trombonaught

It's easier to pick a source file and clean out all errors introduced by the decompilation process (garbage bridge methods, unnamed constructors, references to  anonymous inner classes that have been revamped into outer classes, exploded switch statements, illegal legal accessors, and lost access types) and use the current zombie class files to assist in the recompile.

JavaDoc is invaluable for this work.

In NetBeans, this is as simple as adding the entire Project Zomboid directory to your project and building the worked-on class there.

It's a long process, though. I only made it through the first 200-odd classes before I went a bit insane.

Haylo survivors.
41.73 STABLE
We have the next patch to the stable branch primed and ready to go, however an issue that our fantastic Unstable beta testers have flagged is keeping it held in its pen for a little longer.
 
Players reported that some houses they’d cleared were spawning zeds upon booting up the new build, which alerted us to a snag in our map export process not dealing with map boundaries changing with map expansions. All previous map expansions came along with forced save incompatibility so this crept through unnoticed until now.
 
While it’s an aggravation rather than a save-breaker, we didn’t want to send a build with a known issue out to the masses – and have spent the last few days setting up a fix. This will need some testing, after which we’ll be looking to pump out the latest version next week.
If you’re interested in the changelist, or want to jump in to try it out, then you can find the unstable release notes for 41.72 and 41.73 behind the hotlinks.
 
42 CONTENT
One of the focus points of Build 42 is on extended survival in the months and years beyond the initial Knox Event outbreak.
For this, we are revamping our crafting system – and Turbo’s role has been in laying new foundations for a set-up that allows for: crafted items that have more RPG-like variable attributes based on the crafter’s skill, stats of input items that are reflected in the attributes of a final output item, and the ability of the game itself to recognise all these different attributes when an item is being passed between all of its various different locations and systems.
 
The next stage of this work, meanwhile, has been in taking this same sort of mentality to the liquids in the game – and also making them ever more interesting in our new crafting set-up.
 
WET STUFF
Let’s start with a video, and then move into some explanation.
 
 
 
So what exactly does this mean for the water, paint, gas, alcohol, washing detergent and bleach of the Knox Event?
Essentially all fluids will be defined and stored in a global registry, which is where we as devs can add new vanilla liquids – but also will make the system very moddable.
 
Each definition will store basic info such as ID, name, colour etc – then has different categories it can belong to like Beverage, Alcoholic, Fuel, Flammable and such. Beyond that we also tie in properties per litre of this particular fluid: for example Carbs, Proteins, Alcohol percentage or Energy if it’s a flammable fuel.
 
Liquids that are hazardous or poisonous can also have modifiers that configure the maximum poison effect, and how the effect behaves when mixed.
 
So yes, we’re going to have the most realistic bleach-drinking ever seen in gaming.
 
CONTAINERS
Containers are the coding class that actually store the fluids, and are the way in which the game code interacts with the above definitions.
Inventory items, objects found in the world and vehicles will all have a fluid container – which will allow them to store and use the liquids/fuels/whatever that they contain. Each container also has information stored with it that shows what particular fluids have been mixed in, and their content percentages relative to each other.
 
The system calculates and caches the summary of all the containing fluids properties based on their percentages. So, if you add 80% Soda and 20% pure alcohol the mixture fluid in the container will have 80% of the soda’s carbs, proteins etc and 20% alcohol. Then, when transferred again, the right ratios will still be maintained.
 
USAGE
Finally, we hear you cry, cocktail mixing will be a part of the apocalypse!
 
Yes, but also consider the applications this will bring to post-apocalyptic crafting – as well as to more basic stuff like mixing paints to create different colours, providing different fuels and different ways to tamper with said fuels.
 
Certain versions of our planned workstations, say one for brewing, could have one or more ‘fluidcontainers’ attached – while also allowing other ingredients as item inputs. Likewise we can have recipes that require more precise mixing and concentrations should we desire it.
The system does retain some control over your George’s Marvellous Medicine creations. We can put limits around what can, and cannot, be mixed – however we’re not 100% on how many limitations we will put on things right now. This will probably come through testing later down the line.
 
Unrestricted mixing would mean, for example, that any Fluid can be mixed with Fuel, which would mean that the energy value property per litre would go down when mixed, and that anything using the fuel such as a car or generator would have its operation and potential damage governed by the sort of fuel that had been put in.
 
The ability to recognise tampered fuel, poison etc. would (as usual) be gated behind the game’s professions – so a mechanic might smell something suspicious with watered down gas, or a chef might spot something odd with a mild concentration of something nasty in a bottle of juice.
 
When it comes to poisonous liquids, each has a maximum effect (mild, medium, severe, deadly etc) and control parameters such as a minimum volume and mix ratio. So, if a poison has max effect ‘deadly’ and the minimum amount required for death is 200ml – and you have 100ml mixed into a bottle – then the final effect when drinking will most likely be a medium poisoning.
 
