NagashUD

That looks sweet ! Is it me or the outdoor night is darker than inside the bunker? Should be the same darkness in my opinion, and it would be perfect !
 
Just a question, why not releasing some small updates progressively on unstable branch? like grass, or fences, that should be compatible with the actual build ?
 
I think that would be very appreciated by the community to have fresh things to try out ! (like me after +4k played hours)

Zaumby Thursday
Hey all, here again for the March Thursdoid. Lots of stuff from lots of different areas of the game this time, we do hope you enjoy.
STRIKE A POSE
We’ve mentioned the fact that Build 42 will have a variety of readable materials that you can loot and inspect, but we hadn’t shown them off in-game as quite frankly they didn’t look great. They were crammed inside our existing Survival Guide UI, and it really wasn’t going to bat for us.
We didn’t really want to create a load of individual images that wouldn’t be readily translatable into other languages either, and become a massive timesink for our art department who are already pumping out loads of vital stuff elsewhere. So, clever Aiteron got onto the case
 
 
 
 
So what is this?
Well, it’s a secondary UI API system – and with it both ourselves and modders can create readable text UIs in easier and more flexible ways, and what’s more reuse templates for them too.
 
Techie bit: currently, 4 Java elements have been added: Base, Text, Texture, TextEntry, and then based on these we’ve built a more complex UI in lua that’s easily manipulated by us and modders to play around with position, rotation angle, scale, color, animations, text settings, etc.
 
Alongside this a new RichText system has been added, meaning the media templates can be changed completely in translation files (including size, position of elements and other settings) so we can make great media for our whole international audience.
Video for modders who might be interested here.
 
How are we using it?
For Build 42 we are using this to create two flavours of lootable reading material, although not all of it will be available in the game we moment we go into unstable beta.
Newspapers and Community News pamphlets, to help with world-building and to fully flesh out the timeline of the Knox Event. Local business flyers, house listing advertisements, restaurant menus and the like. These will all be locations that will be useful to your survival story – and reading the flyer will automatically reveal their location on the player map. In this way we will direct new players to helpful looting areas, and some of the community’s favourite safehouse locations.  
 
What’s making it extra cool?
This has been cooking for a while, but we were increasingly unhappy with aspects of the way things looked. We were using in-game isometric screenshots, and they didn’t feel quite right for our in-game newspapers as such.
 
We’re delighted to say, then, that community heroes unconid and Welias have agreed to come on board and help us out with this.
 
Both have been entertaining PZ players with their brilliantly made posed still images and videos using PZ models and imagery, and they seemed amazingly well suited to bringing life to the characters of the Knox Event in readable media.
 
Likewise, we will also easily be able to do fun stuff with, say Nolan of Nolan’s Used Cars, by easily placing his cowboy hat zombie at the location of the car lot that the flyer has revealed on your map.
 
GRASSED ME RIGHT UP
Something in PZ that’s needed improvement for the absolute longest time, is one of the things that you see the most.
We’ve been unhappy with the way that grass looks for a long while, and it became more unsightly with the advent of Build 41’s 3D models.
 
Build 42 is now blessed with a depth buffer. This means that we can reduce the player’s clipping with the scenery, we can show doors swinging open and closed, and (during our unstable beta) we will also be able to show seated characters on furniture in all four directions so players won’t have to use mods to access the sedentary animations for the directions that don’t clip.
 
It’s also great for grass and general undergrowth too, so alongside updating the existing grass sprites to feel more detailed and natural – we’ve also added support for depth maps so large blades and clumps of grass will intersect your character as you walk, crouch, etc as if they were 3D geometry.
 
 
As you can see, this makes the character feel much more grounded. It also has various impacts on the gameplay: crawling zombies are slightly harder to detect, falling objects get a little more lost in the grass etc.
 
With the increased wilderness gameplay that 42 will bring for many players, in terms of hunting and settlement building, players will be surrounded by grass and wilderness a lot more – so we’re really pleased to have got this in, and looking so good.
 
In the world beyond Build 42 we also intend to build on this, tying our grass and scrubland to our seasonal and erosion systems – helping you to get a better sense of the months and years as they pass.
 
In the meantime here’s another nice Before and After of the general grass sprite improvements:
 
 
SOUND UNDERGROUND
Now that 42 is delving underground, and indeed much higher into the sky, we need some improved soundscapes to deal with it.
 
Recently the team at Formosa have been working on what happens with your speakers once you start delving underground. As such they’ve kindly supplied two videos showing their work: the March Ridge bunker we saw last time, and a new spooky Ekron industrial lower floor.
What can you hear that’s different here?
 
Ground level and outdoor sounds gradually dip away the lower you go, and once you’re in an underground area various appropriate one-shot noises can be found – like distant mice, cans falling and rolling in somewhere in the gloom etc.
 
As far as the roomtones go there’s also water dripping layers to give it more of an abandoned feel too, where appropriate, and likewise gunshot noises and the like have been played with to sound more appropriate in an enclosed underground space.
 
 
 
 
  FENCING
A key part of zombie fiction that Project Zomboid hasn’t catered for yet are attracted hordes trapped up against long wire fences – as seen with the fences that surround the prison in The Walking Dead.
 
Previously our pathfinding hasn’t catered for this, and players have felt a sense of security while behind our sturdy wire fences.
Now, things will change a bit.
 
BUT FIRST: some traditional caveats.
 
This feature will be a sandbox option, and it will also only come into play with large hordes – and over a long period of time.
 
This video is WIP, and the effect is sped up, and we can work on the crowding/banging visuals too.
 
The point of this is that we want a gradual build up of a huge horde, so players get the feeling that they are safe – for now. The fence will only hold for so long up against so many zombies, and eventually it might give way.
 
In terms of pathfinding, with lone or few zombies, the change to zombie senses also leads to more Romero-like zombies, with some not being intelligent enough to go around and obstacle, and choose to slam into a fence in their efforts to get to a player instead.
 
 
GUN CHANGES
Fenris’ extensive upgrades to PZ’s guns continue, this month with changes of note like the following:
 
Wind, fog and rain, as well as general lighting conditions now have an effect on hit and critical chances. Some of these can be offset by traits or skill levels. Ranged shots at targets hidden by dense fog or darkness can be challenging or impossible. Maximum firing range has been increased and is no longer affected by skill level (chances of hitting targets at range still is). Distance to target has a greater effect on penalties caused by panic, drunkenness, player movement, weather, etc. Most penalties are significantly reduced at close ranges. Sound radius is increased overall, but with a sandbox option to modify higher or lower. Sound range is reduced when firing indoors. Sighting systems have an ideal range they were designed for: a minimum effective range, and a maximum. Outside of this range they are less effective. If the target is close enough that just pointing without aiming would give a higher chance then the sights are ignored (eg a x8 scope on a target 2 tiles away). Panic previously didn’t actually affect hit chances (just critical and damage). This has been corrected. Remain calm, don’t panic, you’ll be fine. Hit chances and critical chances are now calculated in the same way (with exceptions): if something (like panic) effects hit chance, it also effects critical. Hit chances are generally increased allowing lower levels to make a successful shot under the right situation. However, avoiding negative conditions is vital, especially panic. Ammo weights have been corrected and rebalanced. Mounted flashlights are functional and highly advised for low-light shooting.  
The above video shows Fenris’ experimentation and how he’s polishing guns – the graph shows the hit and critical chances across the various tile distances, updated in realtime, and overlays range circles showing the point blank, optimal targeting ranges (for the given sights), and maximum firing ranges. The chances of a hit can be seen rising and falling with movement, and after each shot
 
ARMOR
This month we’ve also had focus on improving our late-game B42 armour system. As with the weapon crafting, the intent was to make something that wasn’t referential to zombie media or other games, but instead something that seemed natural for the time and circumstances.
 
We don’t want crafted armour to look too anachronistic or “knightly” – looking like they should be part of a renaissance fair. We don’t want to be too goofy, although there are a few more ‘fun’ options in there, and we don’t want anything that doesn’t look like it belongs in the Zomboid setting. Importantly armour should work like real armour, and operate within the bounds of PZ logic itself.
As such a few categories that will come as part of B42 are:
 
Metal
While avoiding overt medievalisms, clearly 42’s crafting update and blacksmith skills necessitate metal armour: plates, leather, straps, buckles and all.
Inspirations here include Ned Kelly and his gang, while (although we always say we won’t take inspiration from other games) the way Rust implements its metal armours is very much along our line of thinking – though clearly we’ll make our own way with it.
 
Please note: there won’t be any historical armour and weapon museums in b42, or suits of armour on display in mansions. With this sort of high-end crafted stuff, we wants players to have to go out into the world and engage with the new crafting system – and not beeline for a spot on the map to enjoy them.
 
Apocalyptic Vibe
We had to ensure that the armour was believable and feasible, while keeping a procedural approach – like our approach of the “lego weapons” in which existing items are adapted and melded.
 
Then, for a more distinct look, we thought of tinges of punk rock and heavy metal imagery, with apocalyptic media such as Escape From New York serving as inspiration. From this we now have armour that can, for example, be crafted out of tyres.
 
