BayCon

All of this.
 
Really would like to have a variety of graves than perfectly manicured.

Everyone knows that Build 38 is introducing the gameplay mechanic of digging graves to dispose of rotting corpses as an alternative to burning them. A good idea, but one that I think can be improved in the following ways: 
 
1. More grave types/models. The current model of the grave is a single rectangle of dirt. To me, that model looks too smooth and clean. I have a hard time believing that a ragged survivor under duress who may or may not have done any hard work in his life would dig a hole that pretty. In my opinion, graves dug by amateur survivors should look like they were dug quickly and haphazardly, with ragged edges, uneven dirt, and other details that make it look like it wasn't dug by a professional digger. Something like this:
 
 
2. Funeral pyres/more realistic body burning. One of the things nobody else seems to have noticed is just how effective cremation via gasoline is. I mean, you dump a little gas on a corpse, light a match, and boom, he's ashes in a few seconds. While that may be for gameplay purposes, that's simply not realistic. It takes a LOT of heat and fire to completely destroy a human body, and a simple gasoline fire won't reach ANYWHERE near the temperatures required for cremation. It's one of the most unrealistic things in this otherwise punishingly realistic game. The solution? Rather than simply leaving behind ashes, perhaps corpses can become charred and partially destroyed to the point where, though not completely gone, they at least won't be a source of disease and infection anymore. Also, funeral pyres. Stack a few logs on top of one another and throw the bodies on top. I was gonna suggest having a separate model for corpse piles, but that's probably redundant. 
 
3. Body bags. We know the military and the scientists were performing experiments within the Exclusion Zone, so it'd make sense that they'd have at least a few dozen corpses lying around wrapped up in a plastic body bag. So why not utilize some of what they left behind, or even make your own out of stuff like bedsheets? It would make transporting corpses far more sanitary, because I don't think anyone in real life would be comfortable carrying a rotting corpse with their bare hands. Which leads me to my next idea:
 
4. Corpse disposal equipment. Latex gloves, respirators, cloth breathing masks, hazmat suits, anything that will make the transportation and disposal of corpses more sanitary. Again, you don't wanna be touching that stuff with your bare hands.
 
5. Mass graves. Instead of just taking up a few tiles, these graves take up several tiles in both length and width, and can hold a ton of bodies. Takes longer to dig than a regular grave. 
 
I'm all for the introduction of grave digging to the world of Project Zomboid. I just think it could be improved and expanded upon. What do you think?

We really require protection from diseases ingame. There will be situations where people can not exactly just go grab zombie bodies and dispose of them. What if you are boxed in and under prolonged siege? Since the military will be in the game go further and implement gas masks/face masks and gloves? Even disposing of rotting bodies is going to be hazardous especially if you have to bury/burn a pile of them. We also need more diverse graves because 5 bodies for 3 tiles wont cut it if a group goes on a zombie murder spree and needs to bury 200 zombies. If it came to that graves would be turn redundant and symbolic and people could get more done just by making molotovs and burning down the neighborhood.

Thats why they need to increase bite / scratch chance vs players without any clothing. Also some good jacket that reduce bite / scratch chance would be cool.

It was fun getting quickly to new locations I've never seen before!
 
1. As already stated they are quite overpowered. I'm wondering if they will have a damage model? If you'd drive over a zombie full speed the mass would definitely damage a car. Now they also change the gameplay completely as you clear whole areas just by driving over zombies until they are all dead and it's a bit silly. For zomboid difficulty the cars should break easy in my opinion, perhaps more speed -> more damage to the car.
 
2. I crashed the car couple times and I though oh sh* now I injured myself. I would love to see some broken bones and pay for my mistakes!
 

Something I can answer! Yes, the corn was taken away, as it was a source of perma-corn, and didn't fit with the rest of the changing vegetation in the game.

You can wash your clothes with soap and water.. Sorry, didn't mention it in patchnote

IWBUMS 38.2!
 
