Trojan_Turps

After we get points we can unlock special starting items like clown shoes, a vest with a big skull on, a tie-dye T-shirt etc... Points plus unlockable items is like crack for some people

I think that the tripping thing is very exciting!
1. How often do you trip?
Simply running over rough ground would make you trip. Things like long grass, curbs and rubbish would make things hard. Then add panic, the dark and zombies.
Also people fall over all the time in zombie movies and that's what the games trying to be like!?
2. I want to die because I tripped over. I want to fear the horde, not just run off. Tripping over will make you panic when It happens. This can only be a good thing. It probably won't happen very time you try and run when panicking anyway.
3. The panic system could be better. I don't like how quickly it goes away and the gun stuff could be different.
4. Clumsy trait would need changing but alot of the traits are going to be changed anyway.
5. Leads down a bad road....
I think it leads down a good road. The devs know that people don't like losing control but they are still putting this in the game because they are sticking to their vision of what the game should be. PZ is great because the devs are doing things differently to all the other teams making zombie games right now! Don't stop them by judging a feature before you have tried it. Tripping might be great... It might be crap...
But I'm just happy that it's being tested.

Buen día, zomberinis!
 
This week we take a look at the work of Snake, one of our most popular modders. “Most popular?” I hear you say, scanning the Steam Workshop. “Why, I can’t find a whiff of this so-called ‘Snake’ fellow anywhere!”
 
But hold on a moment – Snake’s mods are only to be found on his own website, pzmodding.blogspot.com. The mods are easy to download and install, and the couple of extra steps to get them to work hasn’t hurt Snake’s high standing in our Spanish-speaking community.
 
From an abandoned ship to a hunting and food mod, Snake has many mods and several maps, but has thankfully made an all-in-one pack to bring many of them together for easier installation. We’ve prepared a short list of some of the contents of the pack and asked the creator a few questions below!
 
 
Le Gourmet Revolution
   


 
Snake’s piéce de resistance mod, and much more than the name suggests. It is in fact a sort of modpack of its own, bringing together new crops to farm, foods to find and cook, with new and advanced fishing, hunting, and foraging systems.
 
Read new seed packets of crops like rice, pumpkins, and wheat to learn how to plant them, then use your new crops in a variety of recipes. It also adds the ability to make food like waffles and cupcakes that appear in our game but are not creatable.
 
The hunting system lets you use a bear trap or a slingshot to hunt animals like sheep, boar, chickens, or bears for their meat or fur, and the new fishing system (a hobby of Snake’s as we’ll see below) adds many new types of fish and bait, along with a metal detector to find pieces of metal to use in crafting. This is a mod for true survivalists.


 
 
Abandoned Ship
   

At the bend in the river northeast of West Point, you’ll now be able to find a huge cargo ship, devoid of all life apart from the undead. Even to reach this is a huge challenge. Unless you have a boat mod, you’ll have to use your carpentry skills to build a bridge from dry land out to the ship. Reach the ship and fight off the horde inside and who knows what treasures you might find below decks?
 
 
Fuel Tanks, Table Saw
 

Two smaller mods that add useful craftable items. Fuel tanks let you store your fuel in an easy-to-use container that’s much more handy and tidy than, say, fifty gas cans dropped on the ground (we’ve all been there). The table saw uses electricity to cut logs into planks faster but be careful – it’s very loud!
 
 
Military Complex
 

The first map Snake made, the military complex is a very post-apocalyptic base filled with great new custom graphics (body bags, US Army crates and boxes, new graffiti) and lots of cool loot including Alice backpacks and new weapon parts from the other mods in the pack. The complex includes barracks, an overrun hospital, and an airfield. The hospital especially is a sight to behold, filled with blood and barricades that make it difficult but rewarding to explore.
 
 
 
Weapon Accessories (WPA), Ammo Maker Reloaded
   

These separate but related mods add the ability to add cool accessories like a tactical light, lightweight grips, a suppressor, and even a silencer to your guns, along with recipes for creating ammunition from shell casings, gunpowder, and lead, and a few new guns to fight off/attract those deadly hordes with!
And that’s not even everything! With the modpack you’ll find more advanced car mechanics like tyre maintenance, a factory in Muldraugh, metal baseball bats, a gunstore in Riverside, reinforcements for log walls, and containers of acid to clean new rusty metal items with.
 
An interview with Snake (Snaaaaake?)
 
 


Hello! Who are you in real life?

“My name is Christian, I’m 37 years old and live in Argentina. I’m a graphic designer and also repair computers. I’m a self-taught person so I always enjoy learning new things!”

 
How did you first discover PZ? Why do you like it?

“I found PZ through a Battlefield clan I’m part of. I like it a lot because of how open-ended it is, the isometric graphics style, and the focus on realism, along with its notorious difficult level!”

 
How did you get into PZ modding? Did you have experience modding other games previously?
“It all started when I downloaded a very buggy mod and wanted to make a better one myself. As I’m a self-taught person (I’ve never studied programming) I began to read scripts and base game code along with another mod’s code in order to understand how it all works. Then it was just a matter of applying my new knowledge along with what I know about graphic design and audio editing to start developing mods.”
“I had never made mods before, but as I began to understand how Lua code worked I also started a simple but very laborious mod for Starbound, the continuation of a Spanish translations mod, which I have 90% finished.”

 
What do you consider your best mods/maps? Are they also your most popular ones?

“I could never choose a favourite as I work hard on balancing and improving all of them but the most popular one in the community is Le Gourmet Revolution!”

 
Why have you made your mods available only on your website instead of the Steam Workshop? Are you afraid this limits your audience?
 
“I’ve had my website for several years and am very fond of it. The Spanish speaking community is used to coming to my blog because I always post when I update some mod either on Facebook or Discord.”
“I don’t really care about the limits of my audience, but I plan to publish my mods in the Workshop when Build 41 is out of beta and stable. Then I hope, with some help, to translate the mods into more languages.”

 
The Spanish-speaking PZ community is one of our most vibrant and prolific communities. How have you found that community? Are there any members of the community you want to mention?
 
“I first found the Spanish PZ community on Facebook and that led me to explore the game a little deeper. There I met Atox creator of Eerie Country.”
 
“Then after a few months I met Karen who is now my girlfriend! We’ve been dating for more than 3 years. She used to ask me about how to configure the PZ server with the mods I made and that’s how we got to know each other.”
 
“Dydimos helped me to open the blog, and when I joined the official Project Zomboid community I met ditoseadio, who helped test the mods I was making. Then we decided to open a Spanish speaking Discord for PZ.”

 
What are your general principles for PZ mods? Do you think things should be made harder, easier, more realistic etc.? Have any real life interests informed your mods/maps?
 
“Quality over quantity! I prefer to improve what I’ve already done (be it balance, bug fixes or details) before adding new content. I think things should be balanced; when you add something good you also have to add something bad to balance the scales in survival. For mod development I usually do a lot of research before adding something.”
 
“Regarding inspiration, I consider myself a very creative person. I like computers as well as spending time outdoors camping whenever the weather permits, so many ideas have come from my days in the outdoors.”
 
“I also want to mention that many members of our community contribute ideas to improve or add new things to the mods and others help in development, for example Truji, who is in charge of adding the 3D models of food and weapons.”

 
Your modpack adds a lot of new survival elements to the game: more crops to farm, foods to make, guns to scavenge, hunting, and even cheesemaking. Can you tell us a little about how these change the experience of the game?
 
“With the mod pack, I want to allow the player to create all food items that are finite in the base game (such as salmon fillets, cheese, pork chops, peanut butter etc), to expand the player’s options for survival in a very long game.”
 
“Playing with the mod pack prioritizes the skills of scavenging, cooking, fishing, traps and aiming, along with metalworking and electronics for some things eg. the table saw.”

 
Your modpack also adds several new areas to the map, such as an abandoned ship, a gun store, a military base, and a factory. Which of these areas would you use as a base in a zombie apocalypse and why?
 
“Actually none of those sites can be considered as good places to make a base if you are not experienced as they have very high zombie spawn! The zones I added are made to get finite items from the game and to force players to have to leave their base in order to build their dream home.”
 
“I usually build my bases from scratch in remote areas or beside lakes and after some time go and explore my new areas to find materials to improve my base.”

 
Your maps/mods have a very strong visual style. Do you have to change anything about your style for the graphics of PZ?
 
“I try to make the content as similar as possible to the base game’s art. As I’m a graphic designer it’s quite easy for me to create sprites. I’ve always loved isometric art so I’m very fond of the graphic style of the base game!”