Natural Ingredients
One important aspect of the new armour content was that it had to support the new crafting system, as well as survival gameplay on a forest map free of civilization.
 
Although we deliberately didn’t make it too odious to progress from dirt and sticks to solving the riddle of steel, there’s still a lot of middle ground between the two.
 
Leather is an obvious candidate, and is something we have already made some pieces for. However throughout history people have used all sorts of other materials for armor as well, and we are exploring some interesting ideas based on real world examples. We don’t want to go out on a ‘limb’ and ‘branch far’ with this, but knock on ‘wood’ it will work out okay.
 
A Sporting Chance
Given that the game is set in 1993 Kentucky, there’s all sorts of armour already available in the form of lootable Sportsball Gear!
 
All sorts of pads, guards, and paddings, including two items that should make players very happy: The Athletic Cup and the Ice Hockey Neck Guards.
As well, some of those items of Sports gear, like the weapons crafting, can be modified to make badass, cool, post apocalyptic armor, which brings us to….
 
Spikes
And you and the zombies can be spiky too now.
 
 
EXPLORING UP HIGH
Finally, we’re also in the process of testing Skyscrapers for playability and performance. Turns out 32 floors of zombies, all spawning at the same rate of zombies creates a LOT of zombies. So we need to get to balancing things out a bit.
 
 
 
Thanks all. Sadly not too much from the new crafting in motion this time. Please be assured, though, that there’s a lot of work going on there, but some aspects aren’t ready for show, and others are waiting for a core code update to hook things into and as such aren’t filmable.
There’s a bit of a logjam building of stuff that can be pumped out, so we hope it’ll be a flood of cool stuff next time round. This is such a core aspect of gameplay, which could bring huge improvements across the board, so it’s also needing the most consideration and care to not get wrong.
A full round-up of everything confirmed for Build 42 can be found here. 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

Hey all, a good mix of things this ‘doid.
 
Fun gameplay stuff, and a chunk of info we wanted to flag for modder-awareness and the more tech-minded amongst you. (Feel free to skip that bit to get to the more enticing gun stuff from Fenris that’s become its first application.)
 
Onwards, then.
HUNKER INNA BUNKER
Permanent underground structures are being added to the internal build’s map for testing.
 
As discussed before some basement locations will be randomised to add surprise flavour to your looting, but there’ll be plenty of ever-present locations that will likely be survivor favourites for taking over and making your own.
 
Here’s a fun example, which also very clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of B42’s tech upgrade that governs the realistic spread of light. It really is very dark down there, and with that very claustrophobic and scary…
 
 
Another aspect of the underground structures is sound, and now we’ve got more and more of these in the test build our sound team will be working to cut out wildlife sounds, add muffle, echo, drips and such. Likewise, meanwhile, another focus is adjusting the noise of ‘street level’ activity when you climb higher in buildings.
 
It’s also worth mentioning that in 42, or at least certainly its unstable release, you will not be able to tunnel or break down the external walls of underground structures. This is something it would be healthy for the engine to be able to do (although we’d never have Minecraft-style insta-tunnels in vanilla, clearly) but is probably a can of worms best opened later down the line.
 
CRAFTING
In amongst the feverish connecting of code wires from others on the crafting team, Turbo has been working on the new interface that will allow for hand-crafting items on in-game surfaces.
 
We’ve got something ready to go into the internal build, but in its current WIP form still needs some polish – and probably isn’t quite ready to show off before its rough edges have been smoothed out.
 
In essence though, this work has been to cater for crafting items that aren’t as straightforward as ripping clothing to make bandages or opening a can of beans (which will always be feasible just in your hands) but don’t necessarily need a specialized workstation either.
 
Activities like preparing a sandwich or making a nailed baseball bat logically require a handy surface to perform the work. The way it’s being implemented – any logical surface will do (tables, counters etc) but this sort of crafting will no longer be possible while standing in the middle of the street with zombies approaching.
 
In terms of changes in player habits and behaviour going from 41 to 42, this will probably be the one that’s felt most keenly. There’s a lot of muscle memory we’ll be scrubbing out here, after all. However we are doing our utmost to keep it logical, and to keep it real.
 
The current challenge has been to devise an interface that accomplishes all the tasks necessary: providing a handy way of browsing or looking up the recipes, allowing for crafting of multiple objects, allowing the use of tools to modify the quality or success chances of the crafting, and giving access to all the functionality provided in the crafting update.
 
We’re not there yet on this surface level, but functionally on the code level it’s all there and working and ready to be integrated into the game. Next steps will be to make the UI as clean and convenient as can be, improving and iterating as we go, as it’s such a core aspect of 42.
 
(Just to reiterate, however, simple crafts like ripping bandages and so on will still be craftable in the way they are in 41: right clicking the item and clicking the relevant right click menu option. This is still the most immediate and convenient way for a player to do these split second crafts in the midst of action.)
 
Meanwhile, of course, the results of all this new crafting continue to get pumped through from the art department, prepped and laid into the code. Here’s a few that popped through recently.
 
MULTIPLAYER
We haven’t heard from the MP bods in a little while so let’s go over to Andrei for a little while:

“We are very busy on the Multiplayer side of things. When Build 41 MP was first released we had three coders on our team, and now due to the success of 41 we have five.
 
As many will be aware we have been focused on anti-cheat functionality for the last several months which is now being finalized: preventing cheating with inventory and items by moving their processing from clients to the server.
 
Clearly simultaneous to this we have also been working on the integration of new 42-specific gameplay – most notably adding support for animals into MP.
 
We have also been moving the team onto the fixes, feature requests and changes we have heard from the community.
 
Some highlights of this are as follows, but please note that our list is long and not everything will be mentioned! If you’ve felt it or found it annoying in your MP play then it is probably on our list:
 
Privacy and Anti-Cheat work. We are improving our anti-cheat functionality, and adding various new mechanisms. Improving synchronization of characters between clients. We are debugging and fixing issues where zombies appear unexpectedly for the player, or players teleport instead of walking. PVP animations and logging. Current hit reactions in PVP lead to unfair and unfun behaviours, likewise there are issues with disconnecting during PVP. We are planning to fix this and extend PVP logging. Safehouses. As players will be aware, there are various issues related to exploits and safehouse raids that we need to fix. We also have a lot of things in mind for nice-to-have improvements that we hope to share with you in future blogs.  
Thanks to Andrei for his thoughts and, again, to underline – this isn’t the only stuff that’s on their ‘to do’ list. It is, however, what’s in their sights over the month ahead.
 
While we are talking MP, however, it would be remiss to not mention another side project that’s gone into the game recently.
This is disguise option for multiplayer which, if enabled by the server admin, will allow players to disguise their username by wearing a combination of lower and upper face coverings, or indeed full face coverings.
 
The hope is that these will create some interesting dynamics for RP and PVP servers, and indeed for general banditry purposes.
 
(Clearly there’s also a few failsafes having to be built into this! Admins will be able to can also disguise themselves too if enabled and will always see right through disguises, there’s an option to disable disguises inside safehouses, and the system can be disabled entirely on servers that don’t want anonymity to be a feature).
 
OTHER FUN STUFF
Okay, before we get to some of the more in-depth stuff some quickfire smaller nuggets of interesting things that have gone into the game recently.
We are making some character traits have more direct gameplay implications – with a case-in-point being character builds with vision-related issues. Likewise, helmets and headgear that limit what your player can see will get similar, but not identical, effects.
 
(PLEASE NOTE: effect seen in the following video is WIP. It was an internal video, but is too fun not to share)
 
 

The Event Zone’s Wild West tourist attraction is now in testing and open for business – now featuring a new game item that is the wooden coffin.
 
 
Our good friend Ash from TEA has been working with us to integrate Bink into PZ, which is some cool middleware that grown-up games use to play videos, cut-scenes and the like.
 
We’re primarily getting it integrated for some cosmetic changes you’ll discover when you boot up the game that’ll be seen at a later date, but it also means that we can now show tutorial videos and such in-game.
 
In future it also makes moving images on TV screens, cinema screens etc. a possibility – although that’ll be a luxury that comes about long after 42 unstable.
 
 
Finally, in the Fun Stuff section – Fox’s 4K-ification mission continues. In fact, it’s nearly done and higher-resolution UIs for 4K players will shortly become available in the internal test build.
 
With higher resolutions, meanwhile comes higher resolution screen furniture. So bid a hearty hello to some of your new, newly detailed, moodles. Friendly folk, aren’t they?
 
PROF’S PROC-GEN
ProfMobius, he of Minecraft heritage who we brought on board towards the end of last year, has been working on the procedurally generated wilderness to exist outside the map borders to allow for a not quite infinite but huge world outside the main map.
 
Currently he’s working on automatic blending between hand crafted content such as the edge of the map with the generated wilderness biomes, to allow for a smooth and seamless transition between them without visible borders.
 
This will also be invaluable for modders, as currently it’s a rather difficult task to blend the edges of a modded map with the vanilla map, which often results in an ugly sudden border of trees or vegetation changes as you transition.
 
