it’s also a television playing a radio script, but we’ll let that one slide.] Turbo! Show the nice people!

“The following vid is shot with a working in-game radio script manager, although the data is still hard-coded and isn’t reading from a WordZed file just yet.”

 

“What it demonstrates is the guaranteed delivery of scripted content, if the player is present and tuned in, while still flowing through one system and appearing to be live.”

“Here we have two broadcasts loaded into the scriptmanager, and for our convenience the TV is already on the correct channel. The first broadcast gets activated at 3PM and then, for our experiment, the second gets activated at 4PM.”

“When a broadcast gets activated it doesn’t always go instantly to air: instead the system keeps track of whether there are actually players near a valid device that is a) turned on and b) on the correct channel. If that’s the case then it will play, if not then it will hold onto the lines until the conditions are met later on, or until the timeline has it that the active broadcast is removed/replaced.”

“In this vid when the clock hits 3PM the player is near a TV, so the broadcast airs. Thereafter, I move the player away from the TV and let 1 hour and 10 minutes pass, so the second broadcast at 4PM gets activated. Upon returning to the TV the system detects there’s a broadcast in the queue and the player is allowed to hear it, so then airs the 4PM broadcast.”

Is there anything else you’ve got on the brew, or another task you’ll be moving onto? If so, explain! Extrapolate!

Well, this is a big job so we’re not looking much further into the crystal ball right now – but clearly Turbo will be moving onto P2P radio comms, while I’m more than aware that at some point Lemmy will be appearing in a Skype window with another huge pile of NPC dialogue requests. I’m hoping to clear my plate radio-wise first though.

 

Presentation #5: EasyPickins

Hello! Apart from replying simply with the word ‘fine’ and an exclamation mark, how are you?

#fine

So what does this stage of PZ development find you doing?

I’ve been getting an old-old-old feature working again, namely players turning into zombies after they die. In future builds when a player (or player-character) dies they’ll drop whatever they’re holding in their hands (stuff in main inventory and backpacks will remain equipped) and leave a corpse on the ground. That corpse can be looted, burned, and picked up just like corpses always could BUT if the player died while infected then the corpse will rise again as a zombie some time later. I’ve also created a sandbox setting that will control the time your game will allow until reanimation.

What does that involve?

One part of it is getting said zombie’s appearance to match the dead player’s – which isn’t always 100% correct currently, due to there being no hairless zombies in the game. I also have to make sure we preserve reanimated-corpse zombies in the world across play-sessions, get the camera to follow a SP player’s reanimated corpse as it walks around and wrap my brain around getting it all to work in MP.

What’s the next step in this particular part of the development adventure?

The adventure of seeing if it works properly!

Is there anything audio-visual or picture-y you could supply me with that could make this mini-interview more beautiful? No matter how dull?

Is there anything else you’ve got on the brew, or another task you’ll be moving onto? If so, explain! Extrapolate!

Another feature I’m working on was brought up by one of our players. Since co-op came along, a saved game can potentially have multiple saved players in it. Although a specific co-op player can be chosen to play once in-game, there’s no way to choose the first character that loads up. As such, I’ve been adding a new dialog that lets users choose from all available players in a particular saved game.

Presentation #6: RJ

Hello! Apart from replying simply with the word ‘fine’ and an exclamation mark, how are you?

Pretty fine, yup! I did my first studio recording with my band last week, and it was amazing. I’ve also been having a lot of fun lately with Twiggy, Shannon, Dean and others in PZ MP – doing a lot of playtesting, which has been great fun.

So what does this stage of PZ development find you doing?

Multiplayer stuff!

What does that involve?

Loads of things really. Padlocks and combination padlocks to help you secure your stuff, new admin commands, fresh sandbox concepts… and of course SP/MP bug fixes and some new zoning for farming and trapping.

What’s the next step in this particular part of the development adventure?

I think that the ability to clean up blood is something I need to work on, as it’s something that’s frequently suggested by the community. We’ve also had a few people suggesting that grain farming to make flour.would be a cool addition – which could be fun too! Oh, and maybe water purification.

Is there anything audio-visual or picture-y you could supply me with that could make this mini-interview more beautiful? No matter how dull?

Is there anything else you’ve got on the brew, or another task you’ll be moving onto? If so, explain! Extrapolate!

We’ve been talking a lot about what my personal “1.0 goal” should be, but it’s still a secret so far… that and the fact that there’s so many cool things I’d like to do and can’t quite decide!

 

Presentation #8: Binky

Hello! Apart from replying simply with the word ‘fine’ and an exclamation mark, how are you?

*sobs*

Er, okay. So what does this stage of PZ development find you doing?

Well, you heard from Paul two weeks ago. I’m working on the same stuff as him, which is basically all about the map expansion towards the city to the north. The basic process is: Paul creates the road and building layout, and does the first pass on the foliage. Then I assemble his cells into the main map file and do a pass over the ground and trees. I re-arrange some of the buildings as necessary, and connect it all up to the cells which I’m working on.

Paul’s help has been invaluable because, truth be told, I’m maaaaaybe a bit over-picky as far as this stuff goes. I tend to spend a bit too much time over-analysing tree placement if left entirely to my own devices. So having Paul blasting through the cells and me tidying things up after him, and adding in detail, works really well. It’s great in terms of both me being happy with the map, and also in getting it out of the door! It’s a flupping nightmare though, obv. *sobs*

What does that involve?

I’ve just told you, weren’t you listening? *sobs*

I was listening, it’s just that these are all pre-written questions. What’s the next step in this particular part of the development adventure?

Next up will be finally being able to give Mash a huge bunch of cells to start dropping her buildings into. This will be great on two counts.

Firstly, it’ll let her have a break from just making house after house after house after house and actually start laying them out. Secondly, it’ll mean that Skype can go ‘bloop’ and I won’t immediately get a sinking feeling in my gut – knowing that there’s an 85% chance the Skype message will be from Mash asking when in hell she’s going to get some more map cells off me. She’s a slave driver, that one. *sobs*

Is there anything audio-visual or picture-y you could supply me with that could make this mini-interview more beautiful? No matter how dull?

No. *sobs*

Okay, shall I just put in Paul’s image from two weeks ago then?

*sobs*

Okay.

 

We’re almost there now Andy. Just one more. Is there anything else you’ve got on the brew, or another task you’ll be moving onto?

After mappy stuff, I’ll be moving onto clothing and weapon objects because, well, blimey – it’s been forever since we’ve added any more of that stuff.

Sorry. Will get onto it pronto. *sobs*

Well done Andy. That was great. Thank you.

*sobs*

Today’s featured image from Steam user Weilard, who we very much hope is named after a dog who used to be in EastEnders. Want to feel loved every Monday, and whenever we release an update? Try signing up to the PZ newsletter! Don’t wait! Try it today!

[nasKo]

 
After a run of three pulsating, fascinating and audacious Mondoids one might imagine that PZ players are probably due one that essentially says ‘working on all that stuff we mentioned and doing a bunch of testing’. Maybe with an exclamation mark added at the end.

So yeah, we’re working on all that stuff we mentioned – and doing a bunch of testing!

The current changelist can be found in RJ’s new Build 31 thread on the forums. This isn’t the complete list – other features we’re working on may well drop in on completion. We’ll be in a better position to judge when we’ll put a lock on Build 31 content and push out to IWBUMS when we’re further through the testing process. We want to get the more obvious balancing stuff right, and given the large amount of character builds now available there’s a fair chunk to go through.

A quick summary of the build content, however, runs as follows:

Keys and Door tweaks
You spawn with a keyring and the key to your spawn-home. Keys for other houses can then be found while looting, or on homeowner zombie corpses – and locks can be removed and built into player-made doors. We’re also introducing key-based padlocks for hand-made cates and some combination code padlocks too.

