Nebula

Evening all, here we all are again. Let’s take a stroll through the development Event zone.
Crafting Overhaul Recap
Now the vast infrastructure overhaul of the crafting systems has been merged and opened up to the rest of the gang, we’ve had a crack team of coders working solidly on implementing the various new post-apocalyptic profession tech trees, workstations and recipes that will provide for a vast amount of options for crafting and building in B42.
 
As a summary for anyone who isn’t up to date on our overall goals, the crafting overhaul is intended to provide the following things to Zomboid:
 
Give Zomboid a more feature rich end-game.
At present, long time players of the game often find they run out of objectives once they get a well-stocked and secure safehouse. We want to provide many more objectives a settled survivor can undertake to improve their safehouse, or indeed a community of players.
More things to build. More opportunities to craft. More ways to be creative.
 
Provide a way for servers to be able to run indefinitely without the need to wipe or respawn loot.
At present the gameplay loop relies so much on looting the map for items that servers run into problems when most urban locations are looted. These either cause servers to rely on unrealistic loot respawning, or to frequently wipe the server.
We want servers to be able to run well into the ‘Alexandria years’ and for players to experience life much further within the post-apocalypse in an interesting way that feels and plays different to the early chaos.
 
Provide believable post-apocalypse professions that would emerge in a post-technical post-apocalyptic society.
If it’s been 30 years since the apocalypse, making a new character who is a burger flipper ceases to make much sense.
As time ticks by from the initial infection, we will retire pre-apocalypse professions and introduce post-apocalypse professions that mirror pre-modern professions such as blacksmithing, tailoring, butchering and so on. We are also tying these skills into relevant modern day professions where applicable.
 
Provide more community cooperation in multiplayer (and NPCs in B43 and beyond) with different interacting professions that can contribute to a community – as well as provide much more extensive crafting and building, encouraging trade and other interesting player interactions.
We want to give players more interesting choices of professions and activities to contribute to a survivor community, and allow for players to cut more unique and interesting niches for themselves within a survivor group or community.
 
Part of this is reshaping how the skill and XP system work to both make individuals less capable of mastering everything, while making their initial potential a lot higher without grinding if they spec into a particular skill heavily.
 
Simultaneously, meanwhile, we still need to be providing sandbox options to allow solo players to master more skills and professions so as not to cut solo players from all the new content and things to do.
 
Provide a framework for players who want to focus more on community building and player interactions than zombie survival, so that they can optionally run servers with a more traditional wilderness map based survival game or extensive tech mods.
While zombie apocalypse will always be our core focus for the vanilla game, we want Zomboid to provide a breadth of survival mechanics and content that, especially with mods, make a solid foundation for many other varied survival experiences outside the looting and zombie gameplay.
 
This includes making provisions for the full range of possibilities in terms of tech and progression modpacks and overhauls that will add mountains of new ways for the community to play the game.
 
Our tech tree is built from the ground up with the assumption that it is taking place on a wilderness map without any civilization – to ensure that there are no holes.
 
In normal gameplay, close to the apocalypse, it’s expected that players would be able to skip huge portions of this tree by using scavenged technology and supplies from the crumbling modern world. However, with the correct knowledge and skills, players will be empowered to fill any gap if that loot and technology is not available to them.
 
Let the modders be all they can be.
Finally, we also believe that the crafting systems themselves are solid and foundational enough for the amazing modders in our community to run absolutely fucking wild with – and we honestly cannot wait to see what they come up with.
 
Recap over
Now we’ve recapped our general goals with the crafting overhaul, we’ll introduce you to some of the work on three of the profession trees that we’ve been in the guts of this month.
 
Blacksmithing
One of the new post-apocalypse professions that will be available for players, blacksmithing will allow for the comprehensive working of metal to provide players the ability to craft many items that are unattainable outside looting in the current build of the game.
 
The initial work has been based around providing the ability for someone living in the wild to be able to work with metal using a primitive furnace and forge made using rocks and clay, along with higher tiers being producible later on as players progress.
 
Of course there will also be modern equivalents of these workstations available within the world map for players to exploit too, but as stated earlier we are filling out the crafting tech tree always from the very bottom, with the assumption that players do not have access to any looted supplies whatsoever.
Please note that we are currently exploring a new design for building mechanics, in our attempt to get away from using right click menus for everything. We are hoping for a nicer building interface since we’ll have a huge number of extra building projects for the player and just cramming them all into right click menus will get more and more cumbersome as time goes on.
With these facilities simple iron implements can be produced, such as nails, as well as the tools required to build the next tier. Additionally it can be used for simple assembly and maintenance tasks.
This second tier is approximately “Medieval-ish”, the furnaces are built using stonemasonry, consisting of dressed stone blocks and cement; there is a proper blacksmith’s anvil; and also a quenching bucket.
With this more complex and durable tools can be crafted, as well as a higher level of maintenance.
And yup, want to be the most popular person on a server? Crank out sledgehammers for your friends!
Finally in this area, for steel production we need to make coke, produced from charcoal.
This dome kiln can be used to produce both coke, and also charcoal from wood.
 
Wood charcoal is important for this branch of crafting. The heat it produces is good for working metal, but it’s also carbon and had effects on ferrous metal being forged. It will be able to be produced through other means than just the dome kiln, but can be produced more efficiently in higher quantities when using one.
 
Pottery / Stoneworking
We featured some of the possibilities with pottery in a previous Thursdoid however a big benefit of working with clay (as well as stone) is for additional options for building.
 
PLEASE NOTE: there’s anims, tile artwork, SFX and lots of other polish missing at present.
 
 
As well as stone or clay full-size walls, the extended building options from these systems will allow for paths, roofs and decorative elements allowing for player built communities to really feel like a settlement and provide options for security to keep the zeds at bay.
 
This will of course be a balancing concern for us, but we feel with sufficient effort and skill a survivor should be able to (very ultimately) erect walls that zombies do not simply attempt to walk through and bash their heads on until they fall over.
Brewer
The last profession we’ll cover today is the Brewer, who has numerous valuable things to bring to the table. While at present alcoholic drinks may not have too much direct impact on gameplay, we will be providing more benefits and downsides to the partaking in alcohol.
 
After all, we imagine it would be a likely bit of escapism for many a zombie apocalypse survivor, and there’d be more value still added later down the line once the NPCs and the accompanying psychological overhaul we have planned at the same time.
 
In the first instance of this, however, the Brewer profession also allows for the creation of a rather vital way of preserving food.
 
 
CAN BE HAPPY UNDERGROUND
Last ‘doid we showed you building developments high upwards into the sky, this time we’re going deeper underground as there’s too much panic in this town.
 
For those unaware, Build 42 will come with two sorts of below ground floor. First off we’ll have the Permanent ones that will always be attached to locations on the map. These will generally be familiar locations, places of interest, businesses and secret military complexes.
 
Today however, we’ll be looking at our Randomized ones. We currently have 119 of these designed: some empty and desolate, some full of loot beyond your wildest dreams, and some that make you seriously question the mental state of the previous occupant. Here’s a fuzzed-up image to whet your whistle.
These will be basements, bunkers, panic rooms and Waynes World sets that you will be delighted to discover spawning on your regular looting sorties – and they will appear within whatever houses could potentially fit them in and still look natural. The frequency of their appearances will also be governed by a Sandbox option.
 
We’ll also have a long list of designated spots within buildings on the map where a random basement will fit, these spots will be assigned and a random compatible basement will be placed in the world on world creation.
 
Here’s a quick video to show some of our favourites off but first a few familiar words of caution!
 
This is WIP, stair placement within buildings will improve, and likewise the steps will look more natural in the way that they appear within the house. We may also look at hatches etc as time goes on.
 
MODDING
Lovely Aiteron’s mission of tidying up, reorganising and adding new utility to our front-end UI continues. Notably he’s currently improving the Mod Manager which, as an ex-modder himself, he is ideally suited to do.
 
Here’s a quick video showing his changes.
 
 
So what’s seen here? Well, amongst other things, the following:
Mod and map order. You will now be able to change the load order of enabled mods and maps, which also comes with an auto-sort for available mods. Share your presets. You will now be able to share your preset of mods (with specific mods, and the load order) and your friends and/or players on your server will be able to take it and use it themselves. If some mods are missing, then the game will flag it and show links to the ones that are uninstalled. We have added special version tags that will be required for mod compatibility for B42. This is due to the massive changes to the game likely invalidating a large number of mods, and the potential for serious bugs if people attempt to run with those designed for B41. Hopefully in this way things will be clearer through the B42 Unstable process, and sailing can be as smooth as we can all muster it. The game’s use of ModIDs has been altered to be appended by the workshop ID of each mod. This adjustment is aimed at resolving server issues that result in file mismatch errors when users attempt to connect, due to various mod versions sharing the same ModID. This happens on the Steam Workshop a fair bit due to re-uploads and modpacks. Now, with the workshop number attached to the ModID, only the “correct” version of a mod will be loaded by clients connecting to servers. We’re hoping that this will then lessen frustrations with said cursed file mismatch errors whenever you’re in an area of mod self-conflict. We are also working on a new modding API and new modding guide for 42. It’s currently unclear whether it’d be released alongside a 42 Unstable. It’s certainly in the works though. LOOTED HOMES
An area of the game we need to improve is the feeling that ‘something happened here’. We have burned down houses, survivor homes and our costume zeds – but we don’t have much that says people who were panicked were once here.
 
As such now we will be including a random chance for homes, stores and businesses to have been looted – with items strewn over the floor, general detritus and litter, and sometimes graffiti on the walls too.
 
(There’s no graffiti that says ‘Hit them in the head!’ just yet, but we are a video game so give us time on that one I’m sure it will happen eventually.)
 
