HestrimChaosbrewer

How do all, let’s get on into it.
MP WORK
This week we were excited to welcome a new MP Strike Force team member into the ranks from General Arcade. Aleksandr comes to us with a lot of experience in Java projects, and will be working alongside Yuri and Andrei for the foreseeable future.
 
Whereas before our own team of testers and volunteers were putting the MP build through its paces, now the TIS team are working on mainline SP releases we have also separated testing duties – and GA have their own branch and testing channel populated by two other bright, shiny new faces – Oleg and Mikhail.
 
This allows us to concentrate on the more imminent 41 releases (Noiseworks, 3D items etc) while allowing General Arcade to come to us with cleaner builds for wider internal testing when the time is right – as opposed to our previous weekly TIS-side sessions.
 
Recent work has concentrated on combat between zombies and groups of players, though the guys have also hooked up a few things like thrown objects etc that had been left untouched thus far. As in the current build the latter still looks like the jankest thing in the game currently, but will do for now until we have time to input throwables that at least look like they obey the laws of physics.
 
“Last month we implemented a system in which zombies would visibly react to hits from their target player, but attacks from other players present would only create splashes of blood and drops in health” explains Yuri. “Unfortunately, this didn’t look good at all. You never felt that you’d hit the zombie if you weren’t its target, as it wouldn’t play a reaction animation.”
 
“As such, we allowed the zombie animated reactions to all players – but made it so that the super-close zombies within 5 in-game metres of their target would be far less likely to be distracted by other players. To add some texture to this, however, zombies also now have an aggro level – meaning that if attacked sufficiently within a short time interval a zed closing in on its target will change its target. The server now calculates aggro level for each zombie and sends a ZombieControl packet to change the owner.”
 
“We also put a lot of work into our syncing of zombies falling to the ground – which when allowed to happen out of time can lead to increased desync. Our first implementation was working fine for solo players, but when multiple players were attacking zeds the fall position was being rewritten and there was confusion between all the different clients. We believe we now have a solution for this by concentrating on the attacks of the target player, which the team are now testing.”
 
“We have also been fixing bugs discovered by our QA team, like players not being able to kill each other, debugged issues of corpse teleport, worked on various aspects of throwables that were not already implemented and many other issues.”
 
  NEXT 41
We don’t want to mix in too much more to the upcoming 41.54 version of the IWBUMS public beta feature-wise, as it’s already pretty packed. Likewise we also need to make sure that everything going into the 3D items behaves visually and performance-wise, so it’s going to be at least two weeks away most likely.
 
This said we are SUPER jazzed by how the 3D items are looking in-game, and look forward to being able to provide more varied in-game starting / zed story scenes to bring more variety to the map.
 

 
Please check out the entirety of this vid showing a player-decorated safehouse, and also note that since this was taken RJ has added in first iteration of a system that allows you to drag an item from your inventory and place it more accurately on the floor, and to rotate the item using the R key.
 
WIP NOTICE: You may notice when the camera is panned the 3D objects don’t match the 2D tile positions perfectly. This has been a longstanding issue with vehicles and zombies, but has never really been this noticeable as there’s been less of it to see on-screen. We’re setting Zac and his magical maths abilities on this fix tomorrow, and will also be looking to match the lighting of the 3D objects closer match the 2D tiles before release. Despite all this, we hope you’ll agree that it looks awesome.
 
  Oh, also clearly there’s Noiseworks sounds in here now too – we’ve covered the revamped PZ soundscape enough in the past now, but everything the NW team have done up to this point is now in the internal test build.
 
Phase two of their work is starting next week, alongside fixes and required changes brought up by our internal testers and agreed by the core team. Here’s a quick ‘latest’ vid on that front. (There’s some debate internally on the shotgun ‘bang’ noise – so please treat that aspect as WIP for now.)
 
 
 
Other smaller fun/necessary stuff going into 41.54 will be:
 
A fix for those pesky framerate chugs you can get after long journeys in a vehicle (hurrah!) Visible flies over corpses (and, later, rotten food etc)  
 
Some required nerfs to knife-fighting QoL improvements to multi-stage building Better lighting effects from emergency lights, to go along with the better Noiseworks sirens. (Sirens not playing in this vid, but oh well it looks good)  
 
On top of this there’ll also be Turbo and Pat_Bren/Will’s VHS and CD entertainment system – which we’ve covered in previous blogs and is also now in testing.
 
Pat and Will (but mainly Pat, in all truth) have provided 3900 new lines for the new system, which should keep the translators busy.
 
ALL THINGS LOUISVILLE
As we’ve mentioned before, our PZ version of Louisville is now certainly on the horizon – so we thought it might be a good idea to check in with our map team to provide you with a clearer idea of what to expect when it does arrive.

Q. To what extent is Louisville based on reality?
A. Mash:
 
“Initially Binky made the general layout follow reality for the most part, but from that base I took some liberties- some larger than others. For gameplay reasons I wanted to have our (necessarily smaller scale) LV to encompass the types of neighbourhoods you might encounter in any city: the “bad neighbourhood”, the “business district”, the “rich area”.”
 
“As such, the locations of these are not at all based on the real Louisville. For one thing, the city on our map is much smaller (though still relatively huge), so we couldn’t really adhere to reality. The main goal was to make map exploration more fun and engaging, and having varied neighbourhoods that might not be totally realistic but makes organic sense within the map is part of that.”
 
“I think there won’t be much recognition of Louisville and it feeling just like the real world one when you are exploring it on the ground, but that said you will see some recognizable buildings here and there, such as City Hall.”
 
