Tails

So, I've suggested this before, and I think this is a great time to suggest it again-
 
Plz, GIVE US REFRIGERATED VANS/STEPVANS; Ice Cream trucks, Butcher Shop stepvans, Market Produce vans, Alcohol Delivery trucks. This shouldn't be so hard to implement, we already have fridges, so this would be a fridge container that remains cold for as long as there's power on the batteries (perhaps this kind of vehicle would come with additional batteries).

Hey all, hope this finds you well.
Lots of work on the technical side of the four main pillars of 42 these past two weeks – all of which relatively dry, so let’s run through that briefly before checking out some of the other items rolling in.
 
Right now the foundational code to our in-depth crafting systems revamp are being brought into a position where the MP team can better get their hooks into it, while in our optimization/lighting/height channel we’ve been continuing to polish out cutaway issues, errors thrown and the way our isoregions system handles its newfound 32 potential storeys.
For our MP upgrade, meanwhile, work continues on getting the machinations of player inventories (building, recipes etc) over onto the server – while also improving the implementation of our (pretty much fully cooked at this point) new fishing minigames and systems. Domestic animals, meanwhile, are in bug fix mode – with additional attention being given to their pathfinding and around animal escapes.
 
While all this is ongoing other team members are beavering away raising the quality of the game in smaller-scale ways, so let’s look at a few of those fun nuggets now.
 
CURRENT AFFAIRZ
One way to give our towns and city more personality is to provide more written literature for you to loot and peruse – whether it’s a fully readable lore item, or simply an interestingly named (if non-readable) book found in a house you loot that might deepen your understanding of the life of the zombie you just bludgeoned downstairs.
 
 
Build 42 will feature a range of newspapers, each with a final three or four issues to pick up and read in a separate ‘written content UI’. They will contain news articles about the initial build-up to the Knox Event articles, everyday life articles, and even a few breadcrumbs as to what’s really been going in.
 
This will also include smaller scale publications: like ‘town news’ pamphlets for the smaller settlements that don’t quite warrant a full-scale newspaper. 
 
Beyond this we’ve also had a lovely man called Stuart taking all our teeny-tiny map logos and up-rezzing them into more suitable forms for both in-game and irl usage. Their first use within the game are ‘local business’ fliers that are also readable via the same ‘printed media’ UI.
 

 
Clearly there’s not much zed content that can be made from these, but their gameplay role is to mark up interesting locations (and sources of potentially helpful loot) on the in-game map – a function that we feel will be especially handy for new players.
 
We feel that finding a flier that’s a membership advertisement for, say, the West Maple Country Club and revealing it on the player’s map will give an interesting reason for new players to leave town and explore – and likewise a job advert for McCoy logging and a corresponding map reveal might flag a decent place to potentially find an axe.
 
There’s SO MUCH stuff on the PZ map, and we wanted a way to direct people to some of the locations we’re most proud of. Especially those lost in the vastness of Louisville.
 
PERSONAL READING
We also really want you to feel interested in the deceased people whose homes you are raiding, and perhaps even saddened by their demise. From this we’ve also added a LOT more texture to the names of some of the books, comics and magazines they’ve been reading – and indeed the photographs they’ve been tenderly keeping in an upstairs drawer.
 
The hope is that when the spawn tags on these 1500 different interestingly titled books/mags (non-readable) combine with the way we guide our RNG looted spawns work then neat little stories will form in your head about the sorts of folks that lived here up until recently – and perhaps who you just left dead on the kitchen floor.
 
Perhaps they were reading a book called “Long Term Illness Management” by Laura Paloma, which shines a light on the medication in the bathroom.
 
Perhaps their love of military history ties in with the guns, or maybe it’s satisfying to know the zombie in the garden used to read trashy thrillers.
 
Likewise finding photographs that aren’t simply called “photograph” in a cupboard won’t do much to you, but instead seeing “Photograph of a Smiling Family” or “Photograph of a Wedding Car Arriving at a Church” will hopefully do you some emotional damage. We’ve got about five hundred of these, and they’re already bringing some amazing (doomed) colour to the average loot run.
 
We’ve also got six new TV channels, a new radio station, and 75 new VHSs ready to mix into the game (all written by Pat_Bren, who’s also the architect of all the above alongside coder Blair Algol) so really feel that B42 will broaden the narrative possibilities of the game significantly – while also neatly tying into the gameplay in many instances.
Some other changes that are tied into the above:
 
The books, magazines and comic books that now have individual titles, will also be persistent. Instead of disappearing after being read, there will be a cooldown period that dictates how much time must pass before the character’s moodles can benefit from re-reading said item. In conjunction with this revision of literature items, we’ve gone over the mechanics of the Illiterate traits. Illiterate characters are unable to read literature items, but in some cases, such as Comic Books, Catalogues, Photos, and “certain magazines”, they will be able to enjoy looking at the item instead of reading it. In build 42 Illiterate characters will also be unable to read or write player generated notes using sheets of paper or notebooks, write notes on maps (although they can still put symbols on them), read the text on the annotated map items, or understand the nutritional information on packaged food. We’ve done a common sense implementation of needing light to read. If there is insufficient light in a character’s square, and they don’t have an active light source, they will be unable to read (or “look at” for illiterate characters) printed matter, unable to read nutritional information on packaged food, and unable to open maps.  
MEN WITH VEN
Part of the above has been in ensuring that the right newspapers and pamphlets spawn in their appropriate towns, and as such we’ve mixed in a new municipal region system that tells the game’s systems exactly what area of the map each location in the game is located within.
 
We’re also using this for some new vehicles owned by local businesses, that only ever spawn in their hometown and associated region.
 
It’s generally not a known gameplay function, but for many builds now we’ve had ‘profession’ vehicles on the map that are owned by carpenters, metalworkers and electricians – all of whom *do* leave tools in their vehicle overnight.
 
We’ve never flagged this up, however, which has been a missed opportunity – as for players searching for particular items these are very much mobile treasure boxes. Therefore Martin has created a variety of new vehicles for different businesses to better communicate what sort of special loot might be found inside.
 
We have vehicles for different utilities, nationwide businesses and local businesses – many will only spawn in one town, and some are unique in that only one instance of that vehicle will spawn in the world.
 
We know that PZ players love collecting vehicles, especially in multiplayer servers, so this should spice up the hunt for the vehicle collectors. This regional system, and unique vehicle system, is set up to be easily used by mods also.
 
GASP. WHEEZE. PANT.
Regular readers will know that we recently had our very own recording sessions in a studio with microphones, actors and everything.
 
We had various missions to accomplish with this – a primary one being to obtain recordings of a male survivor and a female survivor huffing, puffing, getting hurt, climbing over things, sneezing, coughing and even shouting “hey!”.
The first fruits of these can be heard below and (while subtle when added to the mix and heard in isolation from the way the game sounds currently) we believe that they’ll add a lot to your overall experience once they land in 42.

(PLEASE NOTE: This is a work in progress. Volume and balance levels are initial ones and will change, likewise some recordings sound better than others and we haven’t cherry-picked the ones that work best yet. We think that the exertion noises during heavy combat could certainly do with a boost.)
 
 
 
 
 
A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here. Project Zomboid strongly discourages the unlawful dissemination of classified military intelligence
 

So there is this Challenge gamemode that you can choose called Opening Hours, which spawns you in the mall and spawns a huge horde at 9am. 
This challenge was removed from the game in the Build 41 update, while it is possible to play the challenge with a mod using a mod it would be cool if it came back. If it came back more people would know about and play it.

Hello all!
 
A brief and more hastily thrown together Thursdoid this week I’m afraid, as we’re currently at a messy but exciting turning point in b42’s development which will be setting us up for the remainder of development, and rather than try to scrape together content for this week’s blog while we’re in the guts of it, we would rather save what we have for a much more exciting Thursdoid down the line when things are also a little less hectic.
However, we’ll explain the situation this week to give people a better idea of what’s happening.
 
Firstly, months of multiplayer reworking has made its way into the main development build, which is our efforts toward moving a lot more of the codebase to being server authoritative, particularly with a completely server side inventory system, to aid in making future PZ builds a lot more hack proof.
 
Secondly, the core systems of the massive crafting rework are also being merged into trunk, ready for the wider team to start building on it for the much anticipated deep crafting trees and new post-apocalypse professions for our overhauled crafting systems.
 
The crafting overhaul is quite huge, changing how recipes and items work on a fundamental level, and will require some work to port over existing items, along with any that have been added elsewhere during the course of the new system’s development, and as such touches on many areas of the codebase and is a difficult one to integrate.
 
As such, things on the main branch are in a bit of temporary disarray as these big systems get integrated into the main line, it’s going to be a busy week as the team bugfixes and gets the development build ship shape to start pushing forward with all the integrated code toward getting it to a point we can start looking to push it out for public testing.
 
This new systems allows for:
Multi tile ‘machines’ and crafting stations Support for networks of items, power, liquids or gases (ultimately a building’s power, heating and plumbing will use these systems for example) For items both crafted and looted that have varied statistics and unique properties that alter how they function beyond the simplistic ‘condition’ of existing versions of the game, and providing much more deep variety to gameplay to crafted and looted items. The recipe system has become much more in-depth and customizable allowing for much more interesting crafting processes and possibilities.  
Unfortunately this also means some work in getting all this cool functionality pushed from its branch into the mainline, but this has to be done and once it is the situation going forward will be a lot more exciting.
 
Once this is done, and we have a large portion of the code team contributing to building out the vast crafting trees that have been designed, we should start to have some exceptionally cool stuff to show off in future Thursdoids as we start to feature the crafting overhaul (something quite a lot of people are most excited about) a lot more on the run up to build 42.
 
We’re aware that on the whole this aspect of b42 has been shown off in Thursdoids the least, mainly because the work done (outside the cool fluid systems and the crafting station vid shown a while back) has been mainly code for foundational systems to allow the crafting overhaul to reach the heights we are aiming for, which in itself facilitates extremely cool stuff but is rather hard to blog about in itself.
 
We’re excited that its reached the point where we can build on those foundations and hopefully begin to show off what we have planned. While build 42 is still a way off, we’ve reached the point we were excited to reach, where we can start actually filling out the tasty and much more bloggable content that will make up the crafting overhaul.
 
Without re-treading over old words, you can read an in-depth description of our crafting plans here.
 