 
 
FUN NEW ITEMS
At the same time as the big ticket new systems, our coders and art team like to dripfeed fun smaller stuff into the test build. Recent additions have been:
 
The Military Manpack Radio. Works when worn on the back, in addition to other radio usages.
New fluid containers that use the revamped crafting systems that deal with liquids – so for example the canteens use the new tech where they’re a single script item definition with procedural textures and icons, similar to how clothing items work.
Backpack sprayers that are fluid containers, that should prove useful for farming. (And also get us thinking about flamethrowers, once we have the time to get back into the fire rework.)
OTHER STUFF
The Sound team hit an impressive milestone the other week, with them hitting the total of 50 music tracks that have been re-written so that they work within 42’s new and awesome dynamic music system. Our thanks, as ever, to the fabulous team at Formosa and everything they do for the game. Taking over a building, but still a clean-freak even though the world’s gone to shit and appearances no longer matter? Well worry no more, as 42 will allow you to wash away and scrub the grime and graffiti to make your safehouse look and feel spotless. Until the blood starts to drip again, clearly.  
 
HAPPY HALLOWEEN WOOOO
In keeping with all the other game studios and publishers providing ‘faintly spooky content’ at this time of year, please take this offering of deer skellingtons and a baby deer skellington.
 
We trust that you are now suitably unsettled, and please note that it took about a minute to get our pre-existing animal skellingtons into motion. We haven’t spent all month on the skellingtons.
 
 
 
We’ll see you back here next month (details on the temporarily monthly Thursdoids here) for more cool stuff.
Thanks again all x
A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. 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. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here

For jumping from such a height, you can also introduce parachutes into the game.

Hey all, let’s chime in with some of the feverish work being done in the musty basements and damp holes in the ground of the Knox Event. First off, some scribbles from the engine room
B42 ENGINE
To catch up and recap, the main highlights of engine improvements for build 42 are as follows:
 
Basements and underground things! A flexible per chunk 32 height that can be different in each chunk, allowing parts of the map to be at 32 level height, where others in theory go from -31 to ground floor. New lighting propagation system that has light bounce off walls and leak through windows, doors and other spaces more realistically – allowing for more natural ambient light effects and getting rid of those room based lighting issues. The ability to have negative coordinates on x and y, thus opening up map expansion directions in the three previously missing directions. New chunk based rendering using a depth map to vastly optimise drawing of the game.  
It’s this last item that we’re going to discuss today.
 
How 2D games have historically worked is like a deck of cards being dealt: each image is placed on top of the other to construct the scene. 
This is terribly inefficient, especially in terms of an isometric game like us with a crap-ton of tiles, tile overlays and so on. The rigid order that the sprites are dealt (so closer ones obscure further away ones,  leaving the closest one on top) means that your GPU is unable to optimize how it’s all drawn.
 
Not only this, but every time you deal a card on top of another card (a zombie in front of a wall for example) then that wall is forever ruined by the zombie’s pixels: the only option is to draw the entire thing again, tile by tile, for the next frame.
 
Can I shock you? In the past, people have complained about PZ’s fps.
 
A common thing we hear is: ‘“Well, my PC runs Skyrim/Witcher 3 just fine” but sadly this generally overlooks the fact that GPUs are built and optimized for 3d rendering. A game with this much detail that doesn’t utilize 3D rendering has actually got a tougher time ahead of it than Skyrim or Witcher in terms of making your GPU happy.
 
We also, on top of this, have extremely expensive scene construction CPU time too. End result: a really big bag of nightmares.
 
Now, in a 3D game you have a depth buffer. This is an offscreen rendering of the scene that tells it all how far from 0->1 each pixel is:
 

 
This is really handy, since the deck of cards goes out of the window. You’re no longer having to draw everything from the furthermost thing to the closest.
 
With a depth buffer you can choose whatever order you want: draw all brick walls first, then all characters hairs, then all grass, then all… you get the idea.
 
Outside transparency, which causes issues, you can draw anything in whatever order is most convenient and most optimized for the GPU. Not only this, but you don’t have to put together the 3D scene polygon by polygon every frame: you have a cached mesh probably already on your GPU memory sat waiting for the next frame, and even if the character turns or moves that mesh is still valid to use.
 
Zomboid? Not so much. We have to draw every individual godforsaken goddamned tile: every bit of lighting, every bit of grass, completely from scratch, every frame, every time. And when you zoom out? Wuh-woh shaggy. You’re now asking for trouble.
 
So for B42 we decided to implement a depth buffer! 
 
This was a bold proposition since we have no 3D (outside the characters and items, of course). Our ‘3D’ is otherwise a faked perspective drawn by the artists drawing the tile: it’s an illusion.
 
However, with some perseverance, we managed to generate a serviceable depth map of our usual faked isometric tiles:
 

Note here that when you look carefully at the floors and walls in this, they are not completely smooth. Each tile is still just ‘a certain distance away’ and it all behaves just as it does now: a deck of cards being dealt every frame, where one thing is either below or on top of another. However we no longer have to draw them back to front.
 
We’ve all seen this faked isometric drawn into the tiles cause weird visual glitches too many times to count, where the illusion of the 2d tiled world just breaks in ugly ways.
 
 
So we went a step further and calculated the fake 3dness for floors and walls, thereby making the depth map peachy smooth:
 

 
So where does that leave us?
 
We’re dealing the self-same deck of cards we always have been (these are still faked 2d isometric tiles and always will be) however we can now say ‘the left hand bit of this card is actually further back than the right hand side of this card’ and objects placed on them will represent this as if they had actual 3d depth. 
 
For walls and floors, at least, from this fixed perspective we suddenly service them with the GPU as if they are 3D objects: which means that not only do we get rid of the issues with the fixed tile ordering, but we can say ‘this specific part of this tile is further back or further forward than the rest of it’. So we can choose to put that part of the tile in front of / behind the character differently to other parts of the same tile. 
 
This will make a big difference to immersion on its own, but then we went a step further. With the new depth map, we opened up access to that amazing optimization trick we mentioned before.
 
On the dev branch for this work, we can now just draw a chunk like this tile by tile on one single occasion.
 

 
All those hundreds of draw calls as the cards get slammed down from the deck now only need to happen once as we ‘construct’ the chunk and it becomes its very own ‘tile’.
 
Within this we bake the depth information into the depth buffer. So, despite this just being a single picture, we already have all the information hidden behind it that’s required to correctly place any player, zombie or placed inventory item anywhere on this chunk (even inside the building, or partially obscured by any part of it) – and this can be done AFTER drawing the chunk itself too. We can effectively slide things behind stuff we’ve already drawn intelligently.
 
The only times we will ever need to update this chunk and redraw those tiles is if the lighting from time of day changes, or if a naughty zombie dies on it or a player picks up an item, drops one, opens a door or otherwise.
 
(And oh yes, zombie bodies and dropped inventory items will be cached on the chunk too! With depth! So in terms of performance this current resource-hog will be near enough completely free)
 
So now for every frame the chunk above, the charming apartment balconies, becomes the equivalent of a single current tile. One single draw that’s not that much slower than drawing that one single tile in the current build, in which we have 8x8x4 gridsquares getting drawn, potentially with 4-5 tiles on each. All for near the price on CPU and GPU of a single tile draw. 
 
The work needed to draw each tile on that chunk only needs to occur every so often when it’s updated in a way that invalidates the depth or changes the tiles visually, or when it first becomes visible. And if anything invalidates that chunk that it requires drawing in full, it’s only that chunk that needs redrawing, and only once. It’ll hardly be noticed by your CPU and GPU.
 
On top of this we have that depth buffer still for every tile drawn, and beyond that the walls and floor tiles have additional faked smooth depth applied to them.
 

 
That’s where the magic happens: weirdly not only is the above long-haired hippy character drawn AFTER the fence tiles are, but the fence and the gravel floor that’s visible behind it are just part of the same single image and are not separated whatsoever. Due to the magic of the new system we happened to have the extra depth information and were able to throw away pixels of them being drawn seeing as there was something ‘closer’. 
 
As a cumulative effect of all the above: this is how we accomplished 4k res, max zoom, 300-500 fps, with over 1000 when zoomed in in this video we posted a long while back when we were prototyping all this.
 
 
(Though please note we expect, in practice, it won’t be this high: the lack of zombies and various other factors make it not completely representative of the full game – but it’s still a good indicator of how vast this optimization will be.)
 
Next Steps
So the big issue here is that walls and floors are the easy part.
 
It’s relatively simpler to calculate how ‘deep’ a particular pixel of a wall should be, use a shader to put that depth in, and get smooth continuous depth that the player won’t clip through like it’s a 2D billboard facing the screen. Anything more complex than a flat wall or floor though is a problem.
 
EP, however, has recently been experimenting with some stuff that’s pretty cool.
 
We must make a big disclaimer there that this is very much, as stated, experimenting, and we can’t say for certain what is shown here will be in b42 as shown.
 
He made us promise we made that clear before we speak of it at all, but it’ll give you an idea of what we’re trying to do and the cool ideas he’s been playing with on his travels.
 
So he’s been working on a cool editor for creating simple 3d shapes, positioning them on the tiles, and baking out the depth texture for use when rendering.
 
 
 
 
None of the 3d shapes will end up in the game world while playing, but the resultant extra depth texture (seen in the bottom left) can be used with the depth map system to make the characters interact with it as if those 3d shapes were there.
 
As you can see, here the character intersects with the (remember, completely 2D) tile as if it were a 3d object itself, with full gradual depth.
 

 
And yes, this is the main thing that’s been holding us back from sitting in chairs, lying in beds etc. Modders have done great things providing this in the capacity that’s feasible in the current engine, but are still limited from sitting properly in chairs that obscure the character or face in different directions. We want a proper solution that’ll work 100% when it comes to the main game.
 
Finally, another caveat.
 
There’s no way in hell we’d ever be able to do this for every tile in the game, especially the more complicated ones or ones that were drawn (by hand) by the artists that may not actually follow strict laws of isometric in actuality.
 
While this tech can be used for some nice stuff in future its primary and only feasible short to medium term use is as described above.
Before we start seeing the inevitable “omg PZ will be able to rotate camera RTX mode when??” this is still a complete MASSIVE gulf from anything resembling true 3D.
 
Trust us: we’ve already ummed and ahhed and experimented with all this tech for a long while now to firmly to know where our limits are and put our boot down on those kinda thoughts.
 