The new Profession and Trait system
Check out our Mondoid on this for the full skinny, and RJ’s post for the exact skills and traits but it looks a little something like this:
 


Challenges
An updated area of the main menu, to act as home for Last Stand and any other cool modes we can dream up to provide fun skews on your usual survival. This is currently home for the rather extreme ‘A Really Bad CD DA’ scenario (C:DDA fans will probably be able to guess what this entails), but will soon be home to endless winters, fiery rain and all kinds of fun stuff.

Reanimation
The return of the feature that would see infected survivors turning upon death – letting you watch your zed as it stumbles around – quite possibly attacking other players if you’re in MP.

Other stuff
Ten levels to your skills instead of five. Much needed MP Admin features. All kinds of bug-fixes and whatnot.
That’s almost it for this week, but we didn’t want to let you go without a video. As we’ve discussed previously, TurboTuTone has been working on our television and radio system – and this week we’ve been trying to recreate (in a less hack-y way) how Kate’s bedside radio became less audible when Baldspot was downstairs – back in the days of the tech demo.

As you’ll be able to tell, the next video is somewhat WIP in terms of timings – but will give you a good idea about how the new system will work, and what’s within our [and modder] control through a privileged glimpse at the debug menu…
 

Finally, just when RJ was about to turn his attention to water purification in Project Zomboid the wondrous map maestro BlindCoder appeared with his Dirty Water and Salt Water mod, complete with textures from Thuztor! Check it out!

Today’s Die Hard-themed featured image from Steam user Mryx! Newsletter subscription link found here! Don’t come to us every Monday, let us come to you!

[nasKo]

Hello everyone, and welcome to this week’s Mondoid. Just a short one here, but some interesting stuff about build 32 non-the-less!

Anim Overhaul Update

The stealth system / animation overhaul has taken a little longer than expected, to the point where we’re starting to think it would be best saved for 32 than slow down the traits etc coming to the peoples. The reason for its delay is due to the fact that the animation system we had in the game was basic to say the least, coming from  2D 5 frame sprite animations it is basically only able to say ‘play this animation’, ‘now play this animation’. As the stealth system developed there had to be more and more fudged code to get anims to play in sequence on demand, in the end it was concluded the system wouldn’t be sufficient.

The new animation system is more sophisticated than the old, supporting more advanced features such as allowing travel to be defined in the animation, so stuff like foot sliding no longer occurs and zombie’s movement will be more shuffley instead of sliding along at a constant speed while looping an animation, as well as having more ability for transition animations (say bursting into a run from stand still, or coming to a stand still from a sprint), and branching anim states allowing for logic to define chains of animations (think more fluid and interesting combat) that should make the game play a lot more fluidly.

Our catalogue of animations is rising daily, now in the hundreds (!?!) and just waiting for the system to be in place that should see an avalanche of new animations going into the game. Everything from hammering a wall to looting a container are catered for. A particular one we’re looking forward to the moment when a player is wandering down the street and a sea of zombies all turn their heads with a groan before spotting you, stumbling around and shuffling toward you. Little touches that will make the game feel more legitimately like a zombie movie experience as well as the more gameplay oriented anims.

 

Build 31

So without stealth holding it back, as soon as we feel 31 is ready for more public eyes, we’ll get IWBUMsing it to the max. No telling when that will be, but hopefully soon!

 

Build 32

So let’s talk a little about where the next build will be going. Build 32 will see the professions / traits / skills overhaul continue, in our efforts to fill out the rest of the game in the same way we did the character creation with a major update to crafting and skills. This may well continue past 32 all the way up until 1.0 too. Our plan is to massively increase the amount of recipes and crafting in the game.

Now we have much more focus on professions, we will be expanding this by introducing the concepts of learned recipes. At the moment a few crafting recipes and construction things require a particular skill to be available. Once we overhaul the recipes the key factor will be whether a given character is aware its possible to build that particular item, or how to build it. Many recipes, such as say sandwiches, will be universally available to characters. Others may only be offered with specific professions or traits.

If you’re a character that does not start knowing this recipe, then you will need to learn it somewhere. Like perhaps from the TV? Or a book? Recipe books will be the new ‘go to’ for people aspiring to learn in the apocalypse. There will be numerous recipe books around the world that will have a themed combination of crafting recipes in them. The player will be able to choose from the available recipes and learn them, each taking less time than reading a skill book currently does (multiplayer players will be happy to hear this, no doubt!). Some recipes will have skill prerequisites, others will not, but we can be more generous when it comes to minimums once this is in since it already has the requirement of either starting with the recipe or finding it in the game. To those that have been stressing about the possibility of rain collectors shoehorning people into carpentry roles, they will be pleased to know that non carpentry related rain collection methods will be introduced at this stage, too.

With the introduction of this system, it frees us up to adding more specialist crafting recipes into the game, as if you specifically pick a profession to use that particular talent, then we need to worry less about portraying the ‘every man/woman’ (something which made us shun putting in crafting recipes that seemed too specialist or weird for an ‘average joe’ to be building in a post apocalypse world). We want to add a ton of new areas of crafting, from sewing to electronics, before the end, and RJ is currently composing a list of new stuff that he’s going to focus on on the run up to 1.0.

Today’s featured image from Steam user N3uroR4ptor! Newsletter, newsletter, sign up here!

[nasKo]

Hello folks! Mondoid time again. How time flies!

This week is a busy week. As usual we’re grinding away at our respective grindstones either trying to get Build 31 ready for testing on the I Will Back Up My Save branch (this will be pretty soon, most likely. How soon is not clear quite yet), chiselling away at the huge map expansion, filling up the airwaves, poking in AI brains or rejigging the animation system.

Build 31

The most recent addition to build 31 is tainted water. Survivors will need to boil water to sterilize it to make it safe to drink without getting sick. As well as rain collector barrels, survivors can now finally get unclean water from rivers. This should make non-carpenter survivers happy! Finally big props and thanks go to the amazing blindcoder, who totally beat us to this feature, just as we were planning it, with his amazing mod.

We as usual have no ETA on when 31 will drop to IWBUMs, but any internal test version could be the one we go with.

31 is just the start of a massive push to increase the crafting recipes and skills in the game, as we discussed last week. These elements will likely make the bulk of future updates all the way until release, with exception to bug fixes and features such as map expansion, NPCs, vehicles, stealth, accessibility improvements, and general polish etc. We’re also in discussions at the moment that may lead to us getting a lot more support in the future when it comes to taking the game toward release, particularly fixing up and optimizing the multiplayer code. We’ll see how it all goes!

 

Anim Update and 3D Character Support

In the rewrite of the animation system, we hit a problem where the new animation driven movement would have been completely incompatible with our characters, and in trying to solve this problem it turns out it looks like it may be feasible for us to remove the requirement of FBO and Shader support for the 3D characters in the game.

What this means is it will be possible for the pre 2004 PCs that so far have to have 3D models set to none, may* be able to get away with having a 3D player character, to take advantage of all the new animations, as well as the smooth movement and cool lighting.

*It all depends on the PC in question, the CPU in particular. Milage may vary.

It’s not clear yet quite how well they will deal with it, but generally a PC with a decent processor and a poor GPU may still manage to have a single player 3D character without much of an FPS hit. It should be pointed out that the whole reason 3D characters tend to be done on the GPU is because they are pretty expensive, so no one should expect to be able to put ten 3D zombies on an old laptop and have much luck, but it opens up the 3D characters non-the-less.

It’s too early to say for sure how successful it is, but just so ye olde’ PC people out there know we have your back and are trying our hardest to get the best game possible for the low spec PCs. At the end of the day though it’s balancing act and we can’t shy away from pushing the game forward.