The new system will also add new depth to such things as filling up a vehicle with gas, or siphoning gas from a car’s tank – but we’ll also retain the game’s current quick context options like “fill bottle from tap” to keep things speedy.
 
HUTCHES
Domestic and wild animals, albeit with fairly basic AI brains, will also be a part of Build 42 – and we have already shown our cows, sheep and deer. A fairly realistic take on poultry-keeping will also be part of this.
 
Please note the following UI is super WIP! We may well end up with icons instead of the 3D chickens.
Based on our own experiences with keeping chickens – if you have a henhouse you will have to close its door every night after your brood have gone in to roost. Otherwise there’s a very real chance of Fantastic Mister Fox paying a visit and stealing a few, and potentially leave others dead in their pen.
 
You’d be advised not to forget to let your hens back out in the morning either – for fear of them losing their condition, and adding to the mess in the henhouse that will need cleaning out.
 
Hens will also enter the nesting boxes within the henhouse to lay their eggs, and from which you’ll have to collect the eggs on a regular basis – if you haven’t collected recently then hens will choose to lay outside in their pen instead, where there’s an added risk of them being eaten by wild animals or going bad.
 
OTHER STUFF
While we’re going in DEEP (as is generally our way) on stuff like the above – Build 42 will also feature all manner of other improvements to the game engine, MP systems and general zombie survival and early game stuff too. So don’t fret too much if aspects of the above don’t exactly match your own play-style.
 
It should also be said that it’s still some ways off – partly because of dev illness (and recovery!) that we’ve discussed before, and partly because a proportion of the team are still maintaining and improving Build 41.
 
From now on you’ll likely notice the changelist of 41 patches shrink a little, as team members are taken off 41 and plugged into work on features within the 42 matrix.
 
JOB AD AGAIN
We are back on the hunt for an Animations Engineer / Technical Wizard  – most likely someone from the AAA game development space who has pines for joining a close-knit team of indie devs. If this is you, or someone you know, then our job page lives here!
 
This week’s forlorn firemen from OtakuYazawa. 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 dev and want to work with us? Details here.

I can relate. We are human beings! We have ultimate control over our environments! Even in Project Zomboid. If the game is too hard, make it easier?
 
I stopped toiling over what I don't enjoy. This game allows me to play it exactly the way I want it to be. Almost everything is tweakable, even without mods, which enrich the quantity of an already high-quality experience. 
 
I love the idea of a game beating a person. So delightful! The limitations were meant to be broken, yet watch as the person flounders!
 
Good game and great devs. Glad to see the direction this game is going. More more more!

I'm yet to come across this alleged bug though my play-style is covert.
 
It just sounds like people are desperate to feel like Rambo, making bad decisions then complaining that the game screwed them over.

Yes: it is by design that if you do something rather dumb, like take on multiple zombies at once and put yourself in a position to get team-tagged by them, you’ll die.
 
Otherwise I already addressed the specific issue (in your old thread) of ping-ponging back and forth a few times in that process. It is ugly and a bit silly and I’d like it fixed, but that fix is just killing you faster.
 
We are simply not going back to the pre-animation days of fixed, telekinetic sprites basically operating on area of effect to arbitrarily slow the player. We will of course refine anims as we go in to the future and as the engine becomes more feature rich, but I think the answer to an awful lot of the gripes here is unlearning multiple years of habit rather than blaming the game for it. Things change and sometimes we, as humans, really don’t like that and actively fight it by imagining  whatever changed was better in the past, when it really wasn’t.
 
…
 
For everyone else, since some of you seem to think everyone is complaining about the same thing when they describe it as stunlock: pull down requires three zombies hitting you simultaneously to even function. Turn it off in sandbox if it really is that much a bother and go your merry way. Play survivor if you want something  more like build 40 rather than subject yourself to apocalypse.
 
 

Autopause. Can we get an autopause feature? 
 
I've lost a few characters accidentally hitting the windows key. Perhaps force the game to open the menu when it's minimized?
 
In the same vein, autopause on keyboard disconnect would also be nice. Lost my most highly developed, longest living, most adored character of ever a year because my keyboard wiring decided to poo the bed.
 
Anyways, love the work you lads have been throwing at this title. Ain't a title out there like it(except maybe ccda? Never played, so I can't comment to that).

Hey hey hey I know it's me again with yet an other safehouse suggestion.

Suggestion
Allow owner to assign member roles.
- Co-owner, similar to owner but cannot kick owner and cannot promote member to co-owner.
- Member, give access to the safehouse as a member, allow respawn.
- Visitor, default role allow the player to sleep, drink from tap water and use doors, disallow respawn and looting.
 
