deprav

EDIT : Whoops, I thought I was in Suggestions, opened too many tabs ^^' can it be moved pretty please ?

Pretty much anything that can be used to cook in the game should give the player the possibility to smoke if standing close to the heat source, without using lighter/matches. That would save the player many matches & lighters, which can be surprisingly rare to find in some runs ! Playing as a character with the "smoker" trait right now, lighters/matches is one of my most precious & rare ressources at the moment (1 month & a half in, looted pretty much 1/4th of Westpoint).

I lit my campfire with notched planks + sticks to save matches, but I can't lit my cigarettes with that fire.

(or if anyone can mod it, I don't have the slightest clue about how to)

EDIT : Whoops, I thought I was in Suggestions, opened too many tabs ^^' can it be moved pretty please ?

Pretty much anything that can be used to cook in the game should give the player the possibility to smoke if standing close to the heat source, without using lighter/matches. That would save the player many matches & lighters, which can be surprisingly rare to find in some runs ! Playing as a character with the "smoker" trait right now, lighters/matches is one of my most precious & rare ressources at the moment (1 month & a half in, looted pretty much 1/4th of Westpoint).

I lit my campfire with notched planks + sticks to save matches, but I can't lit my cigarettes with that fire.

(or if anyone can mod it, I don't have the slightest clue about how to)

I don't know if this has something to do with my character having the Lucky trait, but I have absolutely no issues with matches, lighters or cigarettes on my SP Apocalypse 41.65 run (5 months in). I find plenty of these items both on zeds and in containers.
 
But yeah, it would be nice to have more options to light cigarettes. Besides OP's suggestions, I would love to have car outlets. 

EDIT : Whoops, I thought I was in Suggestions, opened too many tabs ^^' can it be moved pretty please ?

Pretty much anything that can be used to cook in the game should give the player the possibility to smoke if standing close to the heat source, without using lighter/matches. That would save the player many matches & lighters, which can be surprisingly rare to find in some runs ! Playing as a character with the "smoker" trait right now, lighters/matches is one of my most precious & rare ressources at the moment (1 month & a half in, looted pretty much 1/4th of Westpoint).

I lit my campfire with notched planks + sticks to save matches, but I can't lit my cigarettes with that fire.

(or if anyone can mod it, I don't have the slightest clue about how to)

This ! More trip sadism when panic'd/exhausted or in poor physical condition while backward fighting, I'm 100% in :3

iirc, walking backwards reduces damage a little.

Later on we might include the chance to trip.

So it seems I'm unable to dismantle doors if my character faces South or East to do the action (so if the character is "behind" the door), wooden doors and metal doors alike. My character just equips the necessary equipment and walks up to the door and then nothing happens.

It works just fine when I'm facing North or West though.

I noticed that bug in multiplayer, didn't get to try in solo yet.

Howdy survivors! Another crazy week for us, we’re still in a bit of a daze!
 
Just a few more days until the entire team are back together after the various international holiday periods have all come to an end, and we’re looking exceedingly forward to fixing up a few of the big issues that have come out in the wash since the MP launch. You can read more about them in last week’s blog here.
 
So the big question, now 41 is out there, and after the remaining MP issues have been fixed up, is what comes next?
 
 
Two Team Release Schedule
Going forward, now the behemoth that is Build 41 is increasingly looking to be in our rear-view mirror, we are going to structure the internal game’s development into two distinct teams (With General Arcade continuing in the meantime on improving MP, optimizing the server, increasing the player count and other MP related tech)
 
First, a little bit of a teaser!
 
 
(This is a fairly old internal video, created as a working proof-of-concept of various aspects of our NPC tech. It’s also not necessarily canonically accurate anymore. It was built to echo our earliest tech demo, but this might not be the start point we take with narrative in future, even if the characters would still be familiar.)
 
It’ll have been no surprise to anyone who read the interview in which Lemmy dropped some major Thursdoid spoilers that one of those teams is going to be focusing exclusively on NPC development from this point on. We’ll also be able to talk about it (not necessarily every Thursdoid, but certainly no longer in a vacuum), rather than work away in secret due to our ‘only discuss what’s coming next’ rule we instigated after a few instances of talking far too early about stuff.
 
Long ago we stated (informally on a forum post) our planned features for future builds, starting with hunting for build 42, and then numerous NPC builds for build 43 and onward.
 
However, many changed circumstances and much ponderings later, we’ve decided that this is not the best approach to take. First of all, its very clear that human NPCs have long been the most requested feature that is still outstanding, and the source of most of the frustration and bad feeling from those who consider the game to still be incomplete.
 
Not only this, but in slightly more selfish reasons, a big reason for not being comfortable with hunting and pets being first, is they are still NPCs and would necessarily leverage all the technology we’ve being working on for years at this point.
 