 
I understand you love fishing. Can you tell us about this interesting hobby and, most importantly, can we see some big fish you’ve caught?

“I could spend hours and hours writing about fishing! I am a sport fisherman and it’s a great passion as well as a family tradition all the way back to my great grandparents. I’ve been fishing since I was 5 years old, and I’ve learned an incredible from my own experiences, as well as my father.”
 
“As I said before, I am very passionate about learning and know a lot about the behaviour of the different fish species in our rivers, as well as how the weather influences their feeding times, tides, changes in the river bed and many other things.”
 
“Here’s my favourite fish, a dorado or golden dorado. It’s a very strong fish – a perfect predator!”
 

 
“And here I am searching for a good spot to fish dorados in my city (they hunt close to the rocks).”


Other than your own, which mods/maps do you enjoy or find interesting?

“The first maps I played with were Downtown, and New Denver (now Slocan Lake, BC). Then Eerie Country (which has an excellent level of detail) and Lobii City, to both of which I have contributed some custom tiles and loot spawn code.”
“Before Build 41 I used to play with mods like ORGM, lockpicking, and Project Farmoid. Now I play with Dynamic Traits, and Worse Looting and Even Worse Looting.”

 
What’s next in your modding plans? What’s the dream?
 
“I’m currently expanding the Riverside Gunstore area, adding some stores and places of interest such as a restaurant, coffee shop and even an arcade.”
 
“My plan is to unify all the mods in my pack into one mod, so it fits perfectly into the spirit of the base game and gives the player more hours of entertainment in a long term game without affecting the balance.”
 
“My dream has always been to create content and make video games. As a kid I used to imagine making my own fishing game. And now Project Zomboid has allowed me to realise this dream through modding!”

 
Thanks to Snake for taking time to answer our questions! You can find all of Snake’s mods on his website pzmodding.blogspot.com.

Okay so we’ll be doing the April Fools at the end of the blog, and it’s the bit where we say that the Community Penisham Festival is cancelled this year due to Covid.
 
Penisham is NOT cancelled. It remains very dear to us.
 
So anyway – Friday was probably the biggest day so far in Build 41 MP development as it was a stress test with a full 32 player server. And, huzzah, it passed the test.
 
Our focus for the past few weeks has been server stability, and 32 players reported a smooth experience (for some the smoothest so far) with only two lag-waves. These edge case server wobbles were then addressed the next day: the MP Strike Force able to terminate them with extreme prejudice using data dredged from the server.
 
We also had a Wednesday Night Internal Test last night, with a more restrained 17 players, which also went well in terms of smoothness and stability. For this we had also managed to fix the bigger test’s most annoying bug – that of some dead zombies spawning replicas who would then go in for the kill.
 
So a big test passed BUT (sorry) now we have that apparently stable test bed there are still issues we need to go back and improve/fix before a public beta release can be considered.
 
Primary amongst these is a return to issues of zombie teleportation that we previously paused on when it became evident that first and foremost the server operations needed some TLC. There are also zombie clumps that visibly spawn at the edge of the screen, random skills/XP loss and various other irritations. All these, then, will be the MP Strike Force’s mission in the coming week.
Here’s the changelist that was being tested last night, what was being tested for the bigger group on Friday night was essentially last week’s changelist.
 
And here’s your highlights vid:

Here also is a fun (staged) vid our friend Mad Dan recorded.
TESTER TESTIMONIALS
 
“I’m in South America (Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil) and even though my internet isn’t good I could play real smoothly! I did have some issues when I was travelling by car and the map couldn’t load fast enough, but the fight mechanics are perfect now. It’s hard to handle with multiple zombies, in a good way, and pvp is realistic. It’s definitely better than b40, I couldn’t even take a step in West Point in that build with lots of zombies.”
“I think you should remind everyone that there’s still work to do, as there definitely is, but for the first time last night I could fight a group without a lag spike, and twice at that! Now that I’ve tried some co-op looting I just can’t go it alone anymore. It’s awesome.”
“The smoothest session in terms of driving. No stuttering. We saw it once which lasted a half second, maybe. Server didn’t hiccup even once. Everything was great, but clearly there are the telepor zeds which are a known thing so I won’t mention it again. And the chat with icons is awesome. Sims MP came true!”
“I only had a short time to test, but the main thing I saw out of place was that zeds walking around seemed to disappear? It happened a few times. I also had one topple over a fence with some weird desync issue. It kinda floated onward along the ground a bit, before snapping back to the fence, only to re-topple. Still, it’s a very smooth experience overall.”
OTHER STUFF
 
Turbo has moved over to MP polish now that he’s fixed up his old work on isoregions (the code that stops fog and weather effects entering houses etc) which wasn’t playing nice and causing various bugs. His domain is the chatbox, which was once upon a time the domain of Stas all that time ago. He has already added some fun stuff, in amongst beginning work the various tester requests we’ve already received.
 
  Parallel to, and not stepping on the toes of, MP development we have Noiseworks getting new sounds ready and plugging them into our existing FMOD framework. This week they’ve been doing female zeds, primarily, while Michael has also been putting the guns into the game properly. Last week we showed a shotgun, so this week let’s see something with a little more pep.
    We regret to inform you that the Community Penisham Festival has been cancelled due to the ongoing Covid pandemic.
  If you’re a fan of the work of PZ ‘Cool Modder’ Nolan Ritchie, the creator of the Superb Survivors mod, then you might be interested to hear that he’s just released his own game on Steam. Freedom Physics is a physics sandbox – where you can create your own gravity-infused game levels with a full suite of tools and nifty gadgets. Give it a whirl, and if you’re interested in the man himself then check out our own mod blog about this talented chap..
 
A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. 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 you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too!

Okay, so TLDR after the last night’s Wednesday Night Test Session on the Build 41 MP beta is that the new MP is increasingly LOTS of fun, but there is still LOTS for us to do.
 
For those interested in the nitty-gritty, here’s the changelist for the week of dev-time that was being tested.
 
For those who would rather just see a few quick vids and screenshots of the developers, PZ server admins and modders we assembled to have a play of the current Build 41 MP, here’s some of the very same:
 
 

And, an example of one of the many bugs we still need to seek and destroy.


  And a few bits of tester feedback:

“The whole group of us met up around the campfire and then made a cross-Kentucky trek. As we lost more and more people the feeling of being in a zombie movie slowly intensified. We started out with like… a dozen people and then hordes split us, people got bitten, etc. All was extremely fun and engaging. Despite a few bits of lag/desync, it really played extremely well. Issues seemed mostly to be fussy visual ones.&rdquo

“It really was a blast, overall it’s very playable at the moment. There’s some desync with players sometimes, some slight tp’ing zombies and a bit of confused zeds when lots of players are around – but the overall experience is so smooth and SO PZ.”
 
So, what items are on the list for polish and fixing ready for the next Wednesday MP test? Well, among other things, the following are in the spotlight:
 
We’re seeing occasional black-boxing and car weirdness (as seen above) so we 100% need to crack down on this. Players can’t move after being shot We’ve got some item-duping on different events, like falls Player lighting (flashlights etc) isn’t synced Some SFX still aren’t matching up Lots of general improvement to connections, admin settings, chatbox etc.
  Other non-MP stuff done this week:
 
Zombies can now pathfind through destroyable objects. They prefer to go around, but if there is no other path, they’ll thump on walls and crates, etc.
  (We are aware that, coupled with the zeds crawling beneath cars update in 41.50 this will be making your lives even more difficult – and are testing this to see how it plays and will be looking at ways to compensate for it, perhaps increased wall and object health etc)
 
Some really promising optimization that should see a frame-rate and load time boost. General balance to: survivor zeds, loot spawn locations, item weights, some nutrition and whether or not you enjoy eating raw dead animals.
  SPIFFO’S FINAL THOUGHT:

Although everything is looking very positive with the MP stuff PLEASE note that we still have a very long ‘to do’ list before we can consider a public IWBUMS beta release and Community Megatests.

We are sorry for being such massive teases with this stuff, but we hope you’ll agree it’s better than radio silence.
Also, don’t walk on campfires.
A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. 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 you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too!

How do all. Let’s dive in…
IWBUMS PUBLIC BETA 41.49
We want to get the last of 2020’s mainline SP work squeezed into a quick pre-Xmas patch. We had been aiming at a release today, but we’re going to give it a few more days in the test oven to make sure that the spear polish is behaving – so as not to leave spear-wielders disappointed over the festive season.
 