On the animation system itself, we’ve more or less got animation driven movement working in the game. It’s not to video quality yet, since the above changes to the 3D characters have made things a little odd looking at the moment, but it’s already clear the impact this will have to the quality of the movement of the characters is huge. The actual movement of the characters across the world being determined by the animator improves everything about them, particularly the zombies, with their uneven and stumbling movement, it will make them feel 10x more like zombies you see in them there films.

The new XML driven anim state system (as well as being moddable) will allow for us to do quite intricate branching animations that could lead to some really cool stuff, particularly in combat, allowing for more realistic and interactive combat (potentially involving two characters, say struggling to get free of a grabbing zombie).

That’s it for this week! Sorry if it was a bit short and was more waffling on about the animation system without showing anything new, but we’re well on the way and have exciting stuff ahead, so back to work with us!

Title image by Bullwinkle. If you would like to subscribe to our newsletter, please send a self addressed envelope to the following link.

[nasKo]

Mondoids are pretty good when there’s a video to show off, and really good when they come in playable form. So when we do both? Criminy. Even now we can hear the distant drum of simultaneous international palpitations.

So… coolest stuff first!

 

Build 31 IWBUMS

Build 31 is now available for public testing, and should you wish to partake you’ll to want investigate this thread that details the necessary steps. The current changelist can be found here but highlights include: the revamped professions and traits, the new key/padlock system, tainted water, the new Challenges system, some much-desired MP Admin features and all manner of general balance and fixes.

 

If you’d like a video run-down then Mister Tooks has you covered with his video playthroughand deep-dive video into the profession revamp.

 

Clearly, as ever, we’d like you to report all previously unreported bugs on our tracker but in this instance it would also be of huge value if you could report back on how the balance feels in terms of the professions and traits you choose. We think it’s in good shape, but there will still be kinks to iron out that’ll no doubt be revealed on MP servers.

There will also be additions to 31 in the coming week, with RJ currently making noises about providing presets for character creation.

 

 

Re-Animation Revolution

Now that our awesome friend Martin Greenall’s animations are being fed into the game it’s becoming clearer and clearer that they’ll have a huge impact on the way PZ plays and feels.

 

We’ve spent the last week building processes that will blend animations together seamlessly and allow for easy modding. What this video shows is our branching anim state machine, deferred movement for accurate animated travel / foot sliding reduction and advanced blending. This is still WIP, but will lead to a huge improvement in animations and flow of gameplay – and will revolutionize combat. And the way it looks in-game? Well, just have a look at how it looks in-game.

 

(IMPORTANT: Watch to the end of the video to see the awesome-sauce zombie anims!)

 

 

So… when? Well, we’re aiming for Build 32 but there’s a lot of work that still needs to be done. Watch this space. And EreWeGo’s remix too – while we’re at it.

 

 

Tara!

That’s all for now, but rest assured that there’s plenty more cool stuff bubbling under the surface. It’s a really exciting time for Project Zomboid at the moment, and we hope that it’s the feeling you’re getting too. See you in seven days!

 

Today’s Featured Image by Steam user Nik_RJ . Want an email every time Mondoid comes around, or we release a build? Just investigate here!

[nasKo]

Welcome to the first ever Matryoshka Mondoid! This week we’ll be addressing the questions of our Russian-speaking audience, as collated and collected by the wonderful LeoIvanov.

One of the best things about PZ is the fact that we have so many players from so many different countries and cultures, so we’d like to make this a fairly regular occurrence – with the second half of the Russian APZDTISA appearing next week, and if people are keen on the idea then we’ll have our French community submit their questions next month. Then whatever other nationalities want to chip in, and maybe even those boring old English-speakers with their dull old ‘and’s and ‘the’s.

First off, however, let’s get the latest on Build 31 which is currently in IWBUMS Public Testing! Over to our French Correspondent Romain ‘RJ’ Dron. And be sure to read beyond it for some clues as to what you should expect to appear in Build 32!

Build 31:
“As I’m sure many will be aware – Build 31 has in public testing on our IWBUMS branch for a week now. While fixing bugs we’ve also added a few new things like the ability to clean up blood, some new food types and most importantly: frogs you can forage. In coming days there will most likely be some other new items that go in before 31 is final – some of which will have no real purpose, and some that will be lying in wait for the upcoming crafting overhaul in Build 32.”

“There’s also clearly still some balancing to do when it comes to the new trait system. I’ve also, after a lot of chat with EnigmaGrey, thought of some interesting ways to improve PZ’s zombie horde experience without needing weeks of coding and testing. I’m not sure if it’ll make it into Build 31 as it nears the stable branch, but plan to experiment a little and give it a try!”
Интервью Энди Hodgetts!

Q. Are there any plans to integrate a map with an ability to create your own marks on it with pencils and pens ? Also, will we be able to use crutches? Usually it’s really hard to move about with a broken leg without them. (Albert Sudakov)
AH: Some sort of player crafted map is something we’ve been thinking about pretty much since the start of development. We have a lot of ideas how maps such as these would have uses beyond just personal navigation and map markers. I hope we’re able to implement this to some extent, but it’s not part of our *essential* feature list for 1.0. And yes, crutches are kind of necessary from a story perspective if you recall the original Kate & Bob story, so yeah we’d definitely like to have this sort of stuff.

Q. Will there be a way to protect yourself from scratches or bites, for example – tape a journal to our wrists, or wear several clothes at once? Will we see winter clothing? (Fedor Ushanov)
AH: There will be many more clothing options in the final game, which will have their own stats. So motorcycle leathers will protect you from scratches far more effectively than a cotton t-shirt, for example. And yes, some clothing will be better for a winter climate than summer, rain protection, etc. Whether we get as in-depth as ‘crafting an item to yourself’ as in your journal taped to wrists example, that remains to be seen. In principle there’s no reason why we can’t have craftable clothing in the same way as we have craftable everything else. But it’s unlikely we’d be able to represent all these craftable varieties (should we implement them) visually on the character.

Q. Are you ever going to integrate the ability to swim – either on boats or handmade rafts?(Nikita Suldin)
AH: At the moment, we envisioned using the river north of West Point as a natural barrier to the quarantine zone, so allowing the player to swim or pilot boats would mean we’d need a physical wall of some description on the other bank. That said, as we continue to expand the map and more smaller streams / lakes / etc are added, we will need to revisit the current utterly impassable water tiles since it makes no sense that it wouldn’t be possible to cross, say, a single tile of water. It’ll need some thought to exactly the best way to handle it but in principle, swimming (or at least wading) through shallower water would be nice. When vehicles go in the game, the distinction between a car and a boat is not that great so, again, this maaaaaay be something we’ll consider. But at this stage, I wouldn’t want to promise it – just give our assurances that we’ll consider it.

Интервью Роберта Джонсона!

Q. Are you planning to create a way to keep us warm? I know that you can warm yourself already with campfires and clothes, I meant a fully functional system that’ll keep a room or house warm. (Fedor Ushanov)
RJ: I don’t see why not. We already have the moodle for being cold/hot, and winter is a huge part of the survival as you can’t farm or forage. You need to stock your food up by then, so I don’t see why at some point we wouldn’t want to stock up on logs to burn and keep buildings warm as well.

Q. Will there be any electro generators added into the game? Will we be able to use car battery to charge electricity? Also, will you be able to craft handmade carts to carry huge loads of wood logs? (Vladik, just Vladik)
RJ: Generators are planned for build 32 (aka “the great crafting overhaul”). It’ll be a quite easy system at first, more complex stuff with electricity may come in the future. For now my idea is that you put the generator inside a building to provide power for that building, but that generator will need repairs, will need petrol to work and will make a ton of noise! As for the carts, well the problem there is the animation and a proper system to push/pull things in the world, hence why I did the basic crafting of “log stacks” for now. Pushing stuff is planned though! Remember the good old wheelie bin?