We have such amazing and peskily talented modders out there, we know fine well that as soon as we released this tech within their grasps, we would end up seeing extremely powerful NPC mods appearing, using our NPC tech heavily, before we had the pleasure of seeing this hard work paid off with our own NPCs.
 
It may be the initial build still contains hunting and wild animals, they ARE NPCs after all. It may be they drop into a subsequent build or later on in the unstable beta cycle, its not clear yet for reasons we’ll discuss in a bit. But the next BIG thing will be NPCs and we’ll have a dedicated team working toward this goal going forward.
 
However, NPCs will still, technically, be build 43. This is because we’ll be running a second dev team exclusively on a quicker, less risky yet still super cool content patch before the NPC work is complete, and then ongoing alternately between the other NPC patches to keep the content train going.
 
Behold this fancy graphic we cooked up! Now that we’ve blown up a bit we need some fancy graphical charts in our Thursdoids!
 
Hopefully the chart shows that, in very real terms, NPCs will be coming out as quickly as they can, uninterrupted, and the other builds are there to help bridge the gap. No build will ever take as long as Build 41 did, it was a practical rewrite of large portions of the game, but nontheless NPCs will take time to emerge, and we don’t want to leave the community without new content in those waits.
 
 
Build 42
There is still a lot of polish and fix work to do on 41, primarily for the MP team but also with a side-salad of bug-fixing issues in both online and solo.
 
Beyond this, however, is a much ‘smaller’ but still extremely cool update that’ll drop before NPCs, that will release during the push toward an NPC release.
 
I say ‘smaller’ only because no major functionality or new fundamental systems, and it will be more a balancing and content patch while NPC team’s work is underway. However it will still be pretty beefy in terms of what it brings to the game.
 
It will serve several important purposes:
 
1) To balance a lot of the existing mechanics, particularly in relation to traits, professions, skills and other areas of the game that have been neglected or suffered some degradation during the years of development since they were introduced. Balancing traits and professions, medical system, and other stuff where it comes down to essentially tweaking numbers to make more builds viable or close up ‘free points’ exploits in character creation. Loot balancing and anything else that’s an easy balance but will help improve the game also fits in here.
 
2) To begin the expansion of the ‘tech tree’ of the game significantly to provide a more rich end-game experience. While until NPCs exist, some of this may be slightly less impactful on single player (though we’re sure will still add a lot of potential), it will significantly improve the MP experience by servers being less pressured to wipe or have loot respawning, providing players and communities ability to create more items that at present can only be obtained through looting.
 
While we may not hit this spot in our first build, our ultimate goal is to provide significantly extra crafting potential to allow players to effectively create a post-apocalypse nu medieval community, to provide plausable alternatives to any of the lootable items in the game that would logically be plausable with the correct skills and resources so players don’t feel pressured to restart the early game repeatedly to get long term fun out of the game. Want to be the person who makes clothes and sells them to a neighbouring settlement? Build brick walls and create something that resembles an actual house? Maybe even build a windmill? Who knows.
 
These are all examples of things we could do here, and may not all appear in Build 42, but hopefully our intended direction is clear. Ultimately to build up to the point that Alexandria / Hilltop / Kingdom style communities can form years after the apocalypse, giving more incentive to keep playing and building on existing worlds instead of intentionally replaying the early game because there is no real late game.
All this would be a time sink and require a group effort and wouldn’t be compulsory for those who prefer to just die repeatedly in the early apocalypse days, but the hope is to allow for a much greater level of community building, and facilitate trade and potentially years of stories and rich history from within a single world, be it NPC populated or an MP server, spanning numerous player lives (so it can still be the story of how you died).
 
These professions and expanded tech trees would be heavily gated and require specialization, often in case of the more complex crafting paths requiring pre-apocalypse skills that while it’s possible, are extremely difficult to attain to high levels after the apocalypse without a character specced toward them. We long ago ‘nerfed’ a metalworking system that was added to the game due to the implausibility of some random survivor crafting spoons and katanas in the apocalypse, however we’ll be expanding this again to include better items available through sufficient mastery and enough plausibility with the character build.
 
We’ll increase the amount of recipes that’ll be unlockable within the world through books, magazines or VHSs, and try and accurately model more advanced and multi-tier crafting professions to allow survivor communities to thrive and provide much more diverse activities for players who like to stay in the safehouses.
 
Finally, and vitally, we’ll be introducing the concept of ‘crafting surfaces’ to further restrict where some crafting recipes can be used. Some more complex recipes will require specific tables or equipment, some will just require a table or surface of any kind, while others can be carried out in your hands with no surface at all.
 
