Strats

I've been loving the new features and agree with the previous speakers as to bugs. Additionally, there are three features that I think would work well.
 
1.) Just like there are random survivor houses,  around the world are random graves made by previous survivors. These could appear on the annotated maps and along the various back roads/wilderness paths that populate the map. This leads to my second point...
2.) Lootable graves! Perhaps a deceased survivor was buried by his comrades with a favorite Spiffo doll or journal. Maybe a person had a dear baseball bat that got interred with them. Many graves would probably have nothing (and digging up a person's resting place would have an effect on sanity), but there are potential awards. 
3.) Dirty and bloodied clothes attract flies whose sounds could distract the player from threats of the undead variety. 

I've been loving the new features and agree with the previous speakers as to bugs. Additionally, there are three features that I think would work well.
 
1.) Just like there are random survivor houses,  around the world are random graves made by previous survivors. These could appear on the annotated maps and along the various back roads/wilderness paths that populate the map. This leads to my second point...
2.) Lootable graves! Perhaps a deceased survivor was buried by his comrades with a favorite Spiffo doll or journal. Maybe a person had a dear baseball bat that got interred with them. Many graves would probably have nothing (and digging up a person's resting place would have an effect on sanity), but there are potential awards. 
3.) Dirty and bloodied clothes attract flies whose sounds could distract the player from threats of the undead variety. 

I've been loving the new features and agree with the previous speakers as to bugs. Additionally, there are three features that I think would work well.
 
1.) Just like there are random survivor houses,  around the world are random graves made by previous survivors. These could appear on the annotated maps and along the various back roads/wilderness paths that populate the map. This leads to my second point...
2.) Lootable graves! Perhaps a deceased survivor was buried by his comrades with a favorite Spiffo doll or journal. Maybe a person had a dear baseball bat that got interred with them. Many graves would probably have nothing (and digging up a person's resting place would have an effect on sanity), but there are potential awards. 
3.) Dirty and bloodied clothes attract flies whose sounds could distract the player from threats of the undead variety. 

I've been loving the new features and agree with the previous speakers as to bugs. Additionally, there are three features that I think would work well.
 
1.) Just like there are random survivor houses,  around the world are random graves made by previous survivors. These could appear on the annotated maps and along the various back roads/wilderness paths that populate the map. This leads to my second point...
2.) Lootable graves! Perhaps a deceased survivor was buried by his comrades with a favorite Spiffo doll or journal. Maybe a person had a dear baseball bat that got interred with them. Many graves would probably have nothing (and digging up a person's resting place would have an effect on sanity), but there are potential awards. 
3.) Dirty and bloodied clothes attract flies whose sounds could distract the player from threats of the undead variety. 

Don't know if these count, but here are a few that I'd like to see:
1. Random creepy noises in the woods (swaying bushes that could mean a zombie or nothing, howls of a pack of feral dogs).
2. A short looping animation for the water.
3. A large amount of bodies in one area slow you down.
4. Fire does not burn chain fences/ any kind of non-flammable metal material. 
5. Remote controls can be linked to various in-game electronics by a high-level Electrician (radios, TVs, lights, etc.)
6. Snow slows down movement speed in the winter and long exposure to the cold causes unhappiness. 
7. Creepy sounds and/or images for a short period after a player awakens from a nightmare.

I must say that in the beginning of the game, scavenging gas should be relatively easy (important if you are in multiplayer). If it's balanced to be difficult to find in single player, that's understandable, but from a logic perspective there would be so many abandoned vehicles to siphon from that it wouldn't be nearly as valuable until multiple groups are competing over the resource.
 
Traffic jams on highways, abandoned vehicles - unless somebody siphoned from those vehicles already, you could get a year's worth of gas easy from traffic jams.
 
In fact, I'd be more surprised to see vehicles without gas at all if you are playing from day one. Not that I don't expect them to be there, but if half of the vehicles lying on the side of the road or in parking lots were empty I'd be a little confused at the logic.
 
A singular car off on a backroad, the chances of it being abandoned due to lack of fuel would be likely.
 
But a traffic jam of cars, where many cars are boxed in by other cars in an obvious case of "jam at the doors" panic... that's a few tanks of gas and oysters of loot just waiting to be looted.
 
Not to mention large parking lots, a lot of the vehicles sitting from before the outbreak that have been left behind. 
 
