link8dragon

After reading:
Yeah, that not happen a lot, but Z bug can be really annoying ("zeds flipping onto their front or back when hit to ground" he will miss me this one ^^) Diversity for hitting Z is essential when we speak about killing Z "New character models with improved/adjusted underwear to allow for some of the new LV outfits" Ok... interresting... new outfits, banzaï ! And yes, Anim have to concord with the sound, soooo... why not, that's great and this map, THIS MAP, beautiful, finally, I will finally play without the map on the net behind, we will finally know where have already go, can't wait too see LV with this and the new road turn texture (even if the arrow have already helped a lot)
GG
 
BUT in other point, I 've just tried the gamepad control, awesome job even if it take me time too understand that I can see further when aiming and holding RB button (above the right trigger), AND I was wondering how we can place object not on the center of a "tile" (like we can place it where we want with the mouse) and if it's only possible? ^^
if not,  it can be a good thing to do

Hey all, before we get to the meat of this week’s blog a quick word on the 41.56 patch.
 
We had intended to release 41.56 last week but have been wrestling with some sound bugs that make noises cut out in ‘busy’ areas with a lot of zeds, rain, puddles, cars etc. It feels like we’re getting somewhere with it now, so fingers crossed we’ll push it out early next week.
 
Also in this somewhat intermediate build:
Fixes for some edge-case animation issues that, for example, would see a fallen character get back up and shove when the player didn’t want them to. Also: shoving zeds sometimes moving them towards you, zeds flipping onto their front or back when hit to ground, and zeds getting in an unfair quick attack sometimes if they’ve been bumped. New weapon hit sounds for: Axe, Golf Club, Baseball Bat, Rackets and Planks. New character models with improved/adjusted underwear to allow for some of the new LV outfits Adjusted the drinking sounds to fit the anims better.
Here’s a quick vid showcasing some of the new sounds, if you are an axe aficionado or a liker of planks. Or indeed a fan of our NEW RUDE PANTS and a few Louisville scenes. Please bear in mind that some of the audio might still require a balance pass – they are fresh in.
 


In more general ‘our version of’ Louisville news: testing, fixing, zoning and new zed outfitting continues. This week we also added in the ‘zed heat map’ that governs spawns in the new area, so it’s getting closer and closer to a properly playable area at this point.
 
Something else we haven’t mentioned before that’ll be released simultaneous to LV, meanwhile, is…

MAPDOID
Just to underline before we begin: plenty of people enjoy playing PZ without the following new feature, and as such it will be OPTIONAL with a range of different settings for it (more than shown today) available in your Sandbox options.
 
With that said right now every month Blindcoder’s (spoilerific) online PZ map gets half a million visits, while Eris’ minimap has quarter of a million known users.
 
It’s been clear to us for a long time that a fair proportion of PZ players would benefit from some form of in-game mapping system that’s been built to a) retain the hardcore nature of the game, and b) be configurable enough to suit both PZ vets and PZ noobs.
 
As such, for quite a long time, we have been experimenting with various different tech-side approaches to this behind the scenes.
 
Our plans for the future of PZ  (in terms of game systems, objectives, being sent to different locations on the game map, creating more and more cool ‘events’ to seek out etc) – will also benefit hugely from a system that we as developers can drop markers on, and where players can make their own markings and records. (Read on for a few given examples of this)
 
Finally, clearly, we’re about to drop our biggest and most complex game location yet into PZ – and to get the best of it (and to share discoveries between our players) the release of our version of Louisville seemed the best time for a new mapping system to make its grand appearance.
 
And so, without further ado, here’s a video of our new (optional) mapping system – built to be completely mod-friendly, and easily adaptable to suit community mappers.
 
In essence: the map ‘draws itself’ as you explore. You check it as a ‘timed action’, meaning you physically see the player taking out the map – rather than it be on an instant on/off toggle.
 
You can zoom out to see the entirety of the huge uncovered game map, and you can zoom back in to check out the parts of the map that your exploration has exposed.
 
You can then mark up items of interest, your safehouse, an area you’d like to come back to later etc. etc. using a system not dissimilar to the way you can currently leave markings on our current looted maps.
 