“We are also taking some inspiration from real world districts when we are designing some of our own, for example I know that Xeonyx has loosely based our version of NE Louisville (home of our new Grand Ohio Mall) on the St. Matthews district east of real world LV, and his old town district around Fossoil Field is based off the real world’s Smoketown and Phoenix Hill.”
 
“As I said previously however, in terms of being close to reality it’s better to think of our version of Louisville to be closer to our more recent additions to the map, rather than having the veracity of places like Muldraugh and West Point”

 
Q. How does it differ when you’re designing a city, as compared to when you created PZ’s smaller towns?
A. Mash:
 
“The size of the city and the new map makes things exponentially more complicated, which led us to choosing to knuckle down on identifiable themed neighbourhoods which would benefit a game like PZ more clearly. From this we then had to make sure it transitioned from one area to another in a way that made some sort of sense. The smaller towns are, for the most part, fairly uniform in feel within each individual location.”

 
Q. Clearly with PZ you are limited to seven storeys and a rooftop – is it frustrating not being able to go higher?
A. Mash:
 
“I think things are pretty relative, and since buildings are only 1-3 storeys in other locations, the 7 storey buildings of our Louisville give a good sense of size and, I think, allow for pretty identical gameplay as if the game had even taller buildings.”
 
A. Xeonyx
“To me, being limited to 7 stories isn’t really a problem. It doesn’t negatively affect gameplay, and the buildings offer a nice mix of high risk/high reward while still retaining the feeling of a large city.”

 
Q. What are your favourite new buildings and locations?
A. Mash:
 
“Some of my favourite buildings I want to leave as a surprise, but one of my favourite areas is the university area.”


  A. Xeonyx
“The scale and design of Louisville offers many new playstyles and challenges to experience, but if I were to pick a favorite new location, it’d be a tie between the gritty industrial district, and the South Louisville district which was designed to be similar to the real life Auburndale district.”

NEW NOLAN MOD
Some areas that we are very aware that PZ needs some improvement in are those related to accessibility – some stuff we’re okay at, some stuff needs a lot of love.
 
For this reason we just wanted to take a second to highlight Nolan’s new mod – which will be of massive help to those who are hard of hearing.
 
Likewise it’ll probably be handy for those who like to PZ while doing another activity, watching TV or similar, where you’re not always glued to your speakers for audio cues and clues.

So, all in all, if this is something that you need improved in PZ, then for now please please check out the Sound Direction Indicator. Thanks Modding Hero Nolan!

  Thanks everyone next week we’ll have a Mod Spotlight on that beautiful creature Filibuster Rhymes, and in the dev blog following that there’ll be lots more goodies including a first full look at TIS newbie Eris’ awesome improved foraging system.
 
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!

In just the small amount of time I was away... 41.51 & 41.52 drop!!! Much love to the devs, you rock for the major improvements, buxfixes and dedication to the community that's grown around Project Zomboid.

It's late Friday night and no 41.51 yet and let me just say that I've got nothing but love for the devs at TIS, so polish away. You folks are gonna be rich when PZ 1.0 drops, cause even in beta Zomboid makes a b**ch out of other zombie sandbox/survival games. I've been playing PZ since 2014 and I still love every minute I get to play. I think I'm the most excited for the NoiseWorks to drop and also I'm kinda psyching myself up for the map changes that are off in the distance atm.

As always, thanks for the time and effort devs... y'all rock!!!

THE BAD NEWS This week we have been playing the MP build extensively, to try and get a clearer and more solid idea how much work would be required to get it into a state we’d be comfortable releasing, and have increasingly become aware that it’s not good enough. We have been too optimistic, and for that we are extremely sorry.
 
Advances have been made, and the quality of where it is going is clear from our many tester testimonials and gameplay sessions, but since the (vital) transitions to zombies on the client it is not even close to the quality that the game or our players deserve, even for a beta. Furthermore, the deeper we’ve looked into it, the more systemic issues deep down have reared their heads.
It needs more time in the oven. We simply cannot release it half-baked. You don’t have to look far in gaming to see what can happen when you do.
 
We recognise that (especially in the past two weeks) we have been making cautiously optimistic noises – but put simply the more we played, the more we became aware of deep-rooted issues that it would be near-impossible to fix in a ‘live service’ situation. 
 
Project Zomboid has every chance of being extremely popular when we release MP – it’s something that we’ve read from people everywhere, and increasingly something we’ve quietly believed ourselves. As we’ve said multiple times in the past, the multiplayer release of 41 is by far the most important build in Zomboid’s history, and if we don’t stick that landing it would be bad.
 
As it stands the MP build we’re playing internally isn’t robust enough to cope with potentially huge floodgates being opened upon it. Support requests, tech queries and bug reports would simply drown us – and the player and community experience would be poor in the absolute extreme. 
 
We had a big meeting with General Arcade, and went through everything that could (and should) still be done to make PZ a MP game that could both stand the test of time, and a huge launch day. Something that would keep multiplayer servers populated and not result in disappointment for our community that have been so patient for so long.
 
This will likely be a much longer wait than we’ve been hoping, and particularly in light of the last two weeks of misguided hopefulness over improvements that while exciting, in the cold hard light of day still are far short of what we would dare release. 
 
We have long shied away from giving any form of ETA, but in the interest of ensuring we are not stringing anyone along with vague notions of a timescale Thursdoid after Thursdoid, we have agreed with our MP team that anything up to six months should be the ballpark we’re now aiming for when it comes to getting a Build 41 MP release into player hands to a level of quality we’ll be confident it won’t blow up in everyone’s faces. 
 
We know this will be of disappointment for many — and we’ll likely receive some flak for this decision — which is understandable, especially given the noises we’ve been making in the Thursdoids recently. 
 