41.49 will contain the following:
 
More improvements to spear combat – swing attacks won’t root you to a place on the ground, but stab attacks will. Stabs now do more damage. Incoming zombies will be taken into account so you’re not prevented from moving in an unfair manner. (This feels pretty good to us, we will be interested to hear your thoughts). Added the sawn-off shotgun Improved/fixed/added more locational loot spawns – so more relevant stuff found in Gigamarts, houseware stores etc. More tailoring books spawning in homes. etc Fixed zombies not acting as you might expect when falling from a great height Fixed many fences that couldn’t be destroyed by cars Fixed broken traps not returning items sometimes Ensured more relevant weapons can strike through wire fences, alongside spears Nerfed worms hunger value. (Sorry worm-eaters!)
MP STRIKE FORCE
This week marks the first time we’ve had a proper server for which to test the multiplayer within the wider team. As discussed last week, we have several steps to go before the MP will be out in the wild.
Develop new multiplayer architecture and fix all obvious bugs. The BIG one. Internal team test on a live server Fixing any issues that crop up during test <- We are here Wider closed test on a live server Fixing any issues that crop up during the test Public single server ‘mega-test’ event Fixing any issues that crop up during the test IWBUMs release
  The big problems that became apparent on the test were as follows:
 
Some memory leaks causing a gradual increase in memory usage to the point it would crash the server. With higher player counts, map loading would become progressively worse until you’re standing at the border of a map chunk for minutes waiting for it to load in. Zombies seemed to move at 2-3x speed when more players are connected, making survival ultra difficult. Players relogging on sometimes doesn’t work properly. Characters would intermittently be invisible. Other log on issues. Zombies will sometimes seem to have bad eyesight, maybe due to some threads getting overloaded under the bonnet affecting their line of sight checks.
Due to these issues, it wasn’t possible to ‘play the game’ to see how many other issues will need resolving, however the team knuckled down and fixed a fair few of these issues since the test earlier this week.
 
The memory leaks were sorted, and memory usage was balanced and optimized, so now its perfectly possible to run a 64 player server on a 12gb server, 16gb to be safe.
 
Better still the garbage collector has a lot less work to do now, meaning that the server will not pause to do a major garbage collect for potentially hours. A vast improvement over previous.
 
The map loading issues were also addressed, we used our fake client bots to simulate 63 other players moving around the map at random speeds, none of them sharing the same map cells, to strain it to the maximum you would expect from a busy 64 player game.
 
In the wild you’d expect several characters to be sharing map cells, thus not all requiring map chunks loaded by the server, or alternatively with them staying around their base and thus not straining the map streaming by moving around the map.
 
As such, this scenario was the literal worst case scenario and now map streaming works well enough at least at player running speed. We’ll have to look into how cars perform with the map streaming in the final run-up to Christmas.
 
Here’s a video showing the server running (locally, so very little latency) with 63 fake clients running around the map alongside (and distant to) a real player. This should show how the server performs now compared to what you’d expect in Build 40.
 

The other issues related to characters and zombies are being looked into by Andrei and Yuri, while EasyP and Lemmy have also been dipping their toe in looking at the memory, map and streaming issues. Things are picking up pace, and it’s all rather exciting.
 
So where next? There are discussions within the team about (either after the next patch or perhaps the one after) crossing the streams: unifying the MP work with the trunk codebase that the IWBUMS patches are rolling out from.
 
People keeping track of B41’s development before it was released into the public IWBUMs beta will remember this was a big step and commitment that meant we could no longer release builds/patches until B41 was ready to be played by the public, however also meant that everyone on the team was now working purely on build 41. That will be the same once we make the same move on multiplayer.

We’ll let you all know when that happens, we have to make sure the available B41 IWBUMs build is pretty solid. It’ll be difficult to provide any bug fixes after that point – but should mean we can pick up speed towards wider testing.
 
Anyway, that’s all for now – we’ll see you on Monday (most likely) for the 41.49 patch, and then on Christmas Eve for the yearly ‘picture of Spiffo in a Santa hat and not a huge amount else’ yuletide development blog. Love y’all.
 
This week’s fireside scene from Foster_Toaster:3. A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. 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 you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too!

Hey all, let’s start off with the Multiplayer Strike Force first this week – as they beaver on in the background while we continue to update the 41 IWBUMS public beta with fun, games and polish.
MP STRIKE FORCE
Those who have followed MP dev will know that the all-new system that allows for characters to move smoothly due to latency and missed packets can sometimes lead to remote characters lagging behind their true position. They might just be caught in never-ending catch-up, or perhaps failed to receive the command to climb in a window, or similar, in a timely fashion.
 
As such, for when all other catch-up procedures have failed, Yuri has written some code so that characters considered too far behind will now fade out and then fade back into their true new position. This shouldn’t happen very often on decent connections with decent pings, however, but is to be considered as a safety net for unexpected slowdown, lag and high pings.
 
In the following video, Yuri is simulating a 500 ping connection with high packet loss: a very unstable and long path to the server. As most multiplayer gamers will recognize this is far from an optimal ping for online gaming.
 
Players should rarely see anything this bad, but it serves to illustrate how the system works in terms of keeping the player in approximately the correct position.
Andrei in the meantime has been debugging and fixing some zombie behaviour, in particular their problems climbing in and out of windows on MP due to some state issues.
 
Through this link here you’ll find the longer video that the above has been cut through, also showing other fixes that have gone into the mainframe over the past week. This included a bug in which one hit on a zombie would kill every single zombie on the server – which seemed a little OP to us.
FORTHCOMING 41.48 IWBUMS PATCH
41.48 is all about polishing some aspects of Build 41 combat, and beyond, that we know are a bit wonky. Currently they are as follows:
CROWD CONTROL
We’ve always had problems with the targeting of zeds in crowded situations when there are simultaneously zombies on the floor that need to be stomped/battered, and also incoming walking zeds.
 
In recent patches we’ve tightened the window a little on this, so it’s better than it was – but at the cost of forbidding expertly timed stomps and downward swings from our more experienced players.
 
We’ve always hesitated to grant players a direct ‘downward attack’ key, but in 41.48 (from a moment of inspiration from RJ ‘Romain’ Dron) we will have a new keybind that provides for this in a more ambient fashion.
 
If you want to keep on playing with targets auto-selected you can, but holding Left Alt while you attack will always force a ground attack.
This means our more ‘pro’ players will get some more freedom in their zombie battering (they can even turn off all ground attacks unless Left Alt is held in a new option, if they want) without overcomplicating matters for the larger proportion of PZ’s playerbase.
SPEARS
Spears have always been the roughest weapons in the game – as they were slightly OP, and also the Spear Charge move was… well it was pretty broken?
 
41.48 makes a Spear Charge a viable combat move, while also makes spears a little more fragile if you’re overusing them.
 
OTHER
Generator connection improvements (fingers crossed) Improved/fixed zombie behaviour when attacking a sequence of externally and internally built barricades on a door or window. The best Zed Story we’ve added yet – it’ll be great fun when you guys find it. More storage trailers found crashed on the roads. Trait cost rebalance New and improved bleach drinking animation! We’re going to try to release 41.48 to the IWBUMS public beta next week, if the bug fix gods continue to smile upon us. Thanks all!
This week’s bloody patrol from Pasteur Arepo. A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. 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 you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too!

Lots of good progress from the MP Strike Force again recently, so let’s start with them once more. Hopefully the week-by-week visual progress in this will be evident to everyone.
 
This week Yuri and Andrei have been concentrating on syncing event-based animations (so, non-combat), player death, window entries/exits, inventory issues, representing zombie collision and a general tightening and polish of the systems as a whole.
 
Here’s a vid that shows where we were last week, and where we’ve got to now. It’s super cool stuff.
NEXT IWBUMS 41 BETA PATCH
We’re currently looking at releasing version 41.44 to the IWBUMS public beta early next week – there’s a few things we need to revert, and a few things we need to balance in there before it’s punted live.
 
As mentioned in last Thursday’s blog this contains the new fitness system, some decent optimization for built up areas from EP, emotes that work while walking, a drinking systems tidy-up and some gun bug fixes.
 

 
Other stuff that’s gone in over the past week includes:
Some new hair-styles from Martin. Side-partings, centre-partings and a few more – so you can do a full 90s Backstreet Boys routine should you ever need to.  
Replacements for some missing 3D models that couldn’t be seen in the player’s hands – jars, bottles and gas cans.
 