 

Lol for the distinction between people and server owners

Today we are releasing version 41.72 to the Unstable beta.
If you need directions to this, then here’s a handy gif!
 
As always with the Unstable beta – be aware that some mods might break.
 
We don’t anticipate a huge amount of disruption with 41.72, but should any of your workshop mods become non-operational then please inform the relevant creators – and be patient while they find the time to update their wares. They have jobs / families / lives too!
 
So what’s in 41.72? Well the changelist can be found here on our forums, and there’s a lot of small tweaks and fixes to scroll through, but we’ll detail the main stuff here also.
 
It’s always HUGELY helpful for us when people, and server owners, jump over to the unstable beta – so please dive in and let us know how you find it.
 
41.72
Lots of general stability and security work has gone into MP – and specifically work on vehicles when you are driving alongside (or are a passenger sitting next to) players with far higher or lower pings than your good self. The first of several layers of polish to the game’s food and recipes. New foodstuffs, improved containers, expanded recipes and all manner of different things to put together to feed yourself and your doomed friends. Various elements of balance too and, as mentioned before, no more footballs that can be jammed into a toaster. Fellow co-op, faction and safehouse member positions can now be seen on your in-game map should you choose to enable it. An improvement to the way in which mod errors are reported. A list of mods has been added to the pause menu, and whenever one is erroring out then it’ll be flagged within the list. This is going in alongside an improved lua error log that shows whether any files reported in call stacks are being overridden by mods. This should help modders and our support teams no end. The game’s foraging system will now understand polygonal foraging zones on the map, rather than rely on its former basic rectangular brain. This should help with decreasing the amount of non-forageable spaces on the map. A slight tweak to zed pathfinding, which means zombies targeting players have a higher priority in the game code than those shambling around more aimlessly. The final large map export that we’ll be doing before Build 42, most likely. This is primarily to fix user reported map bugs, but also contains improved farmsteads, scarecrows (that might be bugged and appear as mannequins currently – sorry) and improved Louisville upper class districts. Alongside the above there are various new tiles going into the game: including baby cribs, heavy factory machinery, standing floor lamps, farm related tiles, ATM machines, heavy safes, medical related tiles, and car wash tiles. For MP: new admin powers and tools – for example a brush tool that will allow server chiefs to create tiles, walls, fire, smoke, water etc. in-game. Also: a thunder trigger, better synced health panels, improved vehicle/trailer spawning, player weight changing and heightened control over zombie movement, zed spawning and locked doors. New loot maps for Louisville – which previously didn’t have any. There are nine different maps in all, due to the size of LV, which all unlock the area they show in your in-game map – alongside a wide range of different survivor ‘treasure map’ annotations. A smidgen of improvement to corpses. More of these will now be ‘fake dead’ zombies, alongside improvement to their rotting – such as the chance of spawning maggots in their inventory and on the floor around them. Handy for fishing! Polish to player emotes and idles. Better representation of weapon-part upgrades. Generator/battery improvements. New action music track. Fixed blood appearing on destroyed objects, and about a million other fixes – best to check the changelist!
  JOBZ
While we have your attention: another quick flag to the fact that we are back on the hunt for an Animations Engineer / Technical Wizard.
This will most likely be someone from the AAA game development space who has pines for joining a close-knit team of indie devs.
If this is you, or someone you know, then our job page lives here!
 
This week’s exciting and no doubt doom-laden story-via-map from Athiuk! 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 dev and want to work with us? Details here.
Oh, and Spanish-speaking community! Be aware of a biiiig PZ streaming event on Twitch starting this Sunday, hosted by @EscocesSL. Spiffo hopes everyone has fun!

After some review of other recent posts in the bug section, it's come to my attention that these posts don't receive much attention. Usually no replied. However, I did see one or two in which it looks like someone who's working on the game has responded. From what I gather, this is what we've got:
 
Devs are aware of the issue
Devs are working on the issue
The issue turned out to be a much larger problem than they had anticipated
For now there is no real fix.
 
I'm going to hope for some kind of response from a dev on what the issue might be so we as a playerbase can get an idea of what's under the hood in this regard. Also I'm going to do some experimenting with my base and see what I can get figured out. Bit of a daunting task, as I don't really want to use cheats, but with my base the way it is, I should have infinite sustainability. Today I'll have a goal of replacing all the floors with pre-built floors and see if that forces the game to generate an interior decision. Any tips are welcome in this thread. Let's see if we can lend a hand to the devs and find some of this bug's cause  or try to at least lol

So I've built a shelter off away in the woods near a lake. Isolation was key - therefore I built onto the lake and isolated part of the base as a sort of island. The base's store room (2nd floor) sits on top of the garage. The garage is completely accessible to normal terrain while you must take a rope to get up to the 2nd level. The store room then leads further onto the lake to the "home" which is divided by some doors. All in all, the construction was quite simple. I ran into very few issues getting walls up other than what might be expected when building on water. I'm making this thread as only half of my constructed base actually registers as an interior and the effects are game-changing.
 