The new system will blend in the procedural elements gradually into the vegetation that exists on a modded map, so the border will be less jarring.
He’s also looking into generating roads so they continue from the borders of the main map, which will massively expand the canvas for modders to position their modded maps – what with them now being able to space them out amongst a huge game world instead of overwriting or extending the main map which will vastly reduce the potential for conflicts.
Definitions for biomes, as well as template for road styles will be creatable in lua, allowing for easy modding to provide more diverse and new biomes with different vegetation, different road styles, and ultimately modders will also have access to the building stamping functionality provided by the basement system and could well extend that to place buildings in the world too.
 
The full wilderness map will have a different set of biomes to choose from, allowing less realistic but more varied biomes to be feasible: travelling an hour down the road to get from a desert to a tundra, for example.
 
For obvious reason, however, the extension of the main game map borders will be restricted to sensible Kentucky biomes, but may be able to include stuff like farmland as well as forests and plains.
 
With this system in place, and the huge swaths of wilderness with convenient road networks to utilize, it’s our hope that a heavily map-modded game could have a truly huge gameplay area 100s of times bigger than currently, with potentially miles of wilderness between major locations added by modders
IMGUI DEBUGGING
Okay – this is the technical bit for modders I warned you about. There’s some fun gun-related stuff afterwards if you make it through.
Finally, we expect this to be more of interest to modders than general players, but it will also impact the ease of future development of the game so is good news all around.
 
For the ease of integration of various aspects of Build 43 we took some time to implement a debug gui library known as imgui into the game which replaces our somewhat time- consuming lua based debug interfaces. We realised that it would likely benefit Build 42 content too, and as such it became part of its glorious whole – and indeed started giving us results the very next day.
 
Imgui is, essentially, the industry standard for providing powerful easy-to-implement debugging uis into game engines and it’s already paying dividends.
If you are bored at this point it’s fine to skip to the guns.
First of all, before anyone gets excited about this being used for mod UIs for gameplay, we’re strictly only allowing this to be enabled when debug is activated in the game.
 
This is because the way imgui needs to be rendered is extremely detrimental to our rendering multithreading since it doesn’t support it on opengl, as well as this the entire point of the system is to provide extremely quick to implement debugging UI that favours ease of implementation over performance.
 
As such we need to put our foot down on restricting the new UI to debugging otherwise we’d quickly see our performance gains eaten up dramatically by modded games. We do plan a big UI overhaul in future but want to use UI middleware suited for actual end user gameplay, with all the performance, swishes, fades, pulses and slickness the UI finally deserved. ImGui is not that.
 
In debug mode, the game can now run with more a ‘development IDE’ feel, with various inspectors and dockable windows to examine the bowels of the game and the game viewport as a dockable and resizable window. For example you can inspect all the game UI elements active to allow for easier UI work and debugging within the game, and you can inspect variables on a plotted graph to help balance values over time. Otherwise you can inspect in-game textures and other assets, and numerous other helpful things which should really aid in demystifying the game’s innards for our modding community.
 
 
Modders will be able to dive in and look into the guts of lua and java at runtime to inspect anything they like: navigating through characters, items, or anything else to inspect them.
 
Imgui also contains a fully functional text editor. We plan for this to be completely integrated for lua editing within the game itself, as well as a more robust debugger to replace the slightly ropey F11 one we currently have, however this is also a challenge due to the way lua executes so will come later.
 
In the meantime, for a nice Build 43 behind the scenes, here is the in-game AI behaviour editing UI with breakpoints, stepping and watch window:
In terms of more imminent usage for game-improvement, meanwhile, let’s move over to Fenris at the gun range.
 
GUN IMPROVEMENTS
From the second imgui was made available Fenris, he of ORGM mod vintage, leapt at the opportunity to use its features to do some intensive firearms work: making them more useful at lower skill levels without breaking balance, while also providing for more tweaks for accuracy based on the player’s actions.
 
Here he is on the firing range, with imgui active.
 
 
Here, the graph shows a new AimingDelay mechanic (the blue line) first initially dropping after the player starts to stablise their aim, then rising with each shot – then overlaid with the recoil delay and animation states. We see him taking timed shots and waiting briefly so his aim stabilises again. The effect can then be seen across the different skill levels, and how the rate of fire changes.
 
Fenris’ work on improvement here is extensive, but aspects of his commits to the game these past two weeks have included:
 
Rebalance of how hit chances and recoil are calculated, and general RoF with firearms. Improved the target highlighting which was previously misleading, with the colour shifting to green shades with lower hit chances than expected. This is now corrected to go green closer to 80%. Previously only aiming & reloading skills, the distance to target and how long ago you stopped moving had an effect on the highlight. Now Strength helps with recoil, Dexterous and All-Thumbs impact on shouldering the weapon, and Eagle-Eyed and Shortsighted can change the optimal sight range. Rates of Fire have been increased to more realistic expectations, but it now takes a bit of time to stabilize your aim when initially shouldering the weapon or after each shot. This time is reduced by aiming skill and various traits and conditions. Firing as fast as possible is less accurate then taking your time and lining up the shot. The lighting of the target square is also now taken into account.  
FINALLY
We saw this pop up on the YouTubes and thought it was a great run-down on what we’ve been working on. Our thanks to CosmiicSteem for the vid!
 
This week’s foggy safehouse from Rick Grimes, though presumably not the real one. A full round-up of everything confirmed for Build 42 can be found here. 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.

I have full trust in you guys !

I second this, the new lighting system is a big improvement but the demonstration clearly showed there was no need for the player to use a lighter for light. You could perfectly navigate the dark building without. I'm in for hardcore darkness if it's a sealed room without any light.

"there’s debate on the team as to whether the player character should have a little more clarity in the darkness"
 
I suppose no light=dark; Cat's eyes trait should maybe give a little more light blue clarity exactly like in the "doors and lightning" video?
Also filters while wearing glasses/sunglasses would be a plus in my opinion
 
Please, no Bethesd* bright nights and indoors !
 
I'm also very exited to try the new lightning system !
 
Cone is a little light, hope it will be possible to make it a little darker in options, that would be great; (I might be wrong tho, probably because i didn't try it myself).

Keep up the good work guys !

Thanks to the developers for the interesting information.
It's cool that the bit fragment can also be used as a weapon.
The underground parking was especially pleased.
In the last picture, the gentleman is strange not so much with a mustache as with leopard underpants.
I really ask the developers not to overdo it with a slightly zany weapon. Leave it to the modders.

"there’s debate on the team as to whether the player character should have a little more clarity in the darkness"
 
I suppose no light=dark; Cat's eyes trait should maybe give a little more light blue clarity exactly like in the "doors and lightning" video?
Also filters while wearing glasses/sunglasses would be a plus in my opinion
 
Please, no Bethesd* bright nights and indoors !
 
I'm also very exited to try the new lightning system !
 
Cone is a little light, hope it will be possible to make it a little darker in options, that would be great; (I might be wrong tho, probably because i didn't try it myself).

Keep up the good work guys !

It’s been a really big week for us, as we merged the second-to-last element of Build 42 into the main codebase across the rest of the team – which is the long awaited tech upgrade which brings a whole host of improvements to the engine.
 
It’s currently being tested and the feedback has been super positive so far. This said, it’s also brought over lots of small bugs, visual glitches, and issues with new depth map clipping items incorrectly. Nothing over-dramatic, but enough stuff to keep testers and coders alike fully occupied.
This is where a lot of our brains have been at recently, so we thought we’d give you an update on the engine as it now stands while testers run around kicking its tires – alongside some videos they have made along the way.
 
Likewise, we also have some examples of some of its new capabilities that we will be able to explore in future – perhaps during the Unstable beta, perhaps beyond.
 
So, a run-down of what this tech upgrade brings into the game:
 
OPTIMIZATION
We’ve made huge optimizations to the rendering of the map that should have a huge impact for most lower-midrange and upwards systems. We are now easily able to get a solid framerate even on 4K, or on furthest zoom. The difference in performance is honestly surprising, and extremely satisfying.
 
For full disclosure, however, we’ve discovered that a few of the absolutely lowest end systems capable of running our game are still adversely affected. This is because the solution for such large FPS optimization comes at the expense of GPU memory usage for the caching textures used. Cards with extremely low dedicated GPU memory may run into problems.
 
We’re investigating and trying to optimize this further to make sure as many systems as possible can benefit, and worst case scenario these optimizations will be disabled on systems where they would do more harm than good.
 
However, it’s still entirely possible that we’ll be able to resolve this completely and provide a large boost to even the most potato systems. More likely, we’ll provide some kind of automatic detection to provide as large a portion of the optimizations as possible for a GPU’s available memory. This will be our next task post visual-bug clear out.
 
Generally we estimate that a huge majority of our playerbase will benefit greatly from the optimizations. Since most of the optimization frustrations we hear come from players who feel their machine should be able to run PZ at a solid framerate, we feel this work will ease the vast majority of performance sadness we see in the community.
 
VIEW CONE
Another improvement born out of necessity is an improved and smoother viewing cone. Due to the optimizations, it was no longer feasible to alter the lighting of tiles frequently enough to allow for the smooth light changes required for our tile based viewing cone.
 
As such we needed to implement a completely separate and newly-coded viewing cone that didn’t rely on tile lighting – which truth be told we were never a huge fan of anyway.
 