But this does mean that we should be able to deal with all the main simpler structural tiles that make up the main geometry of the maps, and will provide a much more solid feeling world despite it looking very much the same as it always has – however, with the new lighting propagation system it shall look that bit better of course!
 
We now return to your scheduled programming.
 
FARMING
Next, over to the redoubtable Blair Algol for the latest on agricultural matters.
 
“The current state of the farming rework is that the current dev phase of new plants, vegetables, herbs, houseplants and associated changes to farming mechanics, are nearly finished. I’m now on fine tuning and polish.”
 
“The sticky matter in the fine tuning and polish, however, is that my mission has not only been in a more realistic and better balanced farming experience – but also to provide a more folksy, relaxing and productive-feeling gameplay loop that fully utilizes the new animation capabilities of modern Zomboid. So this is actually the part where I need to roll up my sleeves and do the heavy lifting.”
 
“I had been waiting for Aiteron’s splendid fishing rework to get into a state where it was possible to build off it, so that both the interface, and interactions would be as consistent as possible; as well as with the RJ’s animal rework, and Eris’ foraging interface. We’re really trying to make the systems and experiences in PZ more consistent as a whole.”
 
“But the goal is that farming should serve as a fun, peaceful minigame, albeit with challenges as we are making a survival game, but that can be an oasis of calm in the chaos and death of the PZ apocalypse. One fun little feature that I’m adding in that regard is using Ladybugs (EUROPEAN TRANSLATION: ‘Mister Ladybirds’) as pest control.”
 
“I should point out that, in testing, even with the longer growing seasons, and new pests/maintenance, the majority of plants would still survive until harvest without any major issues. Yields, however, might vary.”
 
To summarize the changes to farming, we have already implemented the following:
 
Crops now take a realistic amount of time to grow before they can be harvested; this can be adjusted to suit the player or server in the sandbox options. Crops also feature realistic growing seasons, where there’s optimal months to plant your crops, as well as ones where they are doomed to failure; this can be disabled in the sandbox options. Attempting to grow anything other than houseplants indoors will also be doomed to failure; this also can be disabled in the sandbox options, and, when the new lighting systems are implemented, then a realistic greenhouse system could be explored, but don’t take that as a guarantee. Slugs and snails are new garden pests, that can be dealt with using commercial slug and snail killer, or by learning how to make a slug trap out of an empty beer or pop can and some beer. Rosemary plants, and chickens, also serve as means to control slug infestations. Plants will also benefit from regular weedings. We have herbs, which have shorter growing seasons, and can be repeatedly harvested, and you can also propagate new herb patches with fresh herbs. You can use potatoes, onions and garlic as seeds to plant new patches of vegetables. I have added contextual actions using the combat stance in combination with the action key. When you have a hoe equipped, and are in the stance, you can use the action key to dig a furrow. Likewise, if you have seeds in your hand, are in the stance, and are facing a furrow you can use the action key to plant seeds. Likewise for watering plots. I plan on expanding this contextual action to include stuff like chopping down trees when an axe is equipped; removing barricade planks when a crowbar is equipped; etc. as well, for consistency.  
There’s other cool, fun stuff that’s either being worked on, or being planned, but we don’t want to spoil everything.
 
FISHING
A visual update from the Aiteron keep net!
 


 
NEW ITEM STUFF
Back to the Blair hothouse!
 
“One of the other things I’ve been doing for Build 42 is adding a slew of new items – both functional and decorative – along with addressing inconsistencies and missing functionality with existing items.”
 
“One of the issues we’re attempting to address is ‘Bottleneck Items’. These are items such as Generator Magazines, Sledgehammers, Lighters/Matches etc. that, when a player has difficulty finding them, can make them feel like they’re soft-locked out of parts of the game. While we don’t want to remove the challenge of finding these items, we want to ensure that there are adequate opportunities for a player to find these items, even if they may involve some dangerous excursions.”
 
“In addition to ensuring that these items spawn in varied appropriate circumstances as loot, including in vehicles, we are ensuring that special circumstances such as the randomized stories and annotated map stash houses can spawn these items, and appropriate items will also be able to be foraged. As an aside, the loot tables themselves are in the process of being scrupulously revised and glowed-up, and should provide more fun and depth for the looting aspects of the game.”
 
“We made a couple of tools to collect data and feedback regarding this. I had already made LootLog, a tool similar to Aiteron’s LootZed, except that this one, when activated, logs all loot that spawns to the console.txt with details including the exact location where the loot spawns.”
 
“Fenris then took this concept to the next level, and now we are working with a tool that tracks and logs exactly how many items of each type spawn for each savegame; a permanent record showing exactly how many items spawn. Not only does this allow us to collect concrete data regarding item spawning, if you are worried that Sledgehammers, Generator Magazines, or Rubber Hoses aren’t spawning, you can check this record and see if they are.”
 
“In regards to Generator Magazines, with a high enough Electrical skill in Build 42, your character will be able connect and repair Generators without needing that magazine. We are also adding additional varieties of lighter and matches, as well as Lighter Fluid for refilling the classic lighters, and you will be able to use a vehicle lighter, open flame, or an appropriate stove to light cigarettes. There are also alternate means for players with the Smoker trait to feed their addiction to nicotine.”
 
“You can currently use many bottles other than the Gas Cans to hold fuel, which was one way we addressed that particular bottleneck (and yes, we are making sure that hoses for siphoning fuel are common), and we are also adding a new, larger, fuel container, alongside some other military-themed items.”
 
“We know that many players, especially roleplayers, like having themed items, and so some more themed bags, like the military duffelbag in build 41, are on the way. The new entrenching tool serves as a weapon and a shovel, and is folded when placed on the ground or attached to a belt. Several of the new knives such as the Switchblade and Butterfly Knife also have that feature.”
 
“The new canteen item can be attached to the belt, and will also showcase another new item feature that modders can make good use of: items with varying icons and models from their standard base ones. This allows us to add cosmetic variants without having to actually add new items, similar to how clothing works. I believe there are 4-6 variants of this style of canteen. All of this military loot spawns in appropriate circumstances, so if you want this new gear be prepared to have to go out and get it.”
 
“Another alternative Bottleneck Item is a P38 Can-Opener that you can keep on your Key Ring. Additionally, your character will be able to use a knife to open cans of food, although that will damage the knife and has the risk of injuring your hand. We also have fancy, expensive imported beer that requires a bottle opener, and the better wines, aside from Champagne of course, will need a corkscrew, or one of the better pocket knives to open.” 
 
“There are many other new items and features: you can use a Pickaxe to remove annoying stumps and boulders; we added various vanity/prestige items and collectibles; players worried about having enough Garbage Bags for water collectors (another Bottleneck Item) will be happy to be able to find a box of them; and we made garbage loot a lot more fun and gross.”
 
 
MODDING
Next a quick update for modders.
Something else we’re endeavouring to do for Build 42 is to use Tags for item interactions whenever possible. This should make it easy for modders to add new items that work smoothly with a lot of the fun new stuff, and older stuff as well.
 
As mentioned above, for both mods and our own usage, we now have it so that modified item icons and models are “persistent”; when changed they stay that way when after quitting and reloading and we have made sure to have straightforward function names for ease of use.
 
We added some new events for mods to use, including: – OnZombieCreate and – LoadChunk
 
OnZombieCreate will allow modders to directly access zombies when they first spawn. Currently for many mods, using the LoadGridSquare event is the only feasible way to accomplish some goals. However, this often has an annoying impact on performance. What LoadChunk does is allow mods to access the chunks of the world map, which are a 10 x 10 grid of map squares, after they stream in. Afterwards, if the mod needs to access a square in that chunk, it can use code such as chunk:getGridSquare(x,y,z) to access said square. Practically speaking this means that the mod can use ~1% of the previous event calls to accomplish the same goals, for many of the purposes in which LoadGridSquare is utilized.
 
We have also moved around the order of operations when sandbox options are loaded and the loot tables are parsed, to make it easier for mods that use sandbox options to set loot spawn values.
ANIMALS
Finally, a quick video built from clips from the ongoing animals testing.
Tara for now, chucks.
 
 
This week’s hellscape from Stonmo. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. 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. Experienced gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here. Apologies for the lack of blog last week, the blog writer had a fever and for much of Thursday was hallucinating that he was stuck in a Mexican hotel and GOG kept on phoning the switchboard to demand that we change the Knox Event lore.

Hey all, hope you’re all doing well and that thus far 2023 has been kind. Let’s get straight into it.
NEW FACES
First of all we’d like to welcome officially three new people to the full Project Zomboid team.
 
Fenris_Wolf should need no introduction to the old hands of the Project Zomboid community. He took over and maintained the ORGM mod with great aplomb from the original creator ORMtnMan – and will be a name familiar to many.
 
Right now he’s reacclimatizing himself with the PZ codebase, charged with clearing out some of the niggly things that have been on our ‘to do’ list so he gets his fingers dirty in many and various different areas of the game. Clearly his expertise with guns and the firearms code will likely come into play at some point in his time with us, but for now it’s all about bedding down and getting comfy in Spiffo’s hovering mothership.
Also joining us officially, meanwhile, are Amz and Pat_Bren.
 
Amz is another familiar name from the community, and was a great help to us in the days of 41 MP testing. She’s now officially a full-time tester working with Sasha and Yana, and will also be making cool videos for our blogs and improving our (already extraordinarily professional) social media engagements.
 
Pat_Bren, meanwhile, has been writing up a storm for Build 42 on a part time basis – writing new radio and TV channels and content, new lore for what’s going on around the world and much more besides – and will now be working other cool future content in an official and ongoing capacity.
42 STUFF
Right now, we’re probably due an ‘overview’ of Build 42, so everyone is on the same page about its contents rather than skipping about between them each blog.
 
42  boils down to four large chunks of deep-rooted work that we want to all come together: the crafting/animals update, the map expansion, the optimization/lighting/basements engine upgrade, and the weighty job the MP team have taken on to move all inventory interactions over from clients to server.
 
These are all at different stages – for example animals are further ahead than a lot of the elements of crafting in terms of being ready to actively test and play with. Right now with the crafting, the work taking place is on the back-end codeside of crafting stations and component UIs.
Meanwhile with the engine upgrade at this point we’re essentially fixing up various different rendering issues that were broken with our quite fundamental changes to the system up to a point at which it’s ready to be merged into the test build.
 