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2548315176
Had to wait for a rainy/snowy day to get this visual to show how drastic the difference is and why I'm setting this one down until I can find a solution (hopefully with your help!). I built about 90% of this base in vanilla and then added some mods on including HC and a stat HUD as well as a QOL mod that shows what skill I've leveled up in above my head. That being said, I'm not convinced any mod contributed to this issue. In this picture it's 53.5F inside, we're going winter which is why I've really kind of had it with this bug for this character. Semi-comfortable, well lit in the morning/afternoon/evening and dry. But upon crossing the threshold of those doors, the game then registers that we're outside.
 
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2548315150
To answer some obvious questions first
Yes, there is a roof
Yes, floor tiles are on either side of each wall in a desperate attempt to kick this glitch at some point
Yes, we're on a lake 
Funny enough, I've built a pillar on every edge I'm capable of doing so on the main house, but have not done so on the store room. Still, the store room registers interior. You can even see inside the edges from the outside in the pics.
 
So yeah, we're raining and snowing inside where I normally sleep and it sucks. The furnace is next to useless in this space as it's fighting the coming winter cold. If it had not been for a backup I had cuz IWBUMS, I would have lost this character due to some nonsense as there was a massive freeze that came in overnight one night and I hadn't realized yet that the building registered as exterior and my character died unexpectedly. Kinda my bad, but he'd have survived just fine in the store room since it's interior. The sheet rope you see going up is attached to a fence on the roof which actually has walls built around it with a roof on top of that also. That best part is, that tiny room he crawls into after climbing the rope also registers as interior, is super well lit even when my "home" is not, as it's exterior, even though it has no windows!
 
I've made an attempt at deleting the isoregiondata folder - reloading game - destroy wall and rebuilding it to no avail. I've done that a good number of times while trying a few different things to trigger the game to finally think the building is interior but came out empty handed. I was hoping someone could take a look at this. This is actually the first time I've ever gone onto a game's forum to participate in the community. I've got a .rar of my save file prepped, but I'm a bit unfamiliar with  trusted file sharing sites so if you wanna take a look at the world, you'll have to recommend me a site to upload
 
Thanks to anyone for reading this or even looking into it!

Could be it a kinda "crutch" balance thing, because you cannot leave the "sit on the ground" state instantly, but can instantly fight or flee from "rest on the furniture" state?

41.70

BALANCE AND TRANSLATIONS

- Updated community translations.
- Deleted media/lua/shared/Translate/EE
- Item distribution and recipe code fixes and changes

FIXES

- Fixed WorldItemModelDrawer.java applying ModelScript.scale twice
- Fixed Hyperthermia or hypothermia occurring when the player sleeps - if length of the day more than 4 hours
- Fixed node.skinCelcius accumulatubg too large values (hundreds and thousands)
- Fixed Lua errors using the 16 new insect lures.  Definitions were missing in fishing_properties.lua.
- Fixed the player's hair/skin changing after sleep
- Fixed IsoWorldInventoryObject.ignoreRemoveSandbox not being saved.
- Fixed the "Consolidate All" command so it combines drainable items one at a time, instead of waiting until the end of a longer combined action.
- Fixed vehicle trunk capacity not lowering when zombies thump on it.
- Fixed "CHEAT: Set Part Condition" not affecting trunk capacity in single-player.
- Fixed clients not being able to sleep in cars or tents when the SleepNeeded server option is false.
- Fixed clicking on an expanded stack of greater than 50 items selecting other items not in the stack.
- Fixed new players knowing media lines saved in recorded_media.bin when loading an old save with an already-dead player. This shouldn't be happening if an old save is loaded with an alive player who then dies.
- Fixed not being able to place items that are in bags on the ground.
- Fixed items being deselected when clicking the scrollbar in the inventory and loot windows.
- Fixed inventory and loot container buttons responding to mouse-up events when the button wasn't clicked and items aren't being dropped on them. Dragging the scrollbar and then releasing the mouse button over a container button would act like a left click.
- Fixed tall 3D item models being clipped off at the top when rendering them as textures.
- Fixed PVPFirearmDamageModifier and PVPMeleeDamageModifier tooltips which now read "Damage multiplier for ..." instead of "Added damage for ..."
- Fixed dragging items onto inventory and loot container buttons selecting the container.
- Fixed typo with Tooltip_BookTitle_9.
- Fixed sawing a JS-2000 Shotgun with a Choke Tube upgrade not removing the Choke Tube, which isn't allowed on the Sawn Off JS-2000 Shotgun. The Choke Tube is now returned to the player's inventory.
- Fixed incorrect hunger calculation for the Muffin recipe.
 