But we ask those that are upset by this news please to bear in mind other recent releases that people were begging for, and getting increasingly hyper-frustrated at the frequent delays — only to finally have it in their hands, as they facepalmed and asked themselves why the hell this wasn’t held back further??
 
That’s what we’re doing — because we’re lucky enough to be in a position we’re able to do that, both financially, as well as without marketing spends or boardroom pressure forcing our hand, and we are committed to the fact that while we feel the pressure from the community’s frustrations at the wait as well as our own desire for it to be ‘done’, we will not allow that to blind us to putting something out that will end badly for both us and our community that want to see the game grow. We may get a bloody nose for delaying it further and for this long, but we’ll take that gladly to ensure that doesn’t instead happen on release–as that’s a bloody nose we might not recover from.
 
This has been an immensely difficult week for us — people sometimes forget that we want this build out there too. It’s not just a game to us but our daily lives, and the march toward a multiplayer release — the moment we’ve desired to see for so long vanishing away months into the distance, and the prospect of continuing that climb for another six months is heartbreaking to us. 
 
Nonetheless, it’s 100% the right call — we will not waver, and when all is said and done and multiplayer has been out for months and everyone is playing it, we promise everyone — ourselves and our community — will be glad we made this call, instead of releasing in a soon forgotten whimper. 
 
We may take our time, but we get the job done in the end. Hopefully the almost unanimously positive reception to the long awaited animation update proved that to be the case. I honestly believe we wouldn’t be where we are today if we weren’t just as strict back then on what we put out, when everyone was chomping at the bit to play it, bugs and all, and couldn’t fathom why we were being so careful and protective for such a long time. Now people have had it for a long while, no one would want to go back in time and have us retroactively release the anim build 6 months earlier than we felt comfortable doing so, and risk it crashing like a lead balloon and damaging the game’s reputation and future. Our caution led to the most success Zomboid has ever enjoyed. We know the same will be true about multiplayer when people are finally playing it.
 
We’ve discussed with GA about getting two more internal QA engineers the MP team will have direct access to day to day while working, to allow them to more quickly diagnose and test stuff with more players outside our TIS internal tests. 
 
They are also on the lookout for additional resources for the coding team to speed things up. Though it’s worth pointing out that this will require some significant time to learn the codebase and get up to speed for any new developer, which is why it was never a practical solution before our decision to commit to this longer delay with which to capitalize on another coder. 
 
We hope with the changes we make, along with many organizational changes to improve our internal workflow with GA, we can deliver something sooner, and will of course continue looking for new avenues to speed things up — but for all intents and purposes we’re committing to this period of delay to make sure it is definitely achievable and no one should be under any illusions of expecting it sooner. 
 
 
THE GOOD NEWS
It’s not all bad news however. This longer and more defined schedule of getting MP up to scratch makes it clear that we can’t just continue this release drought in the meantime. 
 
Therefore we are going to start releasing IWBUMs builds with new content in the interim, rather than holding back until the MP build is complete as was our original plan.  
 
We will be removing MP elements from the current trunk code that would interfere with the single player game, and releasing a six month backlog of changes, fixes, optimization and upgrades waiting to go into the game. LWJGL 3 and java 15 upgrades in particular that will improve performance and compatibility, not least a new fancy garbage collector we’ve never had the opportunity to use before that should all but eliminate any periodic pauses that have plagued our game in the past.
 
After this, we will be starting to release additional content builds to tide the community over in the wait. We have to be somewhat careful on the style of content we add, so as to not make the MP work more complicated and hold it back further, but stuff you should be able to look forward to in the coming months include:
 
Noiseworks sound overhaul. Noiseworks are due to provide the first complete version of their ‘round 1’ additions to the game, replacing all sounds in the game, for testing and feedback from TIS. Those keeping up with the Thursdoids will have a good idea of what this will bring. After some testing, and adjusting sounds to tester and community feedback, we’ll be getting this out to you as soon as we can. Noiseworks will then be continuing with adding additional sounds, and a procedural music system, which will bring even more atmosphere to the game.
  Map updates. We’re pushing toward a release of Louisville, which nears completion outside some zoning work and bug-fixing. It’s unclear how much time remains to polish this up to releasable standard, but it seems very likely it will drop before multiplayer. Non-90 degree roads with curves, improvements to the existing map, and even perhaps beyond our original scope of the map now our mapping team has grown.
  Several other really cool gameplay features. We’ll talk about them in the coming Thursdoids when we can feel confident they will drop in the interim period.

  THURSDOIDS
Speaking of Thursdoids, a primary piece of feedback we’ve had from the MP team has been the detrimental effect that the weekly cycle of blog updates on MP progress has had on the development process. 
 
A weekly development sprint, where results are desired to show off or talk about makes it much harder to work on longer term improvements. To be honest this is not the first time this has been brought up or felt by the TIS team, the weekly blogs have always stacked a lot of pressure on our shoulders, only ever being 7 days away. But we are both immensely proud of our weekly blogs, and have found them to be a huge part of keeping our community content and informed. Truth be told, we have also been somewhat nervous that reducing their frequency suddenly may be perceived by our community as some kind of winding down, rather than something that would improve development in any way, and so have long been resistant to change.
 
However, in the interest of aiding the MP team in having the time to do longer and less interrupted work on features without the pressure to provide small incremental improvements that clearly haven’t been enough to make the leaps to release that are needed–we are going to make the following changes to how we release Thursdoids over the coming six month period.
 