AS EVER PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS SYSTEM – IT WILL BE CHANGED AND IMPROVED FURTHER BEFORE RELEASE

A video showing the map functioning after a small amount of exploration, and some initial mark-up:
 
 
Another vid showing the same map after some exploration along a nearby road, and subsequent player mark-up:
 
 
A final vid showing you going for a drive on the same map. (NOTE: the map stores the last zoom level you used on it – it doesn’t always open on it being fully pulled back)
 
 
So, beyond the basic exploration that’s evident in these videos – what else will this system provide in future? Well: a shitload of cool stuff essentially, but let’s start with something that’s easy to imagine from the way the game currently plays.
 
[PLEASE NOTE: FOLLOWING CONCEPTS ARE GIVEN AS AN EXAMPLE, THEY AREN’T IN THE BUILD YET AND MIGHT NOT BE PRESENT IN INITIAL VERSIONS]
 
Currently in the game we have ‘metasounds’ that we use to move zombies around – you will know these as gunshots, distant screams etc. Using the new map system we will be able to have these as actual physical events on the map rather than virtual ones: we can put a ‘?’ in the general area of where your character heard a woman screaming from, and where the zombies are swarming towards, and should you explore that vicinity later on you might find zombies feeding on a female survivor with cool loot and a decent weapon for example.
 
We can also expand this to a variety of rare large-scale, and as yet not in-game, events that we can play in the new PZ soundscape for your character to hear – and then drop in a ‘?’ exploration marker for an area that you might like to explore. Your traits could also potentially help or hinder the accuracy of the area approximated on the map. (Hear a helicopter crash in the distance? Maybe head to the circled area on the map that’s temporarily showing the basic area where you heard it come down?)
 
Again, the above is an example of where we want to take this – but right now behind the scenes we are also revamping the looted ‘Annotated Survivor maps’ to work better with the new system (and Louisville, and modded maps) and having the ability to mark up potential areas of interest from this will be massive for creating variety in gameplay as we go on.
 
On top of this we (and modders) could potentially create objectives and map markers from messages heard over the radio system – or notes discovered in buildings etc etc. The list of potential applications is huge, and will finally create new reasons to fully explore all corners of the vast map (and vast new map) that our mappers have been building for so, so long.
 
The system, meanwhile, also allows for areas, certain sorts of buildings, or certain roads to be made visible should you loot a particular map. We’re not sure how specific we’d go with this just yet (or what game modes would allow for it) but the system also enables you to – for example – pick up a Spiffo’s Restaurant leaflet with a small map on it and then for this small area centred on a Spiffo’s restaurant to appear on your overall map.
 
With this in mind we might be able to encourage exploration to some of the more far-flung areas of the Knox Event that a lot of players never venture out towards. (Hell, a lot of players don’t even realise that our locations are all on the same vast map!)
 
It’s a hugely versatile system, and will open up many, many doors for the modding and mapping community also. Essentially with the release of Louisville (and the mapping system) we will also release a new version of WorldEd for PZ mappers – within this there will be commands for users to automatically add forests, water and buildings for an in-game map. However, right now folks will have to draw in roads manually. (Alternatively, a CartoZed image can also be used for the least amount of work.)
 
After so long without a mapping system we recognise that many will have grown used to playing without one, which is why you won’t have to use it if you don’t want to.
 
This said, we will certainly be building in new systems that use it – there will likely be MP applications to come, while our plans for both an objective-built story mode and wider systems featuring future NPCs will use aspects of the tech.
 
If you want to continue to experience the current map-free exploration game style, however, then we are 100% making certain that the option to turn it off is there. Likewise we are making sure that what the map can provide is as configurable as possible across both sandbox options and the game modes they’re tied to.
 
Our more sceptical internal testers have generally found it very engaging once they’ve got their hands on it, and we suspect that it will be hugely beneficial to most players’ survival experiences come its release.
 
This week’s collector of objects from Noah. A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too!

This map system looks amazing and I think you’ve done a great job tying it into the game and not making it an OP minimap/GPS system. 
 
Suggestions:
 
Only allow us to make marks on the map if we have something to write with. 
 
For MP: allow us to share our map data with fellow players. Have this only available if we are next to each other and it would require a timed action (and the copier needs something to write with) Or maybe allow us to share data over a distance if we both have walkie-talkie/radios? 