Along with the new crafting systems, animal husbandry and hunting, the extensive map expansion, and the multiplayer rework–the only other branch left to combine into the build 42 main vein is the tech upgrades that we’ve detailed over the past few months. Including basement support, big optimizations to tile rendering, new lighting propagation, and…erm…. this…
 
 
The tech upgrades will likely be the last to be integrated, however will be the easiest once the times comes since the systems it changes, for the most part, do not overlap so much with ongoing development on other branches.
 
There has been some other cool stuff in the pipe, as hinted at in the screenshot at the top of the blog, but we’ll discuss them in more detail next time!
 
That’s all for this time–apologies if its rather thrown together this time but we’re really trying to push towards getting this stuff integrated so we can start showing off the cool crafting stuff we have in store for build 42 in future.

Happy March survivors, let’s check in with some of the departments we didn’t visit in the blogapalooza of two weeks ago.
FISHING
Over to Aiteron for the latest on his fishing additions.
 
“This week I’ve mainly been working on a unique random seed that procedurally determines where groups of fish will be located in PZ’s waterways, the radius of the different zones, and the base number of fish that could be found within them.”
 
“You’ll see this through splashes of water, which will depend on the groups of fish. So, the more fish in the fish group area, the more splashes on the water’s surface of the water. As such finding the best place for you to fish will be a big part of the system’s revamp. Each groups will react to the noise by the noise that goes on in the world too. So, if there’s a loud noise then the fishing circles will stop being active for a certain amount of time.”
 
“If you craft some chum, meanwhile, you’ll also be able to attract a group of fish – for a limited amount of time. In the following video you’ll be able to see groups of fish (red circles) and a chum area (green circle)”
 

“The team at Formosa have also been working with me to create new SFX for the fishing revamp, and I am very pleased with the results so far! We are also working on different sounds for different ‘reeling in’ speeds.
 
 
MAP EXPANSION
We are at a key point in the map expansion in that the work of our various mappers has been merged together, and our test team are roaming its wilds to provide playability and design feedback. They are patrolling its highways and by-ways, and feeding back on anything that seems amiss on a broader scale.
 
We’re not at the point at which we can do full-on testing (there’s still a lot to do, to be polished, and have signs erected and whatnot) but we are at the point where we can go on a fun road trip.
 
SOUND STUFF
Formosa are up to quite a lot at the moment. A big part of their work is in improvements to the music escalation system, which we’ll go into detail about next time, but suffice to say that action music won’t carry on for as long as it does post-zed-escape in B42.
 
We are also in the final stages of organising a recording session in which we’ll be having some real life actors (in Hollywood! In America!) to puff, pant and make ‘I am hurt’ noises that’ll make our survivors feel that little bit more real.
 
New SFX have also, meanwhile, been delivered for pigs, piglets, chickens, breaking furniture, the emergency broadcast, cork pops and much else besides.
 
A lot of chickens have also been attacked with hammers.
 
 
 
(We will improve visuals on this sort of attack too, so you’re not whacking air)
SURVIVAL FUN
The Blair Algol furnace has also been burning bright recently, alongside his farming revamp work that we’ve discussed in former blogs. So here’s a general show of the new camping items that’ll be found in places like the game’s different camp supply shops come B42.
 
 
 
 
Seen here are matchboxes, insect repellent, tackle boxes, New duffel bags, compasses, magnesium strikers and a fire-starting block. New Literature Titles and Names, so it’s not all generic non-titled books. (These will still act as consumables rather than items for now, however) New Food, drink, snack names and a new eating animation. New police duffle bag An example of how to use the compass Campsite scene showing an array of new survival gear items for the casual camper and general survivalist New tent function, which no longer requires RMB and now places and gets picked up like a normal decor/furniture object New tent storage feature associated with the above change LOVELY LITTLE ANIMALS
LOVELY LITTLE DEAD ANIMAL
:’(
FINALLY
Just to underline, we’re still not at a point at which a 42 unstable release is (at all) imminent. There’s still loads to do with our primary advancements to engine, online multiplayer, crafting and whatnot.

We see people thinking it’s about to land in comments sometimes, so if you see that too then please direct them here. Thanks everyone.
A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here. Today’s fish is trout a la creme. Enjoy your meal.

There should be ZERO chance of getting a laceration while walking through foliage, scratches are understandable.
Also, low hedges should only be able to hurt you from the torso down - I got a cut from one of the hedges in the fenced complex in Muldraugh, and it was somehow a laceration to the neck? Makes zero sense. I die more to trees and bushes in this game than I do to zombies.

What if in Project Zomboid you could find a tool called a Slim Jim (which is basically a fancy metal stick or wire) to open up locked car doors without having to break them?
 
I was thinking you could find the tool in some houses, auto shops and maybe even the burglar occupation could spawn with it by default.
 
The V menu for a car could have a "use Slim Jim" option for the Slim Jim to lockpick it. Might take a couple tries though like hotwiring the car does.
 
 

Hey all, let’s chime in with some of the feverish work being done in the musty basements and damp holes in the ground of the Knox Event. First off, some scribbles from the engine room
B42 ENGINE
To catch up and recap, the main highlights of engine improvements for build 42 are as follows:
 
Basements and underground things! A flexible per chunk 32 height that can be different in each chunk, allowing parts of the map to be at 32 level height, where others in theory go from -31 to ground floor. New lighting propagation system that has light bounce off walls and leak through windows, doors and other spaces more realistically – allowing for more natural ambient light effects and getting rid of those room based lighting issues. The ability to have negative coordinates on x and y, thus opening up map expansion directions in the three previously missing directions. New chunk based rendering using a depth map to vastly optimise drawing of the game.  
It’s this last item that we’re going to discuss today.
 
How 2D games have historically worked is like a deck of cards being dealt: each image is placed on top of the other to construct the scene. 
This is terribly inefficient, especially in terms of an isometric game like us with a crap-ton of tiles, tile overlays and so on. The rigid order that the sprites are dealt (so closer ones obscure further away ones,  leaving the closest one on top) means that your GPU is unable to optimize how it’s all drawn.
 
Not only this, but every time you deal a card on top of another card (a zombie in front of a wall for example) then that wall is forever ruined by the zombie’s pixels: the only option is to draw the entire thing again, tile by tile, for the next frame.
 
Can I shock you? In the past, people have complained about PZ’s fps.
 
A common thing we hear is: ‘“Well, my PC runs Skyrim/Witcher 3 just fine” but sadly this generally overlooks the fact that GPUs are built and optimized for 3d rendering. A game with this much detail that doesn’t utilize 3D rendering has actually got a tougher time ahead of it than Skyrim or Witcher in terms of making your GPU happy.
 
We also, on top of this, have extremely expensive scene construction CPU time too. End result: a really big bag of nightmares.
 
Now, in a 3D game you have a depth buffer. This is an offscreen rendering of the scene that tells it all how far from 0->1 each pixel is:
 

 
This is really handy, since the deck of cards goes out of the window. You’re no longer having to draw everything from the furthermost thing to the closest.
 
With a depth buffer you can choose whatever order you want: draw all brick walls first, then all characters hairs, then all grass, then all… you get the idea.
 
Outside transparency, which causes issues, you can draw anything in whatever order is most convenient and most optimized for the GPU. Not only this, but you don’t have to put together the 3D scene polygon by polygon every frame: you have a cached mesh probably already on your GPU memory sat waiting for the next frame, and even if the character turns or moves that mesh is still valid to use.
 
Zomboid? Not so much. We have to draw every individual godforsaken goddamned tile: every bit of lighting, every bit of grass, completely from scratch, every frame, every time. And when you zoom out? Wuh-woh shaggy. You’re now asking for trouble.
 
So for B42 we decided to implement a depth buffer! 
 
This was a bold proposition since we have no 3D (outside the characters and items, of course). Our ‘3D’ is otherwise a faked perspective drawn by the artists drawing the tile: it’s an illusion.
 
However, with some perseverance, we managed to generate a serviceable depth map of our usual faked isometric tiles:
 

Note here that when you look carefully at the floors and walls in this, they are not completely smooth. Each tile is still just ‘a certain distance away’ and it all behaves just as it does now: a deck of cards being dealt every frame, where one thing is either below or on top of another. However we no longer have to draw them back to front.
 
We’ve all seen this faked isometric drawn into the tiles cause weird visual glitches too many times to count, where the illusion of the 2d tiled world just breaks in ugly ways.
 
 
So we went a step further and calculated the fake 3dness for floors and walls, thereby making the depth map peachy smooth:
 

 
So where does that leave us?
 
We’re dealing the self-same deck of cards we always have been (these are still faked 2d isometric tiles and always will be) however we can now say ‘the left hand bit of this card is actually further back than the right hand side of this card’ and objects placed on them will represent this as if they had actual 3d depth. 
 
For walls and floors, at least, from this fixed perspective we suddenly service them with the GPU as if they are 3D objects: which means that not only do we get rid of the issues with the fixed tile ordering, but we can say ‘this specific part of this tile is further back or further forward than the rest of it’. So we can choose to put that part of the tile in front of / behind the character differently to other parts of the same tile. 
 
This will make a big difference to immersion on its own, but then we went a step further. With the new depth map, we opened up access to that amazing optimization trick we mentioned before.
 
On the dev branch for this work, we can now just draw a chunk like this tile by tile on one single occasion.
 

 
All those hundreds of draw calls as the cards get slammed down from the deck now only need to happen once as we ‘construct’ the chunk and it becomes its very own ‘tile’.
 
Within this we bake the depth information into the depth buffer. So, despite this just being a single picture, we already have all the information hidden behind it that’s required to correctly place any player, zombie or placed inventory item anywhere on this chunk (even inside the building, or partially obscured by any part of it) – and this can be done AFTER drawing the chunk itself too. We can effectively slide things behind stuff we’ve already drawn intelligently.
 
The only times we will ever need to update this chunk and redraw those tiles is if the lighting from time of day changes, or if a naughty zombie dies on it or a player picks up an item, drops one, opens a door or otherwise.
 
(And oh yes, zombie bodies and dropped inventory items will be cached on the chunk too! With depth! So in terms of performance this current resource-hog will be near enough completely free)
 
So now for every frame the chunk above, the charming apartment balconies, becomes the equivalent of a single current tile. One single draw that’s not that much slower than drawing that one single tile in the current build, in which we have 8x8x4 gridsquares getting drawn, potentially with 4-5 tiles on each. All for near the price on CPU and GPU of a single tile draw. 
 
The work needed to draw each tile on that chunk only needs to occur every so often when it’s updated in a way that invalidates the depth or changes the tiles visually, or when it first becomes visible. And if anything invalidates that chunk that it requires drawing in full, it’s only that chunk that needs redrawing, and only once. It’ll hardly be noticed by your CPU and GPU.
 