Now we have a much more accurate, smooth and fancy viewing cone – and now we have extra hands on it internally feedback is being collated so that we can provide plenty of requested options to allow you to tweak it this way and that. (Making it more or less visible probably being the primary one.)
 
 
 
LIGHT PROPAGATION
The new lighting system is now in full testing, and seems to be working pretty well so far.
 
This new propagation system allows for much prettier and more convincing lighting of the world, especially now we have basements which would have been extremely unsatisfying with our existing 41 lighting.
 
41’s system basically had an ‘ambient light’ level that permeated the entirety of the world depending on the time of the day. Then on top of that indoors would get a reduction in ambient light to make them slightly darker than outside.
 
The new system propagates light from light sources such as bulbs, or the sun, across tiles to simulate reflective light. It’s not something cutting-edge that you’d expect from the Unreal Engine, or something, but for our purposes it’s extremely effective. It allows for light from a window to creep across the room, allows for rooms with no natural lighting to be in complete darkness even during the day, allows more immersive coloured lighting, and all manner of other things not previously possible in PZ.
 
Most importantly of all, it fixes the room lighting issues that plague b41 when room layouts are changed with sledgehammers leaving strange lighting artifacts on the floor, since all lighting is calculated purely based on the geometry of the rooms now.
 
With this will now come gameplay balance – there’s debate on the team as to whether the player character should have a little more clarity in the darkness, some internal spots are a little more inky-blue than black, and new gameplay elements like not being able to read in the dark will need finetuning to the new visual.
 
Also seen in the following video, for extra immersion, doors are now fully animated – as discussed last time. This makes a huge difference to the feel of interacting with them during gameplay.
 
 
   
OVERGROUND UNDERGROUND
We’re still in the process of adding basement spots around the map – whether random or permanent. However, as discussed previously, the new upgraded engine allows support for levels from -32 to +32.
 
This allows for both much more convincingly tall skyscrapers for city locations, as well as for basements and potentially sprawling underground complexes. The mapping and modding is gonna be wild.
 
Part of this is also strapping in engine capabilities to help us in future – and as such please take the following as an EXAMPLE video of what we can now do in PZ.
 
Our coders and mappers have enough on their plates at the moment, and as such this is not a confirmed feature for when 42 goes Unstable.
It will, however, be feasible within the engine which is why we’ve chosen to show it.
 
Essentially, EP has been working on some extra physics engine functionality to allow for the physics to exist on floors other than the ground floor – as well as providing new physics shapes that in future will allow for this. This work was also a necessary foothold for other physics-based features we have brewing for future versions.
 
 
Please note also, just to quell any mapper fears again, these extensive engine and map data structure changes will not make existing map mods invalid. All maps will need to be reexported in the new versions of the tools when we release them, most likely around the time we put out the Unstable beta, but they won’t need to be redone from scratch.
MEANWHILE…
We’re waiting on a big commit to fill in some of the gaps in the crafting system process itself, so in the mean-time lets focus on some of the fun stuff that’ll be coming out the other end: weapons.
 
Clearly we already have the more ‘normal’ and traditional blacksmithed weapons for B42 already, and likewise the more ancient-styled stone axes and such. With these we’re avoiding anything specific to any period or culture, going for real life examples that were common across history and geography, and that could pass as something reasonably iron age, medieval, or post-apocalypse. We have consulted an expert in these matters regarding the designs and selection, and we’re also providing them with further weapon designs as we make them for feedback.
 
But, as we stretch out into our apocalypse we also wanted something a little more… apocalypse-y.
As such, currently what’s being wrapped up are post-apocalypse improvised weapons. These include classic examples like the “nail-spiked weapons”, but also weapons that have been constructed with welding and metalshop tools.
 
With these designs a conscious decision has been made to not think about weapons from other games or zombie media, and instead research was conducted regarding real life improvised /crafted weapons. This included stuff like police collections of seized weapons and trench warfare, with additional inspiration from weapons in Max Mad-style post-apocalypse media.
 
We also took on something of a procedural approach, where we looked at the weapons and items that existed (or could exist) in the game, and imagined them being combined like Lego bricks to create weapons. Granted in many cases we just re-invented the wheel, but that helped keep things grounded, realistic, and consistent with the rest of the game.
 
Although we tried to make these weapons realistic and believable, we have allowed for a couple of weapons to be slightly (reasonably) zany. We’re allowed to have a little fun, after all, and all those weapons will also have realistic drawbacks when wielded.
 
Simultaneous to this, we are also adding some broken versions of existing Zomboid weapons. Some of these broken weapons and their parts will be used in crafting other weapons, but these fragments also exist for gory consequences when weapons break when bashing a zombie with them.
I don’t quite know why we’re using this strange moustachioed gentleman to demonstrate these today, but lets have a proper look at him in any case. Curious chap.
 
BACK TO ANIMS-LAND
Finally, a big welcome to Nick from our colleagues at TEA Games who has joined us to help us implement something we call PenguinTech – after the time Zac got two million on-screen dancing penguins into a Wii game.
 
Originally slated for B41 this will, in essence, be a clever way of optimizing our zombie hordes – pooling what states they are in, and then sharing a smaller pool of zombie skeletons for the same anims. With this, fingers crossed, we’ll get better performance when there’s a horde on-screen and in turn we can be less dainty with their application in your survival.
 
A full round-up of everything confirmed for Build 42 can be found here. 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.

Most likely for high resolution vehicle mods like KI5's R32 GTR that got butchered with the last update. Zombie corpses also look terrible after the last update. I thought updates were supposed to be improvements, but I guess not.

Farming really needed a rework indeed, glad to hear that is also in the oven !
 
Plants should need sunlight as well, indoor farming/greenhouse, temperature and such should be also a plus!

Hotfix 41.78.12 - November 23rd:
Propane Torch usage rebalanced for Fixing and Repair scripts to accommodate the change in capacity; all reduced to 2.
Added "AllowRottenItem:true" parameter to the recipes to Empty Frying Pans; Griddle Pans; and Roasting Pans. This will allow players to reclaim said pans when they let Stir Fries and Omelettes get rotten. Recipes such as the Mildew Spray Cure, and Emptying Sacks of produce now have the field "AllowRottenItem:true" which allows rotten items to be used in that recipe. Fixed the Make Mildew Cure recipe not allowing both regular and Canned Milk; as players were unable to make this cure after all of the normal Milk has gone rotten. Fixed being unable to use Rotten Milk to make the Mildew Spray Cure.
Commented out the "Make Pot of Soup" recipes; they're obsolete given the evolved recipe system which handles this matter better. Fixed being unable to use Canned Soup to make evolved recipe soup. Changed the display name of "Canned Soup" to "Canned Vegetable Soup". Note: To make Pots of Soup with Opened Cans of Soup you must now add them to a Pot of Water, as an evolved recipe soup. This fixes the Super Soup exploit and will allow players to also add additional ingredients to the Soup. The other way of making Pots of Soup was an obsolete and in many ways incompatible method from before the evolved recipe system.
Updated the Clean Tray recipe so it works with trays of Biscuit Dough, and also so that it works with rotten and cooked ingredients, so players can always recover a tray from rotten trays of food. Several tweaks to clothing masks. Added missing SetMelee Delay on Pistol Whip animation. Fixed Hoodie and Vest masks to work properly with base mesh. Fixed JokeKnife, JokeArrow, BunnyEars, FurryEars, Antlers and GodStar Headbopper to work with all hairstyles. Fixed moodle and heart wiggle-speed, now reduced by half. Fixed an issue with forageSystem.lua not accounting for the new loot rarity settings. Fixed the veteran having some duplicate clothing selection options. Fixed in-game map road that was made curved in cell 35,31. Fixed print() statement from JoyPadSetup.lua that resulted in unnecessary messages in the console log. Fixed source files not being loaded in the Lua debugger on Linux. Fixed mod Lua files not being loaded in the Lua debugger.
Fixed being able to purify Watering Cans in an Oven. Fixed being able to turn Cooked Eggs back into Uncooked Eggs. Fixed Pizzas having the hasMetal tag. Fixed error in SliceCooked test. Fixed PopEmpty2 and PopEmpty3 having DisplayCategory = WaterContainer instead of DisplayCategory = Junk. Fixed PopEmpty having DisplayCategory = Material instead of DisplayCategory = Junk. Fixed BeerCanEmpty having DisplayCategory = WaterContainer instead of Junk. Fixed Buckets not having been updated to use metal filling sounds instead of plastic filling sounds. Fixed distant players not appearing on the in-game map when the server option allows it. Fixed Male_Undies not having the "OBSOLETE = TRUE" parameter. Also removed them from the foraging pool. Fixed not using a language's desired encoding when reading credits.txt. Fixed non-admins seeing invisible remote players on the in-game map.  

Hotfix 41.78.10 - November 21st:
 
- Fixed being able to purify Watering Cans in a Microwave or Oven.
- Fixed being able to turn Cooked Eggs back into Uncooked Eggs.
- Fixed Pizzas having the hasMetal tag.
- Fixed error in SliceCooked test.
- Fixed distant players not appearing on the in-game map when the server option allows it.
- Fixed Male_Undies not having the "OBSOLETE = TRUE" parameter. Also removed them from the foraging pool.