We will be doing bi-weekly Thursdoids (that’s every two weeks). These will likely be more content-packed, and have more time spent writing them. They will hopefully provide much more bang for your buck and less likely to have us repeating ourselves.
  We’re only going to focus on multiplayer development every other Thursdoid, allowing the team to have a solid month to make longer term, deeper and more substantial improvements without worrying about us coming knocking for stuff to show or test. The alternate Thursdoid will focus on the single-player interim updates, features and fixes coming in the shorter term. That all said if we do have cool MP stuff to talk about, we’ll be sure to let you know regardless of what week it falls on.
  We’ll see how these Thursdoids go down over the coming months, and will decide based on that what to do once multiplayer releases whether to go back to weekly Thursdoids or to carry on with bi-weekly.
 
Thanks for reading, and apologies again for the major misstep in our recent enthusiasm. While we did state it was ‘cautious optimism’, we regret letting short term improvements and perhaps a bit of wishful thinking colour our blog updates. Sometimes you just get lost in the weeds and an uptick one week is deceptive to how much work really remains. We hope the firmer date will give solace to those who check week after week to frustration, who are largely only interested in multiplayer, that they can safely put our game aside for a while, and when to start looking again. And to everyone else, we hope getting fresh content again will help the time pass that little bit quicker.

 
Much love
 
The Indie Stone

Hello! Here’s your weekly update on the internal testing of the Build 41 MP build. This week we decided that the build was stable enough with our usual group of testers, and wanted to push things a little further – knowing that this would likely shake a variety of new issues and bugs out into the open.
 
As such rather than the usual 10-15 players, last night the Wednesday Night Internal Test Session (WNITS) we had around 25-30 in peak times.
The results were encouraging, in that folks generally had a fun time, but also (as was foretold) a variety of new and annoying issues to fix and polish emerged from the gloom. Some big, some small.
 
As is now traditional, here’s a link to a changelist of what went in over the week before the test. (Slightly shorter than other weeks as there was a degree of overspill into next week with unstable stuff that couldn’t go in till after the test.)
 
Here’s also a quick vid of folks putting the build through its paces in vehicles.
 
 
Stuff we need to work on over the coming week.
 
We had a big server wobble after an hour or so of play, with server CPU use skyrocketing and extremely long update periods. Yuri is currently digging into this and has replicated the issue using his fake clients. Close-quarter teleport zeds. One we already had on our list, which Andrei is currently fixing up. A stuttering driving experience for some – which we’re hoping has been fixed today. Numerous instances of players turning invisible, and even a couple where players respawned with another player’s name. Various other niggly and annoying things that we’ll be polishing before the next test.
  Here’s a couple of new tester testimonials as well.

“My top three bugs were probably the teleporting zombies, occasional invisible players and flying cars. In terms of my general opinion: meeting unexpected people and seeing how it plays out… organizing rescue parties… It’s all I ever hoped for and then more.”
——————
“It was a fun to finally get to play with others. Sitting in the bar, organizing things for the party, and even getting to experience being put out of my misery in the worst way possible.”

“It’s 85% playable currently, I’d say. Relating to performance specifically, we had quite a few moments where the apocalypse experience of surviving as a group felt very genuine, and that was fortunately not surpassed by the sync issues that we did experience. It was a great time.“
 
 

NON MP STUFF DONE THIS WEEK
Other stuff that’s gone into the MP test beta that’s not directly linked to online play include:
 
Zac has made a 2x optimization boost to the animation system – which is one of several steps we’re taking to improve performance around hordes.
 
Another big one Turbo will be addressing next is fog performance.

Here’s a quick video Zac took of the game running on his rig with the optimization operational.
 

Turbo’s improvements and streamlining to the game’s save system also went in this week – meaning PZ’s save files should be a little less bloated and hard-drive-filling in future.
 
SPIFFO’S FINAL THOUGHT (AGAIN x3):
Although everything is looking very positive with the MP stuff PLEASE note that we still have a pretty long ‘to do’ list before we can consider a public IWBUMS beta release and Community Megatests.

Each time we open the internal tester pool wider we will be unveiling newer bugs and issues to sort out, and it’s a big tree to climb.

We are sorry for being such massive teases with this stuff, but we hope you’ll agree it’s better than some sort of radio silence.

We miiiight be having a secondary test on Friday evening, to catch the improvements that we’ve been putting in over the last two days. If we do we’ll be sure to tweet a few nuggets of interest from it. Thanks!

This week’s safe abode (but for how long?) from Exotic. 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!

Reminds me of the DayZ stair bug years ago. Hopefully it won't be as much of a hassle (permadeath things).

Hi everyone, here’s another report from a week of work from the 41 beta MP Strike Force and the weekly Wednesday Night Test Session.
As with last week, as it’s probably of interest to some of y’all, here’s the changelist of what was being tested that was new since the last Wednesday session.
As before, the PZ server admins and modders we assembled to have a play of the current Build 41 MP took screens and video for bug reports – so here’s a quick highlights reel of the stuff that wasn’t too broken.
 
 
Overall the test went really well again, and encouragingly had our longest distance player yet (playing from California, on a server in France) fully able to play along without too much inconvenience. Here’s some testimony from some of the players on the changes they felt since last Wednesday’s test.
 
“There have been definite improvements when fighting zombies with multiple people, though there are still issues with synchronizing player positions and zombie death positions as well.”
 
“It gets smoother with every tweak they put in. Combat and fighting still do have various issues here and there with synchronizing, but it feels like they are being ironed out quickly. This includes all various ‘general’ animations too – more and more of them are getting fixed so we can see them working properly in action. It’s quite a funny scene walking into base to see multiple players chilling out, reading books, eating, drinking & working out. It really shows how immersive multiplayer will be in my opinion.”
 