On top of this we have that depth buffer still for every tile drawn, and beyond that the walls and floor tiles have additional faked smooth depth applied to them.
 

 
That’s where the magic happens: weirdly not only is the above long-haired hippy character drawn AFTER the fence tiles are, but the fence and the gravel floor that’s visible behind it are just part of the same single image and are not separated whatsoever. Due to the magic of the new system we happened to have the extra depth information and were able to throw away pixels of them being drawn seeing as there was something ‘closer’. 
 
As a cumulative effect of all the above: this is how we accomplished 4k res, max zoom, 300-500 fps, with over 1000 when zoomed in in this video we posted a long while back when we were prototyping all this.
 
 
(Though please note we expect, in practice, it won’t be this high: the lack of zombies and various other factors make it not completely representative of the full game – but it’s still a good indicator of how vast this optimization will be.)
 
Next Steps
So the big issue here is that walls and floors are the easy part.
 
It’s relatively simpler to calculate how ‘deep’ a particular pixel of a wall should be, use a shader to put that depth in, and get smooth continuous depth that the player won’t clip through like it’s a 2D billboard facing the screen. Anything more complex than a flat wall or floor though is a problem.
 
EP, however, has recently been experimenting with some stuff that’s pretty cool.
 
We must make a big disclaimer there that this is very much, as stated, experimenting, and we can’t say for certain what is shown here will be in b42 as shown.
 
He made us promise we made that clear before we speak of it at all, but it’ll give you an idea of what we’re trying to do and the cool ideas he’s been playing with on his travels.
 
So he’s been working on a cool editor for creating simple 3d shapes, positioning them on the tiles, and baking out the depth texture for use when rendering.
 
 
 
 
None of the 3d shapes will end up in the game world while playing, but the resultant extra depth texture (seen in the bottom left) can be used with the depth map system to make the characters interact with it as if those 3d shapes were there.
 
As you can see, here the character intersects with the (remember, completely 2D) tile as if it were a 3d object itself, with full gradual depth.
 

 
And yes, this is the main thing that’s been holding us back from sitting in chairs, lying in beds etc. Modders have done great things providing this in the capacity that’s feasible in the current engine, but are still limited from sitting properly in chairs that obscure the character or face in different directions. We want a proper solution that’ll work 100% when it comes to the main game.
 
Finally, another caveat.
 
There’s no way in hell we’d ever be able to do this for every tile in the game, especially the more complicated ones or ones that were drawn (by hand) by the artists that may not actually follow strict laws of isometric in actuality.
 
While this tech can be used for some nice stuff in future its primary and only feasible short to medium term use is as described above.
Before we start seeing the inevitable “omg PZ will be able to rotate camera RTX mode when??” this is still a complete MASSIVE gulf from anything resembling true 3D.
 
Trust us: we’ve already ummed and ahhed and experimented with all this tech for a long while now to firmly to know where our limits are and put our boot down on those kinda thoughts.
 
But this does mean that we should be able to deal with all the main simpler structural tiles that make up the main geometry of the maps, and will provide a much more solid feeling world despite it looking very much the same as it always has – however, with the new lighting propagation system it shall look that bit better of course!
 
We now return to your scheduled programming.
 
FARMING
Next, over to the redoubtable Blair Algol for the latest on agricultural matters.
 
“The current state of the farming rework is that the current dev phase of new plants, vegetables, herbs, houseplants and associated changes to farming mechanics, are nearly finished. I’m now on fine tuning and polish.”
 
“The sticky matter in the fine tuning and polish, however, is that my mission has not only been in a more realistic and better balanced farming experience – but also to provide a more folksy, relaxing and productive-feeling gameplay loop that fully utilizes the new animation capabilities of modern Zomboid. So this is actually the part where I need to roll up my sleeves and do the heavy lifting.”
 
“I had been waiting for Aiteron’s splendid fishing rework to get into a state where it was possible to build off it, so that both the interface, and interactions would be as consistent as possible; as well as with the RJ’s animal rework, and Eris’ foraging interface. We’re really trying to make the systems and experiences in PZ more consistent as a whole.”
 
“But the goal is that farming should serve as a fun, peaceful minigame, albeit with challenges as we are making a survival game, but that can be an oasis of calm in the chaos and death of the PZ apocalypse. One fun little feature that I’m adding in that regard is using Ladybugs (EUROPEAN TRANSLATION: ‘Mister Ladybirds’) as pest control.”
 
“I should point out that, in testing, even with the longer growing seasons, and new pests/maintenance, the majority of plants would still survive until harvest without any major issues. Yields, however, might vary.”
 
To summarize the changes to farming, we have already implemented the following:
 
Crops now take a realistic amount of time to grow before they can be harvested; this can be adjusted to suit the player or server in the sandbox options. Crops also feature realistic growing seasons, where there’s optimal months to plant your crops, as well as ones where they are doomed to failure; this can be disabled in the sandbox options. Attempting to grow anything other than houseplants indoors will also be doomed to failure; this also can be disabled in the sandbox options, and, when the new lighting systems are implemented, then a realistic greenhouse system could be explored, but don’t take that as a guarantee. Slugs and snails are new garden pests, that can be dealt with using commercial slug and snail killer, or by learning how to make a slug trap out of an empty beer or pop can and some beer. Rosemary plants, and chickens, also serve as means to control slug infestations. Plants will also benefit from regular weedings. We have herbs, which have shorter growing seasons, and can be repeatedly harvested, and you can also propagate new herb patches with fresh herbs. You can use potatoes, onions and garlic as seeds to plant new patches of vegetables. I have added contextual actions using the combat stance in combination with the action key. When you have a hoe equipped, and are in the stance, you can use the action key to dig a furrow. Likewise, if you have seeds in your hand, are in the stance, and are facing a furrow you can use the action key to plant seeds. Likewise for watering plots. I plan on expanding this contextual action to include stuff like chopping down trees when an axe is equipped; removing barricade planks when a crowbar is equipped; etc. as well, for consistency.  
There’s other cool, fun stuff that’s either being worked on, or being planned, but we don’t want to spoil everything.
 
FISHING
A visual update from the Aiteron keep net!
 


 
NEW ITEM STUFF
Back to the Blair hothouse!
 
“One of the other things I’ve been doing for Build 42 is adding a slew of new items – both functional and decorative – along with addressing inconsistencies and missing functionality with existing items.”
 
“One of the issues we’re attempting to address is ‘Bottleneck Items’. These are items such as Generator Magazines, Sledgehammers, Lighters/Matches etc. that, when a player has difficulty finding them, can make them feel like they’re soft-locked out of parts of the game. While we don’t want to remove the challenge of finding these items, we want to ensure that there are adequate opportunities for a player to find these items, even if they may involve some dangerous excursions.”
 
“In addition to ensuring that these items spawn in varied appropriate circumstances as loot, including in vehicles, we are ensuring that special circumstances such as the randomized stories and annotated map stash houses can spawn these items, and appropriate items will also be able to be foraged. As an aside, the loot tables themselves are in the process of being scrupulously revised and glowed-up, and should provide more fun and depth for the looting aspects of the game.”
 
“We made a couple of tools to collect data and feedback regarding this. I had already made LootLog, a tool similar to Aiteron’s LootZed, except that this one, when activated, logs all loot that spawns to the console.txt with details including the exact location where the loot spawns.”
 
“Fenris then took this concept to the next level, and now we are working with a tool that tracks and logs exactly how many items of each type spawn for each savegame; a permanent record showing exactly how many items spawn. Not only does this allow us to collect concrete data regarding item spawning, if you are worried that Sledgehammers, Generator Magazines, or Rubber Hoses aren’t spawning, you can check this record and see if they are.”
 
“In regards to Generator Magazines, with a high enough Electrical skill in Build 42, your character will be able connect and repair Generators without needing that magazine. We are also adding additional varieties of lighter and matches, as well as Lighter Fluid for refilling the classic lighters, and you will be able to use a vehicle lighter, open flame, or an appropriate stove to light cigarettes. There are also alternate means for players with the Smoker trait to feed their addiction to nicotine.”
 
“You can currently use many bottles other than the Gas Cans to hold fuel, which was one way we addressed that particular bottleneck (and yes, we are making sure that hoses for siphoning fuel are common), and we are also adding a new, larger, fuel container, alongside some other military-themed items.”
 
“We know that many players, especially roleplayers, like having themed items, and so some more themed bags, like the military duffelbag in build 41, are on the way. The new entrenching tool serves as a weapon and a shovel, and is folded when placed on the ground or attached to a belt. Several of the new knives such as the Switchblade and Butterfly Knife also have that feature.”
 
“The new canteen item can be attached to the belt, and will also showcase another new item feature that modders can make good use of: items with varying icons and models from their standard base ones. This allows us to add cosmetic variants without having to actually add new items, similar to how clothing works. I believe there are 4-6 variants of this style of canteen. All of this military loot spawns in appropriate circumstances, so if you want this new gear be prepared to have to go out and get it.”
 
“Another alternative Bottleneck Item is a P38 Can-Opener that you can keep on your Key Ring. Additionally, your character will be able to use a knife to open cans of food, although that will damage the knife and has the risk of injuring your hand. We also have fancy, expensive imported beer that requires a bottle opener, and the better wines, aside from Champagne of course, will need a corkscrew, or one of the better pocket knives to open.” 
 
“There are many other new items and features: you can use a Pickaxe to remove annoying stumps and boulders; we added various vanity/prestige items and collectibles; players worried about having enough Garbage Bags for water collectors (another Bottleneck Item) will be happy to be able to find a box of them; and we made garbage loot a lot more fun and gross.”
 
 
MODDING
Next a quick update for modders.
Something else we’re endeavouring to do for Build 42 is to use Tags for item interactions whenever possible. This should make it easy for modders to add new items that work smoothly with a lot of the fun new stuff, and older stuff as well.
 
As mentioned above, for both mods and our own usage, we now have it so that modified item icons and models are “persistent”; when changed they stay that way when after quitting and reloading and we have made sure to have straightforward function names for ease of use.
 