Hey, I just see the "Celebrate Zed Times" news, and I want to say to all the team and the community too:
Merry Christmas all and have good times with your family, friends and Zeds too 😋🎄🥳

Hey, I just see the "Celebrate Zed Times" news, and I want to say to all the team and the community too:
Merry Christmas all and have good times with your family, friends and Zeds too 😋🎄🥳

Yeah, and maybe one to seat on chair (and avoid the double "rest" on chair and seat on floor at the same time)
And we gonna need some skate/roller protection, to reinforce our clothes (like elbow, knee pad, wrist guard,...)

"Zombies with 3 level of decay" ; "Character temperature stuff" ; "Clothing Repair" and "Gun improvements"
All in one update, thanks guys (and girls), looks terribly awesome 🤩

Add a sleep animation when the character goes to bed and gets up.

Love the new animations and can't wait to see more in the future!
 
Played for a few hours and after losing a few characters to readjusting to movement, I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. Game runs smooth and so far no crashes or major errors like that.
 
The only issue that has been present to me most is even after making a sandbox game and setting all vehicles to high condition, every single vehicle in game still has around 8-10 parts that are 6% condition at best, seems to be random on which ones aside from it's always a tire or suspension, a few body parts, a seat or two, and the battery.  The car will look pristine in game but as soon as I check it out I find out it's not even close to safe to drive without major repairs first, which is fine normally, but odd considering vehicles are supposed to be in good shape across the board according to the sandbox setting.
 
Aside from that, I would just like to ask for a way to either make aiming with the mouse more precise or to make the aiming line more visible from far away, even at max zoom I have a hard time seeing it among the chaos at times.
 
Gonna have another go at it this weekend and I'll have more time to try to break more things  keep up the awesome work though devs!

I was not able to reproduce that since I died so many time without finding any weapons... but when i say bigger it was twice the size of the Z. It was moving like him but it was in the wall behind me, and the Z was in front of me. Maybye something goes wrong with the zoom and the red silhouet was not were it's supposed to be.  (Hard to explain with my poor english, sorry)
 
 

If you have play to his predecessor, Demon Souls (who was so much good), you will know that after you "finish" the game you are launch at the beginning of the game again with all your stuff, lvl, etc... and all ennemy were nerfed to be as challenging as you go the first time (even if you have your boosted armor and weapon, you can die in 3 punch of the very first ennemy ^^)
It's not a new game +, it's like a never-ending story, but with more and more challenge and difficulty (and you can access to some weapon only after a restart)
So no, I don't see the problem of splitting the game into 3 game mode, and if Dark Souls did that, it will avoid to have 2 & 3 so easy and money maker for no-hardgamer... their will be at least ONE true hard mode...
And like that, everyone is satisfied, you have a good "I will die" mode ^^, a good old way of playing this good old game, and a "resting" mode where you can install yourself and enjoying all the different thing game has to offer you without yelling after each Z that won't let you do your little life...
I can even imagine a way to change your game mode after the beginning of your game, don't know, maybe before loading your game, could be cool...

I don't know if it'll work on controller, but there's an option in the key binding section that allows you to double tap the "Jog" button to sprint, instead of having to map it to an entirely different button.

I should mention too, I think the game runs BETTER than before on my 2014 macbook pro. Much impress.

Are you moving when you try to heal, because you can't apply bandage when you move... or try with other bandage, you can find them on pharma
et en FR
Est-ce que tu es en mouvement quand tu essaie de te soigné, parce que tu ne peux pas appliqué de bandage quand tu bouge... ou essaie avec d'autres bandages, tu peux les trouvé dans les pharma

Happy Thursday all. First things first:
PROJECT ZOMBOID 40% OFF, NOW AND ALL WEEKEND. TELL YOUR FRIENDS. ALL YOUR FRIENDS. Etc. Etc.
(Sorry about all this.) 
So anyway, it’s been a week of fixing stuff on the animations build generally this week – and usually we’d be doing a ‘sorry, dull blog today’ blog.
HOWEVER some of you might find the deeper elements of the animations system interesting, and we’re also secretly hoping that a fair few of you will be interested in digging into the dev/modding tool yourselves once AnimZed is released alongside Build 41.
Sooooo… Zac has kindly written something up for us that’s a bit more technical than we usually talk about – but thankfully RJ has also provided a quick vid of something fun he’s implementing before we get into the nitty-gritty.
 