This build will be pushed to Stable within the next day or two.

Hotfix 41.78.9 - November 17th:
 
- Several tweaks to clothing masks.
 
- Updated the Clean Tray recipe so it works with trays of Biscuit Dough, and also so that it works with rotten and cooked ingredients, so players can always recover a tray from rotten trays of food.
 
- Fixed "Pour on Ground" Shortbread Cookies recipe, replaced it with a recipe to Empty Baking Trays.
- Fixed possible Lua error with setUseSteamRelay(nil) calls in the server browser.
- Fixed being unable to slice Cakes or Pies.
- Fixed being unable to put evolved recipe Rice and Pasta into Bowls.


Barring further hotfixes, this is the build that will be going out to Stable early next week.

Hotfix 41.78.8 - November 16th:

- Propane Torch usage rebalanced for Fixing and Repair scripts to accommodate the change in capacity; all reduced to 2.
 
- Added "AllowRottenItem:true" parameter to the recipes to Empty Frying Pans; Griddle Pans; and Roasting Pans. This will allow players to reclaim said pans when they let Stir Fries and Omelettes get rotten.
- Recipes such as the Mildew Spray Cure, and Emptying Sacks of produce now have the field "AllowRottenItem:true" which allows rotten items to be used in that recipe.
- Fixed the Make Mildew Cure recipe not allowing both regular and Canned Milk; as players were unable to make this cure after all of the normal Milk has gone rotten.
- Fixed being unable to use Rotten Milk to make the Mildew Spray Cure.
 
- Commented out the "Make Pot of Soup" recipes; they're obsolete given the evolved recipe system which handles this matter better.
- Fixed being unable to use Canned Soup to make evolved recipe soup.
- Changed the display name of "Canned Soup" to "Canned Vegetable Soup".
    Note: To make Pots of Soup with Opened Cans of Soup you must now add them to a pot of water, as an evolved recipe soup. This fixes the Super Soup exploit and will allow players to also add additional ingredients to the Soup. The other way of making Pots of Soup was an obsolete and in many ways incompatible method from before the evolved recipe system.
 
- Added missing SetMelee Delay on Pistol Whip animation.
- Fixed Hoodie and Vest masks to work properly with base mesh.
- Fixed JokeKnife, JokeArrow, BunnyEars, FurryEars, Antlers and GodStar Headbopper to work with all hairstyles.
 
- Fixed moodle and heart wiggle-speed, now reduced by half.
- Fixed an issue with forageSystem.lua not accounting for the new loot rarity settings.
- Fixed the veteran having some duplicate clothing selection options.
- Fixed in-game map road that was made curved in cell 35,31.
- Fixed print() statement from JoyPadSetup.lua that resulted in unnecessary messages in the console log.
- Fixed source files not being loaded in the Lua debugger on Linux.
- Fixed mod Lua files not being loaded in the Lua debugger.

Hello survivors! Three things of note this week.
FINAL BUILD 41 PATCH RELEASED
This afternoon we put out 41.78 to the stable branch, and you can read its changelist here.
Nothing seems to have exploded just yet, but there will very likely be a hot fix for anything that does crop up. We’ve had a few complaints of visual issues with some clothing that we’d thought we’d fixed for instance, that can probably get a quick look-over again before we move on.
This patch is largely quality of life changes, some MP tweaks and fixes for longstanding annoyances – so hopefully you’ll see a few things in the changelist that make you feel both cherished and warm.

Other than that hot fix, unless we return if circumstances demand it, the final devs who were tinkering in Build 41 will from this point on all be fully aboard the Build 42 train.
 
BARNYARD FRIENDS
First, let us reiterate – Build 42 is still a long way off. However RJ’s development playpen for the domestic animals that the build will feature is still ticking along quite nicely. This week he has prepared two videos for your delight but first TWO caveats.
 
First, our animator Martin wants it known that one of the things we’ll be working on will be the way animals turn / turn when they move.
Secondly, clearly what you’re seeing here is debug dev-stuff – especially how it looks and operates when leading an animal around on a rope. We haven’t quite landed on the best way to herd animals around yet, and will likely have to land at a halfway house between realistic, feasible and fun. Likewise, thirdly I guess, UIs clearly aren’t final yet either.
 
So here’s proof that you can pet the cute little animals in Build 42 of Project Zomboid.
 
 
And here’s how to coax them into a trailer so you can cart them off to slaughter them somewhere distant so their loud desperate squeals won’t attract zombies.
 
MAGICAL WOODLAND FRIEND
Yes, it’s happened. Spiffo merchandise is finally a thing. Behold! More information to come later on down the line. But for now…



To register your interest in crowdfunding a Spiffo plushie visit the Makeship Store! The full campaign begins in less than a week!

To find out how you could win one of two free plushies visit this twitter post!
This week’s table arsenal from Polaris. 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. No-one is allowed to make a jar-based gag in the presence of our Spiffo plushie, please, as we had to google it and oh dear god no please no.

Hotfix 41.78.16 - December 12th:
 
Fixed ServerConnectPopup missing the new "Use Steam Relay" option, which led to the +connect argument not working.

Hotfix 41.78.15 - December 5th:
 
Fixed being able to still add a split-screen player when AllowCoop is disabled. Fixed seeing through walls sometimes after loading into a game. Fixed an error in ISZoneDisplay:getZoneTooltipText. Fixed players briefly appearing at 0,0 on the in-game map after joining a server. Fixed displaying players with name ??? on the in-game map. This happened when the client had not received the first full update with the player's name and other info

Hotfix 41.78.13 - November 30th:
 
Added AllowCoop server option to allow or disallow splitscreen clients. Added MaxTextureSize (default 256) and MaxVehicleTextureSize (default 512) options to the Display options menu. Each of these can be 256, 512, 1024 or 2048.
  Fixed the propane required for the metal wall upgrade system so that you are capable of making a Mk II metal wall without having to upgrade first. Fixed sleeping pills not being taken in account with the panic sleep exploit fix. Fixed some vehicle textures (such as for wheels) being limited to 256x256 instead of 512x512. Fixed reading ServerList.txt and ServerListSteam.txt with the default system encoding instead of UTF-8. Fixed being unable to slice or smash a rotten watermelon. Fixed an error in the farming menu that limited squares watered after the first to 50 water units maximum instead of 100. Fixed /additem command exception when run from the server console. Fixed redundant console output from ISInventoryPaneContextMenu.lua Fixed distant remote players not being displayed on the in-game map.  
Hotfix 41.78.12 - November 23rd:
Propane Torch usage rebalanced for Fixing and Repair scripts to accommodate the change in capacity; all reduced to 2.
Added "AllowRottenItem:true" parameter to the recipes to Empty Frying Pans; Griddle Pans; and Roasting Pans. This will allow players to reclaim said pans when they let Stir Fries and Omelettes get rotten. Recipes such as the Mildew Spray Cure, and Emptying Sacks of produce now have the field "AllowRottenItem:true" which allows rotten items to be used in that recipe. Fixed the Make Mildew Cure recipe not allowing both regular and Canned Milk; as players were unable to make this cure after all of the normal Milk has gone rotten. Fixed being unable to use Rotten Milk to make the Mildew Spray Cure.
Commented out the "Make Pot of Soup" recipes; they're obsolete given the evolved recipe system which handles this matter better. Fixed being unable to use Canned Soup to make evolved recipe soup. Changed the display name of "Canned Soup" to "Canned Vegetable Soup". Note: To make Pots of Soup with Opened Cans of Soup you must now add them to a Pot of Water, as an evolved recipe soup. This fixes the Super Soup exploit and will allow players to also add additional ingredients to the Soup. The other way of making Pots of Soup was an obsolete and in many ways incompatible method from before the evolved recipe system.
Updated the Clean Tray recipe so it works with trays of Biscuit Dough, and also so that it works with rotten and cooked ingredients, so players can always recover a tray from rotten trays of food. Several tweaks to clothing masks. Added missing SetMelee Delay on Pistol Whip animation. Fixed Hoodie and Vest masks to work properly with base mesh. Fixed JokeKnife, JokeArrow, BunnyEars, FurryEars, Antlers and GodStar Headbopper to work with all hairstyles. Fixed moodle and heart wiggle-speed, now reduced by half. Fixed an issue with forageSystem.lua not accounting for the new loot rarity settings. Fixed the veteran having some duplicate clothing selection options. Fixed in-game map road that was made curved in cell 35,31. Fixed print() statement from JoyPadSetup.lua that resulted in unnecessary messages in the console log. Fixed source files not being loaded in the Lua debugger on Linux. Fixed mod Lua files not being loaded in the Lua debugger.
Fixed being able to purify Watering Cans in an Oven. Fixed being able to turn Cooked Eggs back into Uncooked Eggs. Fixed Pizzas having the hasMetal tag. Fixed error in SliceCooked test. Fixed PopEmpty2 and PopEmpty3 having DisplayCategory = WaterContainer instead of DisplayCategory = Junk. Fixed PopEmpty having DisplayCategory = Material instead of DisplayCategory = Junk. Fixed BeerCanEmpty having DisplayCategory = WaterContainer instead of Junk. Fixed Buckets not having been updated to use metal filling sounds instead of plastic filling sounds. Fixed distant players not appearing on the in-game map when the server option allows it. Fixed Male_Undies not having the "OBSOLETE = TRUE" parameter. Also removed them from the foraging pool. Fixed not using a language's desired encoding when reading credits.txt. Fixed non-admins seeing invisible remote players on the in-game map.  
 