The rest action is in the lua files. For the sitting on ground, for comparison, you'll have to dig a little deeper into the java classes. I'll add the formulas/code snippets here, when home.
 
I do agree though: the current system is not really intuitive from a game logic perspective (cold floor > comfy sofa).
 
Edit:
-- lua\client\TimedActions\ISRestAction.lua:13 -- note: self.mul = 2 function ISRestAction:update() if self.character then local endurance = self.character:getStats():getEndurance() + ((ZomboidGlobals.ImobileEnduranceIncrease * self.character:getRecoveryMod() * self.mul) * getGameTime():getMultiplier()) if endurance > 1 then endurance = 1 end if endurance < 0 then endurance = 0 end self.character:getStats():setEndurance(endurance) self.character:setMetabolicTarget(Metabolics.SeatedResting); end end // IsoPlayer.java:2800 // Note: public static double SittingEnduranceMultiplier = 5.0D; private void updateEndurance(float var1) { Stats var10000; float var2; if (this.isSitOnGround()) { var2 = (float)ZomboidGlobals.SittingEnduranceMultiplier; var2 *= 1.0F - this.stats.fatigue; var2 *= GameTime.instance.getMultiplier(); var10000 = this.stats; var10000.endurance = (float)((double)var10000.endurance + ZomboidGlobals.ImobileEnduranceReduce * SandboxOptions.instance.getEnduranceRegenMultiplier() * (double)this.getRecoveryMod() * (double)var2); this.stats.endurance = PZMath.clamp(this.stats.endurance, 0.0F, 1.0F); } // rest omitted }  

Hi gang. I just did some research for a youtube vid and I found that sitting on the ground is the most efficient stamina recovery method (apart from the hack of sitting on ground AND taking the rest action while doing so).
 
I clocked it at about 0.54 stamina per minute (regardless of time setting), compared to 0.32/minute for chairs and beds or 0.108/minute standing around.
 
Is this a bug or is it working as intended?
 
I'll link to the video timing where I explain it, but basically the info is as above. Version 41.69, only mod is for damage display, and  I performed on sleep enabled as well as sleep disabled server with insane population. All other server settings were default.
 

Hi,
 
When I click on "Stash debuggers" of the debug menu, I got an error and no stash debug interface (see following extract of lua code and console.txt).
My minimal context:
B41.65 -debug run local HOST server no mod  
StashDebug.lua
function StashDebug:populateList() self.datas:clear(); for i=0,StashSystem.getPossibleStashes():size()-1 do --here is the size identified in the console log local stash = StashSystem.getStash(StashSystem.getPossibleStashes():get(i):getName()); self.datas:addItem(stash:getName(), stash); end end console.txt
LOG : General , 1640350739716> 585?477?464> ------------------------------------------------------------- attempted index: size of non-table: null LOG : General , 1640350739716> 585?477?464> ----------------------------------------- STACK TRACE ----------------------------------------- function: populateList -- file: StashDebug.lua line # 72 function: initialise -- file: StashDebug.lua line # 66 function: OnOpenPanel -- file: StashDebug.lua line # 146 function: onClick -- file: ISDebugMenu.lua line # 99 function: onMouseUp -- file: ISButton.lua line # 56 ERROR: General , 1640350739717> 585?477?464> ExceptionLogger.logException> Exception thrown java.lang.RuntimeException: attempted index: size of non-table: null at KahluaThread.tableget line:1689. ERROR: General , 1640350739717> 585?477?465> DebugLogStream.printException> Stack trace: java.lang.RuntimeException: attempted index: size of non-table: null at se.krka.kahlua.vm.KahluaThread.tableget(KahluaThread.java:1689) at se.krka.kahlua.vm.KahluaThread.luaMainloop(KahluaThread.java:641) at se.krka.kahlua.vm.KahluaThread.call(KahluaThread.java:163) at se.krka.kahlua.vm.KahluaThread.pcall(KahluaThread.java:1980) at se.krka.kahlua.vm.KahluaThread.pcallBoolean(KahluaThread.java:1924) at se.krka.kahlua.integration.LuaCaller.protectedCallBoolean(LuaCaller.java:104) at zombie.ui.UIElement.onMouseUp(UIElement.java:1228) at zombie.ui.UIElement.onMouseUp(UIElement.java:1183) at zombie.ui.UIManager.update(UIManager.java:808) at zombie.GameWindow.logic(GameWindow.java:253) at zombie.core.profiling.AbstractPerformanceProfileProbe.invokeAndMeasure(AbstractPerformanceProfileProbe.java:71) at zombie.GameWindow.frameStep(GameWindow.java:745) at zombie.GameWindow.run_ez(GameWindow.java:661) at zombie.GameWindow.mainThread(GameWindow.java:475) at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source) LOG : General , 1640350739717> 585?477?465> ----------------------------------------- STACK TRACE ----------------------------------------- function: populateList -- file: StashDebug.lua line # 72 function: initialise -- file: StashDebug.lua line # 66 function: OnOpenPanel -- file: StashDebug.lua line # 146 function: onClick -- file: ISDebugMenu.lua line # 99 function: onMouseUp -- file: ISButton.lua line # 56  