This will add an extra level to the crafting, as making a place suitable for crafting the more complex multi-stage recipes, and potentially upgrading your crafting station and equipment, would become a more fulfilling experience than standing in the field and being able to make a stir fry.
 
We have many and varied other things we want to inject into the game also – we’re currently working on seated / reclining characters for example, and also want to expand on in-game events and tie them to the map. We also need to do some work to improve guns, and PvP, at some point. It’s not clear when smaller features will start appearing, however, so will report on them in blogs as the year progresses.
 
 
Build 43
Worked on concurrently to the balancing and crafting update, as well as discussed and shown within our blogs going forward, will be the first version of NPCs. We’re still deciding what should, could and would be present in the first NPC build. It could include autonomous NPCs that the player can group with, it could primarily include the reintroduction of the story mode, it could have NPC animals, or that could come later.
We really need to look at what we have, and what’s feasible to deliver in a reasonable amount of time, as well as what we could release as a first build and not have people who’ve waited years for them to appear be disappointed. There’s a lot of plates to spin, decisions to make that require more brain power than we’ve had to spare during B41’s development, so we’re going to take some more time to discuss what would make the most satisfying and manageable first build, and take a stock check of what we have.
 
We’ve got a LOT of NPC code, lots of cool systems, from Rimworld style priority and jobs system, personality systems, procedural story event systems, combat systems, autonomous survival behaviours, advanced group behaviour systems, vehicle driving systems, and a whole bunch more. While nothing could be described as 100% complete, the vast majority of the hard work has been done, is functional and is extremely cool.
 
But B41 has taken a huge amount of our time and resources, and also taken some elements of the PZ workings in a different direction to things our NPCs were using, and so they need some time to be reintroduced to the most current build and made MP compatible. And when we do that, we’ll be moving stuff over in stages to release, rather than try and get everything functional and release ready at once.
A good analogy is we’ve got two rooms, one full to the ceiling of extremely cool and complex circuit boards and wires that we’ve spent years making, one room is empty.
 
Trying to tidy and assemble everything in the first room will be a nightmare. So we’ll start moving bits into a new room, setting them up, plugging them in together, and making something cool out of them to release. After release we’ll continue bringing in more pieces and attaching them, and so on for perhaps 2 or 3 builds until the first room is empty and our vision of NPCs is complete. It doesn’t mean that’s all we have, far from it, just sorting that entire packed room out would take too long and we want to finally start pushing NPC content out as soon as possible.
 
We also have some big plans for a gun mechanics rework at some point, to provide a more solid gunplay experience that will make guns not only more interesting to use, require more a player skill element, but also make PVP encounters a lot more interesting for those who enjoy that kind of thing, as our PVP component is still one of the more lacking elements of our multiplayer experience. But for now we are not committing to where this will thread into the release schedule.
 
The process of moving stuff over will take some time, and so we may be quiet for a couple of Thursdoids until we start getting stuff moving in the current build. As soon as we are though, we’ll be talking about the ongoing NPC development, alongside the concurrent crafting and balance patch, until they drop. Exciting times!
 
It shouldn’t go unsaid, however, that if a big new feature is not ready then it’s not in our DNA to push it out of the door uncooked. We’re confident that this will be a great year for PZ, and feel we can keep the content pipe flowing, but also won’t be abandoning our accustomed position as the tortoise in the ‘tortoise vs. hare’ race which appears to now be paying dividends for both game and community.
 
 
Much love,
 
TIS x

A short Thursdoid this week, and we’ll return to our normal larger update blogs from next week in our first 2022 blog! Where we’ll discuss where we’re going after build 41 has been finished off!
 
First of all, wow.
 
We’ve put a huge amount of work and time into this game, and while we always considered ourselves lucky to be able to sell more copies than a lot of indies who struggle to get their game noticed in the extremely competitive indie game dev scene, we never quite imagined we’d manage to break out in the way we have this past month.
 
It’s thanks to the tireless devs in our team who have worked on this game for years and made the game what it is through passion and blood and sweat, the support team who’ve had to try and get all our new players into the game when they have issues–despite this massive surge happening throughout the holidays, the community that have supported us the whole time through this journey and understood what we were trying to do, the incredible modding community who have expanded the game in so many ways and made diving into Zomboid many orders of magnitude more interesting, and it’s thanks to the content creators that have grown up alongside us, who’ve dedicated hundreds of hours of their content to Zomboid to introduce and entertain new players looking to dive in, and we’re overjoyed to see them get extra exposure as the game’s been thrust into many people’s line of sight.
 
There are so many links in the chain that led us to where we are, and we wish you all a happy new year and thank everyone for coming on this ride with us!
 