So what’s on the development menu for the coming week on the MP Strike Force?
 
All players in the test last night reported less ‘black boxing and cones’ – which is when an impassable border can appear when map hasn’t been loaded in for a car passenger, blocking off the road ahead for the whole car. However, this a problem that we want to get 100% addressed, especially when we are anticipating busy servers. As such, Yuri is continuing to dig into further solutions. Andrei is working on corpse position syncing, quite a big task, to make sure that dead zeds are placed in the same position as where they were seen to fall. This will go a long way in ‘tidying up’ hectic scenes of battle. RJ has been syncing missing anims, fixing crashes, hidden models etc. and next week plans to continue tidying up situations in which multiple players are fighting zeds.   It should also be noted, clearly, that we are currently only testing with 10-12 people on the server at any one time. As we scale up tester numbers more and more bug and bandwidth gribblies could start coming out of the closet, but for now lower server population counts are working pretty well.
 

 
 
NON-MP STUFF DONE THIS WEEK
EP has continued to work on zombie pathfinding, making them more able to get through (bash through) complicated patterns of barriers, items and parked vehicles that players put in their way. We are taking the opportunity with the natural break in build releases to update certain aspects of the java systems that the game runs on, and may also mix in the more streamlined save system that Turbo has waiting in the wings. Seeing as our plans for a farming overhaul are still quite distant, we also spent a little time streamlining what’s currently there. Previously to seed/water/harvest you needed to right click on every plant and select an action. Now once you have selected seeds, water or harvest, you’ll have a cursor to perform all farming actions on multiple plants easily.  
SPIFFO’S FINAL THOUGHT (AGAIN):
Although everything is looking very positive with the MP stuff PLEASE note that we still have a notably 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 some sort of radio silence.
 
 
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!

Honestly how are you guys making such an amazing game. This is a dream come true and im super excited to jump in now in 2020, buy it for all my friends, see all the amazing progress this game has come through and now we are at the verge of multiplayer after a year! you guys are amazing im going to be recommending this game to everyone because it needs to be mainstreamed. Its a masterpiece.

A quick Xmas patch for the Public 41 IWBUMS
 
See y'all in the New Year, apart from the Xmas Eve Thursdoid - and indeed if we've managed to break anything in this patch. In which case we'll see you tomorrow!
 
NEW
 
- Added sawn-off double barrel shotgun.
- Greatly reduce hit chance if shooting from a moving car (depend on car's speed).
- Added clothing suit jacket tint, shirt formal short sleeves tint, waist coast tint.
- Added a new optional field named ignoreZombieDensity to the Lua item-distribution tables.
 When ignoreZombieDensity=true, the chance of an item spawning is not affected by the zombie density in that part of the map.
- Added PiercingBullets=TRUE to the M16 to stop each shot potentially hitting 2 zombies that aren't lined up.

Spear combat update: let us know what you think
 
- Swing attack will not root you.
- Stab attack will root the player.
- Stab attack needs to be in certain range, but now it'll also check if another zombie is close by, so as not to root the player in unfair manner.
- Stab attack now does more damage and has more chance to be a crit.
- Fixed issues with spears and the new alt-press function.

Updated translations.
 
BALANCE
 
- Knives can allow attack through wired fences again, like spears.
- Replaced the previous useless "lamp" items with working ones (from moveables)
- Added more locational loot distribution (gigamart, houseware store..)
- Added tailoring book spawning in houses.
- Added dough to pizza kitchen.
- Nerfed worms hunger value.
- Nerfed a bit alice pack bag inventory space.
- McCoys will now have zombies outside.
- Changed RandomizedBuildingBase.addRandomRangedWeapon() to choose random weapon upgrades
 instead of always picking a number of them in the same order.
- Increased a tad spear durability.
- Lowered gardenfork chance to break.
- Removed the delay after the player's falling animations (when falling from a height).

FIXES

- Fixed early export of some map areas
- Fixed zombies falling from high level not falling on ground and removed the "SUPER HERO LANDING!"
- Fixed zombie landing from a fall being killed when they land and staying stuck.
- Fixed Pizza whirled display case not spawning correct loot.
- Fixed multiple display cases in stores not spawning correct loot.
- Fixed bar kitchen not spawning correct loot.
- Fixed some useless "radio" spawning.
- Fixed diner kitchen not spawning correct loot.
- Fixed overhead counter in kitchen not spawning correct loot.
- Fixed ball peen hammer not spawning.
- Fixed D=display case not being considered as a table (cash registers were falling through them)
- Fixed some cash registers not being considered as cash registers.
- Fixed many fences not being able to be destroyed by cars.
- Fixed some seating (futons etc) allowing you to pass through them.
- Fixed many couches not being dismantle-able.
- Fixed some vending machines not being dismantle-able.
- Fixed missing corpse icons.
- Fixed medical items being taken from bags when one is available in main inventory.
- Fixed obsolete Radio item in the Dismantle Radio recipe.
- Fixed missing reload animations for magazine-less rifles and the sawn-off shotgun, when in a vehicle.
- Fixed using item.getName() instead of item.getType() when choosing random weapon upgrades.
- Fixed broken traps not dropping items sometimes.
- Fixed not displaying the Blow Torch model when building metalwork objects.
- Fixed playing the hammering or looting animation when building metalwork objects.
- Fixed some fitness exercise infinite loop (when sleeping, etc.)
- Fixed missing formal shirt tinted in zombie outfits.
- Fixed satchel being considered as a bag for attaching weapon on the back.
- Fixed some bugs with the new blood clothing for modders stuff.
- Fixed long socks not covering lower legs.
- Fixed weapons other than spears/knives not being able to attack through small fences.
- Fixed infinite loop with fitness if sleeping at the same time.
- Fixed a nullpointer in Zed Stories
- Fixed RandomizedBuildingBase.addRandomRangedWeapon() bug with choosing random weapon parts.
 