Q. It’s already known that people are able to consume alcohol in this game, as well as an ability to treat your wounds and wellbeing with various medical pills and preparations. Are there plans to include the “bad side” of everything mentioned above? What I mean is something like an addiction. Spasibo! (Mihail Volikov)
RJ: I’d love to add some kind of addiction system. The idea reminds me a lot of Fallout! But again, I think it’d be a lot of micro-management for the player. It’s hard to simulate an addiction in a game I think, what would you do it? Shaking hands meaning you can’t craft or fight? The player simply refuses to do stuff? This is one of those things that we’ll have to think about a lot, and talk about even more. I don’t think we have enough medicine right now to create addictions anyway. I’ll have to start researching morphine…

Q. Will we be able to create proper window frames for our handmade houses? For example – create them like current doors – tear apart the existing windows with screwdriver and carry certain details over. (Igor Moor)
RJ: Well we’ll be introducing a lot of specific crafting with Build 32, but crafting glass windows might be a bit too much. Then again, perhaps you could find some windows already in-place, and move them onto your own window frame? That’s a potential.

Q. Will we ever see traps implemented? Land mines, bear traps… (Pavel Kotov)
RJ: That’s also planned for Build 32! We still need to think about them, but yes: pipe bombs, remote controlled traps, wolf/ear traps [Editor’s note: the team think the weird Frenchman means ‘Bear trap’ with this phrase] and spike traps have all been mentioned internally.

Q. Can we expect an engineering skill added in the future? A skill that, for example, at 5th level will let us create a generator or something of a kind that can be powered by diesel or alcohol? Engineering is a very wide and interesting topic and I’d be very interested to see how Project Zomboid could include their take on it. (Sergey Svetlov)
RJ: That’s also planned for Build 32! Along with other specific crafting, welding for example, and some more complex crafting that’ll require multiple skills – woodwork, engineering, electrics etc. I can’t really give examples right now as I’m still on build 31, but don’t worry we’re on the case!
 

And Finally
Today is the four year anniversary of the day Lemmy and Binky uploaded the first ever video of Project Zomboid, with (futile as it transpired) hope of acquiring some kind of funding to develop the game.

 

Then they brought the idea to all you lovely people, and the rest is history. Thanks again everyone for giving us the chance to work on the game!

 

Today’s featured image from Nyan Kitty. Want to get emailed lovely Mondoid goodness every Mondoid? Enquire within about our newsletter!

[nasKo]

 

Welcome to the second part of the great Russian PZ question-o-thon!  First, however, the usual ‘current build housekeeping’. We could really do with a snappier title than that…

31 continues to have fixes and changes thrown at it, and we will look to get it released as soon as possible. However, there are a lot of big balance and game progression changes we’ve put into it, and on one hand we want to make sure we don’t make a lot of people grumpy when it is released, but on the other want to separate out more ‘don’t like change’ complaints or misunderstandings from real balance issues we need to address, as the general direction of the new skills and trait systems are something we feel important and a big step in the right direction, and don’t want to dial back changes that will be complemented by the upcoming skill / recipe update (people’s reliance on carpentry, for one). This one may take a while to graduate, we’ll see how it goes, but as soon as it does we’ll get Desura out there too.

Now, onto out second bout of questions from the good russian-speaking PZ survivors of this world. These Mondoids have been fantastic for us, as previously we hadn’t quite realised the extent of the good work put in by Oneline and the ups and downs that the community had faced before it reached its current size, stability and inherent ace-ness. So if you’re a Muscovite and Vladivostockian (?) or anything in between we urge you to visithttps://vk.com/project_zomboid and http://playzomboid.ru/  and join in the fun.

 

 

 Q: Are we ever going to know what has happened before the outbreak fell upon earth? It feels impossible for everyone to turn into zombies suddenly, since the infection takes at least a few days to turn their host into one, according to “standard” sandbox settings.[Fedor Ushanov]

WP: My radio and TV broadcasts should be going into the game, I’d imagine, in Build 32 or 33 to provide a little back story and something to tune into while going about your survival business. For the first seven days in any case, after which point transmissions will become a little more sporadic. The ‘everyone’s suddenly a zombie’ issue certainly provides a challenge, as it does in an awful lot of other zombie/plague fiction, but I’ve spoken to two specialists in real world outbreaks and pandemics at London universities and I think we now have many explanations (many false, one real, some plausible, some not) to hint at and play with while you listen in on the world going to shit.

 

 

Q: Was there a reason to replacing the old exhaustion system? (Sergey Malkovich)

LEM: Yes, pretty much. In playing the game, and watching others play, we noticed that all that the exhaustion ever did was stop gameplay for 5-10 seconds before resetting to as if it didn’t exist. It didn’t really lead to any interesting choices or considerations beyond ‘I should stop running now for 10 seconds’ or ‘I should back away from these zombies for 10 seconds’. Watching zombie clear-outs on YouTube were frighteningly drawn out and dull – which it shouldn’t have been happening. The new system uses energy more like a commodity or resource that the player can use wisely or waste, and this feels much more interesting.

 

 

Q:  Will there be military among the NPCs and, if yes, will they behave any different from the normal citizens? Will they interact with the vehicles – when they are added in, of course? (Evgeniy Karpenko)

LEM: They are certainly planned / desired, and if they are added they will for sure have differing AI and interactions than normal citizens. At this stage though the NPCs are so long coming that we don’t want to promise anything specific more than survivor NPCs until they are done and out there.

 

 

Q: Will there be Steam Achievements?

LEM: Yes there will be, for sure. However, we didn’t think the majority of people would appreciate us spending all the time coding the achievement code when there were many things we still need to do that we’ve promised since day 1, as much as we appreciate many do want achievements. Also we can’t plan for what functionality we’ll one day have to tie achievements to, so it seems wise to leave this until the final lead-up to 1.0.

 

 

Q: Will you add voice chat to multiplayer?

LEM: We will certainly try! We still plan to get Steamworks integrated properly, that’s kind of a must for 1.0 (but is tricky due to the whole java thing), and at this point we could explore the possibility of VOIP communication. The thing stopping us doing VOIP at the moment is the same difficulties that make multiplayer a bit of a chore to set up. To use VOIP we need NAT punch through so clients can talk to each other directly, or the port opening required would get really silly.

 

 

Q:  Are there plans to be able to sever your limbs? [Alexander Vasilyev]

LEM: This is something we’d love to do, and now we have a dedicated animator it is a lot more plausible with the 3D models. However, It just gets a bit tricky with trying to retain compatibility with the 2D only system. Just know that it’s something we feel is an important last ditch attempt to save your character (with a tiny chance of not bleeding out) so will do all we can to get it in there.

 

 

Q: Will there be romantic relationships between players and NPCs? (I’ve found a lot of jewellery but never understood what they were there for.)

LEM: Probably not. We’ll leave these kinda things for mods! We will always make such things possible in the modding, if at all possible. However, its likely we’ll have a lot of preexisting relationships. It’s a must to be able to run into husband / wife / brother / sisters in NPC groups. Maybe its even something the player could pick in character creation.

 

 

Q: Are there ideas on picking zombies off from a higher place? I’ve always dreamt of picking zombie heads off from the window of a second floor.

LEM: Yep this should be possible, it’s more a bug than a missing feature at the moment!