Improved targeting outline around zombies, and the option for you to select it for when you are melee fighting as well as when you’re using guns. Some work on how your survivor chooses to target prone zeds, or those getting up. A brightening of our overly dark daytime storms. Lots of polish for 41’s cutaway system coming in from Fox. This should hopefully be a lot smoother now, and with less occasional jags.  
As we’ve mentioned before, fitness and a new fog aside, we’re not currently looking at adding anything else that’s ‘big’ to 41. Stuff has been set aside now for 42, though work does continue on it, so as not to complicate the MP work which is now at its most critical point.
We’ll be talking more about what else is coming along once MP is out and 41 is fully on its way to public release.
 
This week’s snow scene from General Shepherd. A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. 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 you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too!

Hot on the heels of last Thursday’s 41.42 patch to the public IWBUMS 41 beta comes this Thursday’s… 41.43.
 
As we’ve mentioned before, we’re mainly concentrating on bug fixes and polish for Build 41 at the moment, and keeping our work on big features and more structural stuff for 42. The main intention for this is to make the MP Strike Force’s life a little easier, and to avoid added complications.
 
(Though with this said, there are a few coder side projects stacking up that we could potentially drop in to keep things fresh. We’ll see how we go on this one.)
 
With that all in mind, then, 41.43 contains:
 
Performance improvements. You should find areas of high zombie density more playable – so that’s stuff like Six Months Later, the prison etc. We still intend to bring in skeleton-sharing for zed animation that will further improve things, but this change to pooled objects will hopefully recoup some of the ground we’ve lost in performance over recent patches to 41. New controller icons for controller users. Improvements to zeds climbing through windows – if you’re closing a window and a zombie isn’t over the sill yet then it’ll no longer get in. Likewise if a zombie is halfway in, over the sill, then you won’t be able to shut the window either. An ‘Automatically drink water’ option toggle, and a ‘always leave key in ignition’ toggle – for those wanting to adapt their game to their liking a bit more. Re-enabled floorboard stashes. Increased accuracy indicated by the aiming outline going green. Greater chances of coming across annotated maps and survivor zeds, and more guns left with clips inside – or next to them. Many and varied other fixes, model tweaks and balance things.
While we flounce about and polish stuff elsewhere in 41 then, or muck around in the framework of 42, what’s happening with the MP kids? Strike Force report is as follows:
 
Yuri’s been continuing his work on syncing players, including combat animation. You can see a video of his latest progress here:
As ever, please note that this is all work in progress – you’re seeing all the moving parts being slotted together, but not them being tightened. Likewise you’ll notice at the end, that there are still a few kinks to work out of the combat syncing – with zombies not falling to the floor on both clients.
 
Andrei, meanwhile, has been continuing his investigation into memory issues on high population servers with our new virtual fake clients, which is proving a difficult thing to sort out. He’s got a few tricks up his sleeve to try and reduce the memory overhead and GC pauses, but work is still ongoing to figure out the snarl-ups that occur on Build 40 servers that we’d dearly like to see eradicated.
 
This week’s imperilled raccoon from FoXL33T. A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. 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 you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too!

73. (a) working beer pumps in bars.
       (b) pint glasses
 
 

Greetings from balmy blog-writing Britain. Let’s start with an update from the MP Strike Force, where Yuri and Andrei continue to do God’s work for the online cause.
41 BETA MP STUFF
As we reported last week, the Strike Force have been working on light ownership, allowing zombies interacting with players to be simulated on the clients of the players they are interacting with, to remove latency from zombie combat.
Work continues in this regard, with plenty of bug fixes and tweaks to the system.
Yuri has prepared a video showing it all in its current status with large crowds of zombies, to show how the system performs with around 180 zeds that he picks up along the way.  Stick around till the end for some lovely graphs showing the network traffic.
As you can see, at this point, there is very little if at all separating the zombie movement from single player, which is highly impressive given the zombie counts.
Next up, the guys are going to continue tuning the system, and look for a nice trade-off between smooth player tracking by client zombies, and getting as low traffic as possible by tuning the frequency of zombie target updates and light ownership ranges.
41 PATCH 41.40
We released Build 41 Public IWBUMS beta versions 41.38 and 41.39 this past Friday and Monday respectively, and already have a few things in the pot for 41.40 in a week or two’s time. Items of note are as follows:
Hotbar improvements, including the ability for items that aren’t held in the player’s hands to emit light – allowing for flashlights attached to the person, as a part of a helmet etc. ‘Clutter’ jewellery, both existing and new items, can now be worn. This includes necklaces, earrings and nose jewellry. Examples as seen below. A change from Turbo to the way that the radio and WordZed operates, to help out this awesome mod project that’s looking to record audible radio broadcasts from PZ’s various doomed media outlets. Deets on the mod in question can be found here.  A fix for the longstanding issue of not being able to directly grab heavy items like corpses and generators out of vehicles. OBJECTIVE MARKERS
In the development of the new tutorial we weren’t altogether satisfied with the toolset available to us in terms of directing the player around the map – and we’re more than aware that it’s something we’ll need to improve in future builds when more solo content is being built.
As such, Turbo went off to his rendering labs and came back with the following.
(It’s work in progress still, but we feel it looks pretty good already!)
Alongside this we are also looking to improve general item/container highlights, and RJ is currently tying them into the new tutorial as a part of its general polish for 41.40.
Plans are also afoot for a more involved and open secondary driving/skills based tutorial, which will also let us get more and more foundations like this in place for when we bring back Kate and Baldspot in the builds that lie beyond 41.
AND FINALLY CONGRATS TO…
We’re big fans of anyone and everyone who chooses to stream and youtube Project Zomboid, and will happily toot their horns upon request.
A horn that we’re giving a BIG unrequested toot to today, however, is Ambiguous Amphibian who recently hit the big 100k subs. Well done mate!
This week’s Silent Hill-scape from Harbinger. A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. 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!

First, an MP update from the Strike Force.
Andrei and Yuri have been working on the client ownership of zombies this week. For those unaware this is a system that’s designed to remove all latency from zombies chasing the player.
Gameplay on current Build 40 servers currently has two big problems:
1) On a populated server, if players are all separate from each other in the world, the server needs to keep track of sometimes potentially thousands of full AI zombies. This can get extremely taxing on the server.
2) Compounded by the first problem, zombie AI has to then be transmitted to the clients to show the zombie positions. Zombie movement and bites are done on the server and thus only travel to the clients with latency, meaning clients are viewing zombies slightly in the past and thus, especially if the server gets clogged or data packets are lost on the way to the client being chased, they could see an unfair death due to a lag spike.
The system being worked on now means that the server determines ownership for each zombie. The server is owner for zombies if the zombies are standing or idly walking, which means it will keep track of their movement and position using its own AI routines.
With Yuri and Andrei’s latest work, the client now has ownership transferred to it under certain circumstances and becomes the owner for zombies.
The server will eventually check to make sure the zombies are behaving normally to avoid cheats, but otherwise zombies that are chasing or attacking players will be processed entirely on the client of whom is being chased, and transmitted back to the server.
Eventually the decision will be made whether to process zombies independently on all clients, to maintain smooth movement in critical situations, or whether a chasing zombie is only processed on the client its chasing and not on other clients witnessing that. This is a decision for another day.
In process of developing this feature, Yuri and Andrei have coded it so if the zombie lunge to player or attack player, the client they are attacking will take ownership of the zombie. 
Notice the triangle under some zombies. This is to show that the client is owner of this zombie, and thus all AI is being carried out on the client – thus happening without any latency whatsoever. Otherwise, the server is owner of the zombie.
You can see that the server is owner for a zombie if said zombie is far from the player. The client becomes the owner of the zombie when the zombie comes close, before reverting again when the player runs away.
In this video you can also see that zombies are often updating their targets. This is an adjustment of the target using “ZombieUpdateTarget” packet. The video last week, while a huge improvement on zombie movement than b40 multiplayer, was updating the target point a zombie runs to extremely infrequently, which resulted in sudden turns instead of the smooth player tracking players are used to.
Balancing may still be needed to find a sweet spot between traffic and precision. We’ll see how it goes!
There’s still plenty of work on the table for the MP Strike Force, but week on week hopefully everyone can see the improvement, and level of quality we are aiming for, with the new multiplayer architecture.
IWBUMS BETA 41.38 IMMINENT
The 41.38 patch is pretty much ready to go, our apologies for it not being earlier in the week but new tutorial glitches kept on jumping out of the woodwork. It’s the end of the Euro working day now though, and we’d like folks to be on-hand for any hotfixing that needs to be done – as it’s a patch with a lot of content that’s built up over the month. So we’ll be putting it out as soon as we’re able and at our keyboards, basically.
The TLDR is that it contains a refreshed and expanded tutorial, a reloading radial menu, briefcases, flip-flops, fanny packs, blood build-up on vehicles, tweaked female models, new hairstyles, a fill-all option, improved community translation support, crawler improvements and about a bazillion fixes fresh from the EasyPickins furnaces.
You’ll also notice that homes appear a lot more ‘lived in’ from some lovely little additions from Mash. Hope you enjoy it when we flip the switch, and as ever report any bugs or issues on the forums and we’ll try to get everything fixed up for you ASAP.
This week’s last stand from Battlemints. A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. 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!