We added some new events for mods to use, including: – OnZombieCreate and – LoadChunk
 
OnZombieCreate will allow modders to directly access zombies when they first spawn. Currently for many mods, using the LoadGridSquare event is the only feasible way to accomplish some goals. However, this often has an annoying impact on performance. What LoadChunk does is allow mods to access the chunks of the world map, which are a 10 x 10 grid of map squares, after they stream in. Afterwards, if the mod needs to access a square in that chunk, it can use code such as chunk:getGridSquare(x,y,z) to access said square. Practically speaking this means that the mod can use ~1% of the previous event calls to accomplish the same goals, for many of the purposes in which LoadGridSquare is utilized.
 
We have also moved around the order of operations when sandbox options are loaded and the loot tables are parsed, to make it easier for mods that use sandbox options to set loot spawn values.
ANIMALS
Finally, a quick video built from clips from the ongoing animals testing.
Tara for now, chucks.
 
 
This week’s hellscape from Stonmo. 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 gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here. Apologies for the lack of blog last week, the blog writer had a fever and for much of Thursday was hallucinating that he was stuck in a Mexican hotel and GOG kept on phoning the switchboard to demand that we change the Knox Event lore.

How do all. Here’s a check-in from a few different Build 42 departments, that also occurs in the lead-up to the first in-person meet-up for the wider PZ team since 2018. We’re all aflutter about it (and trying to remember everyone’s real world names instead of online handles) and hope to have lots of good B42 chat in amongst the introduction of an international team to traditional Geordie culture.
 
Let’s pop into a few different areas, then – with the caveat that for a fuller B42 overview our last dev blog is probably a better destination.
FIRE
Work continues on the fire rewrite branch with the intention being to bring it up to a state in which it can safely enter our internal test build.

It recently came to mind that a lot of the ‘fire dev’ chat in blogs took place in the distant past, before we had to reshuffle and our current MP team became what it is today – thereby forcing flames into the sidelines for an elongated spell.
 
As such the guys have made a vid for us today that spells out some of the foundations of what is being done here, in terms of how fire spread, size and duration is governed – and indeed the sort of stats that lie beneath the hood that we can balance with, and that the community can mod with.
That’s the first half of the video: done with our old fire effects (which are too transparent and also on fast forward) so please take this aspect as instructional/iterative rather than a fait accompli.
 
The second part of the video then moves on to show our experimentation with fire visuals, working alongside our VFX artist friend Brian, as we work out different ways to make in-game flame effects better match our particularly coloured iso-world.
 
MP TEAM
As regular readers will know, alongside tidying up smaller multiplayer irritations as they go, our MP team are currently transferring player inventory actions over away from the client and onto the server. They have another three or four weeks set aside for the first stage of this: at which point we will the player’s inventory loaded from the database on the server, and the server always having an up-to-date player inventory – hopefully all working in sync with the progress bars, item move times and expected results you get currently.
At this point the second major part of the code work will be getting underway: having all the item manipulation occurring on the server side, and ensuring that the server no longer trusts clients (those sneaky clients!) so that stuff like item adding cheats are rendered defunct.

After this, clearly, there’ll be a heap of testing and such – but we thought the more technically-minded amongst us would appreciate a catch-up on where the guys are with it.
 
FISHING
This past week Aiteron has been working with the testers who’ve been reporting back on bugs and gameplay in the latest version of our revamped fishing – and has been largely working on an improved/experimental control system for a more chilled out and less button-holdy-tappy experience.

He has also been working with our aforementioned VFX specialist friend Brian, who has been supplying us with various splashes, bubbles and signs of water movement that will indicate the presence of fish, and also be a suggestion of the size of what lurks beneath. On top of bug fixes, changed recipes and improved items for the system he’s also been firming up on exactly what sorts of fish we’ll be adding to the game, and whether they’d be found in rivers or lakes (and definitely not swimming pools).
 
There’s gonna be lot of bass: largemouth, smallmouth, white, spotted and striped. And let’s not even get started on the crappies…
CRAFTING
After an awful lot of code-side tinkering, a super WIP version of our crafting improvement has surfaced into something that’s viewable in a vid. Please note this is the visible tip of the iceberg, and clearly what’s on show isn’t final: you do not saw logs in a furnace, and this isn’t how you make a hammer.
 
So what’s on show here?

Various objects can now be entirely created using the game’s scripting language that’s been made similar to the way items and vehicles etc. are defined.

This covers various currently planned objects that can function as a craft station: stuff like blacksmith furnace, tailoring bench, fletchery, brewing stands, kilns etc. And, unlike the way it is now, these can also be objects consisting of multiple tiles/sprites with various rotations etc.
At a craft station the player is able to use their normal recipes (which may provide a bonus for doing the recipe at a craftstation) but it’s here that they can use their blueprints – and which ones are available will be defined by the associated object script.
Blueprints (working title) are similar to recipes in that they can take inputs, and produce outputs. However they are distinct from your usual recipes in the following ways:
 
They have different duration modes – in real world seconds, game minutes or can run passively in the background for long periods. They may not require the player to be present. For example, a melting process may run on the craftstation while you run off to do other things. As well as items, they can take the input (and produce) Fluids and different in-game ‘energies’ – Electric, Heat, Kinetic or Steam. When active a Blueprint in progress can store its inputs/outputs, and may have storage capacity for them. For example, a blueprint that needs water as an input may well have an internal storage buffer for water. We’ll probably show this in a development vid next time.
Blueprints are processed much like recipes where the inputs by default are consumed to create the outputs. However the default behaviour can be complemented or overridden by custom lua code for certain blueprint events like OnStart, OnUpdate, OnFinish, OnCancel. This is similar to normal recipe events such as OnCreate.
 
Using this custom lua code interesting things can be done – like for example a blueprint for a Meat Drying Rack which has several input slots for meat. The blueprint can be set to run passively, so it wont require a player to manually start it up.
 
The OnUpdate event then triggers a lua function which checks if the Meat Drying Rack is situated in a exterior space, and if so we can then go into our usual PZ super-nerdery level of depth by calculating the amount to dry a meat item based on temperature and the cloud intensity / sunlight at that time. So when a meat item is dropped in one of the UI slots it starts passively drying the meat.
 
Another feature of blueprints is that their UI can be scripted. The video shows a few simple (bizarre) test examples of different UI layouts. However they can potentially be scripted to have any desired appearance – using any of the game’s existing UI elements, or indeed modded ones.
 
As mentioned heavily above: the video is very early WIP, especially where the UI is concerned, and there are still some parts not yet functional. In a future update we can show a more functional UI, and run through some more interesting case examples.
LES ANIMAUX
Finally, over to RJ in the animal zone.

“I’ve been diving more and more into a farm animal’s designation zones – which are paddocks you outline for your animals to occupy (as long as they don’t get loose) and where the game will allow you to do all your various primary animal-rearing tasks. For most of this week I’ve been refactoring and simplifying my animal behaviour and meta code, but there’s a few interesting things to mention.”
 
“Cows and sheep can now recognize a roof area and stay under it during heavy rain, I’ve been trying to get sheep to move in more of a flock most of the time, and baby animals will follow their mother more correctly. You can also now drop food directly on ground for them to eat, or in the feeding trough container – where it won’t spoil quite so quickly.”
 
Also, among many other things (haircare, first aid, dropping bags, new emergency broadcast system noises) the Sound Team have also started making animal noises.
 
Behold, the cows now have hoofsteps.
 
This week’s tarmac follow party from Darth. 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 gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here.

1219. Allowing maggots to be used as a therapy for treating infected wounds.
1220. Mushrooms should  be able to grow in the compost bins.
1221. Lemon grass should be able to deter slugs for build 42 farming improvements.
1222. Maggots in compost bin should have a good role for breaking down organic material to help rotten food decompose more faster.
 
 

Depending on how bad one's posture is it can have a very noticable impact and can take quite some time and effort to fix. It'd be interesing to have as a trait. Perhaps have it increase the odds of injury during physical activity, slightly increase how fast the character gets worn out, perhaps make them slightly more prone to illness as bad posture can impact the immune system and digestion. There could also be exercises to fix the bad posture over time, but perhaps make those something you either have to discover a magazine to learn or be a fitness instructor to know.

Hey all, hope you’re all doing well and that thus far 2023 has been kind. Let’s get straight into it.
NEW FACES
First of all we’d like to welcome officially three new people to the full Project Zomboid team.
 
Fenris_Wolf should need no introduction to the old hands of the Project Zomboid community. He took over and maintained the ORGM mod with great aplomb from the original creator ORMtnMan – and will be a name familiar to many.
 
Right now he’s reacclimatizing himself with the PZ codebase, charged with clearing out some of the niggly things that have been on our ‘to do’ list so he gets his fingers dirty in many and various different areas of the game. Clearly his expertise with guns and the firearms code will likely come into play at some point in his time with us, but for now it’s all about bedding down and getting comfy in Spiffo’s hovering mothership.
Also joining us officially, meanwhile, are Amz and Pat_Bren.
 
Amz is another familiar name from the community, and was a great help to us in the days of 41 MP testing. She’s now officially a full-time tester working with Sasha and Yana, and will also be making cool videos for our blogs and improving our (already extraordinarily professional) social media engagements.
 
Pat_Bren, meanwhile, has been writing up a storm for Build 42 on a part time basis – writing new radio and TV channels and content, new lore for what’s going on around the world and much more besides – and will now be working other cool future content in an official and ongoing capacity.
42 STUFF
Right now, we’re probably due an ‘overview’ of Build 42, so everyone is on the same page about its contents rather than skipping about between them each blog.
 
42  boils down to four large chunks of deep-rooted work that we want to all come together: the crafting/animals update, the map expansion, the optimization/lighting/basements engine upgrade, and the weighty job the MP team have taken on to move all inventory interactions over from clients to server.
 
These are all at different stages – for example animals are further ahead than a lot of the elements of crafting in terms of being ready to actively test and play with. Right now with the crafting, the work taking place is on the back-end codeside of crafting stations and component UIs.
Meanwhile with the engine upgrade at this point we’re essentially fixing up various different rendering issues that were broken with our quite fundamental changes to the system up to a point at which it’s ready to be merged into the test build.
 
The map team meanwhile continue to pump out new towns, interesting locations and fun places to travel to and hold out in.
Around these big ticket items we also have other coders, writers, artists and 3D modellers working to improve aspects of the current game.
So there’s the in-depth fire overhaul, Aiteron’s revamped fishing, better farming, more imaginative and fun items to find and use, better events to come across, improved recipes, new animations and activities, improved music system and deeper soundscape – and general piles and piles of polish and improvement throughout.
 