LIMPIN’
What you can see in the vid below is our first pass on the various animations that can impact on your walking and running – all of which will get some balance love before any test release.
First off the video you see a scratch cause a light limp – and a limping run. Burns will also have the same impact, alongside cuts – a new injury type that’s somewhere between our existing scratch and deep wound.
After this: a deep wound that triggers heavy walk limps. You can still try to run, but it’ll be slow – on a par with the walk speed with a light limp. Finally in the vid: a fracture. This is currently a heavy limp, but it will forbid a run. This will also be the case if you have glass shards, bad burns or a leg bite.
Okay, with that all explained: here comes the science.
Over to you Zac.
THE ANIM PROBLEM
The Animation system needed a big quality pass. Plagued by dozens of tiny issues with snaps and odd transitions, the system was functional – but a rough diamond in need of refinement.
 
THE ANIM OVERVIEW
So, basically, the Animation system is divided into three layers: the AnimState, AnimNode and AnimTracks.
The AnimState handles the big picture: what the character is currently doing. For example, the character is standing idle, walking, sneaking, and so on. The character can only ever be in any one state at a time.
Next layer down is the AnimNode. These handle the middle-detail of what the character is up to, like walking while holding a crowbar, sneaking while walking sideways, etc. The state determines what nodes should be active, and assigns a weight to each. As nodes come and go, their weights are faded in and out.
Finally, the bottom-most layer is the AnimTracks. These are the fine-grained animations that get mixed and applied to the character’s bones. Tracks are also weighted and transitioned, similar to nodes.
One of the common issues we had was visible snapping between nodes. For example, when a character goes from strafing to sprinting, while holding a 2-handed weapon, the weapon would go from being nearly vertical to suddenly snapping to being horizontal, in under 3 frames.
THE FIX
The first step was to refactor the code itself. From the ground up, the code was tidied and tightened up to be cleaner and more efficient.
Next, it was a matter of finding out exactly what the weightings were at the time the issues were occurring.
There was no easy way to make the game stop and show us the data. There was no crash, no exception, no stackdump.
So, a recorder was written up to take the values of weights and times, and dump them out to the console in a comma-separated format. Next, it was a simple matter of putting it into a spreadsheet, and having a close look at the various curves.
It was immediately apparent that the curves were not smooth. The blending algorithm needed some work.
So, we needed to use math(s).
THE MATH(S)
A set of quadratic tweening functions were written up, called EaseOut, EaseIn, and EaseOutIn. A square-root function was also written, but turned out to be too CPU-intensive for what it was intended.
The AnimNode weight transitions were upgraded with these easing functions, and pretty soon we had some nice and smooth transitions between nodes.
The AnimTracks got the same treatment, and transitions between tracks became much smoother as well. The number of snapping issues greatly decreased, and much joy was had. However, a few issues continued to stubbornly evade us.
Deciding to focus on one issue at a time, we chose the crowbar strafe->run transition. A video was taken, alongside the recorded weight data for states, nodes, and tracks. The individual frames were then painstakingly arranged alongside the generated curves, and then closely examined.
Once the track weight curves were stacked and normalized, a problem became visible. There was a rogue Idle animation sneaking into the mix. Its weight would reach barely 40% before it disappeared, over a period of just 10 frames. This made us intrigued, but also sad and weary.
THE SOLUTION
With this clue, the field of possibilities was greatly narrowed. The cause was soon found. As the strafe node was transitioning out, it was still processing its blend-field. Even though the character was now in the sprint state, its strafe state was still active, and it thought that the character was standing still.
So, in its few last dying frames, the strafe state would blend in the Idle animation, just before snapping it off again.
With the root cause discovered, the solution was simple. Stop any transitioning-out nodes from applying their blend-field. The fix was made, and the last remaining snapping issues were conquered. HOORAY!