How do, all. Let’s visit a few different PZ departments to see what’s cooking.
41 PATCHING
We are currently partway through the journey to the 41.69 patch. Planned patches to Build 41 are intended to be, generally, not feature-led and instead focus on balance, QOL, fixes and polish. The current contents of 41.69 includes:
New items and 3D models New foraging discoveries. Many improvements for controller and Steamdeck play Many improvements to the MP experience in areas such as: the sometimes weird vehicle physics, the PvP safety system, the PvP cooldown timer, safehouse bugs, sleeping and radio/VHS sync.
There’s a lot more incoming next week, but we intend to keep this patch relatively short and sharp if we can – though of course will also need to be sure of MP stability before any release (even to unstable) as there’s still quite a lot of large adjustments to the MP code going into the pot.
FISHING AND LOCKPICKING
Although it’s not clear where it will land in terms of a build release yet, this week Aiteron’s new fishing system had its first internal test. This was largely a bug-chasing exercise, especially in terms of MP, but the testers had fun.
 
There’s still a lot of work to be done, and we will need better and more appropriate anims to really sell how it works, but the current mission statement is to get it all working – so we can then add some polish.
 
We also need to bring the mechanics closer to realism, through exploring what is caught (and how) in Kentucky – and what different types of lines, hooks, lures, bait and catch options we should include to increase/decrease your chances of catching a particular sort of fish. Likewise, clearly stuff like your location, the weather, the time of day and your fishing skill will all come into play.
We won’t go into detail, as it’s still distant, but something else that’s in the design phase while Aiteron implements fishing is bringing elements of his lockpicking mod over into the main game – in a new and improved package to boot.
 
Locks will vary in type and challenge, and the tools required may differ. Through this, stashes with useful loot will be added to the map – hidden behind locked doors. This will also enable locked doors within houses, chests, locked gun cabinets etc.
MAP WORK
The map team’s ongoing mission to improve the Knox Event map continues. Amidst other tasks focussing on the Many Years Later challenge map, converting and building new farms to fit in with our animal plans, and plotting for future expansion… here’s a few extra fun things that will be appearing in an exclusion zone near you.
 
New tiles to improve the appearance of existing locations. Some older, and very distinguished, buildings for the richfolk of the area. MUSIC
On top of the gameplay improvements mentioned last time, the guys at Formosa UK (formerly Noiseworks) are working on a first draft of a rework of the action music.
 
Instead of switching between tracks mid-fight, the plan is to cross-fade between different intensity levels of the same track. The base intensity will be the regular track that you are used to, but then there will also be a high action version that has been beefed up a bit.
When the action subsides, or the number of zombies you’re fighting declines, the music will enter a low state and eventually fade out.
FARM ANIMALS
Work on the introduction of farmed animals continues for their planned introduction in Build 42.
 
All the following information and videos are SUPER WORK IN PROGRESS and will improve a bunch as we move forward. Please don’t worry/complain/laugh/faint/query/weep about ‘em. (Usual caveats apply basically!)

Some bullet points on the current integration!
All animals are defined in lua definition tables, which will allow for maximum modding possibilities: it’s via these definitions that you can essentially adjust animal behaviour. When in their pen farm animals will wander around, ‘emote’ by flapping wings or rootling for food on the ground, sit, rest, lie down etc. Relevant animals can graze grass, which then regrows after an appropriate amount of time –  which can be defined in a new sandbox option. Animals will eat from a trough, which is something you’ll either construct or loot from a farm.
    Animals all have different growth stages – for example calves become cows/bulls, and grow in size. Their growth will be guided by various parameters – like their hunger, thirst, general health and the size of their enclosure. Baby animals will stick by their mother’s side, and even take milk directly from the udder. The bigger the animal size, the more meat it will produce when it is butchered. There will be various breeds in-game – so you could have a “meat breed” (Angus) or a “milk” breed (Holstein) – and maybe even something in between like a Simmental. Growth rates will be realistic, so a cow will take two full years to be at its full size, but this will be modifiable via sandbox options. Cows will generate milk for a certain period after delivering a calf. The more you continue to milk the cow, the more milk you’ll get each day. Leaving a cow with a full udder, however, will cause issues and a decrease in lactation. Sheep grow wool that you can retrieve with a shear, and also have a milking system if you enjoy sheep milk.
    Hens can lay eggs. If a henhouse is present they’ll lay eggs in it, otherwise they’ll do it on the ground. They can be fertilized by a rooster, so if left for a time can hatch out chicks. You will need to shut the door to the henhouse every night, and open it back up every morning, or will you risk visits from Mister Fox – and see the resulting bloodstains to boot.
    ANIMAL BREEDING
What’s currently being added to the above systems are some ways to encourage the breeding of animals – to improve your herd, and that of your friends and neighbours, as the apocalypse draws on.
 