Gas is a necessary resource, but there aren't many drivers around anymore. It shouldn't be considered a scarce thing unless somebody is beating you to all that siphoning. That's when I think the rarity of it would change naturally to becoming as scarce as it would be.
 
The one issue about making things scarce on purpose is that the possibility of other players (and potentially NPCs) should be considered before making that judgement. One player can work off of a traffic jam of gas for a long time, but if it's PZ multiplayer and a few groups have to take from the same pile, somebody may start hording and it will reach that point where everywhere you look, somebody has been there before you.
 
A mechanic profession, I must disagree with you on, though. 
 
A lot of mechanics, especially ones involved in bodywork, would be familiar enough with welding to gain a +1 to metalworking.
 
As how doctors are just good for medicine, a mechanic could be good for vehicles and possibly metalworking on the side. Not just that, but the profession is common enough in the rural setting that many people would have it. You could justify having the side effect of boosting other trade stats because of the tool knowledge and the fact that a lot of being a mechanic is bodywork and electronics.
 
There could also be the hobby trait of having mechanical experience (+1 mechanical).
 
The other issue with not having the mechanic skill is that no other profession would have that knowledge by default. Growing tomatoes and cooking bread is not as complicated as knowing how a car works and what every part does. 
 
The content behind the skill levels could be diagnosing issues (something is wrong with the engine VS the spark plugs are worn), fixing the issue (I don't know what to do with these parts VS replacing the spark plugs), harvesting parts from other vehicles (I don't know how to do this VS I'll just take this fresh set from here, they look new) and finally, the chances of successful non-replacement repair, whether it is fixing loose cables or banging out dents in bodywork.
 
It wouldn't be the most prolific skill, for sure, but it would have just as much content as farming and metalworking. It would be a missed opportunity to not include something for the skill. I understand why you would think it doesn't have a place but there's enough justification for it IMO.

They said in an earlier post that the sounds are only temporary.

These things are being worked on simultaneously (animations are one part of the team, NPCs another). It doesn't matter if all the focus went into one thing because the dev team is divided into their specialties. Animators and people who code animations won't be as good with NPC code as animation stuff and vice versa. What we have now is probably best because people are divided by their skill set and instead of one item very far down the dev pipeline, we have three. Keep in mind as well that much of this stuff depends on each other and is easier to code at the same time. Animating driving stuff, animating crashes, teaching NPCs how to drive without the result being Carmaggedeon, etc. All of these have to be working at a reasonable enough standard that the IWBUMS doesn't destroy peoples' computers. These aren't half-finished old ideas being displaced by new ideas, but rather a logical progression of features so that they mesh together well.
 
Hope that helps,
-Strats

TIS is too small to have teams. There's currently eight developers, plus a General Arcade dev.
 
Most major tasks are taken on by a single person. Some pull double duty (e.g. working a physics system for MP while doing general bug fixing).
 
Things come out when they're done with their project, assuming it doesn't depend on another person's work or another system. That can look uncoordinated from the outside, but developers on the team have different specialties and skills, so throwing them all at one thing at a time would not result in any real increase in speed; it'd also mean getting stable builds, bug fixes, patches, and getting  other content out wouldn't happen.

RE: map. The coming expansion isn't a 'big name' location-wise. It has a few interesting places to hold out for sure, but it's filling in the gaps before we reach those areas more than anything. It's a fairly spread out area though, and should be fun to explore once cars hit.
 
RE: vehicles question. One step at a time! Though clearly bicycles etc will require a ton more effort in terms of animation (and physics most likely if they were done well).

Hello! A public build release today, along with a general overview of where we’ll be at with different stuff in the coming weeks.
 
37 RELEASED
This morning we pushed Build 37.8 to Stable. This is predominantly an RJ build, apart from the Mash maps and some Yuri fixes, so our thanks to him keeping the wheel turning while work continues in our various other branches. It contains lots of fiddly longstanding fix stuff that can be read here, but the highlights run as follows:
 
Maps of urban locations within the Knox Event Exclusion Zone can be found in relevant towns, in particular spawning in gas stations. They look a bit like this.
You can make text and emblem markings on maps and share with friends and faction members in MP. In SP you also run a chance of discovering pre-annotated maps that’ve been marked up by deceased fellow survivors. These are mainly found on zombies and can lead you to stashes of weapons, tools and general places of interest. Loot at these locations could be hidden in cupboards, crates, bags left on the floor or even hidden under the floorboards. General improvements to cooking, cooking systems and food. Split screen co-op fixes. Gamepad fixes. Improved sleeping system for online servers who like to snooze. New forage UI to limit item build-up on the map. Portuguese Brazilian community translation by HiveFuse. Clearer moodle impact descriptions. New ‘version info’ box on main screen.  
 