Anyone else liking the creepy look of the new fog improvements? Also, thank you to the devs for their continual dedication and work on PZ! I get that there's some of us in the community that want MP and NPCs right now, but I still believe it's worth letting the devs take the time they need for implementation, bug fixes, QoL improvements, etc...

Don't rush greatness and for goodness sake's anyone reading this: don't rush the devs on finishing everything promised for PZ 1.0.

Anyone else liking the creepy look of the new fog improvements? Also, thank you to the devs for their continual dedication and work on PZ! I get that there's some of us in the community that want MP and NPCs right now, but I still believe it's worth letting the devs take the time they need for implementation, bug fixes, QoL improvements, etc...

Don't rush greatness and for goodness sake's anyone reading this: don't rush the devs on finishing everything promised for PZ 1.0.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, zomboys and zombettes – we just released a big update to the IWBUMS public beta today.
IWBUMS BETA 41.44
The changelist for 41.44 is here.
 
The tldr for the changelist, amongst all the fixes and balance, is:
 
A new fitness system from RJ – containing burpees, sit-ups, squats and the like. Regular exercise will see boosts to your fitness stats. Some decent optimization that should make built-up areas like West Point a little more free-flowing in terms of fps. Polished movement animations, seated animations while performing timed actions, anims for equipping and unequipping items and various others. A range of combat fixes, primarily dealing with the thorny issue of the game choosing a zed that’s down on the floor or an approaching zed as your target. Polish and tidy-up for: the water and drinking system, zombie target outlines, traps, incorrect loot spawns, the cutaway system and general UI stuff. Recently grown saplings now less powerful. Ability to chug mayonnaise from the jar now mercifully included. MP STRIKE FORCE
Here’s a quick video to showcase some of Yuri and Andrei’s work since last Thursday.
Andrei has been working on the sync of climbing through windows, and is currently looking at climbing sheet-ropes / falling and other things on a more vertical axis.
 
Yuri, meanwhile, is working on combat again. He has fixed up variations on zed speed – and is now looking at general movement, some odd variations in damage that zeds give/receive, and also issues with zeds who have reanimated from player corpses.
NU-FOG
The other coder side project we thought we would bring into the beta while MP work continues, alongside fitness, are Turbo’s fog improvements.
 
They are currently looking like what you can see in the vid below. We need to optimize and be sure that they don’t have an undue toll on performance (though they should be fine) but you’ll be able to switch back to our current fog easy enough if you have a lower spec machine.

  This week’s despondent waiting area from zeepl0ck. 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!

Good job Yuri and Andrei, the MP improvements look awesome. I'm getting ever more excited as MP reintegration looms forward. Much love to everyone at TIS!

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!

You've got a long tongue

Let’s break with recent Thursdoid tradition and talk about MP progress first this week.
Or, rather, just show this video as it probably does more to underline recent advances made in the pursuit of multiplayer release for the IWBUMS public beta than can be put into technical-sounding words.
 
 
Elsewhere work continues on the next update to the IWBUMS public build 41 beta.

This patch will likely be out next week, though might take longer to cook dependent on feedback on the new fitness system from internal testers. Here are a few of the patch contents currently being tested:
 
Fitness. As described last week RJ’s fitness system – a way of training to boost physical XP, at the risk of overstraining and exercise fatigue getting in the way of combat skills, will be a part of public beta 41.44.

This week has primarily been about balance for the system, but something cool that’s been added are variants on the animations for lower level characters who aren’t used to the exercise yet and as such can visible struggle with it. Fit character sit-ups Unfit character sit-ups Fit character push-ups Unfit character push-ups Work on the ‘downed zombie vs. approaching zombie’ dilemma. One of the final larger kinks in the Build 41 combat system has been the game not knowing whether your character should be caving in the head of a zombie on the floor or (more likely) concentrating on an upright zed with its arms outstretched approaching at speed. We think we’ve remedied this now, but will likely need your feedback on how it all feels when we release.
  Optimization. EP, our resident code superstar, has made improvements to a foundational element of PZ’s code (property containers / isoflagtype) which has given a boost to many, many wider systems within the game. In internal testing this has had a noticeable impact on built-up areas such as downtown West Point – where we’ve seen significant FPS rises. This will also be of great use in the far-flung future when Louisville becomes part of the game.
  The ability to emote while walking, as well as general improvements to looped/continuous emotes like surrender. (And the eradication of the emote wheel lock-up bug)
  A tidy-up of our water/drinking systems, and specifically how it’s all presented to the player.
  Fixed various issues with guns – primarily those that weren’t racking after each shot.

  Turbo’s work on the fog system improvements we showed last week continues, and might be going into 41.45 – we will see how things fall.
This week’s indoor camping death scene from NightmareFrost. 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. Now, for the past few weeks we’ve been working on general polish and fixes for the Public IWBUMS Build 41 beta while the MP Strike Force get on with their work – so as not to change anything fundamental to get in their way.
 
To keep the wheel spinning, however, we thought that for the 41.44 patch we could be forgiven for widening the net a little – and add in two side projects that we knew would be features that wouldn’t mess with the game or the foundation code too much.
 
(Quick note to say that there are more involved and foundational new features also being worked on that will 100% be build 42 features. RJ and Turbo have also solemnly sworn to keep their polish and fix tasks going in simultaneous to these additions)
 
 
EXERCISE
The first, of these is exercise and a fitness system – which is a good example of the relative ease in which the anims system allows us (and modders) to slot in new functionalities.
 