So with all that firmly held in mind, let’s have a quick dart around some of the different departments of PZ to catch up on a few bits and bobs.
Our smashing friend Steve N, who we’re borrowing from EverCurious Entertainment, has been digging into our animation system and working out some longstanding issues that we’ve been desperate to fix. We’re currently jumping into a test build to check nothing else has been broken by his changes, but the result will be a lot more silky smooth turns and 180s in your survival forays. The big debate currently in our work with livestock is how to make it clear to players that you’ll need to designate areas that you want them to occupy and produce within, alongside building them fences they won’t escape through. We’ve got various ideas for this and will be running our experiments past the testers.

Increasingly we’re realising just how much more ‘life’ these non-human and non-zombie creatures bring to the game. To which end we are also experimenting with some non-interactive beasts that will run before you get near, and give the game a smidge more desolate colour…
  As mentioned before, alongside refinements and improvements to the music system, right now via Formosa/Noiseworks we’re in the process of getting real life human actors (in Los Angeles! In America!) to record some basic bodily noises to give extra life (and pain) to our Knox Event survivors. Imagine how cool it will be in MP when one of your buddies reaches you, having escaped zombies and run in terror, and you can hear their panicked heavy breathing.

That’s the sort of thing we want to capture, alongside noises of hurt and exertion as you tumble around the landscape. While we’re there we are also going to get a variety of other ‘spoken’ TV and radio noises that we can then obfuscate to improve the entertainment system slightly.
  Aiteron is back with us and has picked up on his work on fishing. This is its current iteration, which will shortly be mixed into the internal test build. This probably needs some more tweaking with the ‘strain’ animations – and the indications that a big fish is being caught – but is really getting there now. It’ll be mixed into the internal test build soon, which is also the point at which Formosa can start working on the new sound effects and such.
  About a bazillion new items – some useful (hose now required for gas siphoning, kids) and some more aimed at making the world feel fuller and more ‘real’ are also currently going into the internal test build. Here are a few examples.
This week’s wintry scene from BruceWayne (not the real one). 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 gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here. Thanks to everyone who voted for Spiffo in the Labo(u)r of Love awards. He seemed quite chuffed about it.

I personally think it would be cool to see a late game repeating event where after the exclusion zone falls massive hordes can enter from the borders of the map. Migrating  towards the center unless attracted by Noise stopping the path. This would provide a new source of late game threats and in my opinion would be a big improvement from the current respawning system. Maybe even implement a rare event where a horde can follow an Npc’s car into Knox Country. Please devs if you find the idea good can you implement it please and thank you.

Do you think bikes have any shot of making it into the game? They could be scattered around the map and parted out, we could add boxes to the front for a bit of extra storage. Seeing as the game takes place in the 90's, the bikes could be single geared and slow to start as well. have handle bars, bearings, pedals, wheels and suspension as parts that need replaced periodically (Could do rims and tires). The potholes and running stuff over could damage the tires/rims. Running things over can also damage the suspension. you could have a pedal powered light on the front as well.
(P.S: Bike frames could also be bend and damaged in crashes)
(P.S.S: Chains could need lube and maintenance to function properly)

maybe a ford assembly plant in Louisville , KY since that place is where the ford Explorer was made during the  early 90's maybe could see some brand new Ford SUV that came off the assembly plant since in PZ we have the Franklin All terrain.
 
Also would be a good place for some car parts for your heavy duty class vehicles.

I think it'd be nice to be able to lock pick in the game like for car doors as well as regular doors.
 
I think this mechanic could be some kind of lock picking skill that you'd improve from picking locks as well as boost through lock picking books. Maybe there could even be a locksmith occupation that gets you started on the functional capabilities of said skill. Perhaps the skill could also be in the burglar occupation. 
 
I think for the tools needed it'd be standard lock picks or maybe you could even make some out of the paperclips you find in the game.
 
For starters, It'd be nice to be able to unlock a car without having to find the key or smash the window in addition to hotwiring it.
 
As for doors it'd be nice being able to get in the building without having to find the key or bash my way in through said door or other entrance. 
 
For padlocks it'd be nice to get through those too.
 
I guess for the mechanic to work, with all the proper items and skills in hand you'd right click the you want to lock pick and select "pick lock" and the progress meter would fill up as you pick the lock. It will take a few tries until success and fewer tries and faster ones as you level up.

By playing the game I noticed that i can't use ladder to climb up a building, but it can change the game by logic and with that tiny detail, by adding a use to it, we know that ropes can be broken but ladder can't be but they cannot be move to except by being broken with a masse because it useless in the game.
 
The ladder will give less fatigue than a ropes and if you are tired you will climb it much slower (but less slower to ropes)
it will downgrade ropes but it very logic after all 
 
(and for the helicopter i won't ask you to add a rope ladder but i will give a reason to why they don't do it, you can be infected and you can cause a big danger to the pilot, because you are in the exclusions zone (and for realism you can add crashed heli of the pilot who tried to save survivor that has been bitten to reinforce why they don't help us in the game)

and sry for bad english i'm still learning it

A farming rework this is something I was hoping for a long time. 

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

Hola, zomberinos. Short-ish blog this week, but some fun info-nuggets none-the-less.
FINAL 41 PATCH
We released 41.78 to Unstable last week, and released a fix-up patch yesterday. There’ll probably be another update to it before we consider it safe for a full stable release, but there hasn’t been too much to mop up this time around – so our thanks to Blair who was the chief coder on this release.
One thing it might be nice to get in before we wrap 41 and the long wait till 42 begins, are the products of our investigations into ways to make it clearer to modders and users alike where errors in their mod setup lies – when it comes to different capitalisations in folder paths and different file orders between server and clients.
 
These often result in error messages that are confusing and/or unclear, making things hard to troubleshoot for modders and our support team. It’d be nice to bring about some clarity before we leave 41 for pastures new – so that’s the main thing we’re waiting on now.
WORK ON 42
Slightly technical details from the land of 42, but something that Blair has also been moving onto is working on the architecture of our recipes system – to make it more foolproof and effective for both us and modders.
 
We are streamlining our evolved recipes – using ‘templates’ similar to the tags we use for individual items. This will make it more straightforward and simple for both us and the modding community to add in new evolved recipes and food items.
 
The system ‘as is’ in Build 41 has a sizable amount of ‘clunk debt’ associated with it – that gets compounded by the number of food items we have in the game. The way we are restructuring things strips out some of the complexity, and lets us add new stuff easily – while simultaneously managing our existing recipes and foodstuffs.
 
Next up, we also have more ideas about further streamlining this using item tags to offload a lot of the recipe ingredient stuff to tags and templates. We’ve also got the roots in place of an Evolved Recipe name system that will notice you putting ham and pineapple on a pizza – and call it a Hawaiian Pizza. Or name a sandwich a BLT if you’ve added bacon, lettuce and tomato.
 
On top of this there’s a lot of wash and brush up of existing features. There’s a lot of big name gameplay stuff going into B42, but when it eventually rolls around we want to underline that there’ll be a bunch of more iterative improvements on existing PZ too.
 
For example, right now we’re working on making the randomized profession house stuff more cool and obvious- right now you probably aren’t aware when you’re in a carpenter’s or an electrician’s home as there aren’t enough indicators. We’ve got stuff going in to make it clearer and more thematic. Likewise we’re improving the procedural loot system to make loot and looting more interesting in of itself.
 
There are also new ‘zed story’ events to come across where costumed zombies will tell a story – gun store sieges, hillbilly hoedowns, kids party raves in the forests, a variety of campsites to come across etc.
 
Oh, and we’ll be widening the melee weapons pool a bit also. They’re not in-game yet, and no SFX for them yet either, but here’s a quick look at some of what’ll be on offer.

 
This week’s prison visit from Abby. 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.

Hotfix 41.78.14 - December 5th:
 
- Fixed being able to still add a split-screen player when AllowCoop is disabled.
- Fixed seeing through walls sometimes after loading into a game.
- Fixed an error in ISZoneDisplay:getZoneTooltipText.
 
____________
 
 Hotfix 41.78.13 - November 29th:

- Added AllowCoop server option to allow or disallow splitscreen clients.
- Added MaxTextureSize (default 256) and MaxVehicleTextureSize (default 512) options to the Display options menu. Each of these can be 256, 512, 1024 or 2048.
 
- Fixed the propane required for the metal wall upgrade system so that you are capable of making a Mk II metal wall without having to upgrade first.
- Fixed sleeping pills not being taken in account with the panic sleep exploit fix.
- Fixed some vehicle textures (such as for wheels) being limited to 256x256 instead of 512x512.
- Fixed reading ServerList.txt and ServerListSteam.txt with the default system encoding instead of UTF-8.
- Fixed being unable to slice or smash a rotten watermelon.
- Fixed an error in the farming menu that limited squares watered after the first to 50 water units maximum instead of 100.
- Fixed /additem command exception when run from the server console.
- Fixed redundant console output from ISInventoryPaneContextMenu.lua
- Fixed distant remote players not being displayed on the in-game map.
 
____________
 
 Hotfix 41.78.10 - November 21st:
 
- Fixed being able to purify Watering Cans in a Microwave or Oven.
- Fixed being able to turn Cooked Eggs back into Uncooked Eggs.
- Fixed Pizzas having the hasMetal tag.
- Fixed error in SliceCooked test.
- Fixed distant players not appearing on the in-game map when the server option allows it.
- Fixed Male_Undies not having the "OBSOLETE = TRUE" parameter. Also removed them from the foraging pool.
 
____________
 
 Hotfix 41.78.9 - November 17th:
 
- Several tweaks to clothing masks.
 
- Updated the Clean Tray recipe so it works with trays of Biscuit Dough, and also so that it works with rotten and cooked ingredients, so players can always recover a tray from rotten trays of food.
 
- Fixed "Pour on Ground" Shortbread Cookies recipe, replaced it with a recipe to Empty Baking Trays.
- Fixed possible Lua error with setUseSteamRelay(nil) calls in the server browser.
- Fixed being unable to slice Cakes or Pies.
- Fixed being unable to put evolved recipe Rice and Pasta into Bowls.
 
____________

Hotfix 41.78.8 - November 16th:

- Propane Torch usage rebalanced for Fixing and Repair scripts to accommodate the change in capacity; all reduced to 2.
- Added "AllowRottenItem:true" parameter to the recipes to Empty Frying Pans; Griddle Pans; and Roasting Pans. This will allow players to reclaim said pans when they let Stir Fries and Omelettes get rotten.
- Recipes such as the Mildew Spray Cure, and Emptying Sacks of produce now have the field "AllowRottenItem:true" which allows rotten items to be used in that recipe.
- Fixed the Make Mildew Cure recipe not allowing both regular and Canned Milk; as players were unable to make this cure after all of the normal Milk has gone rotten.
- Fixed being unable to use Rotten Milk to make the Mildew Spray Cure.
 