VEHICLES
The internal tests and updates of our new physics-enhanced vehicles continue, if you haven’t seen it then our latest vid (made by Mark.exe) can be seen here. The current focus is in fixing up what we have now so that it’s all in a state that could be considered for wider testing. We will need, after all, performance feedback from as many PC set ups as we can.
 
This week, then, Yuri had been looking at the build’s most glaring performance issues and glitches. There’s an oddly catastrophic slowdown that hits after twenty minutes of play that’s being looked at right now, for example, while vehicle and tree pop-in also needs addressing. Likewise frame-rate stutters seemingly tied to zooming. In recent days we’ve made good progress on reported (non-vehicular) crashes and garbage collection hang-ups, so we’ll keep on ticking off the list. Likewise, it’d be nice if we could solve some clipping and draw order issues.
 
As a general ‘where we’re at’ overview, right now we have pick-ups, station wagons, ambulances, sports cars, small cars and vans in-game (although they’re yet to have different handling stats). They spawn in relevant places, and according to the affluence/role of area on the Exclusion Zone map. They crash and roll, and they really, really attract zombies – potentially a little too much. They have working headlights and are generally found locked – although keys can be found on zombies or in houses. Every car has storage in the boot, and have a handy glove box too.
 
We’re also looking at two (subtle) different ways of colouring vehicle textures – so answers on a postcard if you can tell us your opinion of which if these vehicles fits in best with the PZ game world.
 

 
What vehicles haven’t got is much ‘Zomboid’ gameplay tied to them right now – mechanic profession, maintenance, damage, player injury and other vital stuff isn’t in yet. Likewise they have no engine sound playing, the info panel UI is temporary and collision with zeds and survivors needs work. The focus right now, however, is getting their operation as glitch-free as possible – so all this will come in future weeks.
 
 
ANIMS
We mentioned it last week but now have an extra body on-board in TIS Towers, in the form of Mark – a man who comes with a wealth of games industry experience and battle-hardiness.
 
He’s going to be jumping into the trenches fairly imminently to help us sort out various other technical issues surrounding the new animation system, as well as tie up any other loose ends or missing bits that are holding back the release.
 
In the meantime he has been implementing Assimp as our default model and animation loader, this will allow models to be loaded in in a variety of common formats that will not only aid modders in being able to easily expand the game, but will hopefully unearth a few issues with the existing loader that have prevented the rotational root motion system from being finished off.
 
Mark’s experience in animation systems could then lead onto other improvements once everything is in-game, but we’ll leave expanding on that until we finally have the basic models in testing. In the mean-time it’s now clear that vehicles will release before animations, so we’re continuing the work required to let them make the best of each other.
 
Work in and around animations will provide some advantages to the vehicles once they land, such as the elimination of the old system of off-screen textures that are rendered every frame in 3D and drawn in place as sprites, being replaced with the game actually drawing the 3D models directly into the screen at the correct position in a more accurate ISO perspective. This will hopefully improve things such as zombie like vehicle collisions, and make multiple vehicles integrate into the scene together better.
 
 
IWBUMS NEXT
With the release of 37 work begins on the more general features and improvements for 38. Its overall contents are currently under discussion but the new map expansion is pretty much certain to be in 38, alongside the MP Discord integration. Hopefully Turbo’s devices code rewrite will also be ready in time, as well as some of the improvements it can provide.
 
 
MOD SPOTLIGHT
We ran an interview with prolific PZ modder Nolan the other week, but forgot to give it a Mondoid flag. Do check it out though, as he’s a very interesting chap.

This week’s last stand from Isnah81. 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 now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can be found here.
 

Just a thought for making the vehicles fit in more; could their graphics get put through a faded-out shader similar to what the devs did to the map textures when they took inspiration from "This War of Mine" and dulled the textures? This would help the vehicles look more natural in the PZ environs (in my opinion).

Just a thought for making the vehicles fit in more; could their graphics get put through a faded-out shader similar to what the devs did to the map textures when they took inspiration from "This War of Mine" and dulled the textures? This would help the vehicles look more natural in the PZ environs (in my opinion).