[New]
[MP] Added a "Level Up" button on the player stats UI to quickly level up a perk without using global point. Zombies clothing will now have great chance of being dirty or bloody (or both!). Added ambient flies sounds if lot of zombies corpses are on a zone. New sandbox options: Clothing Degradation: Governs how quickly clothing degrades, becomes dirty and bloodied. (Can be disabled.) Added random selection on zombie's: Strength, Toughness and Cognition.  
[Balance]
Lowered a lot the effect of dead bodies over illness. You can now add up to 5 corpses into a single graves. Moved night darkness sandbox option to World category instead of Nature. Increased the darkness when selecting "Pitch Black" in sandbox option. Increased a tad the nutrition values of fishes & berries.  
[Bug Fix]
Fixed being able to dig graves over graves if directions were different. Fixed Burry into Bury. (another RJ-ism!) Fixed lampost still active when electricity was down. Fixed being able to build thing inside player's safehouse. Fixed being able to climb through windows into a player's safehouse. Fixed a bug when making player's clothing bloody. Fixed bug when picking/dropping a zombie not updating zone's bodies count. Fixed bunch of bugs in dead bodies counting for illness.

Small Issue with Day/Night active zombies. Sometimes when a zombie is aggroed during it's active time but morning/night comes and it should slow down a bit, it won't.
 
 

Yeah i really like this feature too. It indeed adds another layer of depth to the game.
But despite having the prone to illness perk, i still dont think it should catch me by surprise. I got it really fast!
I can appreciate the fact that there's actually a downside to the perk now regardless. But i do still think an indicator is required. This could come in the form of flies buzzing around. I can't think of a better solution than this in all honesty.
Sounds of flies could indicate that i'm at risk of developing sickness, as a subtle hint. And would not take away from the immersion.

I love the ideas of the Pitch Black, but when the power goes out, the street lamps should turn off imo.

The addition of random zombie speed is great! Hope it will work in MP, too. If it is easy to code in, making their ability to open doors random would be great, too.
Is it possible to make another speed level between sprinter and fast shambler to close the gap?

Good update but:
1) health lose from corpses seems way to easy for PZ - did you ever consider debuff system ? reduced max weight you can carry, reduced max speed, slower attacks etc ?
2) That drakness sandbox options are great, why not to go deeper in that direction - new moodles (afraid of darkness), more light  sources, some things are impossible  at dark (reading) and others are way slower (crafting). IMO a day - night cycle in PZ needs more love.

The moon has a huge impact on how bright it is outside at night. The difference in lighting outside when it is a full moon compared to a new moon is ridiculous. Cloud cover and weather too have an impact on this, but it would be interesting to see if the developers could implement a moon cycle that would affect the lighting outside during the night. Maybe make it so that when raining, it's darker outside regardless.
 
Inside buildings though, rooms without windows should definitely be pitch-black. If there are windows, the lighting should perhaps depend on the ambient lighting outside (moon cycle, campfire, headlights, lightning, etc.).

I feel like a lot of this darkness discussion will also be reliant on people having properly calibrated monitors.

I take great care to properly calibrate the brightness on my monitor (I do graphics work and need to know when things are actually black, etc.) and I concur that Svarog's screenshot isn't as dark as it could be. What Svarog seems to be asking for is that when you look in a direction at night, your view radius shouldn't provide any light. It should look as dark in front of you as behind you. And I agree.

Honestly, I don't know how much can be done about it because of the way Flashlights and general lighting work in PZ.

First Video is Pitch Black setting, it should be dark, I guess maybe the moon is out, I wish I knew for sure. It was darker when I tried it earlier. Do notice how different it is between what the player sees and what he doesn't.


Second video... this is how I imagined Pitch Black nights, this is a mod I slapped together in 15 seconds. The problem is, Flashlight doesn't work at all when ambient lighting is that low.

Yeah, I made them almost useless during day if you choose the option too, I could always increase their threat a bit, but it's kinda the point of them being useless, you just don't want to meet them at night..
 