NEW
Added a prompt for the updated Terms of Service as we are a big boy game now and have to fit in with the other biggerer boys. Added sandbox option to disable Fake Dead Reanimation. Disabled Fake deads in MP by default. Added more control over fake dead behaviour to the sandbox options; having zombies that were "killed" having a chance to become fake dead is an option that is off by default. Added sandbox option that allows Corpse Maggot spawning to be disabled or limited to corpse inventory. Added sandbox option that allows poisoning food to be disabled, or for poisoning food with bleach to be disabled. Added sandbox option to disable the Tainted Water Tooltip/Warning for hardcore play Added sandbox option for enabling/disabling XP multipliers affecting passive skills, which is false by default. Added sandbox option that prevents survivor vehicles from spawning. Added sandbox option "Light Bulb Lifespan". This does not affect Light Bulbs in vehicles, only in light fixture tiles. Added "Randomize" options to Zombie sandbox options for Memory, Sight, and Hearing. Added loot rarity settings "Incredibly Rare" and "None", as well as a "Super Low" option for Fuel Pump content. Items from table stories/randomized stories/etc will still spawn when loot rarity is set to none. Renamed Item "Weight" to "Encumbrance" in the UI and context menu. Added an Accessibility Option that makes the player character automatically walk to a click container within a short radius of 3 tiles. Added the ability to set custom "Good" and "Bad" highlighting colours in the Accessibility Options menu. This is applied to things like traits, tooltips, and the aiming outline. Added an option to bind "Walk To" to a key instead of having to go through the RMB menu. Added highlighting to clicked Crates so it's easier to tell which crate is selected. This can be enabled or disabled in the in-game Options. Added a Context Menu entry that enables/disables Auto-Drink. Tiles that are being disassembled will now be highlighted in the "bad colour", red being the default. Resolutions higher than 1440p will have their zoom levels adjusted to allow closer zoom-in, bringing it more in line with lower resolutions. Disabled some Randomized Survivor Safehouses from occurring in instances where a building has over 10 rooms, or is a spawn location. The limit is 10 for some and 20 for other Randomized Survivor Safehouses. This also means the Toilet Paper story is now disabled in buildings that have over 10 rooms or are spawn locations, which will likely reduce the amount of Reddit posts about it by 50%. Added a check to prevent any of the randomized burnt building stories from occurring if the building is a spawn location. Changed ISCloseVehicleDoor to play the door closing sound when the action is completed instead of its start. This is to provide better feedback for players in cases where they have unwittingly cancelled this action. Added "HasMetal" tag for items. This tag was added to food and water items in metal containers, which will now set microwaves on fire when microwaved. Adjusted the mechanics UI so that both the Battery Charge and Condition are included in the Battery entry in the list of parts. Modified the vehicle mechanics UI to prominently feature the % of a full tank of gas it has, in addition to the battery charge. Added a few more existing clothing options to the character creation. Added the ability to destroy only one wall when selecting corner walls. Replaced the bucket world static model textures with metal icons and textures and not plastic ones, as buckets are now metal and not plastic. Updated the BucketEmpty and BucketWaterFull scripts with tooltips and IsCookable to reflect that they are now metal and not plastic. Changed the icon of the Watering Can With Water to match the Empty Water Can and the Watering Can models. Added a stale tooltip for perishable food to display, when appropriate, that such food is neither fresh nor rotten. Added tooltip to Club Hammers and Mallets explaining that they are unsuitable for driving nails. Flatpack model is applied to movable items that use the Flatpack icon. Made more food items capable of being added to tacos and burritos. Bell Pepper can now be added to Stews. Added a check so cooked eggs cannot be used for inappropriate non-evolved recipes. Removed the requirement for hot water to make a bowl of oats. Changed the Violet FoodType to NoExplicit. Trash tiles (Movable items) and Plastic Bags can now be used as tinder and fuel for fires. Changed the Sawed-off Shotgun recipes to only use the hacksaw, and not the garden saw; a wood saw would be unable to cut through the metal barrel of a shotgun. Added the Meat Cleaver to the Slice Onions recipe. Removed it from the Jack-o'-lantern recipe. Changed the Cigarettes script to prioritize using Matches before a Lighter if both are in the same inventory. Added a new Doctor's bag and military duffel bag. Renamed "Hemophobic" trait to "Fear of Blood". Vehicle Spawn Chance rate can now be a float value instead of just an int. Added a check to prevent items that "weigh" over 50 units from being put in vehicle seats. This is an ongoing issue with bags/containers that are modded over capacity, which get stuck once placed in vehicle seats when the bag + contents have an Encumbrance of >50. Changed translation strings to make bottle names more consistent. Changed IGUI_HouseKey from "House Key" to "Key" to avoid issues with non-residential keys. Removed the numeric information tooltip provided when selecting eat all/half/quarter food item context options. Commented out the tool definitions in ClothingRecipesDefinitions as they currently are nonfunctional and serve no purpose aside from confusing modders. Commented out the WoodenLance in the safehouse weapons distro lists; that item is redundant vs SpearCrafted, and also doesn't work with spear recipes. SpearCrafted already spawns with safehouse weapons. Replaced AmmoStraps in the safehouse armor distro list with AmmoStraps_Bullets and AmmoStraps_Shells. Changed the display name translation string for the wearable AmmoStraps items to Bandolier on account of consistent confusion with the weapon attachment that is also called Ammo Straps. Changed the display name translation string for firearm magazines to use the firearm it is for, and not the caliber, as the prefix. Solves having two .308 Magazines, for both the MSR788 and the M14, and also that's how they're named in real life. Added a tooltip to firearm magazines that displays the ammunition type that it accepts. Added missing models for Candy Corn, Candied Fruit Slices, Hot Sauce, Fountain Cups, JuJubes, Nettles, Shrimp Dumplings, Poached Eggs, Scrambled Eggs, Packaged Corn, Pickled Ginger, Sugar Cookies, Fish Sushi, Radio Receivers,Radio Transmitters, Gummy Bears, Gummy Worms, and Tent Kits. MULTIPLAYER
Added server option "KnockedDownAllowed" to enable/disable the PVP knockdown. This is a stopgap change to give servers an option to make PVP combat less frustrating before we can address PVP combat more directly in the future. Adjusted Type 3 and 5 Anticheat to reduce false-positives. Added auto-completion for player nicknames when pressing TAB while typing in the Chatbox. Added RCON command "checkModsNeedUpdate" to check for mods that need to be updated. Allow other non-admin permission levels to delete items in inventory/containers. Added Checksum logging for MP servers, enabled by default for now. Extended NetChecksum logs: Client dumps logs into checksum.txt. Client sends logs to server. Server dumps logs into checksum.txt. Server dumps client's logs into checksum- .txt. Multiplayer clients will now retry the GettingServerInfo request 3 times. DB Viewer userlog will now have the amount field increased for repeated counts of suspicious activity. When sorting the relative paths of scripts and Lua files to determine load order, the relative paths are first converted to lowercase. This is to fix platform differences breaking checksums in multiplayer. It also fixes the issue where the same file might be loaded more than once if mods use different capitalization for the same file or folder. Fixed the multiplayer "whisper" command corrupting the Lua environment due to multithreading. Fixed being unable to claim a safehouse unless standing on the ground floor. Fixed not checking upper floors for other players or zombies when claiming a safehouse. Fixed an exception on the server when food rots into a new item in a container that isn't in the world any longer. Fixed new stubble getting added to remote players after each appearance change. Fixed text annotations not appearing on annotated maps in multiplayer. Fixed Endurance sync in the Admin Health Tool. Fixed a bug that didn't display mods in the mod list of a server in the ESC menu. Fixed admins being unable to remove car hoods while inside the vehicle. Fixed players being unable to interact with Radios they placed themselves. Fixed a safehouse owner always respawning in their safehouse when the option to do so is unchecked. BALANCE
Modified the M16 & M14 critical values to be more consistent with other rifles. M16 CriticalChance changed from 30 to 25. Added CritDmgMultiplier 10 Added AimingPerkCritModifier 12 M14 CriticalChance changed from 0 to 30. Added CritDmgMultiplier 10 AimingPerkCritModifier 15 Disabled the cumulative slowdown until the next shot when firing the M16 in automatic mode. Firing the M16 in automatic mode will cumulatively reduce the chance of a critical with each additional shot. This is intended to represent the loss in accuracy due to recoil. Short summary of the various changes in this changelog that impact the Propane Torch and Propane Tanks. There has been a pretty longstanding bug where Propane Torches were not used up for several Disassemblies. With the fix, usage of them was reduced from 100 to 10 but the number of refills per tank was adjusted from 2 to 16, along with changes that make sure players find more Propane Tanks in the world to offset the reduction. Set some traits to be mutually exclusive to remove exploits or illogical combinations. Hot-Wiring a vehicle will have a low chance of causing a car alarm. The chance for this is decreased further for higher electronics skill levels. Zombies pushing up against a previously unentered stationary vehicle have a chance to set off an alarm. Removed the undesired RNG check that made vehicle alarms go off only 20% of the time. Fixed car hoods being unable to trigger vehicle alarms. Disabled being able to make melee attacks while inside a vehicle with the window rolled down. Randomized the fall damage that zombies take. This randomized spread will average out to the previous damage before it was randomized; this will have a minor impact (hohoho) on the damage that zombies that fall suffer, but slightly more of them will be able to be killed by this than before. Made it so groin injuries from not-crawler zombies are less common, and that crawlers can also inflict uncommon groin injuries. Increased the yield of metal parts when scrapping wrecked vehicles by 33%. Added a new procedural container, "CratePropane", to garages and shed. Increased the spawn rates for Propane Tanks in the distributions. Increased the spawnrate of Thread and added the chance of Sewing Kits to spawn in gloveboxes. Trailer capacity now reduces slightly when damaged, as there was no point in repairing them before. Changed Bowling Ball Bag capacity from 2 to 8. Increase number of Plaster uses to 10, same as Paint. Allow plastic bags and money to be used as tinder Adjusted duration of the stationary Pistol Whip animation, it's now the same length as the shove animation. Adjusted the capacities of pistol and revolver cases from 7 down to 4. Adjusted Encumbrance of the sturdy stick item to 1 to be more consistent with other items. Adjusted Encumbrance of fire extinguishers to 2, to be consistent with other items. Decreased Encumbrance of Walkie-Talkies. Adjusted Encumbrance of the TreeBranch item to match that of a crafted spear, to 1.7 from 1; The Encumbrance discrepancy has been remarked upon repeatedly, and this also serves in making item Encumbrance more consistent. Adjusted the amount of fuel that spawns in fuel pumps at Low and Very Low. Updated the nutritional value for Canned Evaporated Milk. Calories 472; Carbs, Lipids, and Proteins at 23.6 Changed the days until rotten for Bagels from 2 to 6. Gave the Stir Fry and roast script items a default hunger value of 10. This was previously reported as a bug when players spawned the item in instead of making it via the evolved recipe. Maggots are slightly more poisonous. Fewer maggots spawn, especially in spring and fall (maggots don't spawn during winter). Maggots are now a default item in the world item removal lists. Added a comment for the world item removal lists explaining that Base.Maggots should stay in the list due to corpse maggots. Additional safeguard to prevent errors when using mods that remove maggots altogether. DEBUG / MODDING