Lots of good work in the MP department this week, so let’s start there.
Yuri and Andrei in the MP Strike Force have continued their work on their impressive zombie networking code, making some changes to the zombie updates sent to clients. This has allowed them to further reduce the amount of packets sent to clients for zombie movement.
(Apologies if we get technical again here, but clearly that goes with the territory a bit.)
Predictions in the new MP code are generally sent at least once per 4 seconds, with nothing more frequent than once per 650 ms – which is less than 2 a second.
The current public PZ version sends between 2 and 6 updates per zombie per second, so the savings being made already are clearly noteworthy.
If required, pathfinding will be carried out on the client so the zombie will know where to go without any need for information from the server (unless the zombie changes behaviour) if there are obstacles between the zombie and its target.
Andrei and Yuri have also made a debugging interface that shows many and various useful details. Here’s a video demoing some of their latest work with extremely infrequent zombie update packets and very low network usage.
Compare and contrast this with the other videos in recent blogs, and hopefully you’ll be able to see the high degree of progress.
In the first part of the vid, Yuri shows the moving zombies debug interface: the graph shows any selected zombie, which is marked in the gameplay behind it with a red square. On the graph the MP Strike Force can then see that zed’s position on the server (yellow line), its target (predicted) position (orange line) and its position on the client (pink line). The second part of the video then shows the new zombie update settings interface.
There are still many challenges to face and fix, but the guys are certainly currently on track for a much more stable and efficient MP foundation. Our thanks to all the Strike Force for their hard work and sage guidance in this ongoing quest!
IWBUMS 41.38
The new version is almost ready for a release into the public IWBUMS beta, but we’re still putting the new tutorial through its paces to gain polish and breakage feedback – as we’d rather it go out and have people enjoy it rather than report in with a deluge of ways in which they got stuck or irritated by obvious game-breakers.
Here’s a quick image from the expanded tutorial by way of compensation.
You can probably anticipate 41.38’s beta release early next week. Current (and now final) content also includes:
Radial menu for reloading firearms and spare magazines. New clutter visuals and overlay sprites to provide more visual variety Briefcases, flip flops and fanny packs (bum bags for those not American) Vehicle memory optimization, which has allowed blood to be shown gathering on vehicles. Blood can be washed off with water, but is not yet washed off by rain. Composting fixes and polish Worldflares system made available to modders (coloring/lighting up of a local area in a radius) Tweaked female models, and different hairstyles for both male and female appearances – including curly hair and ‘The Rachel’ what with this being in the 90s Latest community translations, including a general pass over the English UI skew to standardise and improve things.  ‘Fill all’ option for multiple bottles. Empty bleach bottles that can be refilled with water. Too many other fixes, nips and tucks to list as there’s been a long build-up of them as this patch has been long in the gestation. They cover areas like: split-screen issues on sleeping, movable items, horizontal rain, tripped sprinter zombies, vehicle windows, saved outfits, flashlights and lots more. Thanks all, see you early next week for the patch release hopefully. We’ve made the tutorial quite fun so hopefully it’ll be an engaging playthrough for our existing playerbase as well as the newer survivors.
This week’s changing room sports gear from Starbug. A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. 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!

Hello everyone.
In the coming week Yuri and Andrei will explore the ‘light ownership’ of zombies on clients that we discussed in the last blog. The intention for this is to create zero latency for any nearby zombies directly chasing or attacking the player.
Work over the past seven days, meanwhile, has been a continuation on making sure that zombie movement transmission is as smooth as possible on clients – even with high levels of latency and extremely sparing transmission of positions. The endgame of all this being to minimize network traffic with hordes.
In Build 40 and earlier, when zombies move the server calculates their movement via the same AI routines the single-player uses. All positions, animation frames, angles etc are transmitted to clients that are in range of that zombie. Zombies only ever move on the server, so their movement is always inherently at a lower framerate than in SP.
On top of this, due to the latency and ping between server and client, by the time that information is received on a client it’s always out of date. The zombie will always be further along its path depending on the delay in the packet, what you (the client) see is inherently a representation of the past.
Finally, and most importantly when dealing with the zombie menace, if any lag occurs in causing lost packets or delays – then that has no bearing on the zombie’s AI. A bite can occur on the server without a single positional update ever reaching the client being bitten.
So let’s look at how the MP Strike Force have been looking to remedy this. In the following video the blue circles represent the zombies position on the server,while the green line and circle represent the zombies’ current target for movement.
(Please ignore some animation oddities when they transition from standing to chasing at the moment)
Look at the rarity of movement of the blue circles (especially on zombies far away from the player) – and also the inaccuracy as to where the client zombies are appearing. This shows that zombies on clients have a ton more agency to decide themselves how to move, instead of relying purely on information passed down to them by the server.
Zombies far from the player now have a second or more between updates from the server, instead of updates every server tick – which would have been something like 15 times every second. Despite this, zeds are able to move around convincingly using a combination of prediction, interpolation and extrapolation and leveraging the client zombie AI states for moving.
The end result of all this should be, for the most part, smooth zombie movement even in hordes and with high pings or server stress.
Will it be perfect? Well, clearly the differences between the blue circles and the zombies position shows that they are often in inaccurate places on the map – you can see them try to correct themselves as player positions get transmitted after delays and inform them that their predictive client-side shambling has been in the wrong direction. This is something that Yuri and Andrei will continue to improve upon, however ultimately these inconsistencies shouldn’t matter too much.
Once client ownership over zombies is in-place it will only be zombies at a distance and those not interacting with players on a certain client that would have these inconsistencies or deviations from their true server position. In these cases having believable approximate behaviour of the zombies that reasonably mirrors their actions will suffice. Having increased visual fidelity of their movement at an extremely low cost of network traffic, is much more important than extreme accuracy of position and direction of zeds that aren’t directly in harm’s way or chasing your own particular survivor.
Ownership of zombies that are of relevance to the player at hand will be transferred – so the client impacted by the zombie in gameplay terms will have zero latency authority over the zombies actions. This will mean then that their combat should hopefully be identical to that of the single player experience. This then, is one of our key next milestones.
There will undoubtedly be additional challenges ahead. For example, we have to make combat effective when attacking a zombie that’s chasing a friend.
That zombie will be at far higher risk of suffering from latency, and will be using client side prediction and cover-ups based on delayed information. Likewise, there’s the issue of making sure a remote player attacking a zombie that’s chasing you look believable with these similar latency issues.
However, whatever issues we face, even we find solutions that aren’t 100% perfect the end result will be VASTLY preferable to our current MP issues and frailties. The war on lag bites will hopefully have been won, and we will have seen the end of running through hordes of zombies that pause in sync every second as the server struggles to keep up.
NEXT IWBUMS BETA PATCH
We’re on track for a release for the next patch early next week, as we currently have a completed tutorial that industrious internal testers are doing their utmost to break – after which RJ cleans up their mess.
Other interesting nuggets that have gone into the patch this week include:
Polished English language UI text from a new starring role from community member Faalagorn and Nasko. Ability to wash blood from cars. ‘Fill all’ option when filling up bottles of water etc. Better cutaway behaviour with fences A new ‘reloading’ radial menu Fannypacks and flip-flops FINALLY AND IMPORTANTLY
It feels strange for the development blog of a zombie survival game to pass comment on the news of the day, but due to unfolding events it becomes imperative to underline:
Black lives matter.
We hope that in its own small way our game and community can, and will, reflect this basic fact and right.
 
This week’s rogue katana from Debugging Sucks. A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. 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!