 
Build 41.66 plans
 
A few updates on our plans for the next patch for Build 41, which will be appearing in the new year!
 
VOIP has experienced numerous issues which we are keen to solve in our next patch, firstly the voip is adding a significant amount of additional traffic to servers which decrease performance not insignificantly, especially when larger groups are together. In addition, we’re experiencing some rather annoying peaking and clipping when some users start talking which is rather annoying to listen to. We hope to have a solution to this in the next build. We’ve implemented a queuing system to the server joining process. This accomplishes several things: Allows more than 32 players to queue to join a server, and will maintain a queue number that will decrease until they load into the game. This will allow those looking for entry into popular servers a way to start the joining process and allow them to browse the net, watch the Youtubes or play other games while they wait for connection. Forces players to load in one at a time, so as not to cause the server severe lag from numerous players joining at once and requesting large clumps of map chunks to be sent their way. Allows for whitelisted players to be flagged as priority irrespective of their admin status, which will let them jump the queue to get in if they have say VIP status for helping fund a server, or are content creators on their own community servers. Other big issues we’re seeing reported are item duplication bugs, something we’ll be looking to resolve before release. Also we’re keen to look into ways to make dealing with updating workshop mods a lot easier, both in terms of mods updating and causing connection issues for clients as the server hasn’t updated yet (which admittedly is a very very difficult issue to see how we can improve), improving the system for detecting changes and getting rid of any lingering ‘workshop mismatch’ errors that are not related to a server not being updated. Also, an incident recently involving a mod update breaking saves makes us realise we may need to do more to safeguard saves from mods removing item definitions.  
There are likely countless other fixes that we have in the pipe, so if you don’t see your own particular issue listed here, it doesn’t mean we’re not aware of it or have a priority to fix it, more that this blog writer forgot about them! We’ll discuss more in the new year in the run up to the patch, which will likely be put into a public unstable branch first to ensure there are no issues that could cause problems for servers who do not wish to test the fixes.
 
A reminder to those operating public servers, that we cannot guarantee you won’t be hit by very destructive hackers or griefers, and its vitally important that if you’re willing to take the risk with public servers, then you practice frequent server back ups. In fact we’d recommend even white listed or private servers to consider server backups with some regularity, as its always possible a mod update or a game update could cause you problems.
 
As always, we suggest and recommend only whitelisted servers and running a public server is done at your own risk. If you want to be secure from hackers, it’s also not currently a good idea to display your server IP publicly or advertise its presence on the server list.
 
While we’ll constantly look to increase the security of the multiplayer, it was not the primary priority compared to providing a solid co-op experience during the long development, we’ll try and shore up any vulnerabilities in the packet security in the next build, but It will take some considerable time before we can implement solid anti-cheat measures given the open nature of our game’s architecture.
 
Sorry if this blog is a little short and perhaps we’ve forgotten some huge thing we were going to mention. Forgive us if our patch has to wait until the new year, and we’re a little more absent than we should be due to the holidays. The international team will be back up to full speed next week, with the Russian devs who’ve been hard at work over Xmas fixing up and adding stuff, who will be taking their holidays in early January.
 
Thanks for everything!
 
TIS

Hello all! Welcome to this week’s Thursdoid. News flash: I’ve just had to edit out the ‘Hurray! Build 41.40 has just been released into IWBUMS beta!’ portion of the Thursdoid, because a last minute issue with auto-shoves not protecting from scratches or bites was discovered. Obviously this would not go down too well, so will need repairing. Happy days! This will be fixed as soon as possible and we’ll get the build pushed hopefully today.
 
Big things include:
 
JEWELRY! Many more character customization options with necklaces, earrings, rings and so on. Addition to animation system to allow better blending, to get rid of or be able to fine tune some pauses at ends of animations. Spear kill moves should be less dangerous now. May require some additional balances so let us know how things feel. Numerous combat fixes to get rid of some long standing issues with target choice for downed/attacking zombies, zombies over the other side of fences and so on. Added ability to refill water dispensers Zillions of fixes.
  To make up for the lack of a build at time of posting, Binky has kindly donated a WIP map tease screenshot of our rendition of Louisville:

MULTIPLAYER
Work continues on fixing up the last remaining issues with zombie syncing. As stated before, the multiplayer has been in large part completely rebuilt from the ground up for syncing characters and zombies, to provide for much better performance and less issues with lag.
 
One big part in getting these last issues fixed has been in generating diagrams to help debug what is taking place over time between server and clients in order to make sure they both match close enough to provide a believable experience comparable to that of single player. Yuri has managed to sync up thumping and fence falling perfectly using the animation state transitions using this additional power. Though is still debugging a few edge cases where the system fails. (Look out for it in the video)
 
Lastly, just wanted to add a few candid words about the ongoing MP development – We know people are frustrated at the long wait, and are seeing more and more frustrated comments about MP’s absense from B41 as the weeks go by.
 