The map team meanwhile continue to pump out new towns, interesting locations and fun places to travel to and hold out in.
Around these big ticket items we also have other coders, writers, artists and 3D modellers working to improve aspects of the current game.
So there’s the in-depth fire overhaul, Aiteron’s revamped fishing, better farming, more imaginative and fun items to find and use, better events to come across, improved recipes, new animations and activities, improved music system and deeper soundscape – and general piles and piles of polish and improvement throughout.
 
So with all that firmly held in mind, let’s have a quick dart around some of the different departments of PZ to catch up on a few bits and bobs.
Our smashing friend Steve N, who we’re borrowing from EverCurious Entertainment, has been digging into our animation system and working out some longstanding issues that we’ve been desperate to fix. We’re currently jumping into a test build to check nothing else has been broken by his changes, but the result will be a lot more silky smooth turns and 180s in your survival forays. The big debate currently in our work with livestock is how to make it clear to players that you’ll need to designate areas that you want them to occupy and produce within, alongside building them fences they won’t escape through. We’ve got various ideas for this and will be running our experiments past the testers.

Increasingly we’re realising just how much more ‘life’ these non-human and non-zombie creatures bring to the game. To which end we are also experimenting with some non-interactive beasts that will run before you get near, and give the game a smidge more desolate colour…
  As mentioned before, alongside refinements and improvements to the music system, right now via Formosa/Noiseworks we’re in the process of getting real life human actors (in Los Angeles! In America!) to record some basic bodily noises to give extra life (and pain) to our Knox Event survivors. Imagine how cool it will be in MP when one of your buddies reaches you, having escaped zombies and run in terror, and you can hear their panicked heavy breathing.

That’s the sort of thing we want to capture, alongside noises of hurt and exertion as you tumble around the landscape. While we’re there we are also going to get a variety of other ‘spoken’ TV and radio noises that we can then obfuscate to improve the entertainment system slightly.
  Aiteron is back with us and has picked up on his work on fishing. This is its current iteration, which will shortly be mixed into the internal test build. This probably needs some more tweaking with the ‘strain’ animations – and the indications that a big fish is being caught – but is really getting there now. It’ll be mixed into the internal test build soon, which is also the point at which Formosa can start working on the new sound effects and such.
  About a bazillion new items – some useful (hose now required for gas siphoning, kids) and some more aimed at making the world feel fuller and more ‘real’ are also currently going into the internal test build. Here are a few examples.
This week’s wintry scene from BruceWayne (not the real one). A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. 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. Experienced gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here. Thanks to everyone who voted for Spiffo in the Labo(u)r of Love awards. He seemed quite chuffed about it.

Hello,
 
I may missed the words to describe it, but one image (or two in this case)...  Anyway, I've noticed that the car has some sort of  'bubble' going on where it glitches those little barricades on the side of the road at Valley Station.  I'm at 40mph on the first picture, it glitches 9 or so tiles.  If I stop, the number of tiles bugged goes down to 2 or 3.  After going out of the car (second image), if I'm looking it glitches as well.  If I'm not looking, it renders as usual.

Hello all! Afraid this will be a more hastily put together than usual Thursdoid, usual Thursdoid writer is away this week, and we originally planned to do a stable release today.
 
Last minute, however, literally a couple of hours ago in fact, we concluded that this would be a bad idea not only in the middle of the Steam Survival Sale, but also a big week long and rather huge Spanish streamer event (go check it out!) that heralded some of our biggest Twitch numbers ever (thanks again to Silithur for organizing it!).
 
Stable releases are always nerve-wracking, but doubled up with the zombie respawn issues that we’ve been struggling with on unstable it just felt like a bad time to throw any dice. We believe those issues are fixed, and have done significant internal testing, however throwing it in front of a huge number of players on stable we can’t be absolutely sure it won’t still cause problems, particularly with mods, so doing a release today under these circumstances seemed a risky endeavour with so many new people being exposed to the game.
 
As such, we will likely wait until the coming Monday to flip the switch. This gives us a few more days to see if the zombie spawning reports on the unstable branch start to disappear after the fix went live and is probably the safer option, as eager as we are to see the update out and free up the team for bigger commits toward the next update.
 
 
41.73
So for those who haven’t dipped their toe into unstable, here’s a few highlights of what to expect:
Optionally see other players from your safehouse / faction on the map.  Lots of extra security and anti-cheat to MP Lots of improvements to recipes, new foodstuffs, improved containers, expanded recipes. Improved error reporting for diagnosing mod errors or conflicts. Lots of map polish, bug fixes, improvements. Improved MP Admin tools. About ten gazillion bug fixes.  
 
ADAPTIVE MUSIC
Since Formosa UK (formerly Noiseworks) added the adaptive, reactive action music it went down really well. Making the music react to what’s happening on-screen makes a big difference to immersing yourself into what’s going on.
 
The next stage of this plan is being put into place now, which will involve creating reactive versions of all the other tracks in the game. Not just action ones, but also all the various tracks and ambiences that currently exist.
 
The idea is to allow for the non-action music to change in intensity from background ambient, to how it currently is now, to a more intense version, depending on what the player is doing. Do they leave their house after being in their house for some time? Maybe the ambient music bumps up a notch. Get into your car in the morning to go out on a looting run? Enter a house to loot? Find a rare item? There are countless little game moments we can tie into a music change, that will just help to make the music feel like its telling part of the story and provide much more variety in the music tracks through play.
 
 
B42 CRAFTING
We’ve got a couple of sexy flowcharts from lead crafting crafter Turbo detailing some of the new post-apocalyptic professions that readers can pour over to get an idea of what’s coming in Build 42. We intended to save this stuff until you could see it in-game, but it doesn’t hurt to have a sneak peak.
 
As shown with the liquid system a few weeks back, actual code-side work on the crafting is still mostly foundational. Getting and expanding systems in there to cater for different ingredients used for the new crafting and make them expandable and more in-depth, adding new properties and new systems to items to allow them to track more detail than just ‘condition’, but also quality and other parameters that will impact how they are used and what the results of their usage is.
 
Allowing more nuance in spawning items so for example bottles of beer in a convenience store will likely be full, where a bottle in a house may be half empty, empty, or even contain another liquid entirely. Items in general will have more nuanced conditions and qualities, the crafting system being able to operate on nearby crafting stations which affect the results and also what recipes are available to the player.
Also allowing for multi-tile ‘machines’ that will operate as single objects, and allowing for tiles to be connected to cooperate with each other.
A ton of foundational stuff that needs to be in place before the trees that have been designed are implemented, and progress has been good however there is still more to do, which limits what can be shown in videos at this point.
 
At the moment we have about ten post-apocalypse professions, each with their own crafting tree, various multi tile workstations that are upgradable, and each with many produce that often includes ingredients from other professions, or can feed into other professions.
This image does not expand for spoiler purposes, but is just to give an idea of how in-depth the crafting design is at this point — these trees are only part of the full picture, and we’re still far from done with it:
 
If we look at, for example, the stone working profession you will see the level of detail we are going into with the new crafting. (please note these are early designs, and will likely be incomplete, and also we still need to balance and figure out the ‘right level of detail’ from playtesting, as we want crafting to be in-depth, cooperative, but not drawn out and too grindy to be enjoyable)
 
Below is an overview of the stonecutting profession.
 
As stated before, the goal with the crafting is to be able to produce anything that it would be realistically feasible for characters with those skills to produce, to dip our toe a bit more into the ‘rebuild society’ than we previously did, for the sake of providing a better long-term MP (and SP with NPCs) experience for those who don’t die screaming within the first week.
 
Players will not be building computers or nuclear reactors, but any of the more primitive to medieval technology that makes sense we hope to be an option. It should be possible to spawn on a blank map with just wilderness and natural resources and have an engaging crafting and community building game, and adding the towns, cities and zombies to the mix will only make that more interesting.
Here’s another example, the bowyer:
 
As you can see, the goal is that each profession will be involved enough, with enough variety, and also enough interaction with other professions, to make it an interesting experience that a player can focus on within a community. We need to find the right balance between ‘involved’ and ‘not too drawn out’, and also provide mechanisms for SP players to be able to use sandbox to allow them to dabble in professions alone, prior to NPCs, without running into a wall of specialisation limit meaning they can’t function in all the professions required to create any items. And also not make the process of crafting an item so drawn out as to be discouraging players from taking part.
 
We’ll go into more detail on the professions when they are starting to be implemented, and we’re more sure on the designs working out within the game.
 
It’s a hard balance to find, and we’ll know more once these recipes and crafting trees get into the game once the systems are in place to accommodate them, and once these go out to the community we can get further feedback to balance the satisfaction vs grind balance of the depth of them.
 
 
FUTURE MP WORK
Checking in with the multiplayer team, they have been working on a big refactor of the MP codebase in their ongoing work for moving player inventories to the server. This will pretty much eliminate all inventory cheating.
 
In addition, they have been working on character creation being moved to the server too, which will forbid clients from cheating with character inventory, skills and perks before the character is added to the server’s database.
 
We’re also going to be looking into a real anti cheat solution that should reduce the occurrences of cheaters significantly. While anti-cheat can be circumnavigated and its unlikely to get rid of any cheating whatsoever, as we are not a competitive FPS, we hope that there won’t be quite the market for selling cheats for the cheat developers to be as willing to fight in the arms race required, and it will push cheat development above the skill level of most casual cheat makers.
 
The MP team have also been making further improvements to vehicle syncing in MP, improving collisions and avoiding vehicles clipping into each other.

Haylo survivors.
41.73 STABLE
We have the next patch to the stable branch primed and ready to go, however an issue that our fantastic Unstable beta testers have flagged is keeping it held in its pen for a little longer.
 
Players reported that some houses they’d cleared were spawning zeds upon booting up the new build, which alerted us to a snag in our map export process not dealing with map boundaries changing with map expansions. All previous map expansions came along with forced save incompatibility so this crept through unnoticed until now.
 