Again this week, you find us in ‘tutorial’, ‘polish’ and ‘MP integration’ mode on the IWBUMS build 41 public beta – the next patch for which will come once the revamped tutorial is complete, tested and works with gamepads. (So, maybe next week – but more likely the week after.)
Once the tutorial is done and out we’ll then look to polishing a few of the remaining combat issues and eccentricities, while the MP Strike Force continue to hammer away.
So, a few things of interest that’ll also be in the 41.38 patch before we give the Strike Force the mic…
As mentioned before, we’ve got a big memory optimization in this patch that’s come with a side opportunity of being able to get some extra vehicle detail in – namely blood on cars.
Please note that the above is WIP, the blood colour is a little too.. splatterhousey gore, and the version we have currently is a bit darker. 
We will also be expanding our character appearances a little, with some more curly-looking hair and other hair style varieties.
(Please note the following are WIP and will be Mashified by Mash.)
MP STRIKE FORCE
In the world of MP there have been big strides made this week which we’re extremely happy to see! However, as ever, there are still challenges to overcome.
Today we’ll share a little diary of how work has gone over the past seven days or so, and hopefully it will be an insight into the progress and difficulties faced in building a quality multiplayer experience when you don’t have prebuilt fancy replication systems, as with popular game engines, all ready to use out the box.
Yuri and Andrei have been hard at work on smooth predictive moment of zombies across the network via prediction and interpolating the coordinates and rotation of zombies.
Client prediction allows the characters to move in a much smoother way, as well as for the characters to not lag behind their true position on the server when viewed on clients – which is one of the biggest issues in existing Build 40 PZ multiplayer.
The problem with prediction, however, is that while it’s much much more accurate in situations where a character is moving in a straight line, it can easily go wrong if the zombie or player makes a sudden turn.
In this situation, the prediction on the client will assume the zed/survivor kept going straight ahead – up until the point that the actual message is received. So the zed will have ended up even further from its position than it would if it had been lagging behind.
On top of this, clearly, the higher the latency between a server and client, the more extreme these issues could be.
So then, let’s share a few videos showing the step-by-step improvement of all this over the past week or so on our MP branch.
Andrei and Yuri’s first stab at getting the system in as a proof of concept worked well in terms of predicting zombies future positions – but was still very rough in terms of the smoothness of zombie travel.
After this, they explored using interpolation using splines to predict the zombie movement on clients using quadratics which improved things a bit.
However, you will have noticed a problem emerging that’s shown in the video above, where a player is running around the zombies at a close range. Since player position is instrumental to where zombies will be aiming at, the lagged information to be used for interpolation is getting delayed information twice.
Here, the client player’s position (that the zombies are using to target on the server) is changing with a latency delay. As such, the targeted position the zombies should be walking towards is changing extremely rapidly and is out of date on the client, and thus the predictions of where zombies should be headed is wildly wrong. This means they need to walk to the correct position to correct themselves a lot faster than is natural for zombies to move.
As such, as an experiment Andrei and Yuri tied zed animation speed to zed movement speed to avoid foot sliding for the correction movement
So here we have some smooth zombie movement, which is fantastic, but also with some movement that looks unnaturally fast if predicted movement is proved incorrect from their actual server position.
As another experiment, Yuri decoupled zombie animation speed from travel speed when interpolating for the video below – which looks more natural, but inevitably does suffer from some foot sliding.
So where do we go next? Well, the MP Strike Force have some ideas on how to improve this further, including leveraging zombie AI algorithms in the prediction to help cover up the prediction mistakes – and we will be experimenting further in the week ahead.
In cases such as this, also, intend to get Animator Martin create some fresh anims of forward staggers and wider strides to paper the cracks a little.
It’s important to note also, that what’s seen above is how zombies will behave when their position is calculated purely on the server.
We have a trick up our sleeves that we will be soon be playing, which is part of our war on our perennial MP enemy – the ‘lag bite’. This trick, however, should also improve how chasing zombies appear on your client machine.
By giving light ownership of zombies to the clients they are most relevant to (light ownership meaning some authority to call the shots, but with the server acting as a gatekeeper to stop cheating) if you are being chased by a zombie, then your client will assume all control of telling those zombies where you are stood at that moment and how they should move.
This will be double checked by the server, but it means that if a zombie is chasing you, then there will be ZERO latency just as in single player. Lag bites should be a thing of the past.
Other players observing you being chased by a zombie may well still have prediction hiccups, as your position is still delayed in reaching their client zombies for use in prediction. But if the zombie is not chasing them, then its less of a big deal if the zed positions aren’t entirely accurate to the millimetre, or if their movement speed is a little off kilter.
And clearly, in cases where zombies are in idle states, wandering, or heading directly to an inanimate sound they heard – or you standing ready with a baseball bat – all this work means that clients should be able to also predict 100% accurately.
So, all in all, we’re working hard to make sure that zombies are a ton better than they currently are in terms of PZ multiplayer – which week by week we hope to share with you until public tests begin.
AND FINALLY
Mash is still on patrol making the world increasingly more varied, one chair doily sprite at a time…
This week’s cheeky cigarette break from Erin Azakaela Redfire. A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. 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!

Is this update basically saying that I will eventually be able to run DOS on in-game computers, thereby allowing me to play my all-time favorite game (the original XCOM) from within my second all-time favorite game (Project Zomboid)?
 
Yeah, yeah, good job on all the other stuff I sort of read about.  Project Xcom: Zomboid Unknown? You got my attention.
 
(Seriously though. Thanks for the weekly.  Great job, IndieFolks!)

Hey all, hope everyone is well on this sunshine-y pandemic day. A few ‘where we’re at’s on Build 41 will now follow.
IWBUMS BETA 41.38
There won’t be a patch for the beta for another week or so, as the main body of work on it is an upgrade/extension for our current tutorial that Will, RJ and newly TIS branded mapper Xeonyx are currently working on. 
In future we will most likely look to other avenues for explaining and tutorialising the game, but for the time-being we need the current tutorial expanded to cover aspects like stealth, sprinting and the weaponry hotbar – and indeed for a multitude of bugs and breakages to be removed from the existing framework, and for it to work with gamepads.
While not very dazzling or sexy to you our existing players, we also hope we’re making it entertaining enough (and have enough little secrets in it) for experienced survivors to have 15 minutes of fun with it too.
Elsewhere for 41.38, while the tutorial update is being worked on, EP has been on something of a bugfix overdrive while Martin has
tweaked the female mesh and skin weights to improve the posing of lady survivors and differentiate them a little from the men.
Zac and Martin have also together tracked down a strange pause in some links/chains of animations (most notably in spears, which was where the trail began) and we suspect that a forthcoming fix for this may well improve a bunch of anims flow game-wide. It’s seen here in super slo-mo.
Other fixes and improvements recently committed for the next patch include less buggy tripped sprinter zeds, unfixable firearms, invisible salad, the inability to climb over short fence doors while holding E, log walls that can now use the cutaway system and various other things.
Right now we primarily want to fix and polish what’s in 41 rather than introduce any complex new stuff – so as not to add extra complication or disrupt combat while the MP Strike Team does their thing.
MP STRIKE FORCE
We started the week with a big meeting between Grand MP Overseer Bitbaboon Mark and the rest of the Strike Force – as Yuri has been moved over from working on finishing the new fire system to the MP Strike Force and needed to be brought up to speed on plans.
Since then he and Andrei have sparked up a fruitful working relationship and have been sharing videos and info from their work on client-side data interpolation (predicting and interpolating the coordinates and rotation of zombies on your PC rather than the server itself) with the wider team.
Yuri has also created a debugging interface to display the actual zombie coordinates on the server, the previous predicted coordinates on the client and the current predicted ones.
With this interface Andrei and Yuri can see that their predictions work well when the zombie goes in a straight line – the zombie is always in front of its last known position on the server (blue circle). With the current implementation, however, when the direction of movement of the zombies change then the predictions becomes out of whack. This, then, is going to be a focus of their work next week.
TURBO STUFF
Okay, we hesitate to show this again as it’s a coder side project that’s away from our other mainline features (and certainly not anywhere near ready enough for nearby version currently) but Turbo’s latest work on the top of his ongoing Devices project is looking pretty fun.
It’s been a relatively dry blog this week, so please have this by way of apology.
This week’s creative use of sheet ropes from Jimmi Mongoose. A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. 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!

I really like one of the new car stories with a car missing a wheel, and tools lying about.
 
It would be cool if this could be expanded and for erosion system to be tied with an increasing % of cars missing parts at spawn simulating they've been scavenged for parts.

