jamesorbe0

Hey all, some Thursday dev updates from anim-land.
CHARACTER MODELS AND LIGHTING
Last week we discussed the issues we’d been working on around how character lighting is handled – which caused characters in the anims build to glow, not get lit properly by their environment and have a blander two dimensional look.
We have now fixed this, and done a bunch of balancing to the lighting and shader coloration that everyone will hopefully find much improved.
During this process we also focused on another prominent issue: that the character pixel resolution when zoomed in was extremely blocky and lacking in detail. Due to the ways that our initial zoom system handled things, characters were too harshly pixellated. This caused them to be extremely jaggied compared to what it was in the old days, when we were rendering characters to an off-screen sprite before placing them into the world.
So, this week we’ve been doing some significant work on changing how the game handles the zoom, which in addition to fixing this issue should ultimately lead to slightly more optimized rendering of the game – as well as providing the character models much more detail to play with.
As ever, please keep in mind that we’ll continue to balance/tweak to make sure characters fit their surrounds as well as possible – as well as adjust the models themselves seeing as you can now see individual facial features much more clearly. These caveats notwithstanding, however, we’re pretty happy how they’re looking.
The branch with this system on it isn’t complete – navigating indoors presents issues, mouse input hit-testing isn’t fixed up yet, and we’re having issues with seams between tiles when zoomed out – so it’s not quite ready for integration into the main test build. Here’s a quick video of us running aimlessly around zombies under lights to show it off though.
(Along with some new Zach Beever musical accompaniments!)
OPTIMIZATION
This week Zac has been back on optimization duty. Here’s the latest vid of him doing his routine optimization test of sequentially spawning new ten-strong crowds of zombies.
Next up, here’s a video showing further optimizations to multi-threaded rendering and Mouse Input handling where zombies are cycling through their behaviours using the new dynamic state system.
FALLING OVER
Finally, over to RJ at the ‘tying it all together’ animation coalface.
“Right now I’m working on combat animations, weapons and blood– adding stuff in and fleshing things out. One thing that’s new and that people might be interested to see in action, is an effort to make sure players can’t dash through hordes without getting slowed down.”
“As seen in the video below, we’ve now added bumping against zeds. Colliding with one or two while you’re running isn’t dangerous, you’ll just get slowed down, but try running through a horde and you’ll stumble and fall – leaving you temporarily exposed to the encroaching zeds. We might add in a few more different sorts of animations for nudges/pushes, but right now it looks like this:”
“Elsewhere this week, I’ve also been making sure that zombie behaviour is working correctly – fixing bugs with them following, thumping the environment and also behaving as expected when acting as crawlers. I’ve also added a better way for zeds to react when you drive over them and knock them over, and have added my ‘clutter’ improvements to the loot spawning system to the internal test build.”
This week’s trip to the mall from Kate. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here– so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.

I actually prefer more skills and just like this, when you do something specific you get better at it specifically. If I swim a lot, that doesn't make me a good runner, it just improves my fitness. I find that too many modern games go with simpler is better approach because it seems intuitive, but it many times isn't better. This way increases differences in characters and therefore consequences for your actions and makes a more interesting gameplay.

And hi to all! Long time no post.

Did they finally include thanos in PZ?

Did they finally include thanos in PZ?

Husband/Wife name
Steam/steamapps/workshop/content/#######/##########/mods/Super-Survivors/media/lua/shared/translate/EN/
File - ContextMenu_EN.txt (line 105-106)
 
Random NPC name list
Steam/steamapps/workshop/content/#######/##########/mods/Super-Survivors/media/lua/client/1_Dialogue/
File - SuperSurvivorDialogue.lua (starting at line 1113)

Just test the gamepad if you have a gamepad and they give you a free copy of pz search it in forum or sometimes they give pz copy when they have megatest

Hey everyone, lots to get through today soooo…
PUBLIC BUILD 40 PATCHED
We’ve just patched Build 40, which is now up to version 40.36. Primary improvements you’ll notice are:
Local text chat now audible/legible from a distance, and no longer obscured. Weather period frequency throughout the whole year increased, and more heavy weather. Car alarms now attract zeds again. Chat now logged on server (format will be improved later) Less getting wet in inappropriate places There’s a fair amount of other stuff too though, details on which can be found here on the forum.
NEXT 40 PATCH: BETTER NIGHTS
One of the biggest problems with Build 40 on release was that the new time of day, and time of year, shaders didn’t play very nicely with the lighting system. Flashlights, internal lighting and vehicle headlights all suddenly look very washed out. Players who venture out in the dark weren’t having as much fun as usual.
As such, Turbo has been working on an improvement that we want to get into the current public version before he moves fully into Build 41. Vids of this can be seen below.

We hope you agree that it looks far, far better – and more than a little scarier to boot.
“In the above videos the ambient values have been changed along with the colours during dark periods (night/storms)” Turbo explains. “This fixes the headlights, flashlights etc and makes darkness look better in general.”
“Also seen below is some improved and indoor lighting during dark times. In the initial Build 40 release my shader overlay coloring messed it all up – so now the shader coloring is disabled when you’re indoors. This did come with the problem that when you’re looking outside you wouldn’t see darkness or weather effects, however, so I’m now using the mask cut-out I created for rain to overlay an external colored texture too.”

“Before we patch I will probably adjust storms a bit too though, as currently they lose a bit too much of their storm tint.”

BUILD 41
We’re transitioning the PZ coders over to the work that TEA have done on animations for Build 41, but in the mean-time guys like Zac and Grant are continuing to improve tools and, in the case of Grant, do some optimization of the anims codebase.
“I’m doing a lot of work on the new clothing tech at the moment” explains Zac. “Using AnimZed wearable bags like backpacks are now visible on the character, and characters can equip custom clothing meshes on top of the base rig.”
“This allows outfits such as baggy jeans, coats, dresses, hoodies, jump-suits, and so on and parts of the base mesh can be now be masked out to prevent clipping and/or overdraw. When this gets to the modders then it’d be fairly simple to even do something like replace a character’s hand with a pirate’s hook or something.”
“It’s all customized for each clothing item, using the paper-doll UI inside the new ClothingItem Editor. There’s also random tints for more variety in the clothing too.”

(please note: on the spot turning animations are not in the build yet but will be before release!)
WATER STUFF
Regular Thursdoiders will know that Yuri is currently working on the improved appearance of water for Build 41. Below you’ll find what it looks like currently, but here’s a note on what to look out for:
A ripple effect has been added to the water, that will let players to see the direction and speed of the wind added to the game in Build 40 on the water’s surface. The water shader now accepts data for flow direction and speed for each tile in the map, so rivers are now more realistic. In the video you can see how the water flows more slowly near the bank, and also how the flow of water smoothly changes its direction along the river. Three water ‘visual quality’ options have been added. There is now a high and low quality option for both dynamic water and static water. Low quality dynamic water puts a very small load on the GPU, so it should be okay on most PCs.
You can also see Yuri playing around with the different debug values for this system here.
PUBLIC CONTROLLER BUILD TEST

We’re currently running a beta for the work that Stas has recently been doing on gamepad controller improvements, and folk have been contributing some absolutely brilliant feedback.
If you enjoy playing PZ with a pad want to join in, and earn yourself a FREE PZ CODE, then simply visit this thread, install the controllers beta, play for a few hours and answer the ten questions we’ve provided.
This morning we released a new version of the Controllers build using your feedback, and Stas has quashed many of the bugs that were irking people. So now is a great time to join in.
Please note that currently only PC players can run the build, and also that the joypad back-end system, configuration and bindings have been completely rewritten from the ground up. In the process some aspects of the controls and default bindings have been changed in the rewriting process – if you have any issues with the default bindings and behaviours of the controls we’d like to hear about it.
NEW DENVER UPDATED – NOW SLOCAN LAKE
A quick shout out for Xeonyx, the creator of the wonderful map mod New Denver – which has recently been renamed as Slocan Lake. Jamie is now making Challenge maps for the main game, the first of which will likely appear in Build 41 at this point, but wanted to bring his most famous mod creation up to date.
The new version of Slocan Lake now has vehicle spawns and lootable maps, and no longer covers up areas of the vanilla zomboid map. You can find it here.

“With the additions of the towns of Silverton and Rosebery,” explains Xeonyx, “I felt it necessary to change the name of the map mod to Slocan Lake BC to better reflect the region the map takes place in, and not just the first town that was completed.”
“Players can now choose to start in one of the three towns as opposed to just New Denver, and with vehicles being added it makes for easier travel between places. I’ve also added forage zones to let players to gather supplies, even when they’re kilometers deep in the bush.”
“Traveling players will find the map no longer covers parts of the vanilla map (Farmlands, Rosewood Prison etc) and has been pushed South. So if you find a road going South off the highway here, this will take you to New Denver.”
“I’ve also added lootable maps to the mod, so you have maps of Silverton, New Denver, Rosebery, Full Region Map and Golf Course Cards out there to find. I also added in the real world street names on the town maps for players wanting to better navigate, and clearly to underline how the map mod is a 1:1 scale recreation of the real life region where I live.”

This week’s pile-up from Maris. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving to all our American survivors!

Thats been there for a long time ago its a feature i mean you dont want to use your hands removing broken glass do ypu?

Thats been there for a long time ago its a feature i mean you dont want to use your hands removing broken glass do ypu?

Thats been there for a long time ago its a feature i mean you dont want to use your hands removing broken glass do ypu?

Thats been there for a long time ago its a feature i mean you dont want to use your hands removing broken glass do ypu?

Thats been there for a long time ago its a feature i mean you dont want to use your hands removing broken glass do ypu?

(Not my idea, but I found it brilliant. It got lost somewhere on this forum, and never had a separate topic created.)
 
One of the users suggested a rather long time ago that player built walls should not be able to be destroyed by a single zombie. He or she suggested that walls should have "buffer HP".
Imagine, now even a single zombie can destroy a lvl 10 carpentry wall or lvl 10 metalworking wall given enough time to head-butt at it. With wall "buffer HP" that would change and make walls more realistic and more resilient to zombie damage."Buffer HP" would be an additional wall HP that regenerates quickly on top of existing wall HP.
 
How would it work in practice?
 
For example, a lvl 4 carpentry section of log wall would have enough "buffer HP" to withstand an attack of 5 zombies at a time (total amount of zombie damage from 5 zombies would not get past the regenerating "buffer HP"), but if another zombie comes and head-butts the same wall section, they get past "buffer HP" and destroy the wall in time normally, as it happens now.
 
My suggestion for the amount of "buffer HP" would be as follows:
(Numbers could be balanced, I don't even know if it's possible to fit 14 zombies on a tile of map)
 
Standard board wall + board window barricades + wooden doors (weakest of all walls):
(Add 1 zombie resistance if playing a Carpenter, Construction Worker or Engineer)
 
- lvl 1-2 carpentry: 2 zombies needed to destroy a section (so 1 zombie will not be able to destroy a section)
- lvl 3-4 carpentry: 3 zombies needed to destroy a section
- lvl 5-6 carpentry: 4 zombies needed to destroy a section
- lvl 7-8 carpentry: 5 zombies needed to destroy a section
- lvl 9-10 carpentry: 6 zombies needed to destroy a section
 
Log wall (strong defensive wall)
(Add 1 zombie resistance if playing a Carpenter, Lumberjack or Engineer)
 
- lvl 1-2 carpentry: 4 zombies needed to destroy a section
- lvl 3-4 carpentry: 5 zombies needed to destroy a section
- lvl 5-6 carpentry: 6 zombies needed to destroy a section
- lvl 7-8 carpentry: 7 zombies needed to destroy a section
- lvl 9-10 carpentry: 8 zombies needed to destroy a section
 
Metal wall + sheet metal window barricades + metal doors (ultimate zombie defence) (can we make metal doors?)
(Add 1 zombie resistance if playing a Metalworker, Construction Worker or Engineer)
 
- lvl 1-2 metalworking: 6 zombies needed to destroy a section
- lvl 3-4 metalworking: 8 zombies needed to destroy a section
- lvl 5-6 metalworking: 10 zombies needed to destroy a section
- lvl 7-8 metalworking: 12 zombies needed to destroy a section
- lvl 9-10 metalworking: 14 zombies needed to destroy a section

Its already in plan on animation update

Well... I don't want to argue my point indefinitely because that would only lead to trouble for everyone involved, but I do want to come back at you once as I think you've slightly missed what I was trying to say
 
Maybe it was too much of a paraphrase to say "put up or shut up". I was talking mainly about your blog coverage and expressing a preference not to see any stuff about anims when there's nothing new to say, unless a time comes when you know for certain they'll be in IWBUMS shortly.
 
I think we have a difference of opinion on how you should be structuring those updates - to me it feels like we've had 3 years of seeing the same thing except with slightly different wording. Sure, you guys have decided to post weekly, and you need to fill those posts with something, but... well, as I say, a difference of opinion, and I'm sure you would come back and say "Players would still complain if we went silent." That's true but it could be waved away if you gave some explanation of why you were going silent in the first place.
 
I strongly disagree that animations aren't coming any later. We've had blog posts in both 2015 and 2016 suggesting they were very close to entering an IWBUMS build, then suddenly the hype for vehicles and MP takes off in 2017 and shifts anims to the back burner. Now, in 2018, we're hearing more about animations again - but suddenly they seem not as ready as they were before? Animations are coming later, either because (1) those two features have added more work to complete anims, or (2) it wasn't convenient to integrate anims into the main branch while vehicles / MP was being worked on. If anything I've said here is wrong, maybe you can instead give an idea why on earth the anims system been such an absolute monster that has dragged on for all this time?
 
Anyhow, good luck to the team with the remainder of development. I don't expect anything in my box of internet text to change the future so I'll return to lurking and clenching my teeth as I try to remain patient.

Although this is my first post, I've been a lurker following PZ news for... heh, well, too many years now. Despite the rest of this post I honestly appreciate the huge amount of work everyone at TIS, and now also TEA, is putting in to create something special. From the number of hours that many people have already spent in your game, it's clear the work is paying dividends for at least for a portion of the fans.
 
That said, I can't hold back any longer from saying how disappointed I am to see animations shoved yet further into the dev cycle again. I'd been waiting patiently throughout the development of MP, then vehicles, with fingers crossed that finally - surely - there wouldn't be anything to prevent anims from coming next. Here we are, though. The wording of "Zedlights" says they won't be in B40, so that's maybe another 2 months or more until we get an idea of what'll be in B41. At this point my patience as a lurker has worn thin enough to say something.
 
I know you as a dev team are following the best path you can see, but you've been talking about the new animation / clothing system regularly for 3 years, often in a way that suggested it'll be the next thing added. Come on, guys; from any viewpoint you have to see this is ridiculous. Please show some sanity and don't continue to do this. Respectfully, "put up or shut up."

Nolanri can you make an group clear option where they go to a place like warehouse by themeselves killing all the zombies by selecting an area or make them in two 2 groups so they can clear 2 buildings at once. Add more group things npcs looting together by pair or more

Hey Nolan
Can you make more preset survivors like npc group guarding a warehouse or other important/big buildings like supermarket and gives you a risk and reward vibes.
Can you also gives the survivor a trust ability. If you talk and give them foods they increase their trust in you and might tell         you something about their stories and might hint you about their old bases full of foods, guns or ammo
Can you also make some survivors that can trade with you with a preset homemade building
Can you also give a group of survivors a group formation whenever they fighting zombies like when 2 survivors fighting back to back or 5 survivors compressing to each other to fight a large horde
Can you some survivors group a mission like some of them fights zombies or going to a certain place and clear the area
 

Hi!
 
First, sorry for my bad english. Then, i know that NPCs are planned for future builds and that a mod already exists but I want to bring my vision to the game.
 
I love the Nolanri mod that I have been using for a while. But I find it incomplete. So I decided to create my own mod.
What will he do more than the Nolanri mod?
Better AI. Explore, loot, eat, drink, sleep. Better survivors spawn handling. Better management of groups (yes with S) Talk with NPC. Become friends or.... ennemies Quest! Not a priority but i work on it. And more...  
Currently the mod is only at its beginning but I already have a screenshot to show you!

 
At left bottom of the screen you can see the interaction window. The available dialogs are below (yeah i have a deubg dialog lol) and the conversation history above. Still above is the status of the relationship. With "Let me see your equipment" (that changes in future) i can see the inventory of NPC in the window at right. I can drag and drop item like a normal container.
The dialogs are like tree and each branch can contains other branches.
 
I'll give you soon more news about development

Good news and bad news....
Good news is theyre gonna add some more crafting and improving cars..
Bad news is im gonna wait probably late 2018 for animation but please dont release it in 2019

Good news and bad news....
Good news is theyre gonna add some more crafting and improving cars..
Bad news is im gonna wait probably late 2018 for animation but please dont release it in 2019

now that you mention it. It kinda looks like a map on the last stand dead zone game

now that you mention it. It kinda looks like a map on the last stand dead zone game

This is what we could have had by the way.
 
Maybe Nolan can mod in some Back to the Future Part II cars later on down the line
 

I have a few suggestions about the walls heres the following
 
1. log walls should be indestructable because its a log wall and you cant destroy it with headbangs even if you have a lot of friends doing it. 
    instead the log walls should fall if theres enough zombies that head banging that wall. Its like they're pushing the log wall until it fall to         the ground
2. Metal fences and gates should be indestructable too but if theres a huge amount of zombies they can headbang it and fall as well
3. metal walls should have more hp than they currently have on pz. 
4. i saw a different door in prison that does have a keypad. I watch a guy on youtube smash that door with a golf club and it is easily broken      and drop a plank instead of metal as well as the metal bar doors in prison. they should have been toughter or and can only be destroyed by    specific weapon or item.
5. there should be a repair option for doors that doesnt destroy yet but you need items to fix it.
6. reinforce should be implemented as well in pz cause it makes the wall or doors to have more hp like if uou have a wooden wall and you        want to reinforce it you need metal or wood to make it stronger.