Once upon a time players shoved trees to raise their physical skills – a bug/feature that was removed, but made us aware that an ‘official’ version of this was most likely required.
 
The new system, then, is a way to boost your fitness and strength stats – taking into account various factors like fatigue, nutrition, exercise regularity etc.
 
The more you do an exercise, the better you get at it – but the harder you train the more fatigue and pain you’ll feel a few hours later. This will lower combat abilities if your arms are aching, or impact on movement if you’ve been too strenuous with your leg exercises.

 
 
THE FOG
The second thing we’ll be allowing in, meanwhile, is a new way of rendering our foggy scenes. Our current fog system does the job fine, but obscures all characters and objects in the same way – all dependent on the opacity at a certain spot. It doesn’t really allow for that classic ‘zombies lurching at you through the mists’ feeling.
 
Taking inspiration from the excellent Graveyard Keeper, however, in a recent side project Turbo has worked out a way to adapt a more layered and atmospheric fog for our game.
 
The new system also means we can play with the height of the fog, as well as the opacity. It’s great in motion, and made for a fun addition to the game that wouldn’t mess with the ongoing MP fix-up party. Speaking of which…
 
 
MP STRIKE FORCE
 
In the MP Strike Force, we had a productive catch-up meeting on Tuesday with grand overseer TEA/Bitbaboon Mark – while Yuri and Andrei have been continuing to busy themselves in the surrounding times.
 
Yuri’s work on syncing player characters between clients is progressing nicely – building them up at a point at which he can start mixing in some zombies and start debugging the combat itself.
 
He’s also been modifying player clients to reduce their frequency (to reduce bandwidth requirements for them) as well as fixing some issues with characters weapons not matching between clients. Here’s the latest vid he’s shared with us this week.
 
Andrei, in the meantime, has been continuing his investigations into the memory usage of the servers – adding in more and more diagnostic systems and checking in with many and varied graphs and tables that dish the dirt on the various things we need to clamp down on.
 
Anyway, that’s about it for this week – although perhaps worth adding that other smaller polish and fixes that have gone into the next IWBUMS patch (41.44) include: bloodied and dirtied backpacks now washable, general tidy-up of drinking and water supply functionalities, scrap metal now obtainable from car wrecks, nerfed foraging exploits and quite a few polished/smoothened anims from Martin.
 
This week’s vision of 2020 from MachuPikcuinta on the reddits. 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 do some IWBUMS 41 public beta chat.
 
We released 41.41 to the beta last week, and 41.42 is starting to shape on the internal build – with the focus still being on fixes and polish rather than adding any complex systems that directly impact on the gameplay – while the MP Strike Team continue to hammer away at online stuff.
 
To this end there’s currently stuff like improved fishing anims, less clunky car entry and exit if you’re injured, tweaked gun recoils, less clothing clipping, some anims optimization, new gamepad icons and a fix for this tricky-to-replicate ‘bite on attack’ issue that somehow this poor streamer ran into twice in a row.
We will most likely be looking to release this next week at some point.
 
EMOTES
In MP-land meanwhile, a system we’ll be needing that shouldn’t impact too much on general gameplay balance is the emote system – which RJ and Martin are working together on.
 
Emotes will be accessed via a vehicles-style radial menu, and you’ll be able to customize which ones you’d like to have easily accessible (including those that have been modded in) via a window also accessible via the radial.
 
Emotes we’re currently hooking up include clapping, beckoning, follow requests, nose-holding, shakes of the head, polite refusals, nervous pulls at the collar, surrenders, saying thank you, waving goodbye, waving hello and yawning.
 
There will be no dancing, however, as we’re not Fortnite – you guys will have to mod that in via AnimZed once it’s released if you want it!
You’ll be able to do emotes in SP too, as we’d imagine it’ll make for some fun screenshot-taking. Likewise emotes will also be triggerable via the MP chatbox.
 
Super work-in-progress video of RJ and Martin’s current work seen below! Icons, placements etc all due for change.

 
MP STRIKE TEAM
Andrei has been continuing work on the client bot system. For a quick refresher on this, this is a debugging tool to allow us to simulate large population servers, to provide us with information we’ve never had access to before: both to allow us to see where we can optimize network traffic in the Strike Team’s current work, and to debug why our high population B40 multiplayer servers often grind to a halt and suffer terrible lag spikes, black borders on map streaming, stationary zombies etc etc
 
Andrei’s fake clients currently spawn in a random spot in the middle of the map, and move in a random direction at greater speeds than a normal player is capable of. Here are a bunch of them in their first WIP blink-in-and-out-of-existence form.
So, these little automatons will then separate and force the server to send the data for the map and load up simulated zombies: purposefully straining the server as much as possible so it can be debugged to discover where the choke points and bottle necks are.
 
Right now Andrei is optimizing the memory and CPU requirements for client bots, there’s still some way to go with this but he’s  managed 60 of them to run on a single machine now – but in the meantime here’s a fun little video showing 10 of the little fake lads and ladies in action on the PZ map overview.

Yuri meanwhile has been working on syncing player states across the network, with a side salad of fixing up zombie network issues when they crop up.  There’s still lots to be done here: character animations are not yet translated between clients, and there’s still some slight glitches to resolve with zombie behaviour not matching, but it’s great to see it all starting to take form.
 

This week’s secured streets from Greedy Dwarf. 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! The CBOIT also wishes the Dead Matter team success and high infection rates during the launch of their closed alpha this week.