For the pitch black thingy, you did smoe good reports, i'll see what I can do with this tomorrow, but on my end it was really dark, and really needed a light to see outside... But i'll double check.
Same for the zombies illness, I may have screwed up something

Died in 10 hours. I was never able to outrun the sickness somehow. I made it away from the corpses around my house and felt a little better for like a second, but then I decided to go back and use my new hope to clean up the corpses and the sickness went back to where it was. Finally, I decided I would have to go on the run from the sickness if I had any hope of surviving, but it seems like even the corpses that randomly spawn from the game were contributing to my sickness. Either that, or the 6 - 8 corpses at home caused an irreversible sickness that snowballed into a terminal illness, ultimately leading to my untimely death. 
 
TL;DR - Zombies have some hardcore airborne super powered illnesses and they killed me in 10 in-game hours.

Unsure of the specifics, but the current issue I believe is simply that everything happens way too fast. It's supposed to be more of an ambient effect, not to kill you in a couple of hours!
 
RE: Darkness chat. This is me plucking a fact out of my arse, but I recall RJ telling me that he'd also fixed the 'phases of the moon' code that had been broken for a long while without us realising. As such, some nights might be darker than others - and that could account for the discrepancy in Baycon's screenshots. *All this is my personal supposition though!* 

Everything the player can see is fairly bright even with Pitch Black nights, Flashlights are still very optional where I was hoping that it would be barely possible to walk around without them at night on that setting, I was hoping for full on Darkwood (It's a video game) like nights.

Also, and I've had that issue since forever, flashlights themselves should be brighter. The area illuminated by the flashlight is barely brighter than the general ambient brightness of player's FOV.

Edit: The above is 100 times worse with Shaders on.

Random speed on zombies is my new favorite setting, some zombies kinda stutter between shambling/running sometimes. It's rare though and stops as they get close.
 

The more I play the more I feel that should be the case.

This is a feature, not a bug. It's in case you need to bury a Human Centipede.

Lol?
 
 

Build 38 changelog:
 