While it’s an aggravation rather than a save-breaker, we didn’t want to send a build with a known issue out to the masses – and have spent the last few days setting up a fix. This will need some testing, after which we’ll be looking to pump out the latest version next week.
If you’re interested in the changelist, or want to jump in to try it out, then you can find the unstable release notes for 41.72 and 41.73 behind the hotlinks.
 
42 CONTENT
One of the focus points of Build 42 is on extended survival in the months and years beyond the initial Knox Event outbreak.
For this, we are revamping our crafting system – and Turbo’s role has been in laying new foundations for a set-up that allows for: crafted items that have more RPG-like variable attributes based on the crafter’s skill, stats of input items that are reflected in the attributes of a final output item, and the ability of the game itself to recognise all these different attributes when an item is being passed between all of its various different locations and systems.
 
The next stage of this work, meanwhile, has been in taking this same sort of mentality to the liquids in the game – and also making them ever more interesting in our new crafting set-up.
 
WET STUFF
Let’s start with a video, and then move into some explanation.
 
 
 
So what exactly does this mean for the water, paint, gas, alcohol, washing detergent and bleach of the Knox Event?
Essentially all fluids will be defined and stored in a global registry, which is where we as devs can add new vanilla liquids – but also will make the system very moddable.
 
Each definition will store basic info such as ID, name, colour etc – then has different categories it can belong to like Beverage, Alcoholic, Fuel, Flammable and such. Beyond that we also tie in properties per litre of this particular fluid: for example Carbs, Proteins, Alcohol percentage or Energy if it’s a flammable fuel.
 
Liquids that are hazardous or poisonous can also have modifiers that configure the maximum poison effect, and how the effect behaves when mixed.
 
So yes, we’re going to have the most realistic bleach-drinking ever seen in gaming.
 
CONTAINERS
Containers are the coding class that actually store the fluids, and are the way in which the game code interacts with the above definitions.
Inventory items, objects found in the world and vehicles will all have a fluid container – which will allow them to store and use the liquids/fuels/whatever that they contain. Each container also has information stored with it that shows what particular fluids have been mixed in, and their content percentages relative to each other.
 
The system calculates and caches the summary of all the containing fluids properties based on their percentages. So, if you add 80% Soda and 20% pure alcohol the mixture fluid in the container will have 80% of the soda’s carbs, proteins etc and 20% alcohol. Then, when transferred again, the right ratios will still be maintained.
 
USAGE
Finally, we hear you cry, cocktail mixing will be a part of the apocalypse!
 
Yes, but also consider the applications this will bring to post-apocalyptic crafting – as well as to more basic stuff like mixing paints to create different colours, providing different fuels and different ways to tamper with said fuels.
 
Certain versions of our planned workstations, say one for brewing, could have one or more ‘fluidcontainers’ attached – while also allowing other ingredients as item inputs. Likewise we can have recipes that require more precise mixing and concentrations should we desire it.
The system does retain some control over your George’s Marvellous Medicine creations. We can put limits around what can, and cannot, be mixed – however we’re not 100% on how many limitations we will put on things right now. This will probably come through testing later down the line.
 
Unrestricted mixing would mean, for example, that any Fluid can be mixed with Fuel, which would mean that the energy value property per litre would go down when mixed, and that anything using the fuel such as a car or generator would have its operation and potential damage governed by the sort of fuel that had been put in.
 
The ability to recognise tampered fuel, poison etc. would (as usual) be gated behind the game’s professions – so a mechanic might smell something suspicious with watered down gas, or a chef might spot something odd with a mild concentration of something nasty in a bottle of juice.
 
When it comes to poisonous liquids, each has a maximum effect (mild, medium, severe, deadly etc) and control parameters such as a minimum volume and mix ratio. So, if a poison has max effect ‘deadly’ and the minimum amount required for death is 200ml – and you have 100ml mixed into a bottle – then the final effect when drinking will most likely be a medium poisoning.
 
The new system will also add new depth to such things as filling up a vehicle with gas, or siphoning gas from a car’s tank – but we’ll also retain the game’s current quick context options like “fill bottle from tap” to keep things speedy.
 
HUTCHES
Domestic and wild animals, albeit with fairly basic AI brains, will also be a part of Build 42 – and we have already shown our cows, sheep and deer. A fairly realistic take on poultry-keeping will also be part of this.
 
Please note the following UI is super WIP! We may well end up with icons instead of the 3D chickens.
Based on our own experiences with keeping chickens – if you have a henhouse you will have to close its door every night after your brood have gone in to roost. Otherwise there’s a very real chance of Fantastic Mister Fox paying a visit and stealing a few, and potentially leave others dead in their pen.
 
You’d be advised not to forget to let your hens back out in the morning either – for fear of them losing their condition, and adding to the mess in the henhouse that will need cleaning out.
 
Hens will also enter the nesting boxes within the henhouse to lay their eggs, and from which you’ll have to collect the eggs on a regular basis – if you haven’t collected recently then hens will choose to lay outside in their pen instead, where there’s an added risk of them being eaten by wild animals or going bad.
 
OTHER STUFF
While we’re going in DEEP (as is generally our way) on stuff like the above – Build 42 will also feature all manner of other improvements to the game engine, MP systems and general zombie survival and early game stuff too. So don’t fret too much if aspects of the above don’t exactly match your own play-style.
 
It should also be said that it’s still some ways off – partly because of dev illness (and recovery!) that we’ve discussed before, and partly because a proportion of the team are still maintaining and improving Build 41.
 
From now on you’ll likely notice the changelist of 41 patches shrink a little, as team members are taken off 41 and plugged into work on features within the 42 matrix.
 
JOB AD AGAIN
We are back on the hunt for an Animations Engineer / Technical Wizard  – most likely someone from the AAA game development space who has pines for joining a close-knit team of indie devs. If this is you, or someone you know, then our job page lives here!
 
This week’s forlorn firemen from OtakuYazawa. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. 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. Experienced games dev and want to work with us? Details here.

HOTFIX JULY 28th:
 
- Increased allowed map_meta.bin and map_zone.bin file size from 20MB to 50MB in multiplayer.
 

HOTFIX JULY 25th:

- Fixed updates to the map causing zombies to spawn inside previously cleared buildings.
- Disabled the transfer of media items (CDs) when installing/uninstalling vehicle radios, as the current method causes issues in MP. Should be resolved for the next unstable release
- Re-added previously removed IGUI_PlayerText_CanNotExitFromMovingCar string
- Removed the -Xss1280k stack-size JVM parameter from Linux ProjectZomboid.json files.
- Increased Linux and Mac -Xmx=2048m to -Xmx=3072m max-heap JVM parameter to match Windows.
- Fixed NullPointerException in IsoGameCharacter.Eat().
 
 
 
Original post below:
__________________________
 
Barring any necessary hot fixes, this will likely be the last unstable patch before pushing the contents of 41.72 and 41.73 into the main stable branch.
 
NEW
 
- Gas container tooltip tweaks:
  1) When adding fuel to a generator, tooltips show the percentage the generator's fuel percentage will increase.
  2) When adding/siphoning fuel to/from a vehicle, tooltips show the item capacity in liters (to match the mechanics ui).
  3) When taking fuel from a gas pump, tooltips show the item capacity in drainable units.
- Updated Community Translations
- Added icons + textures for Medical/Trauma Bag and Canned Fruit Beverage.

MODELS AND ANIMS

- added masks to extended idle xmls to not clip as much,
- added relevant extended idle anims where needed
- capped off hoodieUP xfiles to stop transparency
- adjusted hoodieUP texture for new cap
- added blood locations to a couple of missing shirts
- re-exported female and zombie female base textures after eliminating some erroneous pixels causing holes
- adjusted Hat_Spiffo mask to display properly on character
- re-exported missed zombie body textures that had outlying pixels
- adjusted male and female HighViz vests to visually work similar to hunting vests
- reworked Male and Female HighViz vests
- changed HighViz vest body location
- tweaked Hunting vest masks to work better with underlying clothes

MODDING

- Added additional check to Vehicle Create, Update and Install Radios that may help prevent mods that modify what data is sent to it from causing errors.

FORAGING / SEARCH MODE

- changed double click behaviour of search mode pins to place items into the current selected player inventory panel if possible
- adjusted the search mode snow cover penalty limit as snowy weather combination could easily hit the penalty cap
- fixed an exploit with search focus when spamming the search mode button which could force items to change type
- fixed a visual issue with search focus trigger after spotting items which caused picked up items to sometimes be the original item

BALANCE

- Ginseng now provides an Endurance Buff when used to make a Hot Beverage as a spice.
- Added Basil to more recipes.
- Better handling of evolved recipe item name when they only have spice ingredients.
- Added the ability to install Makeshift Radios into vehicles; this was done for consistency with the requested fix of allowing Makeshift HAM radios to be installed in Ham radio vehicles.
- Allow vehicles that have HAM radios to allow any sort of HAM radio installed in them; Luxury and Modern Cars will also always spawn with Premium Radios installed.
- CDs in Premium radios will transfer to/from the vehicle they are being installed into/uninstalled from.