We’re sorry that it’s taking so long – however it is what it is, and is what it is for numerous reasons – not only the immense task of building a strong and capable multiplayer architecture, ripping out the old systems, creating multiplayer that will see the game succeed and help build up a larger multiplayer following on B41’s full release (something we’re not willing to compromise on, as B41 going live fully will be the most crucial opportunity for Zomboid to grow in popularity since the game’s initial release, and squandering that opportunity with flaky MP could have a hugely negative impact on PZ in the future), but also with only a limited number of the team able to undertake the work that needs to be done, along with the various additional challenges from fun and unavoidable lockdown/childcare related issues within the team that come from the ongoing COVID-19 situation. It’s definitely been a slog and will continue to be for a while.
 
As with many other dev teams, we’re not necessarily firing on every cylinder right now – but even if we were, this is and has always been a lot of work to undertake, something we’ve tried to stress again and again – and while it’s taking a lot of time in less than ideal circumstances, the results are extremely exciting, and progress is definitely picking up.
 
It’ll take however long it takes though – we’re never ones to give ETAs at the best of times, but as stated these are not the best of times, and all we can promise is we want it out there as much if not more than any of you, and will continue to work tirelessly on getting it out there to you all as soon as possible – and if you want a silver lining, if we went with our original plan you’d still be playing B40 while we worked on this. The whole reason we released B41 into IWBUMs as single player only was anticipating we’d be wading in MP guts for some time, though we didn’t know quite how long it would end up taking, so we’re thankful that people are getting to experience all the work we put into B41 now, along with improving B41 alongside the community while the MP work is underway – and finally we want to thank those who are showing patience and understanding about what we’re trying to accomplish here, and have shown support in the community. It helps keep us motivated a lot!
 
Once B41 is finally out there, we already got lots of real exciting stuff to show off for what’s coming next. We’ve long learnt from our mistakes of the past, and now only show stuff pertaining to the current build in development in the blog updates – but that doesn’t mean we don’t have plenty of extremely juicy stuff piling up behind the scenes we’re dying for people to see.
 
Thanks for reading!
 
This week’s fireside shot from Rei Ayanami. A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too!

Hi everyone, long ago a bargain was made with a mischievous Christmas spirit that we’d blog every week come rain, sleet or snow – so here’s your Yuletide Thursdoid. Complete, now, with IWBUMS beta Santa Hats!
Clearly, not a lot to shout about this week due to the festivities BUT a few interesting nuggets have been submitted to the internal tester build for inclusion in the patch when we all get back into the swing of things back in 2020:
A fix for blob corpses in areas like McCoys logging and the Prison A fix for vehicles being launched into the air by corpse piles Addition of a sewing kit to the loot table, and the glorious return of Mouse Traps. Improvements to where/how loot is dropped – including an option to allow you to always drop at the centre of the tile you’re stood on if you’re a neat freak. A fix of a pretty major ‘zombie attention’ bug that had negative impact on zeds spotting you from more than 10 tiles away – and has been prevalent in all public test builds. We’ll need some feedback on how much trickier this makes survival come patch release. A revamp/overhaul of our mod system – details on which we’ll provide next week.  Traditionally too, holiday time off has always been one something that’s allowed for experimentation – stuff for the builds beyond the current one in development.
And so, amongst other exciting things, we’ve been seeing where the capabilities of the animation build can take us with the people who started it all. There’s a ton of work still to go with them, they’re not on the confirmed list for 42, but…
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?
 
Thanks all, here’s to a 2020 that’s been as exciting as 2019 has been for Project Zomboid. See you next week!
Many thanks to WolframGama on Reddit for the awesome screenshot we used as the Featured Image in this blog.

Next time if you'd prefer you can wait until MP is released and not be able to play SP at all in the meantime.  Your call.

This mod lets structures come crashing down when their support structures are removed. All structures must have a wall in a 5x5 area below or get destroyed.
Also prevents players from building floors more than 3 tiles away from any wall.
Be aware that any player (and zombie) that is below a crashing structure will get hurt, maybe even killed...

Mod preview image by Onkeen. Thanks!
 
I'm still working on the details and effects of this, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to reply!
 
 
This is what happens when you remove enough supporting structures:

 
This is the new maximum distance to build floors:

 
And this is what happens when you stand below a single floortile crashing down on you:

 
 
And finally, download the mod here:
From the workshop: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=836161359
From github: https://github.com/blind-coder/pz-bcGravity/releases
Requires bcUtils: https://github.com/blind-coder/pz-bcUtils/releases
 
Changelog:
 
Enjoy!