- Commented out the "Make Pot of Soup" recipes; they're obsolete given the evolved recipe system which handles this matter better.
- Fixed being unable to use Canned Soup to make evolved recipe soup.
- Changed the display name of "Canned Soup" to "Canned Vegetable Soup".
    Note: To make Pots of Soup with Opened Cans of Soup you must now add them to a pot of water, as an evolved recipe soup. This fixes the Super Soup exploit and will allow players to also add additional ingredients to the Soup. The other way of making Pots of Soup was an obsolete and in many ways incompatible method from before the evolved recipe system.
 
- Added missing SetMelee Delay on Pistol Whip animation.
- Fixed Hoodie and Vest masks to work properly with base mesh.
- Fixed JokeKnife, JokeArrow, BunnyEars, FurryEars, Antlers and GodStar Headbopper to work with all hairstyles.
 
- Fixed moodle and heart wiggle-speed, now reduced by half.
- Fixed an issue with forageSystem.lua not accounting for the new loot rarity settings.
- Fixed the veteran having some duplicate clothing selection options.
- Fixed in-game map road that was made curved in cell 35,31.
- Fixed print() statement from JoyPadSetup.lua that resulted in unnecessary messages in the console log.
- Fixed source files not being loaded in the Lua debugger on Linux.
- Fixed mod Lua files not being loaded in the Lua debugger.
 
____________
 
 
Hotfix 41.78.7 - November 9th:
 
- DB Viewer userlog will now have the value in the amount field increased for repeated counts of suspicious activity.
- znet is rebuilt for MacOS 10.12.6
- Fixed in-game map position of a shed in cell 35,32.
- Fixed Lacerations and Stitches not becoming infected. Cover stitches with alcohol soaked bandages to avoid them from getting infected.
 
____________
 
Hotfix 41.78.6 - November 8th:

- Multiplayer clients will now retry the GettingServerInfo request 3 times.
- Fixed Encoding of Radio and TV content for Chinese languages.
- Fixed lightbulb lifespan sandbox value error.
 
____________
 
41.78.5 - November 7th:
- Adjusted Type 3 and 5 Anticheat to reduce false-positives.
- Fixed zombie Pinpoint hearing not working as intended.
- Fixed not being able to empty rotten sacks of produce.
- Fixed infinite Propane Torch glitch when disassembling items.
 
____________
 
41.78.4 - November 4th:

- Added a display option to enable the new outline around highlighted containers.
- Changed ISCloseVehicleDoor to play the door closing sound when the action is completed instead of its start. This is to provide better feedback for players in cases where they have unwittingly cancelled this action.

- Increased the spawnrate of Thread and added the chance of Sewing Kits to spawn in gloveboxes.

- Adjusted duration of the stationary Pistol Whip animation, it's now the same length as the shove animation.

- Added Checksum logging for MP servers, enabled by default for now.
- NetChecksum logs are extended:
Client dumps logs into checksum.txt.
Client sends logs to server.
Server dumps logs into checksum.txt.
Server dumps client's logs into checksum-.txt.

- When sorting the relative paths of scripts and Lua files to determine load order, the relative paths are first converted to lowercase. This is to fix platform differences breaking checksums in multiplayer. It also fixes the issue where the same file might be loaded more than once if mods use different capitalization for the same file or folder.

- When the Sound.WorldSound.Render debug option is enabled, world sounds are rendered according to the Hearing sandbox option.
For Hearing=Random (where each zombie may have a different radius) sounds are rendered using the Hearing=Normal radius.
This does not mean that their hearing radius is not randomized, it only means that a world sound radius cannot be rendered on a per zombie basis in debug mode.
For Hearing=Pinpoint/Normal/Poor, meta-zombie hearing radius is rendered accordingly.

- Commented out the GunLight and Bayonnet entries in the foraging definitions; they're currently non-functional and confuse players, and were commented out of the loot spawn tables.

- Exposed the MediaData.MediaLineData class.

- Fixed players being unable to fire guns from inside vehicles under some circumstances.
- Fixed firearm damage being affected by the distance to the target.
- Fixed the infinite timed-action progress bar being displayed for actions that set useProgressBar=false.
- Fixed recently introduced bug that caused sounds to attract zombies from too far away.
- Fixed WorldSoundManager.getSoundAttract() not using IsoZombie.hearing.
- Fixed masking problems with Hoodie and Poncho being worn together.
- Fixed transparency issue with trouser texture.
- Fixed the rate of moodle and the heart (health panel) icon wiggling not handling ui offscreen rendering and uncapped framerate.
 
____________
 
Hotfix 41.78.3 - October 26th:
 
- Further reduced the chance of zombies to injure the groin.
- Changed back container max capacity display to the adjusted value when Organized/Disorganized traits are used. The previous change ended up being more confusing than what it was aiming to fix.
- Added logging of player injuries caused by zombies to the console when in debug mode.
- FileDifferent, FileNotOnServer, and FileNotOnClient errors will now display the absolute paths of both files. This should make it clearer that a mod might just have been using the wrong capitalization for a folder.

- Fixed incorrect pathing for masks on some clothing items which should fix clipping issues.
- Fixed spamming the 'manual floor attack' and 'shove' keys while aiming resulting in firing empty firearms and shoving distant zombies.
- Fixed not-crawler zombies sometimes injuring the feet or legs.
- Fixed assorted errors in food items' EvolvedRecipe parameters.
- Fixed error with randomized zombie senses.
- Fixed the Disable Bleach Poisoning setting in multiplayer causing issues when adding food to Evolved Recipes.
- Fixed sawing off a Double Barrel Shotgun not changing its weight.
- Fixed not being able to host locally with a nonsteam server.
- Fixed zombie hearing radius being too large.
- Fixed being unable to rip Varsity Jackets.
- Fixed ripping all clothing unintentionally ripping clothing worn by the player.

____________


NEW
- Added a prompt for the updated Terms of Service as we are a big boy game now and have to fit in with the other biggerer boys.
 
- Added sandbox option to disable Fake Dead Reanimation. Disabled Fake deads in MP by default.
- Added more control over fake dead behaviour to the sandbox options; having zombies that were "killed" having a chance to become fake dead is an option that is off by default.
- Added sandbox option that allows Corpse Maggot spawning to be disabled or limited to corpse inventory.
- Added sandbox option that allows poisoning food to be disabled, or for poisoning food with bleach to be disabled.
- Added sandbox option to disable the Tainted Water Tooltip/Warning for hardcore play
- Added sandbox option for enabling/disabling XP multipliers affecting passive skills, which is false by default.
- Added sandbox option that prevents survivor vehicles from spawning.
- Added sandbox option "Light Bulb Lifespan". This does not affect Light Bulbs in vehicles, only in light fixture tiles.
 
- Added "Randomize" options to Zombie sandbox options for Memory, Sight, and Hearing.
- Added loot rarity settings "Incredibly Rare" and "None", as well as a "Super Low" option for Fuel Pump content.
 
- Items from table stories/randomized stories/etc will still spawn when loot rarity is set to none.
 
- Renamed Item "Weight" to "Encumbrance" in the UI and context menu.
 
- Added an Accessibility Option that makes the player character automatically walk to a click container within a short radius of 3 tiles.
- Added the ability to set custom "Good" and "Bad" highlighting colours in the Accessibility Options menu. This is applied to things like traits, tooltips, and the aiming outline.
- Added an option to bind "Walk To" to a key instead of having to go through the RMB menu.
- Added highlighting to clicked Crates so it's easier to tell which crate is selected.
- Added a Context Menu entry that enables/disables Auto-Drink.
- Tiles that are being disassembled will now be highlighted in the "bad colour", red being the default.
 
- Resolutions higher than 1440p will have their zoom levels adjusted to allow closer zoom-in, bringing it more in line with lower resolutions.
 
- Disabled some Randomized Survivor Safehouses from occurring in instances where a building has over 10 rooms, or is a spawn location. The limit is 10 for some and 20 for other Randomized Survivor Safehouses.
    This also means the Toilet Paper story is now disabled in buildings that have over 10 rooms or are spawn locations, which will likely reduce the amount of Reddit posts about it by 50%.
- Added a check to prevent any of the randomized burnt building stories from occurring if the building is a spawn location.
 
- Added "HasMetal" tag for items. This tag was added to food and water items in metal containers, which will now set microwaves on fire when microwaved.
 
- Adjusted the mechanics UI so that both the Battery Charge and Condition are included in the Battery entry in the list of parts.
- Modified the vehicle mechanics UI to prominently feature the % of a full tank of gas it has, in addition to the battery charge.
 
- Added a few more existing clothing options to the character creation.
- Added the ability to destroy only one wall when selecting corner walls.
- Replaced the bucket world static model textures with metal icons and textures and not plastic ones, as buckets are now metal and not plastic.
- Updated the BucketEmpty and BucketWaterFull scripts with tooltips and IsCookable to reflect that they are now metal and not plastic.
- Changed the icon of the Watering Can With Water to match the Empty Water Can and the Watering Can models.
- Added a stale tooltip for perishable food to display, when appropriate, that such food is neither fresh nor rotten.
- Added tooltip to Club Hammers and Mallets explaining that they are unsuitable for driving nails.
- Flatpack model is applied to movable items that use the Flatpack icon.
- Made more food items capable of being added to tacos and burritos.
- Bell Pepper can now be added to Stews.
 
- Added a check so cooked eggs cannot be used for inappropriate non-evolved recipes.
- Removed the requirement for hot water to make a bowl of oats.
- Changed the Violet FoodType to NoExplicit.
 
- Trash tiles (Movable items) and Plastic Bags can now be used as tinder and fuel for fires.
- Changed the Sawed-off Shotgun recipes to only use the hacksaw, and not the garden saw; a wood saw would be unable to cut through the metal barrel of a shotgun.
- Added the Meat Cleaver to the Slice Onions recipe. Removed it from the Jack-o'-lantern recipe.
 
- Changed the Cigarettes script to prioritize using Matches before a Lighter if both are in the same inventory.
- Added a new Doctor's bag and military duffel bag.
- Renamed "Hemophobic" trait to "Fear of Blood".
- Vehicle Spawn Chance rate can now be a float value instead of just an int.
- Added a check to prevent items that "weigh" over 50 units from being put in vehicle seats.
    This is an ongoing issue with bags/containers that are modded over capacity, which get stuck once placed in vehicle seats when the bag + contents have an Encumbrance of >50.
 