Hey, a fairly generalist dev blog this week – but hopefully enough to let you see which wheels are spinning. First off:
IWBUMS PUBLIC BETA 41.37
This was released on Tuesday and the changelist can be found here. Primary items of a relatively fixey, balancey, quality of lifey patch included:
A change in helmet behaviour A way for getting unwanted items out of your game (which we will refine later on) using garbage cans More movable items, better controller stuff and ripped clothing providing thread The option to have normal speed automatically resume after performing a fast-forwarded timed action Tiles showing slightly opened drawers and cupboards to start adding more visual variety to homes and safehouses. This is a minor thing, but that we’ll be building on in future versions and as time goes on. (Images stolen from Dairy Free Burger Time on Discord, please forgive us) NEXT UP
We already have an initial internal test build of 41.38 with various fixes and polish, but nothing over sexy as yet: UI stuff, mod.pack loading issues, translation issues, incorrect anims playing and lua error fixing. We should also be having some polish of the cutaway system coming down the pipe from Fox on Team Tanglewood.
Next up this week we should be adding Rockstar Mark’s new car textures to it- these have been redone as Bitbaboon Steve noticed that are existing ones were a big cause of memory bloat. We’re hopeful that once implemented these will lead to a lot more people on low spec systems to run Build 41.The side bonus to this being that we can also have room to spare for blood overlays on said vehicles, which Mark has also done.
MP
Work on 41 MP continues, but the work being done is slightly too complicated for a precis from this blog writer – but stuff like this is being proffered up from General Arcade’s Andrei in his updates:
“I’m working on detecting the right game variables and passing them to client to keep the context updated. I’m changing AnimState manually with the current zombie x/y/z coordinates during ZombiePacket processing – and though the animation states now sync, they are twitching as we expected – so my next step are some abstraction layers and appropriate helpers.”
We will endeavour to get a less technical rundown of affairs for you next week, as well as increasingly some visuals hopefully.
TUTORIAL
We’re trying to get everything finished and tidied up for when the wider team, and those playing the 41 beta, can get into the MP side of things – so Will, RJ and Xeonyx are currently working on the tutorial.
Until more tutorialised narrative content comes in later down the road, we’re sticking with the same basic model we have currently in Build 40 – but with a more interesting and enclosed map created by Xeonyx.
There’s also an extended sequence at the end that shows off the sneaking/sprinting that’s available now with the animations, a removal of as much of the existing one’s jank and clunk as we can, and some interesting stuff for people to find when exploring/running/surviving at the tutorial’s end.
(Not hugely exciting for the existing playerbase we know, but still something we need done and done well prior to 41’s full release)
AND FINALLY
Well, not quite finally – but what Thursdoid would be complete without a link to Yuri’s latest fire work? He’s been tuning the radius of light from the fire depending on the intensity of combustion, preventing crashes and added an alpha channel for effects so we can play with what is seen and what isn’t when the player is looking towards and looking away.
We’re also talking to Yuri about mixing his fire work in with the current implementation of item deletion – so that burnable items could be disposed with in fire barrels rather than the current rather gamey ‘delete y/n?’ approach we have with trash cans.
AND ACTUALLY FINALLY
This bug cropped up this week, and we thought it was too fun not to share.
This week’s blockade from Nicholai SeveN. 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!

Hello survivors and welcome to this week’s Thursdoid! A few things to discuss.
IWBUMS BUILD 41 PUBLIC BETA
This week we released 41.35 and 41.36 (to fix a few things hot style)
Changes in this were manifold, but the primary items were visible bags in hands, a make up system, a nerfed carmageddon meatgrinder exploit (further balance to come) and a rebalanced night to encourage flashlight use. Give it a whirl and let us know what you think, and what needs tweaking on the forums.
Currently in the works for 41.37 meanwhile are:
Fixes for zombies heads clipping through walls when they fall over, which in turn makes zed head smoosh attempts awkward. Rockstar Mark’s new pass on car textures, which uses a second UV channel to vastly reduce video memory usage of the game – and also will let us get vehicles bloody. This is still underway, but progress looking very good. MP WORK
In the MP camp, or the #multiplayer_strike_force slack channel as it’s more accurately called, things are starting to warm up nicely. General Arcade’s Andrei, a new addition to the team, is up to speed with the codebase and is at work getting the clients animation state for players transmitted over the network and synchronised. Still lots to do, but Andrei and Zac have been back and forthing and pumping code into the repo all week and it’s been exciting seeing it all roll in. 
It’s still unclear exactly how long until we can start doing some tests, there’s still a lot to chew through, but hopefully we’ll be able to see stuff in action before long. For full details on our MP improvements, and our reasoning why we’re going for such a huge overhaul compared to older builds, please check out this earlier Thursdoid if you missed it previously.
FIRE
Elsewhere, in some of our branches, other coders continue to work on some cool things.
Yuri is continuing on with the fire overhaul, tying in the fire effect with the ‘meta’ map of combustible materials you may have seen in earlier blogs.
Long story short, the system allows for fire to spread more realistically, but also for it to spread in areas of the map that are unloaded. (Don’t worry, we have measures in place to avoid the entire map burning down)
The system uses more detailed modelling of combustible materials, which include: wood, cloth, grass, soil and brick. It can add materials for items from wood, tables, chairs, counter-tops, sinks, doors, curtains, sinks, trees, soils and floor tiles.
Here is a video of Yuri experimenting with some debug fires and some useful timestamps:
00:00 – Yuri shows the spread of fire in an area far from the character. This area is not loaded into the combustible materials map and game map. Then he loads the area. 00:14 – Yuri sets fire to a tree, also enabling the unloading of non-burning tiles.  1:36 – Yuri teleports to an area that is on fire, and sees the fire and the aftermath of the fire (calculated despite the tiles not being loaded during the fire!). 3:40 – Yuri sets fire to a couple of houses to watches the spread of fire. 6:02 – Yuri sets fire to the grass and watches the spread of fire. Please note this is still very much in development and will likely undergo a lot of balances and tweaks to make sure it sits well with the gameplay, but what’s underway is super cool and impressive, and along with the much improved visuals, we think fire will be much more interesting in future.
DEVICES
Turbo has been continuing work in his long-time passion project of a comprehensive ‘device’ system for Zomboid.
For those unaware of what the system is going to do, if you’ve played something like tech modpacks on Minecraft you’ll probably instantly ‘get’ the inspiration behind it.
It is a comprehensive and generalised system for handling devices of all kinds and communication between them – which should open up a metric crapton of doors both for systems and devices in-game, but more crucially provide a base for some pretty in-depth mods for those creative types.
In this screenshot you can see that a walkie talkie, instead of just being ‘a device’ specifically and uniquely programmed, now has modules such as speakers and a microphone attached.
This modularisation and generalisation of devices inputs, outputs and communication on one level will give us new and easily adaptable ways of setting up our radios, TVs, VHS recorders, and security gate systems – but it is also a system that we/modders can allow to run deep.
It will also provide us the option of doing stuff like wiring things together into circuits, having an in-world computer running as a functioning lua programming device (you’ll have to pretend lua was in general use in the 90s) that can be programmed to create security systems, CCTV, and all manner of cool stuff for late game zombie fortress use.
While it’s not something that’s within the remit of Zomboid base game (at least to this level), we can fully imagine modders adding automated production chains and all that Factorio/Technic style goodness in mod overhauls.
This is likely all very much far future stuff though, so don’t be expecting it in the next build or two, but we’re excited to see it develop and the potential it will bring in all manner of ways!
This week’s medical emergency from $ℏìᶄ. 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!