Am I the only person who giggled like a small child at the name 'Rim World'?

I was playing a game recently and in it you had the feature to disguise yourself and get an unknown tag, I think we should have this for Project Zomboid so you will #1, accidentally shoot your own friends who are unknown and #2 be able to do sneaky stuff without getting shit listed in all chat by the one person who sees you. It makes sense from a realistic standpoint but I guess it could be used to grief, maybe have it appear in the logs who is disguising themselves?
 
I am not sure, I just think it would be fun if you could actually wear a mask, and given the visual update coming up it would really fit the same theme really nicely and certainly make the game a lot more interesting. 

Hi there survivors. Work continues on the animation, combat, blood, gore and clothing systems that will in turn unlock the implementation of our final primary game features. We’ve had new textures going into the system (different clothing, like long-sleeved shirts) but most of the work has been under the hood, so this week’s Mondoid isn’t quite the blow-out that the last one was.
That said, we’re expecting an internal test build of nu-nutrition, metalwork and sleep systems fairly soon, which will then be released to the community in an IWBUMS for testing and balance feedback. (Please note that, at the time of writing, this hasn’t been merged with the animation system though, which still requires tinkering.
As such let’s turn to what RJ and Turbo are up to, which is primarily in turning a spotlight onto longstanding features to bring some added spice to survival.
RJ RIGMAROLE
In RJ’s case we wanted to get back to the feeling that falling asleep in the zombie apocalypse is a dangerous thing to do, just as it was back in the earliest builds of PZ. As such this week RJ has been coding in a reduced player control on when you’re actually able to sleep (so if you’re anxious or in pain you might require sleeping pills) and also removing control from what time you actually wake up in SP and local co-op.
RJ has also been inside the Sadistic AI Director so that he can better govern zombie movement and intrusions while you’re sleeping. “Basically, if you’re going to sleep in the next build then you need to be extra-sure that the TV is off, the curtains are closed and the lights are off.” he explained, when he received his weekly Mondoid prod. “We’re looking into zombie behaviour a bit, and buildings with zombies outside and have light showing or sounds audible could attract attention. These events will be rare, but enough to keep you on edge – just as anxious characters might wake in the middle of the night now.”
“My next job will be to remove the choice of how much time you want to sleep, and adding a working alarm clock system for you, and maybe your nearby co-sleepers. You might want to be careful to turn the alarm off if you waking up early and go off scavenging with your clock in your backpack though!”
In terms of general tweaks from community suggestions and improvements it’s also worth noting that in the next build RJ has also coded in some nerfs to the Lucky trait (abundant Spiffo plushies will be no more L ), some extra and more easily identifiable skill books where they were previously lacking, a bunch of new items relevant to metalwork, more world-filler to flesh out your shelf space and the ability to turn off helicopter/gunshot meta-game events in your sandbox options.
TURBO TIME
While he waits for more community radio/TV translation work to roll in (Russian is in the works!) Turbo is currently working on ways to tie the system closer to gameplay through their impact on the boredom moodle, and then the boredom moodle’s impact on the player. As we’ve mentioned before, we also need to finish off the work that sees XP/recipes learned from certain shows.
He’s also working on improving the visual/audio aspect of this system to make it feel like a bigger part of the game world. As a test-bed for this, here’s a rough and ready (and very WIP!)vid of a community suggestion that came up when thinking of ways to make the game feel a bit more 90s. 
 
here you go, blackteapie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4wknM0z8oE  
 
BLINDCODER’S MARVELLOUS MAPPAGE
Finally, a public service announcement. Blindcoder’s amazing PZ map project has a new home at http://map.projectzomboid.com/, so it’s all nice and official – albeit still under the strict custodianship of Mister Blindcoder. There’s still work to be done on the 2x overlays for some of the community maps, but BC is happy to throw the doors open to the general public, and asks for any issues to be reported on the PZ forums. As ever, our eternal thanks go out to Benjamin and his amazing work on this.
 
This week’s featured image by Spot on your Steam service over there. 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! Okay thanks bye!