Added a search bar to the LootZed cheat panel. Added vehicle distributions to LootZed. Improved inventory check-in Check Stats panel. Right-clicking on a fuel pump in debug mode will display the amount of fuel in the pump in the right-click context menu. Added logging of player injuries caused by zombies to the console when in debug mode. Added isStartValid function check for BaseTimedAction. Allows checking if an action is valid before the action starts. Added saving ModData from IsoGameCharacter to IsoDeadBody and from IsoDeadBody to IsoZombie. Added "OnPlayerGetDamage" event. Added event "OnWeaponHitThumpable" (Args: character, weapon, object) Added a trigger for the OnFillContainer Event when vehicle part containers are filled. Added the tag "CarBattery" which can be used with mod item car batteries so they can be charged with the vanilla car battery charger. Added the event "OnThrowableExplode", which transmits the IsoTrap and IsoSquare when one detonates. Added a toggle option in the vehicle debug context menu that will show if a vehicle's alarm is enabled or disabled. Changed Fast Move cheat in debug. Players can now levitate on different height levels via the PageUP/PageDown keys, and move around via the Arrow Keys on the different height levels. Made ImageScale, SeatOffsetY and SeatOffsetX global and not local in ISVehicleSeatUI. "Missing translation", "ignoring invalid ItemPicker item type", and "VEHICLE MISSING CONT DISTRIBUTION" console messages will now only appear when using debug mode. Exposed the MediaData.MediaLineData class. When the Sound.WorldSound.Render debug option is enabled, world sounds are rendered according to the Hearing sandbox option. For Hearing=Random (where each zombie may have a different radius) sounds are rendered using the Hearing=Normal radius. This does not mean that their hearing radius is not randomized, it only means that a world sound radius cannot be rendered on a per zombie basis in debug mode. For Hearing=Pinpoint/Normal/Poor, meta-zombie hearing radius is handled properly. FileDifferent, FileNotOnServer, and FileNotOnClient errors will now display the absolute paths of both files. This should make it clearer that a mod might just have been using the wrong capitalization for a folder. Fixed characters in godmode still changing body weight. Fixed instances of the Cheat Menu not working after a player died. Fixed removing bodies via Horde manager not working in SP. Fixed being stuck in a vehicle after trying to uninstall/install a car part through the Mechanics Cheat, when a character was inside the vehicle. Fixed bug with health panel: Fully healing a body part now also removes its muscle fatigue. Fixed mod texture packs being loaded before Core.TileScale was set based on the double-sized-textures option. This would result in 2x texture packs being loaded instead of 1x texture packs.
Fixed issues with the Tile picker: Fixed being unable to lock Doors placed via Tile Picker. Fixed Tree Tile issues. Fixed electronic tiles (TV, radio, generators, etc). Fixed Garage Doors. Fixed Street Light tiles. Fixed Search Bar issues. Fixed Light Switches. Fixed not showing all tiles. Fixed Fireplace objects. Fixed Wells and Lights. FIXES
Fixed only being able to add Maple syrup to "PancakesRecipe" and not to "PancakesCraft" or "Pancakes". Fixed not being able to make 2 or 4 bowls of Rice or Pasta with a Saucepan anymore. Fixed lipstick not being appliable when player had Foundation Makeup in inventory Fixed Make-Up not being appliable when in a car. Fixes and changes to item categories. Fixed destroying a wall with a Lightswitch on it not destroying the Lightswitch too. Fixed making 2/4 bowls from a Saucepan returning a Cooking Pot. Fixed putting a hat on a Mohawk resetting hair growth timer. Fixed not being able to make a Molotov with an Empty Beer bottle. Fixed repeatedly building/disassembling some carpentry objects increasing the number of Planks sometimes. Fixed Sand/Gravel Bag wall behaviour when built at an angle. Fixed selected part of a garment in the "Inspect" UI being too faint. Fixed Shirts and other clothing items getting auto-removed from the world. Fixed unnecessary extra Muffin recipe. United the two existing Muffin recipes into one. Fixed being able to make Cake Batter using rotten ingredients below level 7. Fixed unused Zombie Decomposition sandbox option still being listed. Fixed NullPointerException in bThump animation variable when the object isn't loaded. Fixed being unable to click on open doors in an adjacent room. Fixed the starting house in "A Really CDDAy" challenge sometimes not being on fire. Fixed possible Lua error in MOBarricade.lua when a barricade sprite is on the east or south edge of a chunk. Fixed minor issues in ISZoneDisplay UI and text colours. Fixed Foraging icons rerolling when a search focus was selected. Fixed ISSearchManager check for valid zoneData when loading icons. Fixed not being able to rip Jeans/Leather Jackets when they're on the ground instead of the player inventory. Fixed disassembly of Favourited items. Fixed randomized crashed cars not having the correct car keys spawned for them. Fixed Mouse Trap related collision. Fixed sound issue when pressing W and S at the same time. Fixed sound issue when switching Seats while Cruise Control was enabled. Fixed Refill tool not updating the container visually. Fixed incorrectly named recipe for making Wooden Box Traps. Fixed several tile and cutaway issues. Fixed Lighters draining completely when used with a Molotov. When a Lighter is equipped it will no longer automatically become lit, instead it will do so only if activated using the flashlight keybind or radial menu, or using the inventory context menu option to activate them. Fixed evolved recipe error in scripts for Lemons and Lime. Fixed Machetes not losing condition when used to craft spears from branches/planks. Fixed Empty Beer Bottle using the wrong icons. Fixed the space before commas in evolved recipe item names. Fixed missing recipe for Opening Canned Fruit Beverage. Changed "Canned Condensed Milk" to "Canned Evaporated Milk" because people are really passionate about milk in can lore. Fixed melted ice cream not rotting. Fixed house keys spawning with a long string of numbers in their display name. Fixed climb sheet rope speed. Fixed water collision bug when placing Stairs on water. Fixed missing textures for Flatpack model. Fixed ISInventoryPaneContextMenu.doEvorecipeMenu error. Fixed the on-screen keyboard returning asterisks instead of the actual text when entering passwords. Fixed microwaves not stopping the StoveTimer sound when turned off. Fixed missing context menu translation string for "Item Water Capacity". Fixed missing movables translation strings for Oak Bars. Fixed missing translation string for foodtype cocoa. Fixed wrong tooltip for Onion Slices. Fixed pies and cakes being able to be sliced when uncooked. Fixed frozen ice cream cones causing boredom and unhappiness; added the "GoodFrozen" tag for such items that should still be enjoyable when frozen. Fixed characters not limping when they had their groin bitten. Fixed being able to fill a square over its capacity by using the Place Item interface. Fixed cooking rotten eggs producing fresh boiled eggs; now if food is rotten and has a "replace on cooked" value, it will not be replaced but will still be cooked, i.e. you will get a cooked rotten egg when you cook a rotten egg. Fixed Propane Torch not being used for disassembling objects. Fixed Walking and sprinting not burning more calories than standing still. Fixed NullPointerExeption when throwing a bomb from above ground level with a controller. Fixed not being able to pick items that were dropped to a removed seat slot. Fixed being stuck on a seat when trying to change seat twice in different places. Fixed being able to do Fitness during sleep and while sitting in a car. Fixed the eternal fire after destroying a lit campfire with a sledgehammer. Fixed Map objects disappearing when a player aims at a stealthing player. Fixed bug with item icons in halo text when foraging. Fixed a bug with locking/unlocking doors inside buildings. Fixed different values between standard and evolved recipes for Soup. Fixed an issue where the interaction between the two different separate zombie population sandbox settings was inconsistent between singleplayer and multiplayer sandbox setting interfaces. Fixed equipping "Bandana (face)" placing the bandana on the head. Fixed not being able to get a key ring. Some zombies will now have their house or vehicle key in a key ring, and key rings can also sometimes be found in store displays with watches. Fixed that it was impossible for a randomized name to be "Pat Bren". Fixed adding poisonous berries or mushrooms to an evolved recipe did not make the product poisonous. Fixed missing icon for Scrambled Eggs. Fixed currently nonfunctional bayonet and gunlight items not being commented out in the distribution files. Fixed missing models/textures for Fountain Cups, Recipe Pizza and Recipe Bread. Fixed missing "Obsolete" parameter to BakingTrayBread as it's an unused test item without a model. Fixed missing checks to prevent buildings with inappropriate randomized dead survivor stories from being alarmed. Fixed being able to use the place item option to place infinite items in a floor square. Fixed cut and paste error in the unused function HandWeapon.getToHitMod. Fixed an exploit where players, especially ones with desensitized, were able to sleep immediately after breaking LOS with zombies. Fixed a couple of inconsistencies between the default MP settings and the Apocalypse setting on account of the loot setting changes. Fixed CannedMilk not having the parameter CannedFood = TRUE. Fixed only pouring 50 units when selecting the option to put 100 units of water into a farming plot. Fixed an issue with the vehicle alarm debug tool, BaseVehicle.setAlarmed also needed to set previouslyEntered to false for the vehicle when enabling an alarm. Fixed car horns continuing when switching seats while honking. Fixed being able to hold down keys while AFKing to grind nimble; now a check is made to ensure that the character has actually moved before awarding XP. Fixed error with broken glass script name in distro files. Fixed hazmat suit missing blood locations. Fixed being able to put uncooked bacon into tacos and burritos. Fixed Pink Hair Dye not being in the distribution lists. Fixed not being able to put Black Beans into a salad. Fixed Strength XP levels causing slower Sheet Rope climbing at certain levels, especially at level 10. Fixed bugged interaction with building metal objects and the Propane Torch. Fixed not being able to disassemble car wrecks due to a missing Propane Torch, even though it was in inventory. This needs Balance feedback since the usage per Torch was also changed. Fixed interaction when pressing shift+e near passenger seat to move to the drivers seat. Fixed ISBuryCorpse action validity check. Fixed using a firearm to repair another firearm evaporating the ammo, magazine, and attachments of the first weapon. The items will now be placed in the player's inventory. Fixed being unable to read in a car when the engine was running. Fixed zombies spawning inside buildings when the zombie populations is set to 0. Fixed missing world static model for Bag_ShotgunDblSawnoffBag. Fixed search window tooltips still appearing on hover when the world map is open. Fixed player able to walk away while equipping items to scrap or destroy an object to perform the actions from afar. Fixed dismantling floors with the character on top by moving character to an adjacent square where possible. Fixed disassembly context menu issue: Added highlighting of target object in world and object texture in disassembly tooltips. Fixed reflective and shooting glasses having reversed icons. Fixed some events of ZomboidSoundMP.bank not playing for remote clients. This is to potentially fix sounds cutting out when several players are together. Fixed players being unable to fire guns from inside vehicles under some circumstances. Fixed firearm damage being affected by the distance to the target. Fixed the infinite timed-action progress bar being displayed for actions that set useProgressBar=false. Fixed recently introduced bug that caused sounds to attract zombies from too far away. Fixed WorldSoundManager.getSoundAttract() not using IsoZombie.hearing. Fixed masking problems with Hoodie and Poncho being worn together. Fixed transparency issue with trouser texture. Fixed the rate of moodle and the heart (health panel) icon wiggling not handling ui offscreen rendering and uncapped framerate. Fixed incorrect pathing for masks on some clothing items which should fix clipping issues. Fixed spamming the 'manual floor attack' and 'shove' keys while aiming resulting in firing empty firearms and shoving distant zombies. Fixed not-crawler zombies sometimes injuring the feet or legs. Fixed assorted errors in food items' EvolvedRecipe parameters. Fixed error with randomized zombie senses. Fixed the Disable Bleach Poisoning setting in multiplayer causing issues when adding food to Evolved Recipes. Fixed sawing off a Double Barrel Shotgun not changing its encumbrance. Fixed not being able to host locally with a nonsteam server. Fixed zombie hearing radius being too large. Fixed being unable to rip Varsity Jackets. Fixed ripping all clothing unintentionally ripping clothing worn by the player. Fixed zombie Pinpoint hearing not working as intended. Fixed not being able to empty rotten sacks of produce. Fixed infinite Propane Torch glitch when disassembling items. Fixed Encoding of Radio and TV content for Chinese languages. Fixed lightbulb lifespan sandbox value error. Fixed in-game map position of a shed in cell 35,32. Fixed Lacerations and Stitches not becoming infected. Cover stitches with alcohol soaked bandages to avoid them from getting infected.