It sounds complicated, but it’s actually quite easy for us to generate animals with a ‘full’ (for our purposes) genome – again all defined in lua definition tables for easy modding.
 
Each animal type will have a set of abstracted genes that each contain two ‘alleles’ inherited from parents, from “milk quantity”, to “life expectancy”, “strength”, “appearance” genes and a lot more in-between.
 
We’ve gone for a somewhat realistic, yet still gamified, genetics system to make it feel somewhat accurate. We want to have some of the interesting consequences of genetics, and also to have them present clear enough results for players to engage with in cross breeding projects.
 
When breeding animals, characters with appropriate skills will be able to inspect the animal and get an idea of its various health-related attributes (aka genes) – while others such as egg laying, fertility or milk production will be observed in the animal during its lifespan. Higher skills will also, most likely, make this more apparent/obvious to experienced breeders.
 
The gameplay loop of animal breeding will involve trying to pick the correct pairings/groupings of your animals to pass along the best genes into their offspring.
 
Over successive generations you will be able to improve your stock with better milk production, egg production etc – or help you to focus on producing animals with more meat for slaughter.
 
Finding new animals to breed to diversify and improve your stock’s gene pool will be a prime reason for farmer players to interact with other groups, or go hunting around the farms on the map. Likewise, this will zero in on the concept of a ‘prize bull’ that you might grow an emotional bond with, and really, really not want to get ill – or perhaps even get stolen in MP.
 
The science will be that each animal will carry two sets of alleles in their genome, one contributed randomly from each parent. You have dominant and recessive alleles, and this will mean that you definitely have to be careful about in-breeding, as base generated animals may have recessive gene timebombs in the forms of genetic illnesses of varying types, waiting to ruin your prize bull and your entire stock if you’ve inbred your animals too much.
 
We’re sure there’ll be mods that will allow players to observe the genes more directly, but in the base game we’re expecting a tad more ‘art than science’ approach and using informed guesses and examination and observation to improve your stock.
 
There’s plenty more to this system, but we’ll leave it there for now. All animals will use this genetic system, and we’re sure at some point we’ll look into expanding it into the plant system too, however that’s not a priority right now and almost certainly in the worlds beyond Build 42.

 
This week’s cool arcade base from Damien. A changelist of all our pre-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.

I agree especially on the lack of accuracy in close range, a zombie is right in front of you and you miss all your shots.
I think you should be able to hit it at 100% but not a lethal hit if you suck at aiming, at least it would be less frustrating.
It reminds me of X-com.

l will love these new sounds kkkkkk

when they get to 69 or 70

love noise wor- A INT.. INTERACTIVE UK

smiling cow isn't real it can't hurt you.... smiling cow^

After several barnstorming ‘future plans’ blogs this one is a bit more near-sighted we are afraid, but might cast some light on our intentions for the general upkeep of PZ while larger-scale features are worked on.
 
First though, the boring-er stuff!
 
HOUSEKEEPING
TEAM EXPANSION!
 
We are looking for a game development specialist, likely someone with AAA experience, who wants to go indie and doesn’t mind one of their superiors being a cartoon raccoon. We need an Animation Engine Programmer, who would be in charge of improving the code guts of Project Zomboid.
 
Good experience required with working on or developing character animation systems in a proprietary engine: root motion, blending, masking, inverse kinematics, ragdoll etc. Competitive rates, flexible working, worldwide dev team. Apply within.
 
GET OFF THE OLD BETAS PLZ!
 
At some point in the near-ish future, we will be tidying up some of the older Build 41 MP betas available on Steam. Namely, 41.60, 41.61 and 41.65.
 
Please return to the non-beta live version of the game as soon as you can to be 100% sure that you avoid any game or mod corruption when these disappear – whether on a server or in SP.
 
(The sound issue that meant that some remained on 41.65 has now been dug up, fixed and patched in 41.68 stable.)
UPCOMING 41 PATCHES
Today we hotfixed the stable build with an FMOD sound engine update that should finally solve the issues experienced by some players with certain output/peripherals set-ups.
 