FIXES

- Fixed mapper-placed broken windows not being smashed IsoWindow objects.
- Fixed vehicle lightbar lights and siren continuing to operate after the part condition drops to zero (due to zombie thumping).
- Fixed the lightbar option not appearing in the vehicle radio menu after the part is destroyed.
  The option appears now, but the lights and siren won't operate at zero condition.
- Fixed multiple lightbar parts appearing in the vehicle mechanics ui.
- Fixed incorrect effect of distance on critical-hit chance with firearms.
- Fixed pans holding less water than pots.
- Fixed issue with zombie maggots + fishing; zombie corpses now spawn poisoned Base.Maggots and not Base.Maggots2 which are now obsolete.
- Fixed issues with new gas bottles and containers in backpacks.
- Fixed missing distributions for barbequestore and bathroom/shelves.
- Fixed Canned Fruit Beverage not having reduce thirst value.
- Fixed Obese and Fit not being fully mutually exclusive in MainCreationMethods.lua.
- Fixed missing translation string ContextMenu_FuelCapacity.
- Fixed inconsistent GoodHot from WildEggs tooltip.
- Fixed ContextMenu_PanicNoSleep not being translated in one instance.
- Fixed IsWaterSource parameter from BleachBottleGasoline.
- Fixed issues with eating quarter and half portions of small amounts of food.
- Fixed recipes to tear denim and leather - temporary fix pending improvement.
- Fixed adding whole and uncooked animal as a bait, removing and butchering it returning a "full" hunger reduction value animal
- Fixed missing tooltip for SafehouseAllowNonResidential server option
- Fixed ContextMenu_ContextMenu_FuelCapacity typo.
- Fixed the wrong sprites being used for windows sometimes.
- Fixed one of the molotov cocktail producing unwanted empty bottles.
- Fixed added AddIngredientIfCooked:true to the Burger evolved recipe so baked bread slices can be used to make burgers
- Fixed missing period in Tooltip_item_RainFromGroundOnlyPurifyMicrowave.
- Fixed missing period in Tooltip_item_RainFromGround.
- Fixed hot drinks with alcohol being too strong.
- Fixed better tooltips for tainted water items in plastic containers that can only be boiled in microwaves.
- Fixed baked bread slices not being usable when making sandwiches; this was on account of them being cooked, the evolved recipe for sandwiches was changed to allow cooked bread slices.
- Fixed missing item Violets that got accidentally removed
- Fixed Peaches having evolved recipe food type "Berry"
- Fixed various mapping issues
 

It is known that in order to disinfect a rag by boiling, you need a sufficiently long boiling time, in the game the character spends little time, and disinfects objects quite quickly, which is not entirely realistic. It would be great to increase this time by at least 3 times.

until you fix your trash foraging system or someone releases a mod to fix your mistake, I dont really have any interest in playing.

HALLELUJAH!!! I've been playing this game since 2015, I can recant tale after tale of my time in high school coming home and hopping on to play with the boys over a teamspeak call. This game has been my favorite game and proudly displayed on my Steam as such for years now, I remember the last megatest for build 40 and the big PVP royale we had and everything. This is unironically my dream game, and it's wonderful seeing it finally get the recognition it deserves after so many years of hard work. This game has been transformed over the last two years, and while a lot of naysayers said the update would never come, it is somehow here. Thank y'all for your hard work, and for giving me the game that I always wanted. I look forward to many more hundreds of hours of fun and years of enjoyment! THANK YOU!!!

build 41 has been an amazing build for me so far and cant wait to start seeing some animals to hunt in build 42.

It felt like the day would never come, but we’re really happy and proud to announce that Build 41 has been released to stable!
 
If you’ve been out of the loop on the beta, a good place to start would be our new trailer to celebrate the release and show those new to Zomboid what’s in store for them:
 
 
This build marks a huge step for us, the graphics, gameplay, audio and netcode being significantly remastered and radically improved, Build 41 feels more a sequel than a patch update. As well as a huge map update, new mechanics and systems, its by far our biggest update yet.
 
Under normal circumstances, we may have done a little more polish and fixing before releasing to stable, but the truth is next to no one are playing Build 40 now, apart from those that didn’t know of the beta branch. It’s presence if anything has been damaging to Project Zomboid’s first impressions and we were only waiting for multiplayer to drop in a somewhat stable fashion to allow us to move on, as we feel strongly that Build 41 even with the remaining bugs and issues that need weeding out, casts a far superior first impression for new players.
 
Build 40 will forever live on in a branch, access the beta branch “legacy40 – Classic Zomboid” at any point to continue playing, or if your specs aren’t capable of running build 41 comfortably.
 
So what’s new in this build?
 
Massive animation and character overhaul, more immersive animations and smoother gameplay and combat, highly customizable character that shows clothing and equipment in the world. Visibly ripped and damaged clothing. Visible Backpacks and Bags. In-game map system to allow the player to chart their exploration and find their way around the huge map. New animations and new movement systems. Sneaking, sprinting, jogging, racking, reloading, climbing, fence-jumping, collapsing and much much more. New multiplayer built from the ground up for smooth, immersive and low latency player and zombie movement. New combat, new weapons, new difficulty balance. New tutorial teaching you the very basics of the new movement and combat. New character creation – many, many different new clothing options both on spawn and discoverable in the world as loot or on zombies. New city to explore, the gargantuan Louisville, as well as many improvements across the entire map, including new buildings, decoration, and curved roads for easier driving. New zombie behaviour: feasting on recent corpses, lolling against walls, falling over fences etc. Blood and dirt system that progressively bloodies bodies and clothing of survivors and zombies New injury system – movement and combat visibly hampered when injured. Lacerations now possible, an injury state that lies between bites and scratches. Improved gunplay: green/red target outline while aiming, increased gun loot spawn. Randomized environmental storytelling elements. Death Scenes, zombies discovered in the situations in which people died. Prayer meetings, sports-viewing parties, survivor zeds wearing backpacks etc, vehicle crashes and blockades. Situational zombie type/clothing and inventories – cop zeds in police station, firemen zeds in burnt buildings, Chef zeds in restaurant kitchens, bride and groom zeds at a wedding ceremony in church etc. Clothing protection: different clothing provides different levels of protection from zombie attacks. New Sims-style cutaway vision system. Vehicle handling improvements, resizing and appearance tweaks. Updated, remastered and expanded Kentucky-themed soundtrack. Complete soundscape overhaul – All new sounds, building a more immersive and compelling sonic landscape. Items now have placeable 3D models in the world, for all your decorative needs. New Gameplay Styles
Apocalypse: Stealth focus. Short lifespan. Combat best avoided and picked selectively.
Survivor: Powerful combat. Longer Lifespan. A challenging playstyle based on PZ’s previous Survival mode of Build 40.
Builder: Construction, Exploration, and Farming focus. A more relaxed experience. New Challenges
Kingsmouth – A separate challenge map, Kingsmouth puts you on a paradise island vacation resort.
Studio – Try to survive as the Knox Infection hits the dream factory. Some of these zombies are not like the others. Entirely new foraging system. New inventory slots – belts and holsters now give quick equip slots. Weapons can be attached to the character’s back. New thermal / body temperature system. New Tailoring system for clothing repairs. New Fitness / Exercise system. New emote system – Hold Q to bring up the Radial Menu for Emotes. New water visuals – including visible flow direction. New puddle system during heavy rain. New fog visuals. New levelling system. New VHS, and CDs system. Broken glass and related injuries. 3D Store Mannequins – can be dressed however you like Working washing machines and driers Server-side saving: MP save system now in a server-side database. Offline SP-side, also means no more lost cars via irl power outages. New radial menu for reloading firearms. New game cursor New loot balance and loot balance system: houses and stores now have loot in the containers you would expect from real life – and not in a jumble. Isometric aiming cursor that shows where you’re aiming in iso space to aid in combat. A gigantic list of fixes and QoL improvements.  
 
Thank you
A huge thanks everyone for the wonderful experience we’ve had since releasing multiplayer, seeing such a wave of positivity has been wild and made this long journey for this build more than worth it! Seeing the player numbers dwarf our previous record has been crazy:
 

 
We’re over the moon over the success the multiplayer has seen and we vow to continue and expand on that.
 
We’re so proud of everyone on our team, we know we wouldn’t be here today if we didn’t have such dedicated devs working on all these features, often under intense external pressure, and the support team for helping us keep the sometimes chaotic wheels spinning. Every one of them is wonderful and deserving of all our thanks.
 
Finally, a huge specific thank you to General Arcade, in particular Yuri and Andrei who have put such amazing work into bringing a quality to Zomboid’s multiplayer we simply would never have (and indeed, hadn’t) achieved without them. They’ve put huge amounts of work into this, and we’re thankful to them for helping Zomboid multiplayer come to the vision we had for it.
 
That’s all for this update. See you all after the new year where we’ll talk about what comes next!

NEW
 
- The containers in the "Move to" controller context sub-menu are disabled if the container can't hold the item to be moved.
- During "Walk To" or other timed-action movement, allow the player to continue to move while aiming, instead of stopping.
- Added a radial menu for light sources that is accessed by holding the F key for longer.
- Added "Pan Camera While Driving" display option. This will move the camera in front of the car to give better vision of things ahead. Please give us some feedback how this feels. Some had issues with this previously, so the option is off by default. 
- Added recipe.StopOnWalk and recipe.StopOnRun script properties to the codebase to control whether the crafting action is interrupted by walking and running. Currently this is only used to allow inserting/removing batteries in flashlights while walking.
 

ANIMS AND MODELS
 
- Made male underpants smaller and to look like briefs.
- Made female bra strapless.
- Made the same changes to male and female zombie textures.
- Adjusted Bikini and Swimsuit texture to fit new female underpants and bras.
 

NOISEWORKS
 
- New weapon hit sounds:
 
        Axe, Wood Axe, Stone Axe
        Pick Axe
        Badminton Racket, Tennis Racket
        Hockey Stick, Lacross Stick
        Broom, Fishing Rod, Pool Cue
        Garden Hoe, Rake, Leaf Rake
        Shovel
        Snow Shovel
        Spiked Baseball Bat, Spiked Plank, Spiked Pick Axe Handle
        Baseball Bat
        Canoe Paddle
        Golf Club
        Plank
 
These also have a new setup where a regular hit sounds different from a hit that causes the attacked zombie to fall and a more impactfull killing blow.
 