  LESSON LEARNED
There were a few lessons learned. Firstly, Math(s) is great – even when we got down to brass tacks and went old school on this issue.
The second was how helpful it was to observe, reproduce, and document every known issue in a visible list. Then performing a ground-up service and tune-up, systematically fixing each issue one at a time.
Finally, that it is important to have visibility on the internal workings of the system. Instead of relying on stop-start debugging, we need a mechanism for recording all state data as it changes over time, and present it in a human-readable format.
Thing was, the spreadsheet and curves were incredibly useful, but were slow and cumbersome to use.
So! We are now building a fully-fledged recording viewer as a part and parcel of the AnimZed dev and modding tool. Huzzah!
We’re sorry this has been such a technical Thursdoid, easily the most involved one we’ve ever done, but in amongst all the cool vids we’ve been showing in past weeks we wanted to spotlight some of the work that’s been happening that’s not quite as sexy. (Well, not mainstream sexy anyway.)
We also know that there are some among you who really dig this sort of thing – but apologise whole-heartedly if you’re not. We’ll be a lot less clever-clever next week, and that’s a promise/inevitability. 
This week’s winter that’s coming from eHxAtoMiic. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too!

Interesting. Are such translations planned for any other languages?

Imo Realism > Romero.
 
A healthy human being would have a really hard time biting a chunk out of someone's neck. But for the sake of gore, a rotting corpse is somehow able to do that with ease in B-movies. Imo it's just cheesy & also doesn't result in good gameplay - it just isn't fun to survive a zombie attack only to bleed out seconds later.  I guess it's an unpopular opinion, but i think the chance to die from a bite is too high as it is. If getting bitten means you're almost guaranteed to die, there's no suspense. It's also the reason why First Aid is kinda useless as a skill.
 
TLDR: Bad injuries = fun, instant death = meh.

Yeah, with a little transparency or a slider for opacity in option, so we could totally remove it and play the hardcore oldstyle on some server

Yeah, with a little transparency or a slider for opacity in option, so we could totally remove it and play the hardcore oldstyle on some server

Those Animations look amazing, very exciting to try on all those cool clothes and kill some zombies with those new weapons.

Damn, those animations are looking pretty sweet! Amazing how things like seeing backpacks, hats/helmets, more realistic moments adds to the overall feel.

Hello all, for your viewing delectation today we have an extended gameplay compilation from the internal test build – the roughest edges/bugs now sufficiently quashed to allow for it.
As we explain in the vid we still have a fair few issues to chase down in the coming weeks: strafing issues, character wheeling meaning it feels quite imprecise with the turning circle, general combat issues where some weapons feel too slow/fast etc.
We also still need to plug in work on rotational blending, MP hook-ups and the work on the zoom that led to the sharper-looking models we showed off in past weeks. None of which are overnight affairs.
So you can see what work we still have to do, we’ve used some subtitling to underline some of the issues as and when they crop up during the gameplay.
All that said though, it’s really feeling fun to play – and to look at. So, here we go.
Also added to the internal build this week is an experimental system to help with gun aiming – which will also come alongside a general tightening stuff like the shotgun radius, before we fully overhaul firearms in a future build.
Please note a) this might not end up in the main game or primary game modes depending on how fun it feels, and b) the colour is WIP and will be toned down in any full release.
We have also done work on attacks to feeding zombies, and added more zombie-like stances to zeds eating dead bodies. We are also in the process of adding smashed glass that lands after you break windows, which will then prove a hazard if you fall on it during your escape – or of course don’t wear shoes and do a John McClane over it.
Short but hopefully sweet! See you next time!
This week’s night drive from Spicy Eggplant. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.

Have just tried, work pretty well and I have accent ^^ Wonderfull, and thanks for adding it, I hope FR people will like it  

Hello Hydromancerx,
I'm sorry to bothering you but I just want to know if I can use the archery part of your mod, because I want to publish a new mod with only the archery of Hydrocraft (with simplier Recipe, replace arrowhead with sharped stone, a 2nd fletching made with newspaper, and a Recipe to break stone in 2 sharped stone)
So I ask your permission to use the lua, script, model and texture (I have ask to francogp too, but I don't know who belongs the lua property, so  i'm asking to you for starting) and like I already made this new "Compound bow" I want you to know that you will already have the future permission to take it and add it in Hydrocraft (if you want it, for sure) and maybe create him a Recipe with carbon fiber or things you have add with Hydrocraft  take a look:

Hm yes, that should be fixable. I'll probably have to manually check for gamepad controls.