- Changed translation strings to make bottle names more consistent.
- Changed IGUI_HouseKey from "House Key" to "Key" to avoid issues with non-residential keys.
 
- Removed the numeric information tooltip provided when selecting eat all/half/quarter food item context options.
- Commented out the tool definitions in ClothingRecipesDefinitions as they currently are nonfunctional and serve no purpose aside from confusing modders.
 
- Commented out the WoodenLance in the safehouse weapons distro lists; that item is redundant vs SpearCrafted, and also doesn't work with spear recipes. SpearCrafted already spawns with safehouse weapons.
- Replaced AmmoStraps in the safehouse armor distro list with AmmoStraps_Bullets and AmmoStraps_Shells.
- Changed the display name translation string for the wearable AmmoStraps items to Bandolier on account of consistent confusion with the weapon attachment that is also called Ammo Straps.
- Changed the display name translation string for firearm magazines to use the firearm it is for, and not the caliber, as the prefix. Solves having two .308 Magazines, for both the MSR788 and the M14, and also that's how they're named in real life.
- Added a tooltip to firearm magazines that displays the ammunition type that it accepts.
 
- Added missing models for Candy Corn, Candied Fruit Slices, Hot Sauce, Fountain Cups, JuJubes, Nettles, Shrimp Dumplings, Poached Eggs, Scrambled Eggs, Packaged Corn, Pickled Ginger, Sugar Cookies, Fish Sushi, Radio Receivers,Radio Transmitters, Gummy Bears, Gummy Worms, and Tent Kits.
 

MULTIPLAYER
- Added server option "KnockedDownAllowed" to enable/disable the PVP knockdown.
    This is a stopgap change to give servers an option to make PVP combat less frustrating before we can address PVP combat more directly in the future.  
 
- Added auto-completion for player nicknames when pressing TAB while typing in the Chatbox.
- Added RCON command "checkModsNeedUpdate" to check for mods that need to be updated.
- Allow other non-admin permission levels to delete items in inventory/containers.
 
- Fixed the multiplayer "whisper" command corrupting the Lua environment due to multithreading.
- Fixed being unable to claim a safehouse unless standing on the ground floor.
- Fixed not checking upper floors for other players or zombies when claiming a safehouse.
- Fixed an exception on the server when food rots into a new item in a container that isn't in the world any longer.
- Fixed new stubble getting added to remote players after each appearance change.
- Fixed text annotations not appearing on annotated maps in multiplayer.
- Fixed Endurance sync in the Admin Health Tool.
- Fixed a bug that didn't display mods in the mod list of a server in the ESC menu.
- Fixed admins being unable to remove car hoods while inside the vehicle.
- Fixed players being unable to interact with Radios they placed themselves.
- Fixed a safehouse owner always respawning in their safehouse when the option to do so is unchecked.
 

BALANCE
- Modified the M16 & M14 critical values to be more consistent with other rifles.
    - M16 CriticalChance changed from 30 to 25.
            - Added CritDmgMultiplier 10
            - Added AimingPerkCritModifier 12
    - M14 CriticalChance changed from 0 to 30.
            - Added CritDmgMultiplier 10
            - AimingPerkCritModifier 15
- Disabled the cumulative slowdown until the next shot when firing the M16 in automatic mode. Firing the M16 in automatic mode will cumulatively reduce the chance of a critical with each additional shot. This is intended to represent the loss in accuracy due to recoil.
- Set some traits to be mutually exclusive to remove exploits or illogical combinations.
 
- Hot-Wiring a vehicle will have a low chance of causing a car alarm. The chance for this is decreased further for higher electronics skill levels.
- Zombies pushing up against a previously unentered stationary vehicle have a chance to set off an alarm.
- Removed the undesired RNG check that made vehicle alarms go off only 20% of the time.
- Fixed car hoods being unable to trigger vehicle alarms.
 
- Disabled being able to make melee attacks while inside a vehicle with the window rolled down.
 
- Randomized the fall damage that zombies take. This randomized spread will average out to the previous damage before it was randomized; this will have a minor impact (hohoho) on the damage that zombies that fall suffer, but slightly more of them will be able to be killed by this than before.
- Made it so groin injuries from not-crawler zombies are less common, and that crawlers can also inflict uncommon groin injuries.
 
- Increased the yield of metal parts when scrapping wrecked vehicles by 33%.
- Added a new procedural container, "CratePropane", to garages and shed.
- Increased the spawn rates for Propane Tanks in the distributions.
 
- Trailer capacity now reduces slightly when damaged, as there was no point in repairing them before.
- Changed Bowling Ball Bag capacity from 2 to 8.
- Increase number of Plaster uses to 10, same as Paint.
- Allow plastic bags and money to be used as tinder
 
- Adjusted the capacities of pistol and revolver cases from 7 down to 4.
- Adjusted Encumbrance of the sturdy stick item to 1 to be more consistent with other items.
- Adjusted Encumbrance of fire extinguishers to 2, to be consistent with other items.
- Decreased Encumbrance of Walkie-Talkies.
- Adjusted Encumbrance of the TreeBranch item to match that of a crafted spear, to 1.7 from 1;
    The Encumbrance discrepancy has been remarked upon repeatedly, and this also serves in making item Encumbrance more consistent.
- Adjusted the amount of fuel that spawns in fuel pumps at Low and Very Low.
 
- Updated the nutritional value for Canned Evaporated Milk. Calories 472; Carbs, Lipids, and Proteins at 23.6
- Changed the days until rotten for Bagels from 2 to 6.
- Gave the Stir Fry and roast script items a default hunger value of 10. This was previously reported as a bug when players spawned the item in instead of making it via the evolved recipe.
 
- Maggots are slightly more poisonous.
- Fewer maggots spawn, especially in spring and fall (maggots don't spawn during winter).
- Maggots are now a default item in the world item removal lists. Added a comment for the world item removal lists explaining that Base.Maggots should stay in the list due to corpse maggots.
- Additional safeguard to prevent errors when using mods that remove maggots altogether.
 

DEBUG / MODDING
- Added a search bar to the LootZed cheat panel.
- Added vehicle distributions to LootZed.
- Improved inventory check-in Check Stats panel.
 
- Right-clicking on a fuel pump in debug mode will display the amount of fuel in the pump in the right-click context menu.
 
- Added isStartValid function check for BaseTimedAction. Allows checking if an action is valid before the action starts.
- Added saving ModData from IsoGameCharacter to IsoDeadBody and from IsoDeadBody to IsoZombie.
- Added "OnPlayerGetDamage" event.
- Added event "OnWeaponHitThumpable" (Args: character, weapon, object)
- Added a trigger for the OnFillContainer Event when vehicle part containers are filled.
- Added the tag "CarBattery" which can be used with mod item car batteries so they can be charged with the vanilla car battery charger.
- Added the event "OnThrowableExplode", which transmits the IsoTrap and IsoSquare when one detonates.
- Added a toggle option in the vehicle debug context menu that will show if a vehicle's alarm is enabled or disabled.
- Changed Fast Move cheat in debug. Players can now levitate on different height levels via the PageUP/PageDown keys, and move around via the Arrow Keys on the different height levels.
- Made ImageScale, SeatOffsetY and SeatOffsetX global and not local in ISVehicleSeatUI.
- "Missing translation", "ignoring invalid ItemPicker item type", and "VEHICLE MISSING CONT DISTRIBUTION" console messages will now only appear when using debug mode.
 
- Fixed characters in godmode still changing body weight.
- Fixed instances of the Cheat Menu not working after a player died.
- Fixed removing bodies via Horde manager not working in SP.
- Fixed being stuck in a vehicle after trying to uninstall/install a car part through the Mechanics Cheat, when a character was inside the vehicle.
- Fixed bug with health panel: Fully healing a body part now also removes its muscle fatigue.
- Fixed mod texture packs being loaded before Core.TileScale was set based on the double-sized-textures option. This would result in 2x texture packs being loaded instead of 1x texture packs.
- Fixed issues with the Tile picker:
    - Fixed being unable to lock Doors placed via Tile Picker.
    - Fixed Tree Tile issues.
    - Fixed electronic tiles (TV, radio, generators, etc).
    - Fixed Garage Doors.
    - Fixed Street Light tiles.
    - Fixed Search Bar issues.
    - Fixed Light Switches.
    - Fixed not showing all tiles.
    - Fixed Fireplace objects.
    - Fixed Wells and Lights.
 