[New]
New map area added! The town of Riverside and the Knox Heights Country Club are now ripe and ready for exploration. It can be found west of West Point. [Foraging zones etc still need to be added, but survival can commence!] Added an easy way for modders to add columns to their scrolling lists. [MP] Added an UI for admin to manage player's inventory. [MP] When a server save will occur all client will be unable to perform anything (paused, server option). [MP] Got rid of TransactionID while it's bugged & it made server saving longer. [MP] Optimization to limit the amount of zombie placement and zombie movement data that’s shared between players. Released in preparation for the Wednesday community megatest. First Aid kits now spawn with sterilized bandages, rather than regular bandages. Can now sterilize cloth bandages in a boiling pot of water. Mattress can now be made using a suture needle as well as a regular needle.   You can now add spices as first item in pasta/rice (eg. marinara). Can use CTRL + A to select all items in a container. Command console in Debug now autosuggests functions and shows return types. Command console version now accurately reflects the current version of the game. Items used for fuel in campfires can now be used for fuel in BBQs. Sheet of paper can now be written on. Updated credits. Large piles of rotten corpses will make you feel ill and sad if you stay close to them for extended periods. You can now dig graves with a shovel. (Ability to bury multiple bodies in the same grave will come in 38.2) If you're carrying a corpse, you can bury it in an empty grave. Added new sub menu in carpentry "Misc". In "Misc" you'll find a wooden cross, acairn and a wooden memorial picket to go alongside the graves you dig. Changes in clothing: Clothing can now become dirty over extended periods, dependant on your activities. Fighting zombies will make your clothing bloody. If you're wearing dirty or bloody clothing over an open wound then chances of infection (normal infection, not zombie) will increase. Clothing now also has durability, every time you get hit you'll lose a little. Some clothing is more resistant than others. Added new sandbox options: Generator Spawn: Increase/decrease the chance of electrical generators spawning on the map. Generator Fuel Consumption: Impacts how much fuel is consumed by generators. A generator that needs no fuel should be set to 0.0. (Replaces GeneratorFuelConsumed server option) Randomized House Chance: Increase/decrease probability of discovering randomized safe house on the map: either burnt out, containing loot stashes, dead survivor bodies etc. Annotated Map Chance: Impacts on how often a looted map will have annotations marked on it by a deceased survivor. Zombie Construction Damage: Governs whether or not zombies can destroy player constructions and defences. Free Trait Points: Adds free points during character creation. Player-built Construction Strength: Gives player-built constructions extra hit points so they are more resistant to zombie damage. Day/Night Active Zombies: Governs whether zombies are more active during the day, or whether they act more nocturnally. Inactive zombies will be slower, and tend not to give chase. Nocturnal Darkness: Governs how dark it gets at night. Don't forget your flashlight Injury Severity: Increase and decrease the impact that injuries have on your body, and their healing time. Bone Fracture: Enable or disable broken limbs when survivors receive injuries from impacts, zombie damage and falls. Time Before Corpse Removal: Number of in-game hours before zombie corpses are automatically removed from the map. (Replaces former HoursForCorpseRemoval server option). Decaying Corpse Health Impact: Governs impact that nearby decaying bodies has on the player's health and emotions Clothing Degradation: Governs how quickly clothing degrades, becomes dirty and bloodied. (Can be disabled.) Added random selection on zombie's: Strength, Toughness and Cognition. Fire spread (previously No Fire spread on server): allow or not spreading fire. TV and Radio programmes now have an impact on the character's moodles. If watching an instructional show then an XP multiplier is received. [MP] Added a "Level Up" button on the player stats UI to quickly level up a perk without using global point. Changed how custom maps are loaded:
After selecting your mod, you now arrive on the "select spawn location" screen and no more "select map" screen to avoid confusion. Every map mods enabled is now loaded, including their spawnpoints. It means you don't need to code your own multiple maps mod to load more than one. Added a mod order UI, use it if you have conflicts (copy a cell over existing one) in your modded map! Changes on world view:     Building levels above the player are ONLY hidden for the "current building". "Current building" defined as the building you're inside OR if you're outside, the building blocking our view of the player character OR a building whose window you're look through. To peek through a window stand adjacent and face it. Building levels are also hidden when the nearest visible zombie is behind a building. So if your character looks behind the back wall of a building and there's a zombie there the building's floors will be hidden just as they would if you walked behind the building. Building exterior walls are no longer stencilled to transparent when you're outside unless they are actually blocking the view of your character.  
[Balance]
Increase player's constructions hit points. Removed starting year sandbox option. Increased a tad the nutrition values of fishes & berries. Sleeping outside in rain will wake players up, unless they are in a tent or under a player made structure with roof.  
[Bug Fix]
Fixed zombie memory "none" sandbox option not working. Fixed a bug with season making moon not afecting ambient lights at night. Fixed water pouring bug. Fixed lampost still active when electricity was down. Fixed being able to build thing inside player's safehouse. Fixed being able to climb through windows into a player's safehouse. Fixed bodies corpses zone sometimes overlapping. Fixed bodies corpse zone not being properly synced in multiplayer. Fixed bugs on the new riverside map. Fixed lot of UI non-working with a gamepad. Large amount of smaller items will now correctly fill up container space available. Book Reading is now interrupted when player aims a weapon. Fixed Characters losing fraction of xp on save. Added missing "spawn point" options in the server settings GUI. Added missing world filler. Fixed possible bug with alarm being reset. Fixed Rare bug with the craftingUI. Fixed Mod order button being missplaced. Fixed Bug with the getLightFoodMod() calculation. Fixed Evolved recipe drinks not being able to be drunk when an item could be added to it (the coffee bug). Fixed Crafting issue with Hot Cuppa.  
[Optimization]
Optimized Garbage Collection Added WorldReuserThread LightingJNI optimized Fixed surge in memory usage of 2-300 MB that can stall the game Optimized map loading Fixed: Voice Manager being enabled in SP. [Should give slight improvement in FPS, especially on slower systems]

It's hilarious that it's possible to just die by standing next to some corpses for 2 in-game hours.

Also, while I like the feature itself, I think the bloody clothes thing should have came in along with blood texture overlays for characters, the utter lack of any visuals in the area just make it feel completely "meh".

Love the new sandbox options BTW.

Not entirely sure that's working 'as designed' then!
 
As for the bloody clothes thing, yeah it's definitely been built with the new anims/models in mind.