Funny how the Mondoid regarding this sort of thing needed to be linked and then quoted 18 posts later before it was taken notice of, resolving the issues of the topic lol

Mondoids = Everything haha

Best source of info ever, if you read them

I think some stuffs about construction have been mentionned a few mondoids ago *looks for said mondoid*  this :


 

They took the simple wall as an exemple, but I think the system is supposed to cover everything you can build. Ain't that kind of what you were asking for ? (the part I put in bold)

I think some stuffs about construction have been mentionned a few mondoids ago *looks for said mondoid*  this :


 

They took the simple wall as an exemple, but I think the system is supposed to cover everything you can build. Ain't that kind of what you were asking for ? (the part I put in bold)

(on a more "serious" forum note :  there's no way to know which scored what, we just have the stastistics as a result but not the name of each entry ! Well it's not like we often use polls, but you never know ;o)

This week we’re going back over to Animation man Martin. Martin’s currently finishing up a fairly laborious re-export of all his anims, which needed some adjustments to bring them up alongside the way visible backpacks are working.
In the midst of all this, then, he seemed quite pleased to dole out some new animated treats for us.
“Animation-wise I’ve been doing some new zombie hit reactions, new player melee attacks, some more incidental anims like eating, drinking and a whole host of other stuff.”
“Beyond that I’ve modelled a couple of new items of clothing, but a lot of the work has really been new textures – adding some variety to what the player can wear. With Captain Binky’s new player character models we’ve been trying to optimise the models and textures so we can have layered clothing with the addition of dirt and blood splatter; but doing it in such a way that it won’t overly impact performance.”

“Then, as we showed two weeks ago we’ve got new items, some of which are derivatives of existing weapons like the hammer which, along with the original, now has variations like ballpeen, mallet and clubhammer. Other items are everyday objects a survivor may use to fend off zombies who get too close, like a toilet plunger, saucepan, pipe wrench etc.”
“As I mentioned last time though, there’s a lot of stuff to implement and balance. Creating the assets is only one part of the process – so don’t expect everything in the very first anim update.”

“With that in mind, then, I’ve also made a batch of improvised “spears” that have their own set of melee attacks. Whilst their material cost and damage still need to be worked out and balanced, the intention is that anything you can use to stab with will also have an improvised ‘spear’ version.”

“You’ll also be able to fix a bayonet or other improvised stabby thing to certain guns and use them in a similar way to a spear. Finally, as I said last week, please keep your suggestions coming on the forums. I read everything and people have come up with some great ideas!”
There’s plenty more cooking that we’ll discuss next week, although it might be worth mentioning that last week’s Operation Big Tree is done and awaiting the first internal test build of Build 35. Thanks to the hard work of community translators like Teesee, Geras and their teams, meanwhile, it’s looking likely that French, Polish (and maybe a few other localizations) of the Radio and TV channels will also be in 35.
Oh, and we also just wanted to spotlight a new PZ RP server that’s sprung up over the past week. So, if you’re of an RP persuasion, then please do check out ZomboidRP.com.
This week’s featured image by AwesomeMMM off of Steam. 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! Okay thanks bye!

Wait, records are not a throwing weapon? Here I was thinking this is a zombie survival game!

Today we’ve got an update from Martin, our lovely animator friend. Something the animation update will bring is some improvements on in-game firepower, so he thought he’d share…

“One of the areas currently lacking breadth in PZ are firearms,” he explains. “The amount of guns in the game has been discussed in many threads on the forums in the past, but it’s always been the intention to have a wider range of boomsticks. It is America after all!”
“What calibres, and how many, is still under discussion. We’re by no means talking about as exhaustive a list of some of the (very cool) mods like ORMtnMan’s one, but we will be adding a few more guns and ammo types that’lll give the player some more options and problems to think about.”
“Obviously when I came to model the guns I was basing them around particular calibres/types that would generally be available to Kentuckians during the early-90s era that PZ is set in. They’ve been modelled with a degree of generalisation, in part to avoid licensing issues, but also to let them represent several guns of similar types.”
“In the above video you’ll also see that there are models with proper bayonets and improvised versions. This was something I was keen to include as using guns with bayonets is as old as firearms themselves – but you’ll also notice not all guns have proper bayonets or indeed can be modified to use improvised versions. The same can be said about modifying with sights. Again, this will give the player more options and problems to think about.”
“As part of some new melee attacks I’ve also included a couple of rifle butts and pistol whips for when things get desperate – like when you’ve run out of ammo and the zeds get too close for comfort!”
“While we’re talking offense it’s also worth mention that, along with new clothes, I’ve also modelled and textured some new items that can be used as melee weapons. Some of these are representing items already in game that currently don’t have a model (ie the crowbar!) but quite a lot of them are new. Suffice to say there’s a lot of stuff to implement and balance. Creating the assets is only part of the process, so not all of it may make it in the first animation update but will be rolled out as and when they get put in game. Should all be good though!”


“There’s plenty more I’m up to, and have been up to, but we’ll leave that to another Mondoid! I don’t tend to reply on the forums or reddit but I do lurk and take notes, so keep the suggestions for animations or items coming. It all helps, and a lot of it is going in. Thanks!”
This week’s featured image by Zo off of Steam. 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! Okay thanks bye!