- Added farming-related sounds for plowing, seeding, watering, and harvesting
- Adjusted the drinking sounds to fit the anims better.
- Further tweaks to busy sound areas - and especially with engine noise in and around zombie hordes. Please test!
- Addressed issues of lost / strange sounds during busy periods - such as during rain etc.
- Tweaked puddle footstep loudness (it was too loud still)
- Removed seagull sounds from towns
 

FIXES
 
- Fixed applying mildew cure to plants being broken.
- Fixed the player phasing through obstacles after climbing over a tall fence.
- Fixed Lua error SMetalDrumGlobalObject:update() when it rains.
- Fixed shoving zombies from behind sometimes causing the zombie to move toward the player.
- Fixed hitting a zombie that is getting up from lying face down flipping the zombie onto its back.
- Fixed killing a zombie that is getting up from lying face down creating a corpse on its back.
- Fixed the player's hit-reaction animation sometimes playing long after the attack happened.
- Fixed zombies finishing their bumped animation too soon, allowing them to get another attack quickly.
- Fixed playing two getting-up animations if the movement key is pressed after the animation has started.
- Fixed vehicle engines not taking damage if the hood is uninstalled.
- Fixed pan condition not resetting each time at FightStep:KillZombie in tutorial
- Fixed new pan not spawning if the player somehow does manage to break the pan at FightStep:KillZombie
- Fixed hiding the Set Alarm dialog due to the player position changing slightly after turning.
- Fixed highlighting useable parts of vehicles when the player is inside a vehicle.
- Fixed exception trying to place an item on the same square as a Car Battery Charger (or any object with no sprite).
- Fixed the controller focus remaining on a context menu after selecting an option with the mouse.
- Fixed a Lua error after pressing the 'V' key while a game is loading.
- Fixed not automatically reloading changed animation files.
- Fixed IndexOutOfBoundsException in JAssImpImporter.GetKeyFrameScale() with a test animation.
- Fixed "Could not find bone index for node name: "Translation_Data_$AssimpFbx$_Translation"" warning with a test animation.
- Fixed ISRadialMenu:setSliceTexture() calling setSliceText().
- Fixed the welding sound not stopping when building metal objects.
- Fixed zombies opening locked carpentry doors.

Hell yeah we brought this thread back from the dead!!! Lots of folks here listenin' to metal and pop. A lot more metalheads than I would've thought, so I figure I gotta spice things up with some good ol' country thrown into the mix! I won't throw too many at y'all but these two are definitely headbangers!
 
 

Hello, I would like to suggest that the basic needs of defecation and urination be implanted in the player. This would make the game seem much more real. In addition, I consider that these are not such silly details in a survival game if we take in mind that the player has to eat, drink, rest, wash, wear suitable clothing and a long etcetera, why not add this?
 
Thanks and kind regards!

The advanced sound menu was removed.  
Sounds aren't triggered the same anymore. 
Copying what I wrote elsewhere:

 
We'll look into bringing it back for mods. For the whole lot of vanilla sounds, it will not make a return for a while.  

Ооy!
It's just a BOMB!

Ооy!
It's just a BOMB!

Added Noiseworks Sound Revamp - Stage #1
Stage #2 is going to introduce a wider range for zombie voice sets as well as further improvements to the music and ambiance systems. Melee weapon SFX - currently mostly based on material rather than the weapon in question - will also get more specific to the weapons themselves; same goes for firearms. 
 
Added VHS, CDs etc.
- Added functionality and data for for Disks and Tapes. Data is stored in 'recorded_media.lua'.
- Media line effects will apply only once per player upon first time listening.
- Home VHS's spawn uniquely.
- Retail CD and VHS can have 'common', 'rare', 'very rare' spawn chance.
- Added learnRecipe method to gamecharacter. Adds the ability to learn recipes via the radio line codes.
- Added new translation file 'recorded_media_EN.txt'
    - This translation set keeps a translation of the english versions which can be retrieved seperatly.
    (needed for LCD which only supports basic ASCII chars)
- Added event 'OnInitRecordedMedia' to setup any recorded media data, see ISRecordedMedia.lua for modding.
- Added new Media UI section to device control panel.
- Added UI popup for disc's and tapes, some of them can show backcase info via the rightclick context menu.
- Removed item 'CDplayer' and added 'Radio.CDplayer' a portable device able to play CD's.
- Added ability to play media, RadioRed = CD, Black/Wide television = Tapes
- Changed display of overhead notifications for skills etc
    - Softer pastel colors and outlining, red for negative green for positive effect
    - Replaced skill/stat effect numbers by arrow up or down
- Small overhead text for skills and stats are no longer being displayed if there is no effect on their value.
- Removed overhead text code from ISRadioInteractions
- Added static class HaloTextHelper.java for more universal use of the overhead text.
- Added a few functions to add text, options for color and usage of the indicator arrows.
- If a text is already being displayed the next text is briefly queued.
- If multiple text are being added on same tick or while queueing they are combined and seperated with a grey ','.
- If a text is added which is already being displayed, it's discarded.
 
- Added world lights for flashing vehicle lights.
- Added animated flies texture displayed where corpse-flies are buzzing.
- Added new mugs
- Display read books in the character info panel ("Training Material"). This might move to the Crafting UI later on.
- Added highlighting to dragged items that can't be moved to the destination container.
- Added a loot-window container icon for mannequins as well as the container title "Mannequin".
- Added a context-menu command to empty a rain collector barrel onto the ground so it can be moved.
- Added a history of the last three catches to the Fishing menu. They will not fade out anymore. 
- Added the option to select a dedicated container for catches in the Fishing Menu. All catches will go to this container until full.
- Heart UI icon will shake when player character takes damage. It will stop shaking once the player is no longer losing health. 
- Draw a faint border around the player's health bar so the amount of lost health is easier to see.
- When crafting, items will be put back in their original container/bag. E.g. when adding Salt to a Salad, the salt will be grabbed from a counter, used, and put back.
  
- Upgrading walls (multi-stage building) takes items from the ground similar to carpentry.
    This includes opening boxes of nails automatically.
    For metal walls, propane will be used from multiple propane torches as needed. Only one propane torch needs to be in inventory, and it may be empty, as others will be used from the ground.
  
- Removed StopCar and HitByCar properties from one of the walls_exterior_house_01 south-east wall pillars.
    The properties were only on one of the several south-east wall pillars.
    This put "tree" physics on the center of the square.
    These pillars should be removed when one of the two adjacent walls is removed.
 
  
- Added 3D models for items placed in the world. 
    Right Clicking an item will show the "Place Item" option. This will display a rendered model of this item and highlight the square to know where it is being placed. On controllers, the item is currently always placed at the center of a square.
- Items automatically go on a table/counter if the mouse is over one of them.
- Press R to rotate clockwise, shift+R to rotate anti-clockwise.
- If you select multiple items and one does not have a 3D model yet, you'll simply drop it at your feet.
- Fixed rotation speed at different framerates.
- Added snapping to the nearest 5 degrees.
- Place items one at a time at the current rotation. 
- Shift-click to place all items. With a controller, the X button toggles between placing one or placing all.
- Improved lighting of 3d items in-world, to closer match the tiles lighting.
- Added rotation to the lighting in 3d items in world, before their lighting would rotate along with the item when rotated.
- Improved lighting on all 3d objects, characters, vehicles, items etc.
- Added "itemHeight" so players can place things on a microwave that is on a table for example.
- If you have a counter with a shelve on top of it, you can press tab to change the height of the item.
- Default "Iso Cursor Visibility" changed to 50% due to the regular cursor being hidden by default.
- 3D items can be disabled in the options.
 
- Table stories. Random chance to have some stuff on a basic home's table to tell a story.
- Multi-stage building QoL: Now if you upgrade a wall frame, wall, etc, you'll have the item displayed until you press ESC (like normal building), allowing to build multiples without having to use the right click context menu every time.
- Added a "Can't Sprint"-moodle which will appear when the character is unable to sprint. The moodle will shake for a bit when you can't sprint but try to.
 
Last Stand Compatibility changes:
- Player files are saved in Zomboid\Lua\LastStand instead of Zomboid\Lua\Players to avoid conflicts with Build 40.
- Player files have VERSION=1 at the top for compatibility with future versions of the game.
- Existing Build 41 player files will need to be moved into Zomboid\Lua\LastStand and add VERSION=1 at the top to work.
 
- The character-creation "Save" button dialog now fills in the name of the preset selected in the combobox, if one is selected.
- Require the player to be near a vehicle before the context menu displays refueling options to fix gas E.S.P.
- Changed the vehicle radial-menu icons for adding and removing gas (they were the same before).
- Added BaseTimedAction:setCurrentTime(). This is used by ISReadABook to set the start time based on the number of pages already read.
- Added blood and dirt stats to the Wash context-menu item tooltips.
- Added "Stack Weight" to inventory-item tooltips to show the total weight of a stack.
- Added a "Training Materials" button to the character Info panel. This displays a window with two tabs, one for skill books and another for magazines that teach recipes.
    For skill books, the item name is displayed in white once the player has read the book completely, or has gained the skill levels through other means.
    For magazines, the item name is displayed in white once the player knows all the recipes taught by the magazine.
- Updated/added Radio translations for Japanese, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese
 
 
BALANCE
 
- Allow plumbing a non-moved sink before the water shuts off if there is a rain barrel above. The water is still infinite for plumbed sinks before the water shuts off.
- Allow plumbing a sink to an empty rain barrel.
- Allow metal drums to be picked up with the furniture-moving tool.
- Allow pouring water into metal drums.
- Boosted loot spawns in stash.
- Display what perk just levelup up on top of the char (like exp gain from TV).
- Sheet ropes can now be attached to metal railings on balconies. (Currently doesn't work for fences on the south or east of a floor)
- Car wrecks appear less often, but can now be dismantled.
- Increased odds of curtains being already closed in houses.
- Holes will be added to clothing after the check for protection, meaning 100% protection will always defend you from a bite and lowered protection from a hole will only affect future attacks. Thanks to PseudonymousEd for pointing this out. 
- Shooting out of cars now has a more limited angle than the former 360°.
- Player will now be unable to control the car while reloading. 
- Reload time increased while driving.
- Control of the car is also lost when shooting rifles, but not with pistols.
 
Distribution changes:
- Updated distributions.
- Added a weightChance property, so you can try to make X spawn more than Y. Defines all the weight chance in said list (total can be over or under 100, doesn't matter).
- Added a forceForTiles property, this'll check that a specific tile exist on this container's square to spawn items from this distribution list (ex: force something in counter under a sink).
- Added a forceForRooms property, we'll check that a room specified in this list exists in the building of the container.
    Example: Police station has an "office" room with a desk, but we don't have ways to spawn more police themed items in their desk. 
    Simply define a new distrib PoliceOfficeDesk, and add a forceForRooms="policestorage" so if we detect a policestorage room in this building, we'll use PoliceOfficeDesk instead of a regular desk)
 
Changes to knives:
- If you're too close to a zombie but there's another zombie chasing you (thus not be able to do a jawstab) the character will shove instead of stabbing normally.
- Slightly reduced movement speed while attacking with knives, similar to other weapons.
- Reduced Hunting knife damage a tad.
 