Evening all, here’s some gameplay nuggets for the Build 41 beta that managed to escape quarantine.
BETA PATCH 41.35
The next IWBUMS beta patch *should* be out early next week, with the caveat that the addition of visible player-carried bags has introduced lots of new bugs and gameplay considerations to the mix which RJ has been addressing one-by-one on the internal test build. Here’s a few examples of some of the bags that’ll be on-show.
Something else, meanwhile, that’s been added recently is the visible build-up of dirt, mud and grime on clothing while you play – and especially if you walk through trees or fall over a lot. It works a lot like the blood system really, only browner.
MP WORK
In a separate branch Zac and new recruit Andrei, one of General Arcade’s boys, are already striking up a good rapport as they section off different aspects of the required work for them to continue ploughing through.
If it means anything to you (it means little to the blog writer) Andrei says he “is currently work on passing ActionStateName and game variables via ZombiePacket”.
Meanwhile, Zac says he’s “getting an AnimState/ActionState name table going. That way, we can truncate the name strings to byte/short indices. Once Andrei has the ActionStateName transmitting, these two should slot together nicely.”
The blog writer will take Zac’s word for it, and will also endeavour to get a more technically-minded blog written in a future week as I know some of you like it when Zac gets his Maths out and we have some graphs.
CAR TEXTURES
We currently have TIS friend “Rockstar Mark” (so-called as he used to work there and not because he’s on tour) is doing a pass on all the game’s vehicles. He is adding a second UV channel to each that will allow the use of a single reusable generic rust and damage maps.
This will in turn cut down on the amount of unique textures dramatically – and decrease a whole bunch of the memory bloat that Bitbaboon spotlit during his regular Friday optimization spelunking. This also means that we can spend a small proportion of that saving to add vehicle blood maps.
  YURI FIRE
Yuri continues to work on his new fire spread system. The game can now how have a global, game mode or server-defined limit on how many tiles can be burning on the map – so we/admins can have some control over fire and not burn down the whole map by accident.
Yuri’s system also now uses the direction and speed of the wind, while in-game rain now helps with fires being put out. All this can be seen in the following video that Yuri has lovingly put together.
FINALLY
We know that folks often like to see the random/terrifying animation bugs that occasionally crop up on 41 while we work on it. So here’s one for anyone who fancies doing an Attack on Titan mod one day…
This week’s bathroom jocks from ☆.::Sam_Sparkman::.☆. 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! Sorry if there are typos in this week’s blog but the baby has been crying for hours and I’m tired oh so tired.

Greetings zed-watchers. Quick blog today but it’s accompanied by an update to the IWBUMS Build 41 beta.
Version 41.34 is out now, and amongst other things it contains:
Added a full decay for zombie corpses: they go from stage to stage until disappearing totally  Adjusted melee anims. Added a new slow when swinging (only when going backward) for 2 handed, 1 handed & knife Added visible wounds on upper torso of character  Added new vehicle stories Added fuel timer to campfires and other fuel items Added ability to tie the bandana RAMBO style  Added ability to use bandana as a mask Added ability to hold umbrella Added ability to hold a torch/flashlight in your hand Added Garden Saw. Cruise control. Press Shift + W to start/increase it.  Shift + S to decrease it. Braking will stop it, and Shift+W will resume the set speed.  Stealth improvements: Increased range for jawstab of some knives. Player will raise their left hand if close enough to jaw stab. New jawstab from behind (player & zombie). Hair dyes. Regular color will be found in bathroom, some others in a hair salon. You can dye your hair & beard separately , just right click the hair dye bottle. Added “Font Size” Display option. Buffed the current flashlight, and added torch which is a lighter version of the current flashlight.Battery now weighs 0.1 instead of 0.6. Increased torch/battery spawn rate. Balance: Tweaked junk and clutter loot. Increased painkillers active time. Added option to Wash clothes with a full Bucket/Cooking pot and Soap in inventory Fixes to: day/night active zombies. Zombie spawn in large structures like the mall. Mannequin rendering. Spawning in dangerous safehouses. Zombies auto-turning. Bloooo. Fishing with traps not giving XP. Challenges running on Survival settings. Winter is Coming not having enough deep winter. A bunch of other stuff. In team news we are also delighted to be welcoming General Arcade’s Andrei to the team on this coming Monday, who will be aiding Zac and the ‘MP Godfather’ Mark in their quest for Build 41 anims integration. We believe that an extra pair of hands will be hugely beneficial in the process of finally getting MP into the hands of our survivor community and also kicking the final polished Build 41 out of the door to public.
Oh, and here’s a quick vid that Yuri made of him debugging fire spread in his branch.
Many thanks everyone, and please keep safe in these difficult times.
This week’s warehouse base from Jimmi Mongoose. 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!

Hey all, here’s a quick rundown on a few of the things currently in the internal testing build and due for a hopeful release early next week.
Visible wounds on the character New ‘vehicle zed stories’ to see on the road as you drive by (these being the car placements and zed clothing that suggests scenes of what was happening during the initial outbreak) Fuel timers for campfires and other fuelled items – showing how many in-game hours they have left The ability to tie a bandana either Rambo-style over your head, or to cover your face. Cruise control for cars – pressing Shift+W will increase the maintained speed, Shift+S will decrease it. Braking will turn it off. Stealth improvements – especially for sneaking up behind zombies and stabbing them. The player character will raise a hand to signal when he/she is close enough for a jaw stab from behind. Added ability to hold a flashlight in the player’s hand, and also for a visible umbrella to be displayed being held by the player too. Here’s a quick video that shows some of the above in action.
Finally today, here’s a quick look at Yuri’s work on fire spread. It’s not quite as visually appealing as the above, but hopefully it’ll be of some interest.
On the right you can see all the factors in-play: temperature, material types, weight, volume, surface area, heating energy, cooling energy etc – ignore the ‘weather’ tag at the top.
Then, on the left you can see a map of combustible materials, in this case trees. Each tile displays the temperature of a tree – the left the trunk, the right the branches. We then see a fire spread between them all – with the tree-tops lighting up, and their burning being passed on to surrounding trees.
This week’s rainy road from Цаплин. 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!

Okay, let’s go for a quick around-the-houses on stuff currently being brewed for future updates to the IWBUMS Build 41 beta, while Zac and Mark’s work continues on MP in the background.
YURI FIRE
Yuri’s work on the realistic spread of fire, and how the game deals with it on both an SP and an MP map, continues. Fire is one of the earliest systems that was ever put into PZ, and it’s been needing an update for the longest time.
Right now Yuri has worked out a way in which the game automatically creates a 1000×1000 tile saved map of potentially combustible materials when you play. This is then stored separately from the usual map files for load reasons.
If a tile is marked once then the game knows that it is an object that can burn, and if it is marked twice then the game will know that it’s an object that can potentially explode into a wider fire.
Yuri is also working on a way to save and load a separate internal list of burning tiles, from which calculations for the spread of fire will be taken.
Here, for your viewing pleasure, is an example of one of these maps – showing all wooden tiles in a section of map that could potentially get set on fire.
 
ANTI-KITE MANOEUVRES
Here at TIS we dislike the ability for players to walk backwards while batting down a long line of pursuing zeds – perhaps letting you take out 20 or so without breaking much of a sweat.
To this end for a lot of the Build 41 beta’s life there has been a slight pause when you pull back your bat or golf club – which we’ve seen as a necessary evil.
It works fine, but it’s never been a perfect solution – you guys and gals have gotten used to it overall but it’s never sat that well with some of us. As such right now we are experimenting internally with various zombie tweaks, slightly changed backpedalling and strafing anims and a few other nips and tucks to see if we can find something that works a little better.
We can’t promise anything, but so far have a few promising leads that (fingers crossed) will be a part of the upcoming 41.34 patch. Improving stealth is also on the agenda.
 
VISIBLE WOUNDS
Now we have crisper character models we can also have more detail in terms of what’s shown on them. To this end RJ has been adding in visible scratches, lacerations and bites on the player’s body – which will be plain to see once you’ve removed your bloodstained clothing.
We will tweet out a quick demonstration gif of this later, as the internal dev video supplied was soundtracked by Marilyn Manson and we don’t want to enter any legal dispute with him.
 
SLEEKER SAVING
Potentially due for build integration when MP comes online, Turbo has been looking at ways to optimize byte size for savefiles and online MP packets. PZ saves are pretty gargantuan, and Turbo currently has a test save taken after a simple circular walk around Riverside that was previously 24.8 MB and now cut down to 6.1 MB.
We know this sort of stuff probably doesn’t sound too exciting, but it’ll be great for the game – and something we’ve long pined for.
 
AND FINALLY
How could we not mention the single best thing we’ve seen so far created using Build 41 as a base?
Seriously Kopereview – this is some cool-ass shit. Thank you so much for providing some light in a difficult week.
This week’s homemade bar from Kornbrony (again). 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!

Well, what a week. We’re seeing many returning players, but we wish it were under better circumstances.
The development of an isometric zombie survival game is rather insignificant in the scheme of things, but a few people have asked if this will impact on PZ Dev in the coming weeks.
Short answer: hopefully not much. Long answer: the bigger ‘core’ features like MP should progress internally at the same rate, the more patch-to-patch additions might be a little slowed by childcare juggling.
Clearly everything is changing day-to-day, and everything is unpredictable, but right now we’re going to chug along like normal. We have some excellent self-isolaters already on the team so feel quite well-prepared.
We hope you’ll forgive the shorter blog today, and proffer up as an apology the release of IWBUMS beta patch 41.32. The patch notes can be found here. Many thanks to KoRnBrony on Reddit for giving us a laugh with today’s featured image.
Normal service will be resumed next week, one would hope.
Keep safe, Kentucky.