Wayfarer

May or may not have been suggested before, but player character food likes/dislikes could add another dimension to roleplaying/character creation.
 
The Boredom and (Un)Happiness stats of foods are sensible, though static.  Similar to the trait system, pick a handful of things your survivor likes or doesn't like.

May or may not have been suggested before, but player character food likes/dislikes could add another dimension to roleplaying/character creation.
 
The Boredom and (Un)Happiness stats of foods are sensible, though static.  Similar to the trait system, pick a handful of things your survivor likes or doesn't like.

The new updates are awesome, keep it up chaps 😁

Hello everyone! Lazy Thursdoid this week while we can get away with it, IWBUMs are out and for the most part everyone seems to be really happy with how its going. A few much more isolated issues to resolve on low end PCs and Mac, Linux builds. It sucks and we promise we’re working on them, if there’s anyone out there who feels they haven’t been responded to about their issue, chances are we’re already aware and are working on solving it or getting hold of a similar spec ourselves to debug on. Otherwise, people seem to be responding very positively, and player counts, reviews and everything seem to be very active. Exciting times!
We released 5th patch to IWBUMs yesterday, and boy was everyone really happy to see the increased soap spawns! We seem to have licked all the specific performance related issues, and now only need to improve general performance with skeleton sharing between zombies in hordes. This will happen during IWBUMs at some stage, but is a bigger task than some others so we’ll see at what point it does drop in.
We feel our naming scheme for the playstyles has been a lot more successful than previous attempts, the hotbar system has been going down a storm. We’ll carry on polishing, balancing and fixing until we’re finally ready to start testing the multiplayer code (no timescale on this, it really does depend on a lot of factors) and until then… enjoy!
This week’s image from Vic on Steam. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too!

Mechanically, how much difference is there between crouching [C] movement and sneak/aim [ctrl/right mouse] movement?  Of course there's the nice new animations, pushing through trees and so on; and one mode is for fighting.  But noise-and-notice-wise, skill-wise? I've not particularly noticed, but haven't been thoroughly looking.

Wow, that new rotation is looking great!  Very excited to play with the new animations, when it's all nice and ready   Have you thought about some degree, or some cases of rotation being head-only?   Say the first x% of the rotation the character turns their head first, before their torso? 

Merry Christmas survivors, joy to the world and all that business. With opening sentence festiveness over then, let’s see where we’re at with a few things.

VEHICLES BUILD 31

Vehicles Build 31 is out now, and is primarily one of bug-fixing – with corrections, balancing and optimizations being the primary focus as work towards pushing vehicles toward stability and their public release.

We’ve still got some work to do with remaining MP sync issues, which Yuri is currently addressing, and there’s an annoying rooftop rendering regression bug to address still – but general issues covered in this latest public test build include: disappearing skill books, lock syncs, giganto cars on 1x tiles, everlasting street lights and various issues related to vehicle loot.

In Build 30 zombies were also given the ability to set off house alarms when swarming a house and breaking windows – but we’ve turned this off until we’ve looked ‘zombie awareness’ optimization in the new year. People did seem to be enjoying the added chaos to the first few hours of the game, however, so it’s been made available as a sandbox option.

ZED OPTIMIZATION

The combination of BitBaboon Steve’s map streaming smoothening and ChrisW’s work with the non-rendering unseen tiles has resulted in a far more playable games when it comes to the vehicle build – with the biggest strain on performance now being the zombies themselves.

In towns and densely populated scenarios the combination of players covering large distances more quickly and their vehicles having wide radius of zombie attraction means that more zombies are being stirred up than ever before.

Yuri, then, has been investigating the best ways to optimize their heightened enervation – to give us some wiggle room when it comes to difficulty and zed population without sacrificing FPS. He’s even done some graphs like this or that seen below:



Right now zombies will ‘walk towards’ sounds they hear in a straight line, until they hit a fence, wall or building. At this point they enter a more costly ‘PathFindState’ that will direct them towards the player, which in all honesty isn’t very zombie-like in any case. As the above graph shows, with hundreds of zombies responding to car sounds at long range this is causing major lag in areas like West Point.

To improve this over Christmas Yuri will be creating a ‘WalkAroundBuildingState’ which will be used for any zombies outside of close range of the player (off-screen to a SP player). This will be a simplified version of the traditional zed pathfinding that funnels them along a building’s wall in a direction that brings them closest to the player, going back into ‘walk toward’ when they have circled the building.

As such zombies will be able to navigate past buildings without dragging processor power, while still displaying suitable dumb zombie behaviours to MP onlookers, or the player themselves if they are watching a horde following a distraction or a house alarm.

ANIMS

As of the public release of the vehicles build we’ll have the full animation system lying dormant in the released code, waiting to be turned on bit-by-bit in the test versions that follow.

Right now it’s all behaving better than expected – but has a sweep of bug-fixes required that’ve either appeared during the grand unification process and the introduction of Bitbaboon Mark’s tool-based ‘AnimZed’ editing and implementation.

As you can see in this vid, for example, for some reason vehicles (despite being drivable and tinkerable) aren’t visible – and elsewhere the player character turns into a squiggly nightmare when climbing through windows, and can often snap a full 360 which looks decidedly strange.

Once these kinks are ironed out Mark will be moving onto optimizing these processes (the focus has been on getting stuff working, with the tightening of loose nuts and bolts to come later) while Martin can concentrate on improving visuals – and maybe have a model for a trouser-wearing male that doesn’t look quite so… tight-fit and 1980s.

A full sanity data pass of the entire data set will also be required soon, so Mark will no doubt be calling on his Technical Director management skill-set to get a full export/validate system going with Martin to get it done quickly and easily.

Today’s supermarket sweep from persol. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.
 

Yeah, it's hard to do much...but you can do the basic to get a mostly-functional car going, or improved if the tires are bad or the battery's damaged.  I also had a tires and a battery disappear.  I think one battery and maybe one or two tires over the course of swapping all tires between two cars, and a battery from a third.  I thought it was because they "broke", due to low Mechanic skill or something, and not a bug.  If it was intended, it was a tad ambiguous with no message saying so.
 
Is repairing going to be a thing?  Like if your car is pretty good except the trunk or a door, will you be able to repair or will you need to replace?
That's so we can test the stuff.  I imagine when it's implemented "for reals" that's going to be a big goal

Yeah, it's hard to do much...but you can do the basic to get a mostly-functional car going, or improved if the tires are bad or the battery's damaged.  I also had a tires and a battery disappear.  I think one battery and maybe one or two tires over the course of swapping all tires between two cars, and a battery from a third.  I thought it was because they "broke", due to low Mechanic skill or something, and not a bug.  If it was intended, it was a tad ambiguous with no message saying so.
 
Is repairing going to be a thing?  Like if your car is pretty good except the trunk or a door, will you be able to repair or will you need to replace?
That's so we can test the stuff.  I imagine when it's implemented "for reals" that's going to be a big goal

Hello everyone - a shorter Thurdoid this week, just a few announcements.
 
Build 38
We've just released what will hopefully be the last IWBUMS of build 38 before we finally put it to bed. You can find the changelist for 38.25 here. We'll probably aim to go public with it on Monday, at which point the vehicle build will become the prime build and all hands will move onto it.
We've pretty much got the dedicated server system set up on the new build system, so will have updated that soon and will announce it when that happens with hopefully a good chunk of the weekend left to assure no issues remain with online play for a Monday release. At which point we'll upload to GOG and finally put this version to bed! Speaking of GOG:
 
GOG Builds
In the past, due to the difficulty of how we've handled builds it meant we haven't given GOG users as speedy or regular updates and we're sorry about that, it's clearly not been good enough. However part of the focus on revamping our build system means that we should be able to investigate IWBUMS support for the vehicles build once build 38 is out the door, at which point both versions will retain parity as much as possible. (It may be however GOG Linux will lag behind a bit since it requires a zip file upload to ftp, and is not directly uploadable via the GOG backend, but it will still be a lot faster and IWBUMS compatible).
 
Build 39
A few interesting updates here. ChrisW has been working on the new cutaway system for some time, which as you know provides sexier cutaways allowing for more buildings to appear in full without the entire world being cut away at once. He's now moved onto a rather huge optimisation in the same arena of code that should allow us to address the severe FPS loss we've been experiencing, particularly on the vehicle build. By removing unseen furniture and other tiles from inside building levels above the player that are hidden, it should massively reduce the amount that the game needs to draw, and should have a noticeable improvement on FPS particularly on a zoomed out view and in towns. As well as this Steve from BitBaboon has turned his optimisation sights onto the vehicle build, and we'll hopefully make some big gains to FPS in the vehicle build.
Meanwhile RJ and Yuri continue to expand on the various vehicle systems required for release, this week with a particular focus on balancing, while Mash has been doing major work on the damage and other overlay textures. Next on the list from RJ is more work on the mechanics UI. Yuri and Martin will be looking into visibly opening trunks/hoods/doors to make interacting with vehicles much more realistic.
That's all for this week, apologies its a bit of a short one this week normal Thursdoid will resume next week!

New version!
 
Fixed memory leaks when the player died.

Ah yes. New version everyone!
 
Mainly bug fixes.
 
Bug fixed: Interior car doors are locked, and cannot be unlocked from the other side. Also sometimes the door on the driver’s seat is locked, but the passenger seat door is unlocked. Bug fixed: 'Rain falls through roofs on first floors. Bug fixed: Street Lights and Lamps work even when there is no electricity. Bug fixed: Loot tables on a reloaded game (and possibly other bugs associated with reloads)

I'm not certain that I've noticed an improvement.  Not to say there actually isn't one for me, as I didn't track the FPS before.  I just tried F8 for display FPS and F11 for debug, but nothing came up in-game.  Is that normal?  There's still a bit of degradation, but mostly when zoomed out and probably at higher speeds.  I'll do more to test later.
I've also seen cars higher on the z-axis (ones I haven't used). I was playing for a while and kept seeing repeating messages in the console to do with "moving vehicle back onto chunk". I tested quitting while in-car and reloading, it crashed to main menu and created the _crash game save.  I attached a pic of the console message.  EDIT:  I could load the _crash save, and the car was higher on the z-axis. The vehicle info window appeared to get stuck open until I got out of the car (the x didn't work).
I can comment on reloading a save with more repetitive results across games:
Loot distribution changes.  It seems like containers in particular locations may be getting the distribution properties of other locations, or maybe the rates are being drastically impacted...or something :S e.g. houses in general.  On new game, it's all normal.  After reload, I don't find much at all, and what I do find is proportionally lots of pens, flashlights seem more common than "normal", kitchen counters don't really have anything, especially food items, that sort of thing. e.g. Muldraugh farmers market which I think is a pretty safe bet for lots of food across games, with produce being very much the majority, the shelves in the centre were bare but the graphic was as if it there were items.  Assuming that's not an affect of dynamic loot, it seemed bug-like.  The fridge freezers also had burgers and meat, I'm thinking normally they perhaps wouldn't?  Slim example, yeah, but still hopefully useful. Compared to "normal", interior-locked doors to bedrooms etc are much more common, which I can't open from either side. My system:
Windows 8.1 64-bit DirectX 11 GeForce GT 740M Intel i7-4700MQ 2.4GHz 12GB RAM Presence of strands of golden retriever fur likely

Hello.  I'm a little surprised this isn't floating around on here somewhere....  I've seen bits about adding context menus, but not something for weapon renaming specifically.  I figured, since we can rename bags and evolved recipe dishes, it's pretty much already in there and just needs a bit adding for weapons.  And here it is
 
This will enable renaming weapons in inventory context menu, just like bags. Go forth and give that hammer you've been swinging around in the Exclusion Zone for 2 months a special name
 
I expect renamed items should continue to work fine for recipes, as the display name is what's being changed, not the underlying ID.
 
Bit of a disclaimer:
- I've not personally tested in multiplayer, either hosted or joined, but it's been commented that it works, however.
- I've not personally tested with renaming weapons from mods, but that's also been commented to work. I expected it would, it operates against hand weapon items after all.

Credit / References:
- Indie Stone, of course. Basically, I've adapted relevant bits of the base ISInventoryPaneContextMenu.lua.
- I referred a bit to RoboMat's Creating Inventory Context Menus tutorial and MisterInSayne's Giving custom options to items when you right click them thread.
 
 
Download the mod file .7z archive from here; or Copy paste the below, or attachment, into a mod media/lua/client folder; or It's on Steam Workshop as well.  
 
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ISInventoryRenameWeapon = {}; require "ISInventoryPaneContextMenu" ISInventoryRenameWeapon.createMenu = function(player, context, items) local canBeRenamedWeapon = nil; for i, v in ipairs(items) do local item = v; if not instanceof(v, "InventoryItem") then item = v.items[1]; end if instanceof(item, "HandWeapon") then isHandWeapon = item; canBeRenamedWeapon = item; end end if canBeRenamedWeapon then context:addOption(getText("Rename weapon"), canBeRenamedWeapon, ISInventoryRenameWeapon.onRenameWeapon, player); end end ISInventoryRenameWeapon.onRenameWeapon = function(weapon, player) local modal = ISTextBox:new(0, 0, 280, 180, getText("Change item name"), weapon:getName(), nil, ISInventoryRenameWeapon.onRenameWeaponClick, player, getSpecificPlayer(player), weapon); modal:initialise(); modal:addToUIManager(); end function ISInventoryRenameWeapon:onRenameWeaponClick(button, player, item) if button.internal == "OK" then if button.parent.entry:getText() and button.parent.entry:getText() ~= "" then item:setName(button.parent.entry:getText()); local pdata = getPlayerData(player:getPlayerNum()); pdata.playerInventory:refreshBackpacks(); pdata.lootInventory:refreshBackpacks(); end end end Events.OnPreFillInventoryObjectContextMenu.Add(ISInventoryRenameWeapon.createMenu);  
 
ISInventoryRenameWeapon.lua

This.  I suppose making a barrel or some kind of crude rain-catcher is more difficult than nailing a plank across a door....but....maybe not that hard....a box with a garbage bag fixed open to the inside maybe is all for the most basic creation.
 
I agree with the idea of "migrating herds" too.  Yep you can clear around you and you're safe for a time...but not if that herd just heads your way.  And maybe they should just be more inclined to "keep moving" in the direction they last chased you in, even if it's just one by itself, because, why would they stop?  You're food and you went that way.
 
My game just ended because I got complacent, went rushing around to find the last close-by food as the power went off, and got myself chomped.  So the danger is still always there....  but yeah, you have to look for it, and that's what seems to be the problem.
 
EDIT: Another one of these threads mentioned how loud wood cutting would be.  Totally.  That'd potentially be a big draw when wood fires are how you cook and keep warm later-game, even for the Daryl-wannabe living in one of the forest huts.

I'm excited but I wondering if getting a car up and running would cost an arm and a leg  xD

No you cannot equip the gloves or hats yet. Though in the code it says there is a head slot. Maybe some day. However Work Gloves and Oven Mitts are used as a requirement in recipes. So even if you cannot equip them you can still use them.
 
As for the bathroom stuff and other items that don't do anything. Besides being sources for recycling, I do plan to give many of them a use. In fact many had no uses before but now do, such as many of the kitchen items now have a use thanks to merging in the CCCP mod that added a ton of cooking recipes.
 
In short we can only code so much. There are a lot of thing I want to make in future updates, its just a matter of getting around to doing it. I also am curious on what will be the crafting update in build 32. This could change a lot of what I have. I know it will have some items already in the Hydrocraft mod so I will have to remove them to avoid redundancy with the vanilla game. But hopefully new stuff will be possible such as tossing items. The egg timer I have in the Hydrocraft mod would be a good distraction item by throwing it and then having it attract zombies.