The Big Stuff

ETA! When will . . .
TIS has a strict no-ETAs policy, while they may have their own internal timeframes. Only features in a playable (and fun state) will be released to the stable branch. For those looking to live dangerously, there's IWBUMS.

Where're the NPCS?
tl;dr Perpetually slaved over by our dedicated founders, NPCs are in the works and likely won't be out for quite a while yet.  More information will likely be provided after the animation update.

What are your priorities?
Because TIS is a large (if small) team working remotely from one another, some features may be completed faster than others. This doesn't mean other highly requested features are being ignored; TIS has gone out of their way to avoid being side-tracked by hiring General Arcade to assist with MP development. Smaller stuff will be addressed when individual devs find time.

NPCs remain the highest priority. Only things close to release are discussed in the Mondoids; this does not mean other things are being ignored or that the developers have changed their priorities.

How often does PZ update?
The IWBUMS branch can update anywhere from several times a day to once a week, usually, while the stable branch can take anywhere from one to three months for updates to trickle down. This timeframe depends on the complexity of the feature(s), the stability of the game, and how much polish is necessary, thanks to community feedback.

What do Build Numbers mean?
Not much. They're just a way of compartmentalizing features, bug fixes, tweaks .etc into manageable bites. If something is not ready for a planned build number, but the rest of a build number is significantly complete, that feature may be held back until it's ready for release.
 
  Everything Else
 
 
40% Is as Low as We Go
No, we cannot announce sales ahead of time.

Rathlord's Commonly Suggested Suggestions
A quick rundown of what is or isn't planned by the developers, as defined by community activity. Rather out of date now.

BlindCoder's Massive Map Project
Self explanatory. A huge interactive map featuring both vanilla and mod maps. Coordinates are accurate within the game!

PZ Community Wiki Project - We Need Your Help
The PZ Wiki is a community effort currently lead by Connall. If you have some time and would like to help out Project Zomboid, consider joining our wiki effort.

General PZ FAQ
A quick rundown of just what PZ is and frequent questions asked by our users, presented by our community manager, Nasko. Needs to be updated

Easy Co-OP FAQ
Multiplayer is changing - the old method of setting up a dedicated server is being eclipsed by Easy Co-Op. Find out more here. Needs to be updated.

Survival Mode -- It's Too Difficult!
Back in the early days, PZ was a much more difficult game. Since Build 30, PZ has tried to recapture that sense of danger in the optional Survival mode. Be wary of the hardcore description, it means it.

Indie Stone Moderator Policy
Be lovely, follow the forum's rules. Criticism and discussion thereof are welcome but abusive comments are not. Do not engage in personal attacks.

Public 34.23 released!
 
There were many fixes and tweaks, here are the highlights:
All-new double-sized textures. Easy Co-op server hosting from in the game. Double-sized Tilesets option for low-spec machines. There's a new server-settings editor in-game. Barricades are allowed on both sides of a door/window.  For doors, barricades absorb all damage before the door takes any, to stop the door being destroyed before the barricades.  For windows, a barricade absorbs damage only when it is between the attacker and the window.  When removing a barricade, one plank at a time is removed. Allow rain barrels to be moved. Added SleepAllowed and SleepNeeded server options for multiplayer sleeping.  Players may sleep at any time.  When all players are asleep, the server clock speeds up.  Players sleep until they wake themselves by aiming or moving.  Players may wake other players.  Zombie attacks also wake players. Fireplaces work like campfires. Wood stoves now work like campfires.  They emit light, warm/dry the player, can be used for cooking, and don't require electricity. See-through doors. Hang sheets on see-through doors. Fixed walls and solid objects on the floor below blocking movement going up stairs. Staircases may now be placed above another staircase. Crates can now be moved with the furniture-moving commands.  When building new crates, the height is chosen automatically (no need to use the R key).  Currently, this allows stacking crates on top of tables as well, although that might change.  Destroying crates lower in a stack should cause the higher crates to drop down. Allow digging farm plots with a shovel.
The "levelup" sound only plays when a point may be spent. It plays in these 2 cases:
    1) The player gained a point while already having enough XP for a new perk level.
    2) The player gained enough XP for a new perk level, and already had a point to spend.
Added "Zoom Levels" checkboxes to the options so users can choose zoom levels.
Added "Pour into" submenu so you can choose what to transfer water into.
"Fill" is now a submenu of items that water can be transferred into instead of having separate menu items (when taking water from a sink, for example).
Smoke bomb changes:
- No longer start fires in multiplayer.
- Now work when fire is disabled in multiplayer.
- No longer emit light.
- Don't burn corpses.
- Use a larger smoke sprite when first triggered.
Memory-leak fixes in multiplayer.
Bags now displayed on ground.
New community translations.
Ham icon looks far less like a penis.