 

Hello all! Turns out a UK heatwave combined with severe post-Covid viral fatigue aren’t a good combo, so usual Thursdoider Batsphinx has had to take a bit more extra time. As such, another hastily put together short Thursdoid this week, sorry folks! Hopefully he’s feeling better soon. A few things to point out, like oh what’s this?…
 
IWBUMS 41.41 release
It’s just been released now, changelogs can be found here. Highlights include:
Sleeping anywhere available (say on floors) when extremely tired Performance option for corpse shadows. Performance options for blood / holes on clothing/weapons. Sandbox option for disabling zombie lunge behaviour after climbing fences / windows. Fix to FPS compensation, will stop time passing further than about 1/4 of a second during the game pausing from severe FPS lag. Should stop the weird deaths on stairs reported last week, as well as unfair lag bites / car crashes etc in single player, since time will not progress during a spike. And many more.
  MULTIPLAYER
Yuri has been continuing with his work fixing up issues with syncronization with zombies, meanwhile Andrei has been hammering out the first versions of his client bots, capable of simulating a player client so we can stress test the servers and find out where they stall or become overloaded. He’s been working on optimization to try and reduce a client’s footprint so we can easily chain 60 of them together on a single machine.
 
Once this is in, he’ll be coding the fake clients up to quickly move between and around towns, forcing the server to load up areas of the map, simulate zombies, and generally process large areas in the same way as a live server. This will help greatly in figuring out ways of improving server performance and stability significantly over B40.
 
And that’s it for this week, enjoy 41.41, byeee!
 
This week’s Christmas surprise from parky302. 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 there, your regular Thursdoid author returning today after a quick dose of the Covid. Pro tip: don’t get the Covid. It’s not super fun! Let’s now return to our regular fictional pandemic programming:
 
We released build 41.40 to the public IWBUMS beta this time last week, with a small hotfix to it on Monday to allow for more shoving.
 
The intention for 41.41, meanwhile, is to make a dent in our internal task list of ‘quality of life, balance and niggle’ issues as we don’t want to put out any big features while MP work is ongoing and complicate Yuri and Andrei’s work (and also because that list is pretty long and needs a trim!)
Currently on the internal test build we’re running with the following amidst some more general work under the hood – this is only the beginnings of the patch and will be considerably expanded as the week goes on:
 
Properly integrated the M14 single shot assault rifle. Balanced damage and now uses proper ammo (.308) instead of 5.56. Enabled the “New Character” button after the player dies in singleplayer, so it’s more clear that players can continue the save with a new character. This button was already available in splitscreen and multiplayer. Reduced damage for Wood Axe as previous damage values were workaround for a past bug that ended up way overpowered when said bug was fixed. Lowered min angle of shove to stop shove working on distant zombies who weren’t in range Fixed jaw-stabbing zombies through unbroken or barricaded windows, and fixed jaw stab animation playing but character missing Fixed splatting blood and playing weapon-impact sounds when hitting a window between the player and a zombie. In terms of the ongoing MP work meanwhile, if you didn’t read it last week then there’s we provided a general overview in last week’s blog. As for a progress update, well Andrei will be picking up on his work on fake clients to stress test the server next week – while Yuri’s been up to the following.  
 
MULTIPLAYER
Yuri’s continued his work on getting rid of some remaining issues with zombie synchronisation between server and client. Issues where zombies on the client would stop at fences sometimes instead of fall over them, or alternatively would phase through the fence without triggering the correct animations. Things are looking a lot smoother now!
 
 
 
ZOMBIE OPTIMIZATION
We also currently have Zac digging into zombie optimization, as we need to make scenarios with anything more than standard zombie numbers a lot more palatable for your machine. He’s looking into stuff like shared anim skeletons and ways to cache anim state info for non-visible zombies, and given as he’s got a bunch of experience in this area we’re confident that he’ll return victorious. To those who suffer from anything over normal zombie counts (i.e. pretty much everyone) this should significantly improve performance with hordes!
 
 
3D INVENTORY ITEMS
It won’t be a 41 feature, but Rockstar Mark has just delivered the next batch of 3D model items that’ll in future be seen littering the floor instead of inventory icons too – and they look pretty fun so we thought we’d share. (Image of Kate in the frame a temporary version of her he yanked off google image search)
 
The idea also being that we can make neatly stackable versions of the inventory icons so they can appear properly on shelves, tables and other surfaces.

 
STAIRS BUG
Finally, a quick appeal for info. Long ago (long ago!) we used to have problems with player death when descending staircases. However, we’ve recently heard that it may somehow have returned. If this is happening then it must be SUPER rare, and we can’t replicate it at all. So…

Have you recently been a victim of stair death? Do you remember exactly what you were doing at the time? Might you even have it recorded on a stream or a youtube video? (Please?)

Anyone able and willing to provide information that leads to a fix for this bug will receive multiple Spiffo Points which, while fictional and of zero monetary value, do at least come with a degree of kudos. Let us know on the forum! Fanks!
 
This week’s prison standoff from comrade_jonas over at reddit. 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!

Hmm... idk but sounds like something a bot might suggest. lmao Nah jk, I had a good laugh when I read this though.

My heart goes out to all of you devs putting in the time. I cannot imagine the stress and pressure that you all have been under. Not too mention all the regular stresses of living in 2020. lol If it makes any of y'all who are doing the dev work feel any better, I'm hella big fan. I've had a great time so far with PZ(I bought it up in 2012) and I've been able to reintroduce a lot of people back to couch co-op through PZ. Much love to everyone at The Indie Stone. Keep up the good work!

P.S. 
Don't let your heads get too big when Zomboid 1.0 blows tf up! 

take your time looking forward to the mp. "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad."