cool daddy shark

I'm sure I've seen TIS mention that special zombies spawn in special zones. Ie, you wouldn't find a fireman spawning on a farm, and you'd be more likely to have police officers inside a police station, etc. They already control that kind of thing with the vehicle spawn zones. I imagine there will be a similar level of control for zed spawns. 

Howdy almost-yuletide survivor.
PATCH 40.40 RELEASED
Today we released our final (sort of, read below for more on that) patch for Build 40. Full patchnotes can be found here, but this covers stuff like:
Improved darker nights, and less washed out night-time interiors. Car headlights and flashlights will be more of a necessity now. Sandbox settings also updated, so you can adapt it to a brightness you desire. Improved appearance of weather effects when in a building. Moon calculations re-added to game to govern night brightness. Extended disassemble ability to many more items,including: fridges, ovens, more chairs, washing machines, lockers, fitness equipment, metal barrels and some missing shelves. Some balanced player actions related to injuries, sleeping, window-breaking and bandages in a saucepan. Fixed whisper problems in the new chatbox, stair teleports, rain rather than snow in Winter is Coming, community translation font issues, plumbed sinks not working in MP and various other issues. 40 MP NETWORK STUFF
While the rest of the team move into the animations build and version 41, we’re leaving optimization specialist Bitbaboon Steve investigating what easy-win MP networking improvements we could potentially still patch into 40.
The first of his discoveries, the removal large number of empty and unnecessary data packets being sent over the server, has been released in 40.40 and should be a mild salve for current lag issues but his investigations also came up with an idea we thought it’d be wise to test out with a forthcoming IWBUMS beta and Community Megatest.
Essentially, Steve has been working on some server configurable optimizations for zombies in multiplayer. Since vehicles, performance in multiplayer servers has seen added strain (particularly in handling zombie hordes) and we’re hoping this might improve matters.
In essence, we’re about to release a test version in which there are several configurable options to allow server owners to fine-tune how much zombie data is sent to their players.
There will now be two ‘player client zombie awareness’ circles: the first a smaller radius that defines at what tile-range zombie positions are sent to clients with a high precision in every frame, and then a second larger radius in which the zombie location information can be sent to clients less frequently. Server owners will also be able to play with how much time there is between the low frequency updates.
On low population co-op servers these values can be set pretty liberally, so the players are getting all zombies in the visible area smoothly. But on high population servers that experience lag issues, server operators can sacrifice the smoothness of zombie movement in the distance (or even cap zombie visibility completely over a certain distance) in order to VASTLY reduce the amount of internet traffic they produce when lots of players are involved.
We think this will sharply decrease the amount of work the server needs to do and should lead to a much better player experience with a little bit of visual compromise toward the edge of the screen. Distant zombies might pause a bit or appear to teleport slightly between updates, but these movements are also something we’d hope to blend better (and make far less noticeable) with the added functionalities of the animations build. Server operators can decide on their own level of compromise too.
This work is pretty much done, and as such we will add it into the IWBUMS beta as soon as it’s clear there’s nothing from 40.40 that needs hot-fixing. Please keep your eyes on the forum if you want to participate in a special Yuletide Megatest.
41 ANIMS
This week in TEA-land Grant has improved things dev/modder-side with live texture reload, through upgrading the Filewatcher mechanism. It now watches the media folder instead of polling individual files, and is much more efficient. Upon a texture filechange, the game now reloads it live and in-place. This should make iteration times on textures much easier and faster.
Zac, meanwhile, has fixed up AnimZed for Animator Martin to the extent that he can now get a lot more variation on different individual outfits. Take these cops for example:
Martin has also been creating a better range of skin tones for player characters, to allow for better customisation should people desire it.
OTHER STUFF
Stas has just updated the Gamepad Test beta with a lot of fixes, for our lovely select bunch of gamepad testers. If you fancy helping out with this part of PZ work, and earn yourself a free code, then enquire within. RJ has been tinkering with in-game loot, and has occasionally been popping into the PZ Discord to look for willing testers. The overall plan is to have more information in the game code in terms of what’s a desirable item, and what’s junk – so we can then fill containers with a lot more realistic junk items even on higher difficulty levels. He’s also experimenting with having more specific containers in homes for more specific items (all the cutlery in one drawer, male clothes in one wardrobe, female in another etc) but the jury is currently out on whether it actually detracts from the looting gameplay. ChrisW’s work on in-building Sims-style cutaways and the abolition of the dithered circle view stencil continues. As seen here both with, and without. Today’s warehouse horde from Frank. 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 PZWiki 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! OurDiscord is open for chat and hijinks too.

A suggestion would be to give maybe metalworking the ability to craft a water tank/rain collector or something, which could then be connected to buildings the same way generators are. Giving the whole structure water
 
I would like to see washing machines usable, I never bother to clean my clothes as the downside of wearing dirty clothes is too minor and washing them currently is tedious when they get dirty so fast

Don't take it too personally, there have been a lot of people who have been waiting for this and there has been 2 years of "i hope it comes out soon" and so many let downs that its turned people jaded.
 

That hope never should have existed anyway.

Helicopter pilots are the embodiment of pure evil.

I don't want to sound like a jerk but when are you going to fix the vehicles's hitbox? Before build 40 it was perfect but now it is bigger than it looks on the north, north east side of cars.
It is so big my character can't pass between 2 cars parked next to each other and I keep hitting stuff which obviously doesn't even touch the car I'm driving.
 
I can't get closer to the vehicle than where I'm standing on these screenshots :


Sorry again if I sound like a jerk, it's a legit question, I'm not searching to offend anyone.

I just want IWBUMS to be finished already so the team goes full ham on Build 41, each week makes me lose hope for a Build 41 before 2018 ends. 
 
Still, everything else like the water and shader look really great. 

Chill guys, it's already done.
 
Although probably won't make it into the first round of clothes.

The beauty of PZ is you get yourself killed rather than the game needlessly thrashing you to death (whether you became reckless, impulsive, didn't weigh the risk/reward, etc.) Being in a cabin in the middle of the woods and amassing supplies and then being lit up by an invisible marker that artificially inflates the danger drives against that. There are just more organic and fluid ways to do this. Bandits and zombies should start taking an interest in that cabin in the middle of the woods because you decided you'd like to use a gun rather than a bow to hunt and inadvertently put a giant blinking neon sign saying that you are there and you merit attention.

Ill be honest and say I don't exactly like this idea. Doing a check to see if you should be possibly kneecapped for amassing a set amount of resources is not good design. 

I was talking about that with someone last night. You could have this music on the radios and car radios. Add them to the CDs you find throughout the world and listen to them on the portable CD players. What wasn't discussed in the option for a music channel on the TV which would be another interesting idea. You could also sprinkle in some music from the 80s and earlier as music from previous generations doesn't really disappear when newer music is created (another part that was discussed).

RE: Music stuff, as we said in a blog a month back (or so?) Zach has redone the full OST to make it sound more like Kentucky, and we plan to get it into the anims build.
 
He was only like... 15 (16?) when he did most of the PZ music, and I think he's enjoyed going back over the old tunes quite a lot with the added wealth of knowledge he has from his musical studies post-High School.

What you are thinking of is a plate carrier where you insert trauma plates to stop rounds which is a (relatively) new development. I am referring to a PASGT vest which is rated to stop pistol rounds and low velocity shrapnel and was in service since the 1980's.
 

 
These totally fit the time period. I cant imagine soldiers running around with nothing but a helmet and no armor on.

Hello!
I just found out that when you let the time pass on the fastest speed while its thunders, the thunder sounds will all overlap and it will sound like an airstrike lol 

I suppose the soldier outfit does not have any body armor because its being added later? Are we ever going to get riot armor?

Since winter has turned into something that can rival zombies in lethality I am starting to feel that zombies should be affected to a degree. If temperatures reach 15 degrees or less I don't how a zombie can exactly come after me effectively unless I am just being careless.  I just wanted to run over some ideas really quick because if I can get hypothermia why cant a zombie get stiffer and slower?
 
1) Zombies enter a passive state similar to what is already in the options menu for Day/Night.
2) Players will be lulled into a false sense of security by more docile groups of zombies.
3) Areas previously too dangerous to explore become more viable to explore.
4) Human interaction will increase now that people are more willing to venture out.
5) Human competition for resources will come to a boiling point.
 

Since winter has turned into something that can rival zombies in lethality I am starting to feel that zombies should be affected to a degree. If temperatures reach 15 degrees or less I don't how a zombie can exactly come after me effectively unless I am just being careless.  I just wanted to run over some ideas really quick because if I can get hypothermia why cant a zombie get stiffer and slower?
 
1) Zombies enter a passive state similar to what is already in the options menu for Day/Night.
2) Players will be lulled into a false sense of security by more docile groups of zombies.
3) Areas previously too dangerous to explore become more viable to explore.
4) Human interaction will increase now that people are more willing to venture out.
5) Human competition for resources will come to a boiling point.
 

Since winter has turned into something that can rival zombies in lethality I am starting to feel that zombies should be affected to a degree. If temperatures reach 15 degrees or less I don't how a zombie can exactly come after me effectively unless I am just being careless.  I just wanted to run over some ideas really quick because if I can get hypothermia why cant a zombie get stiffer and slower?
 
1) Zombies enter a passive state similar to what is already in the options menu for Day/Night.
2) Players will be lulled into a false sense of security by more docile groups of zombies.
3) Areas previously too dangerous to explore become more viable to explore.
4) Human interaction will increase now that people are more willing to venture out.
5) Human competition for resources will come to a boiling point.
 

IWBUMS beta now updated - doors should be buildable again now

I was sleeping in a bed while it was snowing I was bombarded with thunder sounds one after the other like it was machine gun fire.

Zombies stutter a bit in close quarters and totally ignore me at times.

Most of those were actually my kills from the previous megatest @EnigmaGrey never cleaned up. I even got him a brand new bucket and mop

Hey all, quickfire ‘what we’re up to’ blog today.
We had an impromptu Community Megatest last night. It was really useful in terms of spotlighting a few things we need to iron out before we can release Build 40: namely some potential lag caused by extreme weather that we’re digging into, a ‘joining server’ error that some experienced and the ‘dead zombie leaves a weird graphical glitch’ issue which, admittedly, we already knew about.
Internal testers have also flagged a few issues that *might* be an issue on Linux and Mac, so if you’re on those platforms and the new IWBUMS beta isn’t behaving then please let us know.
Our plan is to patch these issues up over the coming days and then have another Megatest next week.
As mentioned, we’ve just released IWBUMS beta version 40.21. Among other things this includes:
Skybox generation for vehicle reflective windows. To give a better indication of what the weather and climate systems are doing, car window reflections now take into account: the time of day, the Global illumination colour, fog, cloudiness, precipitation intensity, wind direction, wind speed and the temperature of the ambient air (as in winter the clouds are lower than the ground) Please note that the overall effect of this might be toned down a little, and that a primary motivation for this is also as it being a first step towards reflective-looking water – seeing as bodies of water for a long time have been one of the ugliest things in the game. (This will be a Build 41 or 41+ thing though)

An ugly thing that we have addressed in the latest 40.21 IWBUMS, however, is more natural looking snow on the ground. Previously snow would appear in blocky tiles, but now Turbo has made it look far more natural when it gathers and melts away.
Other new stuff added in the new beta version: temperature now has an impact on the chances of starting a car in super-cold temperatures (especially on low quality engines), less fiddly chat/admin options and some tweaks to how MP usernames work. As discussed last week, we’re biting the bullet in terms of Build 41 being the animation build – so that TEA aren’t playing endless catch-up with the main game. As well as preparations for the big switcheroo the guys at TEA have also been fixing issues like zombie outfits randomising and disappearing, renderer crashes and sorting out z-ordering issues so that bags are now drawn correctly.

This week’s featured image from our tester Sasha, who’s awesome. 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. 

Military bases typically have trees cut down for a few yards around the perimeter to give a good sight-line of anyone trying to get into the compound,  would you be willing to reduce some of the trees next to the fences?  I really like the look of the base, and that armory room is exciting both visually and in the prospect of how much loot it would contain.