I wonder if that's intentional?  The trailer doesn't have a cover, so maybe items falling out (at high speed?) would be something they'd add.
 
(I'd hope they'd let you add a cover / tarp to prevent it though...)

i have to confirme the supsicion, i just started a new server recently after a while and it's shocking how tough the game is now. We can barely get out of our base and we all die at least once each game. We killed hundred of zombie around our base who is not inside a town and there is always more a few minutes after. It may be something about noise because even when i sneak the z seam to always see me before i see them. I never noticed anything like that the last time i played to PZ.

41.78.3
Singleplayer
With mods
New save, but probably still a thing in old ones
 
So after playing more in latest unstabe build I can definitely say there's something strange going on with either zombie spawning or their migration. It feels way more aggresive in 41.78. Before in 41.77 I was able to swiftly clear Rosewood without problems, but now in unable to do it as zombies just keep on coming and coming from nowhere. Just had a weird situation. Arrived to my base, unloaded loot, did a whole perimiter check around the base - nothing to be seen for miles away. I went inside to segregate loot when I suddenly hear zombies banging on my door. I thought that I might have missed one maybe hiding behind a tree or something. To my surprise I was greeted to a horde of 30+ zombies just casually hanging around my base.
Couple more things I noticed from my play sessions:
- Zombies seem to be more attracted to gun fire. Even the most quiet firearm caused hundreds of zombies to just appear. (maybe it's mods fault, but it didn't happen in 41.77)
- On many occasions I found groups of 4-5 zombies standing really close to each other. Could be coincidence, but I don't recall anything like that happening so frequently in 41.77.
- Also keep in mind, that I have zombie respawning disabled completely in sandbox options.

I can confirm same thing happening to me, even in the same place as you. Very often I came back to completely cleared out areas to find them filled with lots of zombies, even with zombie respawn turned off. I can assume it's just migration, but it definitely feels way more frequent in newest version. 

Then it works only when player is not around. Cuz i was chilling at or near my base for around 5 days. When i was coming back from my loot run i noticed that streets around had groups of zombies, while i left them clean for a while. And that blob of zombies are only those who spawned nearby.
I've cleared the neighborhood again. There were like 600 zombies in quite close proximity. I've dragged groups from generator and came back to see even more zombies come up to it. I literally cant explain this many zombies just by sound bug, since i was there for a long time and cleared everything in close proximity. Nor it looks like any kind of migration. Unless there is a condominium in forest nearby. They all popped into existence near my base and surrounding streets after just one day. Like there was a helicopter but i wasn't there.

I think the issue is related to sound, I suspect that generator's range is much bigger than it used to be - which is what attracted the zombies from further away than usual.

I must say it's somewhat inconsistent maybe? I've read your post and was playing for some time without encountering anything like that. Some minor groups here and there that could be explained by migration.
But just now i returned from a whole day of clearing up Rosewood school and there were quite a number of zeds around my base and the picture on my lawn looked like a garage sale. I've cleared surrounding area quite consistently and thoroughly. And can confirm that those zombies just spawned despite my setting being Respawn Hours 720, Respawn Unseen Hours 160 and Respawn multiplier 0.01.

Thank you, this will be looked into