Just a thought for making the vehicles fit in more; could their graphics get put through a faded-out shader similar to what the devs did to the map textures when they took inspiration from "This War of Mine" and dulled the textures? This would help the vehicles look more natural in the PZ environs (in my opinion).

Just a thought for making the vehicles fit in more; could their graphics get put through a faded-out shader similar to what the devs did to the map textures when they took inspiration from "This War of Mine" and dulled the textures? This would help the vehicles look more natural in the PZ environs (in my opinion).

Just a thought for making the vehicles fit in more; could their graphics get put through a faded-out shader similar to what the devs did to the map textures when they took inspiration from "This War of Mine" and dulled the textures? This would help the vehicles look more natural in the PZ environs (in my opinion).

Just a thought for making the vehicles fit in more; could their graphics get put through a faded-out shader similar to what the devs did to the map textures when they took inspiration from "This War of Mine" and dulled the textures? This would help the vehicles look more natural in the PZ environs (in my opinion).

This vehicle thingie isn't going to end good for me. I'll, probably, collect every nice-looking car and park it in my base. And then, die of starvation because I can't get out of the base with cars blocking the doors.
 
Eh, poor me. 
But PZ gets better and better every month.

Hello everyone! Welcome to this week’s Mondoid. It’ll be a relatively short one this week, yet we got some cool things in the pipe to show non-the-less.
Vehicles
A big milestone today as vehicles officially went into closed testing, which is a big step toward getting them out there to you all. They aren’t completely finished yet–There will undoubtedly be bugs to fix reported by our testers, and at the moment there is only a test model, a blue pickup-truck with an oddly placed wheel on the bumper, in the game. The cool vehicle models Martin has been pumping out still need to be implemented, and on a cosmetic level some additional work needs doing on the lighting to make them appear less uniformly lit and a bit more metallic in appearance, we may bump up their size a little too, but they are getting close and all the heavy lifting has been done.
Feedback so far shows that the streaming seems to work extremely well, and the vehicles controls and handles surprisingly well considering the isometric perspective. You use a radial menu to start the car, rolling down windows, turn on the heater, change seats, or play with the car radio.  It’s also extremely fun running over zombies–as you can imagine!
We’ll save on the videos until we get more cars implemented and feel an IWBUMS is more imminent (also, as cool as it looks already it’s a bit odd to see neighbourhoods of blue pickup trucks!) but here are a few pics to whet your appetite.



Thanks again to General Arcade for their amazing and tireless work getting the system working over the net, and getting through the remaining technical roadblocks that complicated and delayed their completion, and of course to EasyPickins who put a monumental amount of work into the vehicles prior to that, alongside his day to day work on PZ updates.
RJ has spawned
That’s right, always a productive one, our very own Romain has gone and co-created a tiny person, whom he has dubbed Victor, who was born literally yesterday. He is very cute, and as per his contract with TIS we have given RJ two weeks to get him up to speed on java so he can be put to work in the TIS code mines. Here is a picture of him alongside the Eternal Leader Spiffo:

Will, usual Mondoid writer, father and sentimental one of the bunch is away at GDC advancing the cause of The Indie Stone in the U.S, but if he was here I’m sure it’d he’d say much more eloquently that we’re ecstatically happy for RJ, Celine and their new son, it’s wonderful to see the Zomboid family grow, and we wish Victor every future success against the zombie hordes.
That’ll be all for this week, see you all next week after we see how the closed testing goes!
This week’s image is by us. 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 now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can be found here.

I'm just imagining the moments at night where you're in your safe-house looking out at the darkened streets, seeing the hordes amble along. Maybe there's a gunshot, and some sound draws their attention and their heads all turn as one... *shivers.

Are we able to place the maps on a wall and see them by right clicking them?

Recently in game, nightmares and sleep events were added to the game, but the penalty for not sleeping is still very low. I think that if a player has not slept for a while, they should start to hear phantom noises: zombie moans, footsteps on the floor above, a thump that could be a zombie or could not). This would raise player paranoia and encourage sleeping so that these do not occur.

Recently in game, nightmares and sleep events were added to the game, but the penalty for not sleeping is still very low. I think that if a player has not slept for a while, they should start to hear phantom noises: zombie moans, footsteps on the floor above, a thump that could be a zombie or could not). This would raise player paranoia and encourage sleeping so that these do not occur.

Are we able to place the maps on a wall and see them by right clicking them?

Are we able to place the maps on a wall and see them by right clicking them?