- Balanced some clothings Speed Reduction and Protection to be more consistent.
- Small chance of having some house windows being left open.
- Curtains can now spawn closed.
 
 
MOD SUPPORT
 
- Added outfit zombie distribution (see example in Distributions.lua). Allows modders to add items to specific zombie outfits (e.g. bigger chance of finding ammo on police zombies, etc)
    Quick example, add Outfit_ in front of the outfit name, like Outfit_Generic01 and define your loot table.
- Added getters and setters to Recipe, Recipe.Result and Recipe.Source for mods.
- Added a system for respawning zombies on island maps (e.g., Kingsmouth).
    Normally when respawning zombies, a random location on the edge of the map is chosen as a start location.
    The game then attempts to find a path from that start location to the chunk that zombies are respawning in.
    This doesn't work for maps that have water on all edges, since paths cannot be found through water.
    Map creators may now specify valid start locations by adding objects to the map's objects.lua file.
    The objects.lua file is normally created by WorldEd.
    These objects are rectangular areas along edges of the island indicating respawn start locations.
    These objects should be right on the edge of the land next to the water (but not in the water).
    Alternatively, these objects may be put into a file called spawnOrigins.lua in the map's directory.
    This file has the same format as objects.lua. See Kingsmouth/spawnOrigins.lua for an example.
- Added ISLiteratureUI.SetItemHidden(fullType, hidden) function so mods can prevent items being displayed in the Training Materials ui.
 
 
FIXES
 
- Fixed being able to fish from swimming pools.
- Fixed the "randomAngle" field of a VehicleZoneDistribution always being false.
- Fixed triggering OnObjectLeftMouseButtonDown and similar events on objects that have been removed from the world.
- Fixed long braided hairstyles not pointing to correct hairstyle.
- Fixed belt not working as 3D item.
- Fixed buildings having more than one table story.
- Fixed issues adding water to and taking water from rain-collecting items on the ground.
- Fixed aiming cursor being less visible on light backgrounds.
- Fixed changed shader files not automatically being reloaded.
- Fixed an infinite loop occurring when require()'ing a Lua file recursively.
- Fixed "invalid direction" exception when a fence is broken by zombies.
- Fixed "VanAmbulance" instead of "Base.VanAmbulance" in RVSCarCrash.
- Tutorial: Fixed the dad zombie's eating sound not stopping after he stands up.
- Tutorial: Fixed the player getting stuck using the Open Curtain context menu option.
- Fixed RVSCarCrash.
- Fixed some container types.
- Fixed issues with automatically opening boxes of nails when doing carpentry.
- Fixed tainted-water status of metal drums with water in them.
- Fixed some vehicles not playing Lock/Unlock/IsLocked sounds for trunks.
- Fixed the game hitching every second while in a vehicle until zombies are near again.
- Fixed no sound playing when hitting objects with bare hands.
- Fixed a multithreading issue with keyboard input. This only affected entering text, not keyboard controls while playing.
- Fixed vehicle radio text staying onscreen after turning off the radio when not in the driver's seat.
- Fixed the player's animation locking up when charging with a spear after a zombie is hit.
    This happened when the "Manual Floor Attack" key was the same as the "Sprint" key.
- Fixed impact and death sound not playing when spear-charging a zombie.
- Fixed "Place Car Battery Charger" displaying for every item clicked on
- Fixed the "Plant Information" window not handling different font sizes.
- Fixed bomb explosion sounds not playing.
- Fixed the weapon swing sound not playing when using the "Smash Window" context-menu option.
- Fixed class-cast exception in Moodle caused by HumanCorpse updating Moodles.
- Fixed HumanCorpse update() getting called when zombie spawning is disabled, which caused a NullPointerException with Moodles.
- Fixed overlapping disease text in the Plant Information window.
- Fixed farming with a controller.
- Fixed some of the excessive head movement when swinging a spear.
- Fixed Lamp On Pillar losing it's battery and on/off state upon reloading. This raises the WorldVersion to 183.
- Fixed rendering the isocursor and aim-outline in splitscreen.
- Fixed the position of the vehicle dashboard in splitscreen with more than two players.
- Fixed conditions of cooking vessels resetting the condition when adding water and rice or pasta. 
- Fixed Welding Masks getting soaked in the rain.
- Fixed Thick Skinned and Thin Skinned incorrectly calculating the chance to do damage from zombies.
- Fixed being unable to remove Thin Skinned using the Player Stats debug ui.
- Fixed Lua error after removing a trait in the Player Stats debug ui.
- Fixed showing zero-cost traits such as Axeman as "bad" when adding traits in the Player Stats debug ui.
- Fixed setting the Occlusion FMOD parameter to simulate the Hard Of Hearing trait, since it is now done in FMOD Studio.
- Fixed infinite carry capacity after making rotten-strawberry salad.
- Fixed the layout of the microwave and oven UIs with different-sized fonts.
- Fixed Lua error wobbling the non-existent heart icon of splitscreen players.
- Fixed endurance being reduced while holding down the Run key when not moving.
- Fixed misplaced halves of Large Modern Oven in one orientation.
- Fixed not being able to barricade carpentry Wooden Door.
- Fixed the layout of ISAlarmClockDialog with larger fonts.
- Fixed ISTabPanel:getWidthOfAllTabs() when equal tabs widths are used.
- Fixed native-code exception when opening the Option screen. This was a bug in GLFW.glfwGetKeyName().
- Fixed animation and sound issues when attacking zombies that are eating corpses
- Fixed VehicleAmbiance using the wrong event name.
- Fixed the vehicle horn continuing to play after the switch-seat ui is displayed while honking.
- Fixed Radio items without a WorldSprite being assigned an invalid module.type.
- Fixed duplication bug when crafting from containers.
- Fixed not being able to make coffee and tea with the Spiffo mug.
- Fixed hot beverage not being hot right after it is crafted.
- Fixed hot and cold drinks not giving a happiness bonus.
- Fixed not being able to tie a rope to player-made windows (gracias dito!)
- Fixed ranger car siren light colour.
- Fixed annotated map loot not always spawning when it should.
- Fixed crash when trying to go forwards & backwards at the same time in a car.
- Fixed Firearm Radial Menu coming up when any ISBuildingObject cursor is already displayed.
- Fixed trying to play multiple instances of WorldAmbiance since only one is allowed.

 
TECHNICAL
 
- Added a bunch of performance probes to IsoCell.renderTiles to help track down the inner-most causes of the performance lagging issue.
- New class: PerformanceProfileProbeList
    Allows us to have arrays of performance probes, suitable for profiling arrays of code blocks, like with IsoCell.renderTile layers.
- Added a few WorldDictionary.DebugPrintItem calls to some functions to help find some mod problems
- Moved updating some global FMOD parameters out of IsoPlayer into AmbientStreamManager.


________________________________________


Additional Hotfix:

- Fixed small clock
- Fixed DrinkingFromBottle sound continuing forever after the action completes.
- Fixed the Training Materials button overlapping other text with 3x font size and many traits.

In winter, food in a backpack spoils at the same rate as in summer.
I think this is not entirely correct, because the backpack has almost no thermal insulation. It should be like in a frige.

In 41.51 many mods are broken due new distribution system.
Here working distribution example for 41.52 for little mod "Siphoning Needs Hoses (build 41)".
File media\lua\server\Items\RubberHose_Distributions.lua
 
require "Items/Distributions" require "Items/ProceduralDistributions" require "Vehicles/VehicleDistributions" local i, j, d -- Distributions for ProceduralDistributions.lua local myDistTable = { "CrateMechanics", 100, "CrateTools", 100, "GarageTools", 100, "StoreShelfMechanics", 100, "MechanicShelfTools", 100, "MechanicShelfMisc", 100, "GigamartTools", 100, --"KitchenRandom", 100, --"GarageMechanic", 100, } for i = 1, #myDistTable, 2 do table.insert(ProceduralDistributions.list[myDistTable[i]].items, "Base.RubberHose") table.insert(ProceduralDistributions.list[myDistTable[i]].items, myDistTable[i+1]) end -- Distributions for Distributions.lua. May be broken in next updates due devs going to ProceduralDistributions myDistTable = nil myDistTable = { {"all",{ "metal_shelves",100, "crate",100, "bin",100, } }, {"armyhanger",{ "metal_shelves",100, "counter",100, "locker",100, } }, {"storageunit",{ "all",100, } }, {"toolstore",{ "shelves",100, "counter",100, } }, } for i, d in ipairs(myDistTable) do print(d[1]); for j = 1, #d[2], 2 do table.insert(Distributions[1][d[1]][d[2][j]].items, "Base.RubberHose") table.insert(Distributions[1][d[1]][d[2][j]].items, d[2][j+1]) print(d[1],d[2][j]); end end myDistTable = nil myDistTable = { "Bag_SurvivorBag",100, "Toolbox",100, "Bag_JanitorToolbox",100 } for i = 1, #myDistTable, 2 do table.insert(Distributions[1][myDistTable[i]].items, "Base.RubberHose") table.insert(Distributions[1][myDistTable[i]].items, myDistTable[i+1]) end -- Distributions for VehicleDistributions.lua. May be broken in next updates due devs going to ProceduralDistributions myDistTable = nil myDistTable = { "GloveBox", 100, "TrunkStandard", 100, "TrunkHeavy", 100, "TrunkSports", 100, "SurvivalistTruckBed", 100, "FossoilTruckBed", 100, } for i = 1, #myDistTable, 2 do table.insert(VehicleDistributions[myDistTable[i]].items, "Base.RubberHose") table.insert(VehicleDistributions[myDistTable[i]].items, myDistTable[i+1]) end myDistTable = nil  

Now you can make color music

High beam, reversing, and braking lights when?

Hmm... the first animated animal became a fly,
I thought that the first would be pigeons and other birds.