 

 

Q: About the NPCs. Will they be as advanced as everyone expects? Will they create diaries and be capable of making any kind of relationship with you and other NPCs? It’s just that many, many games like these have NPCs comparable to mindless, soulless bots and it’d truly become a great instalment if NPCs are this advanced. (Sergey Gamanin)

LEM: ‘Advanced’ is a loaded question. We’ll make them as advanced as we possibly can, and may subtly cheat to accomplish our goals to make up any remaining distance the NPC intelligence can’t deal with alone. NPCs will form relationships with you and each other, and these will be altered by events that transpire in-game. This kind of stuff is not the behavioural AI stuff we’ve demoed in the previous videos but more ‘soft-scripted’ branching story event chains, so while it may seem ridiculously ambitious – if you look at Crusader Kings 2 you’ll see a rather clever way of handling all this character driven stuff that we’ve been heavily inspired by. (Of course it’s still bloody ambitious, hence the WHY NO NPCs still. Aggg. We’ll get there though. )

It’s essentially a combination of behaviour trees defining the NPCs movement and moment to moment decision making, while the NPCs main ‘story’ and moral choices / decisions etc are played on a higher, simpler world model involving character traits and relationships, with events modifying these and triggering dialogue. The difficulty comes from fitting all these together! The level we’re aiming for is higher than in any game we can think of, truth be told. We may not hit the height we are aiming for but as they say ‘shoot for the stars, hit the moon’. We won’t be satisfied or release until we have something we think the community will think is worth the wait. This is why it’s taking so damn long.

 

 

Q: How is the map development going on? What are your plans on it’s overall size and how far do you plan to develop it in terms of territory? (Alexey Leshyov)

RNG (lol): Map development continues apace, with almost all of the road/building layouts and vegetation leading to the City of Louisville (from just North of West Point) in its “first draft” state. That’s currently 85+ completely new and unseen cells, a lot of which will be more dense with buildings than any cells previously seen (excluding its surrounds, Muldraugh is 9 cells, for comparison). The overall size of the map should end up being somewhere between 1000 – 1200 cells (only including south of the River) which equates to roughly 100 square kilometres. In terms of territory, after the Louisville outskirts are complete, it will be on to the city of Louisville itself, and then South of Muldraugh towards the army barracks.

 

Q: Very important question to me – can we expect high rise apartments and office towers, higher than existing 8 floors? (Pavel Kotov)

LEM: It’s possible we’ll have to increase the building sizes for the inner city. There are performance ramifications to consider though (it used to be 16, we actually reduced it) so we’d have to consider some alternative methods so increasing it would only impact performances in those areas. It’s easier said than done because you can’t take for granted the height of the world from area to area. In short – we’d very much like to and will look to, but even if we did it we’d use it sparingly, and it would unlikely be 50 floor buildings.

 

Q: Will you ever add cellars into the game, 2.5 meters under the ground, able to hold optimal refrigerator temperature of 0-5C even in the hottest summer days? I don’t care if it takes a huge loads of resources and 5th level of carpentry to create, because it’s a very, very important and valuable thing. Also, will yoube able to keep your food outside during winter temperatures to freeze it? (Maxim Ilyin)

LEM: As above it’s feasible and we’d like to, but presents technical challenge as the engine and tools and everything are built upon the assumption that floor 0 is the ground floor. There are potentially ways to change this, work around it even, and its definitely something we’d like to do, but we’re being careful of making promises we can’t end up keeping. There are certainly plenty of other things we have to do before we could consider something like this. The outside temp in cold weather being used as refrigeration is an interesting idea we should look into. Depends to an extent on Kentucky weather how feasible this would be.

 

That’s pretty much it for this week! Before we go, would just like to say a big LOVE YOU to all the wonderful people we met, first time or not, at Rezzed. You’re all super.

Today’s header image is courtesy of Lament. If you’ve got that newsletter feeling, then clickhere.

[nasKo]

 
It’s always a bit of a weird one when we release a new build publicly of a Monday. It’s a Dulldoid for our wonderful IWBUMS-ers who’ve been there, done that, reported the bug and ripped their t-shirt into bandages.

But then again, it’s a resounding Fundoid for those who don’t partake in our public beta – and those who boot up Steam to see an exciting progress bar next to the words Project Zomboid. Just imagine that joy for a second…

Which is all as much to say, that on this day Build 31 came out to play.

You’ll be able to find the full changelist here!

News on Build 32 will be fermenting throughout the week, and will no doubt be mulled over next Monday. Meanwhile we’ve had really good progress on NPCs this week (but will hold back details so we don’t re-engage the hype machine when there could still be bumps in the road), meanwhile Turbo has been given a first test radio station script for integration while Will is filling out all his existing spreadsheets to fill the now wider daily schedules. The foundations of the Louisville map, meanwhile, continue to spill out of RingoD and Binky’s paws in preparation for Mash’s building deployment.

It’s all go basically. Fun times are ahead. And welcome aboard if you bought the game over our Steam Sale weekend! Good to have you with us. Try the bleach!
 

Today’s featured image from Overstalker! If you like your Mondoids and you like emails clogging up your personal inbox, why not enquire within and receive our newsletter every week, or on every build release?

[nasKo]

Welcome to a Mondoid precipitated by an exciting community event. On Wednesday a nice survivor called Nynuc dropped by with an offer. Post an update about NPCs, they asked, and then we would all see what was inside… the mystery box!

Well, it was pretty clear what had to happen next. Stick with us, though, to not only find out what was in the Mystery Box, but also to read some cool Build 32 Molotov-related content and more! [Please also note the Mystery Box ruse, once used, can never be repeated].

 

NPC PROGRESS UPDATE!

“Now first of all: Mondoid news on NPCs does *not* mean they are imminent or soon. However! Here is a picture of the behaviour debugger doing its thing: poking into the brains of AI NPC brains.”

 

“At this point in time most of the NPC survival behaviours are in. AI survivors can loot for food, barricade, will stockpile water, hang sheets as curtains, change dirty bandages, sew deep wounds, and all the stuff to keep them alive. I’m currently coding in specific looting targets based on items the characters want, say going specifically to Cortman Medical for medical gear.”

“Their combat skillz ain’t too great, but since there is a big combat rewrite incoming with the new animations there is zero point in working on zombie (or npc -> npc/player) combat as it’ll all need rewriting once that goes in – and that will be released before NPCs, almost certainly. So at the moment I’m focusing on group interactions. Group interactions use an entirely different system built based on inspiration from Crusader Kings 2, and use xml driven event chains to describe story beats in kind of mini-plots that will be stitched together.”

“Currently I’m writing an event chain for when a group walks toward an NPC safehouse. What happens if a patrolling guard spots you? What happens if a guard at a window sees you? What happens if you get spotted while trying to jimmy a window on the safehouse? What happens if you’re spotted inside the safehouse?”

“Each of these events will lead to their own consequences, which are branching events based on the personalities of the people both in the safehouse, and the people approaching the safehouse. From a stand-off with shotguns to begging for help to deal with raiders – there will be all manner of outcomes based on numerous factors. The whole idea is to build whole metric ton of different branching possibilities for single events, so that they can play out in dramatically different ways. We’re going to have all these little ‘storylets ‘ that branch in numerous ways, and when pieced together we hope they’ll make for a Walking Dead story-like experience that’s different each time.”

[Caveat: without actual game wide plot arcs, as considered and discussed and written by a team of writers, our results are unlikely to be as narratively sound and tight as a TV show story or purposefully written main quest game story. However, we hope for enough variation that it feels like a unique story each time.]

“For more details on how behaviour trees work, look here. NOW WHAT’S IN THE BOX?”

RADIO AND TV BROADCASTS UPDATE!

TurboTuTone has the system in-game, with multiple broadcasts playing alongside each other to simulate the last days of civilization before everything slowly goes dead. There’s still a fair amount of writing to do after the decision to create more narrative content timeslots per day, but we’re really motoring with this one now. Turbo has also made it possible for WordZed to suck dialogue, speakers and general info straight out of a global excel file, so modding should prove relatively easy.

 

THE MOLOTOV RETURNS!

A primary part of Build 32’s crafting update will be some rudimentary offensive and defensive devices that can be thrown, or maybe have timers/sensors attached to them if your character has the relevant skills. Romain is still beavering away at the code, but was kind enough to create the following video demonstration!

[NOTE: This is all very WIP, there's still no SFX and visuals need polish. The system is also currently using the ‘old’ PZ throw code. As such it looks a little bit odd at the moment with the new 3D characters. Please note that we'll be moving to more realistic physics once vehicles go into the game, and we will have more realistic throwing physics from that point too. Also, clearly this raises new issues when it comes to fire spread – so in MP we’ll add disable spread/spawn/crafting options into server options, while also perhaps playing around with just how flammable different tiles are. Concrete isn’t famous for its combustion properties, after all. Oh, and the Molotov probably shouldn't bounce either.]

 

More fun and games with Build 32 development next week!

It turned out there was an axe in the Mystery Box by the way, which was a relief as we’d been looking for one for DAYS.

 

If you’d like delicately phrased Zomboid-shaped fun packages like this delivered to your inbox every Monday, why not subscribe to our newsletter?

[nasKo]

 

Don’t be expecting much this week, survivors! This week is going to be one of those lazy ‘we’re getting on with it’ Mondoids. It’s Easter and there are eggs to be eaten! A few updates / bits of news though:

Multiplayer Code
As of late there have been increasing reports of unstable multiplayer, so we’re going to be looking into some multiplayer work, optimizations and changes that will hopefully improve the multiplayer experience of the game, decrease lag spikes and the such. There are some changes to the map loading stuff EasyP is trying out at the moment, and we’re hoping we’ll be able to stop the lag spikes on players joining the server. It’s a tough problem though, so its not clear if or when we’ll get this sorted.

 

Since we want to make sure we can provide the best multiplayer we can going forward to 1.0, we are starting to consider we’d be best off finding someone with the specific experience we need to work on the net code up to release, to free the rest of us to focus on the gameplay and bugs still remaining. We would be very interested to speak to any experienced C++ game developers out there with experience in online multiplayer game coding, preferably with some experience with Steamworks, and replicating physics systems reliably over a network. Java experience preferred but not completely necessary. If anyone out there has these skills and would like to be involved with Project Zomboid, then please get in touch with us via info@theindiestone.com!

Sorry to our community folks who are usually first in line for consideration, but we have a very specific skill set we’re looking for here so may have to look further afield this time.

 

 

Build 32
Work continues apace on the crafting update to the game. A few issues to resolve with the new animation system that is holding that back from further development at the moment (models and the hundreds of anims needing reexporting, which is quite time consuming, while we nail a few lingering problems with the core system) but we’re still hoping that will be able to make an appearance in build 32.

 

 

Insomnia 54
So for the last few days, CaptainBinky went along to the Multiplay Insomnia Festival with friend of Indie Stone Sir Twiggy, where they did a talk on stage about Project Zomboid. As well as this we got an opportunity to show off the game on the floor thanks to the amazing Team 17. So just a big thank you to all the Team 17 peoples who made it possible <3! Unfortunately since the impromptu author of this Mondoid wasn’t actually there himself I have little more to say than that, and will get the post-show gossip myself tonight, but early reports indicate it was all very GOOD, so hurray!

 

That’s all folks, I guess!

 

The title image is courtesy of Ayatuki – Newsletter be here

[nasKo]

Good Mondoid one and all. A fairly decent offering this week, spotlighting work that’s taking place on both the current and next build of the ongoing Project Zomboid saga.

BUILD 32 INVENTORY PROLIFERATION

Let’s go over to our French correspondent, Romain Dron, for an update on some of the new in-game items that will play a part in Build 32’s massive crafting update.

“Well, today has been an exciting day in which I come across all the different new items that Mash has been giving life to. There’s over 70 new items right now, and some will be useful (as traps, for example), while others will just be there to give a little more life to the game’s environment.”

“So to name a few: perfume bottle, dog leash, crayons, comic book, pinecone (can be used to light a fire), Washing Up Liquid, Mop (blood cleaning!) and alarm clock.” Look! Some balls!

“I’ve currently created 30+ recipes that use these and existing items – so you’ll be able to take apart a CD player to salvage components, and likewise house alarms, that’ll let you include parts of these devices in your crafted triggers/bombs.”

“A lot of this crafting will be exclusive to professions, so you shouldn’t expect to be able to craft a motion sensor if you’re not an electrician by trade, but that said we will look into realistic in-game ways to garner the more basic skills. You’d never be able to learn everything that a real electrician could though, in the same way that in Build 32 only engineers and repairmen will be able to fix up generators to the same high levels.”

SPIFFOSPACE SERVER

A quick nod to EnigmaGrey’s new SpiffoSpace Server, which is an official TIS server that we’re hosting for two very important reasons. Firstly we thought that we needed a friendly official server that new players could hang out on and learn the ropes. Secondly, it means that we can monitor what the game’s doing first-hand while EP is streamlining MP code and (as mentioned last week) we look for a MP coding genius who can ensure that we are a fully armed and operational battle station when we hit 1.0 later this year. Full details here on SpiffoSpace here! 

WATCH AND LEARN

Whoever said watching TV was a waste of time? As discussed previously, Build 32 will give the opening days of the apocalypse radio and television broadcasts to tune into so you can listen live to the downfall of humanity. That doesn’t mean that the usual schedules will be entirely interrupted however, and as such there’ll be cookery shows, home improvement shows and the like that will provide players with examples of the stuff that can be crafted in PZ and – thanks to TurboTuTone’s recent work – give you XP boosts as well. As such, profession-specific recipes will be made available to all avid TV-watchers no matter what their role in life.

This system is also being built with moodle lifts and lows in mind. So repeated viewings give markedly less and less XP – and also impact on boredom moodles. Quite how we’ll balance these with the current skill books is the next challenge we’ll face, but also on the menu is letting you record shows onto blank videos – and to have pre-recorded videos of both informative and entertainment shows lootable in homes and stores on the map.

Here’s a WIP video, BUT two things to note: XP gain is currently waaaay OP, and lines are currently too long in the show-content proper. It would usually be a much longer broadcast.

In other Turbo news, the clever chap has also coded us up a profanity filter that you can choose to drape over our narrative content if needs be. This was always a hotly requested feature back in the K&B days, and we thought it a necessary part of the game as rude words start to reappear once more.

EASYPICKINS’ IWBUMS MP ADVENTURES

Build 31 is still with us and currently has version 31.16 being tested in the IWBUMS beta channel. Why? Well, only due to a gargantuan battle between EasyPickins and what many call The Terrifying MP Map Corruption Bug of Ultimate Doom.

WARNING: Mondoid gets techier than usual from this point.

It all began when renowned server-hoster Zeek get in touch on March 21^st with an issue that saw the map getting corrupted seemingly at random – with either all-black chunks or chunks from another part of the map being placed where they didn’t belong. For the longest time it just couldn’t be replicated, so EP was stabbing in the dark with fixes – errors about truncated maps, fears of non-flushed data and countless checksums were all thrown into the mix.

“I got onto Zeek’s server to see first-hand how bad it was, and it was nuts.” Explained EasyPickins, shortly after the battle was won. “Chunks where nothing was loaded plus parts of the map placed where they didn’t belong.  And very often the errors in the log files pointed to completely different parts of the map than the ones we could see were messed up. The logs would say chunk X,Y was corrupt but then we’d go there and find a different chunk (or two or three) was messed up that wasn’t even in the error logs. It was so random that last Sunday I thought I had found the problem and his server ran the patch for 10 hours with zero errors.  Problem solved!  But no, the next day the logs were filling up with errors again.  And people on other servers reported they had no problems at all!”

At the end of a demoralizing final week, our champ was beaten – lolling on the ropes and hoping beyond hope that it could just be his Zeek’s personal RAM playing tricks. A software switch and a few hours of corruption-free play lulled them into a false sense of security, but then it came back. Back for the boss battle, like Kathy Bates in Misery.

“By that point we’d had enough people willing to run around on Zeek’s server trying constantly-changing test builds that I was able to get enough clues about what the problem was – and of course the other server admins trying the fixes I put out also, so my thanks goes to them as well.”

“The actual cause of the bug turned out to be a freakin’ variable related to saving zombie corpses. One part of the game was adding corpses to this list variable while at the very same time another part of the game was adding corpses from a different chunk to the self-same list.  Even chunks that had no corpses were being affected by chunks that did have corpses due to this shared list variable.”

And so, after 22 days of frustration the beast is slain at the hands of EasyPickins and friends, never to return again. Isn’t game development fun? Thanks to Zeek and everyone else who joined the battle!

OH, AND THIS TOO:

While we’re on the topic of EasyPickins and his victorious IWBUMS activity, running concurrent to his head/wall slams was quite a significant change to how PZ servers streams the map to clients. Again, it’s a smidge techie but… it’s highly likely that you’re a smidge more intelligent than the person that usually writes the Mondoid.

Back to EP: “The server has always created ZIP files containing parts of the map that are newer than the client has. A big performance problem with this has been that while creating these ZIP files, the server isn’t updating the game world or processing network messages. The more clients that needed map updates, the more time the server would be spend creating these ZIP files. As such creating ZIP files is now handled in a separate thread (actually, one thread per client).  So the server is no longer affected nearly as much when streaming the map out to clients.”

Got all that? Huzzah! Now to do the usual Mondoid sign-off stuff.

See you next week!

Today’s featured image is of our least noticed in-game reference. Can you spot it? As taken by Olaf the Merchant. Would you like to receive babble like this in email form? Well who wouldn’t? Click here!

[nasKo]

 

It’s just another Manic Mondoid, and no: we can’t quite believe that it’s taken us this long to make a reference to The Bangles either. There’s lots of fun stuff brewing here in Zomboidton, and today we’ve got a few updates on the upcoming animation system as well as Build 32’s new crafting and broadcast system. Hope you like!
 

Chris and Martin’s Animation Adventures
After running into some export issues that slowed us down for a bit while when we tried to get all of PZ’s current hair and clothes working with the new animations we’re now back to the exciting stage of implementing them over into the game itself. Let’s go over to Lemmy for some on-the-spot reportage!

“Animation stuff is going well. The bank of animations that our animator Martin is creating is growing larger by the day. We now have a tall fence climbing anim, for example, so survivors have another escape route from the horde. On top of this panicked or clumsy survivors will soon find themselves tripping over when running, turning corners and vaulting fences at high speeds – as well as scrambling along the floor trying to get back to their feet. This will all be done with animation driven movement, and should make for some really exciting gameplay moments. We’re not quite ready for another video, but hopefully soon!”
 

RJ’s Build 32 Adventures
Meanwhile in France: coder Romain Dron is still worrying his fiancée by leaving windows open on his PC that contain information that would be of interest to paranoid government officials.

“Right now I’m still balancing and testing the new trap crafting and recipes, and doing some additional research on them too. It’s important that they’re not too overpowered or too useless, after all. I’ve got all the MP code up and running, but whether in SP or MP a mix of engineer and electrician skills will be the most useful if you want to turn your safehouse into a trap-laden nightmare for interlopers.”

“I’ve also just added sound effects, and if you think zombies are attracted to the noise of gunfire – wait and see how they react to a pipebomb! While I’m in there I’m also playing around with fire spread, so you don’t burn down a whole neighbourhood with a single Molotov. After a lot of talk with Twiggy we’ve also thought of a few more traps and devices that would be useful, so there might be a few more surprises.”
 

Will and Turbo’s Broadcast Adventures
Finally over to Will, [who’s actually the guy writing this buy… hey-ho] for an update on the new TV/radio system that will let you listen in on the world falling apart.

“We’re at the point now at which all the systems are ready and waiting, so basically I’m going to be ‘writing up to the line’ in terms of Build 32 testing. In a perfect world I’d like 5 TV channels and 5 Radio stations ready to go in the first drop, so there’s still quite a lot to do – not least because whenever I think of fun new events and lore elements I have to go back and tweak each of the broadcast timelines. The thinking is that this batch will cover ‘official’ broadcasts and transmissions, while survivor/military channels commenting on the same events will follow later on.”

“That said, to give me some extra options, Turbo’s also worked on a way to get different fonts and custom images into the lines that appear on-screen. This came from my request to have a ‘musical notation’ symbol so that it’d be clear when a line was sung or a radio jingle – it should put us in fine stead for the development of the system too. Turbo is now off investigating the integration and development of his ApCom Ham Radio and Walkie Talkies mod for future builds.
 

In Other News about Adventures
A quick request from EnigmaGrey to see if anyone would like to help out as Admins on the new TIS SpiffoSpace Server. We basically need some nice community types to help out new players and keep an eye out for cheats. Please contact him via a direct message on the forums if you’re interested.
 
 

This week’s featured image is from Mrniffty. If you’d like Mondoid thrown onto the porch of your electronic house every week, then why not give consideration to a newsletter subscription?

[nasKo]

The big plan was to have a super-cool new animation video today, but despite a valiant all-night effort to eradicate a glitch that stands in the way of an exciting vid – it stubbornly persists. So: sad face.

Mondoid waits for no man, however, so Romain ‘RJ’ Dron has thrown his hat into the ring with the full run-down on his current contribution to Build 32! Over to RJ!

CRAFTED DEVICES AND TRAPS

Traps have receive some more RJ love since last week, in fact they’re pretty much done. I’ve had a few more ideas I want to add in, but all the items and systems are now working, present and correct. We’ve mentioned it in a few Mondoids now, but haven’t really put anything in an easy-to-read fact list – so here are the basics of my stuff in Build 32.

With new engineering and electrician skills you can now build, throw and detonate device and traps to aid you in your survival attempts. There are explosive devices, fire-spreading weapons like molotovs, a smokebomb and a noisemaker – for example.

As well as throwing these in/around crowds of zeds, they can also be set down and triggered in various ways. There’s the movement sensor, for example, that will need to be crafted from the movement sensor in a home’s burglar alarm. Each constructed device, meanwhile, has its own level of effectiveness – meaning that a character who is an electrician by trade will be able to build a better movement sensor than someone who’s just learnt from books they’ve looted.

Beyond the movement sensor we’ve got a timer – an old classic! This can be crafted from a kitchen timer or an alarm clock and it’s pretty simple: put it into your device, set the timer before ignition and wait! Finally, there’s a remote control. You can craft a trigger from electronic scrap found in devices and a receiver that’s found in, for example, radios. Then take a remote control for a television set, link the devices [through a simple right click ‘link to’ dropdown menu] and place the crafted receiver on your device. The higher your skills, the better the receiver – and the further away you’ll be able to trigger the explosion. Just think: when NPCs come around you’ll be able to leave all sorts of surprises in their safehouse!

GENERATORS

I’m currently working on generators, after doing a lot of research on them. You’ll find them in sheds, garages and storage units in Build 32. They’re not all that rare BUT they do require certain skills to operate them. As such, an electrician will know how to use a generator, but an average joe will have to get some reading done!

If you know how to operate them, however, then you can carry them [although they are really heavy!] to the outside of your safehouse, plug it in and turn it on. A wise survivor, however, probably won’t place it inside the house as, yes, the threat of poisoning will be very real. Electricity will then be provided in the home – and the generator will slowly consume fuel and lose condition as it does so. Fuel itself will be obtainable at any gas pump in the game, while there’s still electricity to pump it. Comfort does have a price though, and users should be aware that generators make a hell of a lot of noise, and might get a bit explode-y and fire-y should their condition deteriorate to dangerous levels.

WILL AND TURBO STUFF

Will continues to write radio and television transmissions, and is looking with mounting horror at how much there’s left to do compared with what Romain is industriously ticking off his Build 32 list. Turbo meanwhile, with 95% of his broadcast system in place, is still fiddling with the innards of his ApCom mod with an eye to bringing it over in a future build.

He did, however, find the time to allow certain images in MP chat. This led to a spurious demand from Will, which ultimately led to the creation of a video in which a lady hacks zombies to bits while singing ‘The Hills are Alive’ from ‘The Sound of Music’.

OH, AND HEY

Our favourite PZ video in a fair while surfaced over the past week. Before you go, please do check out what happened to poor old TehMikal’s brother:

This week’s featured image from Healerus over on Steam. Do you read to the end of Mondoid every week, but still persist in NOT wanting to receive the Project Zomboid Mondoid and Update newsletter? Only you can change your life for the better, by clicking here.

[nasKo]

 

Hello survivor! It’s been a pleasant Bank Holiday Mondoid in sunny Blighty, if you ignore the rain and the fact that we’ve been sat inside coding zombies of course. We’ve got some cool Build 32 nuggets for you this week although sadly the new animation vid isn’t ready at the time of writing since, despite the eventual obliteration of last week’s bug, there’s now a lighting issue that keeps on plunging them into darkness.

Games development: yaaaay. We’ll stick it up when it’s ready and make a fuss still though, as we’re quietly confident that it’ll stir loins in safehouses the world over.


CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
As the Builds tot up towards 1.0 we’re going to be introducing more and more cool new bits and bobs to the PZ Challenge menu. These will provide new activities for long-term players and take place in interesting areas of the map that are a little off the beaten track. By the time of 1.0 they’ll also have a progression and unlock system attached to them for any fresh faced Project Zombateers who buy the game in the world beyond Early Access.

We currently have two new Challenges up and in the game, which will shortly be going into internal testing for ‘fun factor’ feedback. They’re both pretty nifty, and come from the keyboard of Romain ‘RJ’ Dron.


Winter is Coming
As Game of Thrones obsessives will know all too well, endless winters are rarely pleasant. This Challenge spawns the player in one of several isolated locations on the PZ map, armed only with the knowledge that in seven days’ time a winter will set in like no other before it. The undead hordes will be slowed slightly by the cold, but your challenge will be to survive as long as you possibly can as the temperature suddenly starts to fall.




Opening Hours
This challenge is us trying to get a real feeling of Dawn of the Dead into PZ. You are alone inside an empty mall with countless zombies building up at the doors and ambling around the parking lot, but you won’t be alone for long. At 9AM the Mall will be ready for business: doors will automatically open, and the hordes will enter. Can you survive until the doors close again at the end of the day? Shame the mall is open seven days a week really…



We also want to make a quick shout out to forum user BobHeckling, who was the guy who rebuilt our original map in the new map tools and allowed it to be used in the Bedford Falls mega-map. We really want to build a cool challenge in the old 0.1.5d/0.2.0 location so if you read this then please get in touch (!) as we’d like to make sure it’s done with your blessing.


RANDOM CHARACTER CREATOR
Build 32 will also see Blindcoder joining the illustrious ranks of those who’ve had a mod incorporated into Project Zomboid. [You hear that Stormy/RJ/Turbo? We called you: illustrious!]

His excellent Random Character Creator and Character Build Saver mod will become an official part of the game, and we will watch his uncanny ability to predict the next item on RJ’s ‘to do’ list with great interest. Thanks Benjamin!


IN OTHER NEWS

• Turbo has been working on how portable radios will work in-game and also have the potential for player-customized frequency presets, all with an eye to having it mesh with the walkie-talkies when his ApCom mod is fully integrated, as well as in future when there’ll be military and survivor frequencies to tune into that’ll deepen the narrative.
• Amidst his animation bug battling, and various other duties that lay on the path to his NPC nirvana, our Lemmy wrote an interesting blog about Valve’s recent ‘paid mod’ furore and what its implementation would’ve meant to his time as a modder, his career and PZ in general. It’s quite interesting and I’m not just saying that because I work with him.

That’s all for this week. See you next Monday!

This week’s featured image from Romain ‘RJ’ Dron, who emailed me the picture. Fancy receiving an email every Mondoid or whenever there’s an official or IWBUMS game update?Click right here, bucko.

[nasKo]

 

Why a Blue Mondoid? Perhaps it’s because you’ll let out a cuss-word in surprise and delight at the treats in-store for you below? Maybe Zombies turn blue, as well as green, sometimes? Perhaps, just perhaps, it’s because the guy writing this really likes the songs of New Order. Who can say?

EXCITING ANIMATION VIDEO

Over to Lemmy for a quick description of what you’ll see in our latest, long-awaited, animations video.

“This is still WIP, and is just a demo of a few new things in the new animation system. General running will be separate from a sprint ability, which gives you a boost to speed but quickly tires you, lowers your ability to manoeuvre and increases a risk of a fall or collision.”

“Characters will have much more physical presence in the world, and inertia and change of speed is now a factor with regard to animation. This will also allow us to branch off different ramifications given the character’s mental and physical state. Panicked survivors who are not looking where they are going may run into problems (quite literally) while unfit, clumsy or undexterous characters may perform actions slower, or be more likely to mess up, fall or perhaps fail to scale a fence at an inopportune time.”

 

TUTORIAL RETURNS

Mondoiders with keen memories might remember that back in the days of Build 25 there was talk of a Tutorial that would teach the most basic of basics to new survivors. A script was written and initial code was tapped in – but then tasks elsewhere diverted our attention and the poor thing was left on the shelf for a while. Left alone that is… until a brave Frenchman called Romain ‘RJ’ Dron found it, blew the dust off and finished it like the dreamy gallic hero he is!

Now a part of Build 32, the tutorial is an introduction to the mechanics and ambience of Project Zomboid – and should be quite fun for established players to check out too as there’s some fun forced-feeding of rotten foodstuffs along the way. We’ve been sure to write it so it complements the more narrative tutorials of Kate and Baldspot, when they return, who’ll be more concerned with ‘advanced’ gameplay. This tutorial is very much aimed at making new players feel less confused in their very first couple of minutes of gameplay.

 

TURBO AND WILL ADVENTURES

Okay, so slight annoyance time. The coders have left Writer Will [that’s me, hi] in the dust and he’s not comfortable with his radio and TV spreadsheet going into Build 32 as a WIP. He needs extra time to polish, proof and be sure the multi-channel coverage of simultaneous events is watertight. So, sorry about that one.

In ‘positive spin’ news, however, this does mean that players will be getting the entire radio system when it comes to Build 33 – incorporating all of Turbo’s player-to-player transmission system brought over from his ApCom mod.

Turbo is simultaneously working on a system for those who’d like to customise their safehouses a little – letting you rotate and move (via your inventory) certain items of furniture, paintings, items and vegetation. More of which we’re sure you’ll hear a lot more about after Build 32 is released and the build-up to 33 begins. [Although seeing as a lot of the groundwork for all of the above has already been laid, it presumably won’t be a hugely long wait as far as PZ updates go].

OTHER STUFF

In the background mappers continue to set out the foundations of Louisville, EP’s doing stuff with zombie population management that’ll make you tingly and we’ve also got various other cool things we won’t tell you about until they’re a smidge closer. All cool stuff. Have a lovely week everyone!

 

This week’s Featured Image is Lenged91’s ‘Pride and Joy’ safehouse. God bless her, and all those who cower within. Would you like to receive weekly updates on Project Zomboid? How about every Monday or, as the cooler kids say, ‘Mondoid’? Follow this link for voluntary enlistment.