Next up will be a small patch, 41.69, designed to counter what we feel are some of the more pressing issues that the game currently has – and where a fix can be quick, simple and hopefully non-disruptive. The issues at hand currently are:
 
Problems with safehouses, including unwanted teleports for safehouse members when the safehouse owner is offline. An issue with a non-responsive PvP icon impacting on general play. The fact that looted VHS tapes are single-use and can’t be used by other players.  
We apologise for these small patches, and know it’s annoying having to wait for a server owner or host to update, but we hope that this will be the last of these smaller niggly patches for a while.
 
The team will then implement quite a lot of QOL and balance work that we already have waiting backstage into the internal beta, and we can knuckle down on 41.70 (if all goes well) as a wider and ‘small feature-led’ patch with a longer lead-time for the community.
 
This will also contain many and varied improvements to the MP experience, alongside some work to make our game better compatible with the SteamDeck.
 
[Post-blog Addendum:
We've been working on the VHS one-time XP bug that's annoying on MP servers - but our fix will likely create disruption and required updates for mods that use radio/TV.
As such, while annoying, it seems wise to make 41.69 a bigger patch as opposed to the quick-fix-build mentioned in the blog.
41.69 is being prepared and will spend some time in an unstable beta for required mod fixes.
We have a lot of QOL and balance changes somewhat logjammed at the moment, so hopefully we can get it all in and tested - so it shouldn't be too long a wait before it gets into unstable. Thanks all!]
SOUND DEPARTMENT
The patch described above will also contain a lot of the recent work from our friends at Noiseworks – who are now known as Formosa Interactive UK btw, but our dev relationship with them won’t be changing.
On the menu for this sound update are the following:
 
Reworked Shotgun and M16 sounds, and additional firearm sounds for the Desert Eagle and the M9. New indoor reverb tails for small/medium/big rooms for all firearms to make them sound more realistic indoors. Additional foley sounds for zombies tripping over fences/obstacles/through windows New environmental sounds for the Electricity/Water shutdown, and how the world reacts when either happens. There’s different shutdown sounds for inside/outside, and electric appliances play shutdown sounds in sync with these when the player manages to catch the event while close-by. Plus attempting to drink or get water from taps when the water is off might play water sputtering sounds. A new background atmo bed for foggy weather More specific roomtones for different building types, along with some random oneshot sounds. For example, in the prison you can occasionally hear rats, or other metal squeaks. Meanwhile in the mall, while the electricity is still running, there’s a chance of mall music playing. A bunch of additional world emitters for streetlights, neon signs, hot dog stations, gas pumps, arcades etc – all of which also react to the Electricity shutting off. All the vehicle doors have also been re-worked and split into layers for more variation and to make them squeak less often.  
The guys are also in the process of reworking the music system to address tracks not playing out – and also have future plans to make combat music more engaging and dynamic.
 
BEYOND 41
Okay, maybe a little from our future plans. RJ continues to work on our first implementation of PZ livestock. Look at this happy beast!
 
This week’s foggy, rainy Gotham-esque nightmare from †. A changelist of all our pre-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.

I find the game is almost designed to be played on multiplayer. Sure, solo play is fun. But being in a persistent world with other people driving around on the roads, leaving wrecks and shooting at each other. It turns the game into a whole different beast. 

1173. Weather forecasts on the radio are too precise. In game, temperature and wind speed are given to two decimal places (i.e. 76.13 degrees, 12.15 mph). In real life these are given at most to the nearest whole number (i.e. 76 degrees, 12 mph). Also, weather forecasts generally include daily high and low temperatures, but not average daily temperature.

Prepear to have your minds blown, did you guys know that you don't have to fill gas cans only to carry gasoline around in real life! That's right you can take a tea cup and fill it with gasoline instead of tea or you can fill a bottle/bucket with gasoline for much higher effciency then you could have achhieved with a cup. Now I know you need some time to take a breath from screaming, I mean WHO could have KNOWN that you could do such things!!! I myself personally though that this was some kind of witchcraft, but my friend told me that this is in fact totally possible. I couldn't go without asking him one thing: "Hey man, this game I've been playing recently called Project Zomboid, it too let's you fill stuff with gasoline, but only if it's red and called gas can, you know anything about that?!" to what he replied "Ah yes, either the devs of the game don't like their playerbase or they're too busy adding jalepenos, fish roe and power pylons to add such things." This left me in disbelief, esecially after he sent me this.

Note that text above this one contains sarcasm to make our (players) situation look less lame considering we still can't do this despite getting dozens of new foods and things in the game that aren't as helpful as this one, yet so simple and especially after the gas cans became rarer, kinda a lot rarer + imagine the benefits in MP.

It seems that we've had a case of miscommunication within the team. The issue is indeed not fixed and I apologise for making the claim that it was... A member of the team is working on this as we speak. Here's to hoping that it will get fixed in time for the next patch!