FIXES
- Fixed only being able to add Maple syrup to "PancakesRecipe" and not to "PancakesCraft" or "Pancakes".
- Fixed not being able to make 2 or 4 bowls of Rice or Pasta with a Saucepan anymore.
- Fixed lipstick not being appliable when player had Foundation Makeup in inventory
- Fixed Make-Up not being appliable when in a car.
- Fixes and changes to item categories.
- Fixed destroying a wall with a Lightswitch on it not destroying the Lightswitch too.
- Fixed making 2/4 bowls from a Saucepan returning a Cooking Pot.
- Fixed putting a hat on a Mohawk resetting hair growth timer.
- Fixed not being able to make a Molotov with an Empty Beer bottle.
- Fixed repeatedly building/disassembling some carpentry objects increasing the number of Planks sometimes.
- Fixed Sand/Gravel Bag wall behaviour when built at an angle.
- Fixed selected part of a garment in the "Inspect" UI being too faint.
- Fixed Shirts and other clothing items getting auto-removed from the world.
- Fixed unnecessary extra Muffin recipe. United the two existing Muffin recipes into one.
- Fixed being able to make Cake Batter using rotten ingredients below level 7.
- Fixed unused Zombie Decomposition sandbox option still being listed.
- Fixed NullPointerException in bThump animation variable when the object isn't loaded.
- Fixed being unable to click on open doors in an adjacent room.
- Fixed the starting house in "A Really CDDAy" challenge sometimes not being on fire.
- Fixed possible Lua error in MOBarricade.lua when a barricade sprite is on the east or south edge of a chunk.
- Fixed minor issues in ISZoneDisplay UI and text colours.
- Fixed Foraging icons rerolling when a search focus was selected.
- Fixed ISSearchManager check for valid zoneData when loading icons.
- Fixed not being able to rip Jeans/Leather Jackets when they're on the ground instead of the player inventory.
- Fixed disassembly of Favourited items.
- Fixed randomized crashed cars not having the correct car keys spawned for them.
- Fixed Mouse Trap related collision.
- Fixed sound issue when pressing W and S at the same time.
- Fixed sound issue when switching Seats while Cruise Control was enabled.
- Fixed Refill tool not updating the container visually.
- Fixed incorrectly named recipe for making Wooden Box Traps.
- Fixed several tile and cutaway issues.
- Fixed Lighters draining completely when used with a Molotov.
    When a Lighter is equipped it will no longer automatically become lit, instead it will do so only if activated using the flashlight keybind or radial menu, or using the inventory context menu option to activate them.
- Fixed evolved recipe error in scripts for Lemons and Lime.
- Fixed Machetes not losing condition when used to craft spears from branches/planks.
- Fixed Empty Beer Bottle using the wrong icons.
- Fixed the space before commas in evolved recipe item names.
- Fixed missing recipe for Opening Canned Fruit Beverage.
- Changed "Canned Condensed Milk" to "Canned Evaporated Milk" because people are really passionate about milk in can lore.
- Fixed melted ice cream not rotting.
- Fixed house keys spawning with a long string of numbers in their display name.
- Fixed climb sheet rope speed.
- Fixed water collision bug when placing Stairs on water.
- Fixed missing textures for Flatpack model.
- Fixed ISInventoryPaneContextMenu.doEvorecipeMenu error.
- Fixed the on-screen keyboard returning asterisks instead of the actual text when entering passwords.
- Fixed microwaves not stopping the StoveTimer sound when turned off.
- Fixed missing context menu translation string for "Item Water Capacity".
- Fixed missing movables translation strings for Oak Bars.
- Fixed missing translation string for foodtype cocoa.
- Fixed wrong tooltip for Onion Slices.
- Fixed pies and cakes being able to be sliced when uncooked.
- Fixed frozen ice cream cones causing boredom and unhappiness; added the "GoodFrozen" tag for such items that should still be enjoyable when frozen.
- Fixed characters not limping when they had their groin bitten.
- Fixed being able to fill a square over its capacity by using the Place Item interface.
- Fixed cooking rotten eggs producing fresh boiled eggs; now if food is rotten and has a "replace on cooked" value, it will not be replaced but will still be cooked, i.e. you will get a cooked rotten egg when you cook a rotten egg.                                             
- Fixed Propane Torch not being used for disassembling objects.                                          
- Fixed Walking and sprinting not burning more calories than standing still.
- Fixed NullPointerExeption when throwing a bomb from above ground level with a controller.
- Fixed not being able to pick items that were dropped to a removed seat slot.
- Fixed being stuck on a seat when trying to change seat twice in different places.
- Fixed being able to do Fitness during sleep and while sitting in a car.
- Fixed the eternal fire after destroying a lit campfire with a sledgehammer.
- Fixed Map objects disappearing when a player aims at a stealthing player.
- Fixed bug with item icons in halo text when foraging.
- Fixed a bug with locking/unlocking doors inside buildings.
- Fixed different values between standard and evolved recipes for Soup.
- Fixed an issue where the interaction between the two different separate zombie population sandbox settings was inconsistent between singleplayer and multiplayer sandbox setting interfaces.
- Fixed equipping "Bandana (face)" placing the bandana on the head.
- Fixed not being able to get a key ring. Some zombies will now have their house or vehicle key in a key ring, and key rings can also sometimes be found in store displays with watches.
- Fixed that it was impossible for a randomized name to be "Pat Bren".
- Fixed adding poisonous berries or mushrooms to an evolved recipe did not make the product poisonous.
- Fixed missing icon for Scrambled Eggs.
- Fixed currently nonfunctional bayonet and gunlight items not being commented out in the distribution files.
- Fixed missing models/textures for Fountain Cups, Recipe Pizza and Recipe Bread.
- Fixed missing "Obsolete" parameter to BakingTrayBread as it's an unused test item without a model.
- Fixed missing checks to prevent buildings with inappropriate randomized dead survivor stories from being alarmed.
- Fixed being able to use the place item option to place infinite items in a floor square.
- Fixed cut and paste error in the unused function HandWeapon.getToHitMod.
- Fixed an exploit where players, especially ones with desensitized, were able to sleep immediately after breaking LOS with zombies.
- Fixed a couple of inconsistencies between the default MP settings and the Apocalypse setting on account of the loot setting changes.
- Fixed CannedMilk not having the parameter CannedFood = TRUE.
- Fixed only pouring 50 units when selecting the option to put 100 units of water into a farming plot.
- Fixed an issue with the vehicle alarm debug tool, BaseVehicle.setAlarmed also needed to set previouslyEntered to false for the vehicle when enabling an alarm.
- Fixed car horns continuing when switching seats while honking.
- Fixed being able to hold down keys while AFKing to grind nimble; now a check is made to ensure that the character has actually moved before awarding XP.
- Fixed error with broken glass script name in distro files.
- Fixed hazmat suit missing blood locations.
- Fixed being able to put uncooked bacon into tacos and burritos.
- Fixed Pink Hair Dye not being in the distribution lists.
- Fixed not being able to put Black Beans into a salad.
- Fixed Strength XP levels causing slower Sheet Rope climbing at certain levels, especially at level 10.
- Fixed bugged interaction with building metal objects and the Propane Torch.
- Fixed not being able to disassemble car wrecks due to a missing Propane Torch, even though it was in inventory. This needs Balance feedback since the usage per Torch was also changed.
- Fixed interaction when pressing shift+e near passenger seat to move to the drivers seat.
- Fixed ISBuryCorpse action validity check.
- Fixed using a firearm to repair another firearm evaporating the ammo, magazine, and attachments of the first weapon. The items will now be placed in the player's inventory.
- Fixed being unable to read in a car when the engine was running.
- Fixed zombies spawning inside buildings when the zombie populations is set to 0.
- Fixed missing world static model for Bag_ShotgunDblSawnoffBag.
- Fixed search window tooltips still appearing on hover when the world map is open.
- Fixed player able to walk away while equipping items to scrap or destroy an object to perform the actions from afar.
- Fixed dismantling floors with the character on top by moving character to an adjacent square where possible.
- Fixed disassembly context menu issue: added highlighting of target object in world and object texture in disassembly tooltips
- Fixed reflective and shooting glasses having reversed icons.
- Fixed some events of ZomboidSoundMP.bank not playing for remote clients. This is to potentially fix sounds cutting out when several players are together.

I think there should be more tactical firearms (you know things with a pistol grip, detachable box magazine, stock and other basic parts of the gun) in the game as well as accessories. 
 
The guns should be accurate to their real life counterparts like no gun holding more or less ammo than it actually does in real life. Accessories should follow suit.
 
As for what guns I think they should be her are some suggestions (they can have their real life like the M1911 pistol or just a fictional/generic game like MV-58 or assault rifle 2).
 
Some starting examples
 
AK47 with 30 rd mag. maybe a WASR-10 for a semi-auto version.
Pistol grip for M14.
FN FAL with a 20 rd mag.
Tec 9 Pistol with 30 rd. mag.
Ruger 10/22 with 30 rd. mag.
Silencer for the pistols in the game.
M40 Sniper Rifle with detachable Scope
 
 

I would love a challenge mode that is just forest, no starting building, just a tent and a backpack full of stuff the player might of had taken from a city before getting into the forest, I've always wanted to live off the land and see how well that goes, with this animal update I want it more than ever.

Compliled changelist (41.74-41.77)
These small updates were intended to address the crashes affecting Linux MP servers and improve the client-to-server connections.
 
41.77.9 Hotfix October 20th:
- Added checks for a null VehicleScript to IsoPlayer.getNearVehicle() and IsoZombie.getNearVehicle().
 
 
41.77.7 Hotfix October 17th:
- znet libraries were rebuilt.
- Minor revision number now displayed on main menu instead of just inside the console.
- Fixed being stuck on the connection screen or a black screen when trying to connect to a co-op server.
- Fixed: log messages and NPE during the processing of the RakNet already-connected packet.
- Fixed instances of clients being unable to connect to a server where logs showed that the client is already connected. The client will use 127.0.0.1 to connect if it is a co-op host.
- Fixed host connections from remote clients.
- The client will save coop server logs to the logs.zip file before and after each start.
 

Hotfix October 7th:
- Rebuilt znet libraries
- Fixed /banid command
 
________________
 
 
MP
- Improved client connection.
    Important for server providers: Servers now have two ports for clients to connect to.
    The game port (UDP 16261 by default) is used to handle Steam queries. The additional port (UDP 16262 by default) is used to handle the direct connection. These ports can be configured through the server options.
    Clients will first try to use a direct connection. If direct connection fails, clients will try to connect via Steam.
    The non-Steam version works as usual.
    UPnP rules were changed accordingly (UPnP is used in cases to prevent manual port-forwarding).
    The client will show the warning message "WARNING: SERVER HAS PORT %1 CLOSED. PERFORMANCE MAY BE SEVERELY AFFECTED" if the client can't connect through direct connection.
 
- ZNet libraries rebuilt for Windows, Linux, and Mac.
- ZNet, Connection, and Kick logs are improved.
 
- Improved Type5, and Type21-24 Anti-Cheat behaviour to reduce false positives.
    A note that if you do not run a public server (i.e. a server exclusively for you and your family & friends without the worry of griefing and cheating), you can entirely circumvent any sort of frustration with false positives by disabling all AntiCheat protections in the servers .ini file.
 
- Split the large ConnectionDetails packet into several smaller packets with one of the ConnectionDetailsPacket.State enum values indicating which data is requested.
- Improved algorithm for the transmission of large files while playing.
- Loading screen now shows the download status of large files when connecting to a server.
- Extended checksum logs for debugging CRC differences.
- Increased kick delay for CRC differences.
- Additional logs were added.
 
- Fixed ObjectModData packets not being sent while the server was in the FastForward state.
- Fixed bug in world dictionary when an item in a different module but with a similar name as an vanilla item was removed.
- Fixed a new stubble Beard getting added to remote players after each appearance change, which resulted in receivePlayerZombieDescriptors errors.
- Fixed kicks after disabling VOIP.
- Fixed connecting to host after disconnection from a dedicated server.
- Fixed infinite connection attempt to non-steam server when it's not up.
- Fixed the client displaying "Disconnected" instead of "Wrong username or password".
- Fixed players being able to change their saved password for an already created account in some instances.
- Fixed Type21 black screen at connection stage when Type21 anti-cheat check is disabled.
- Fixed the character model always using media/textures/Body/Masks instead a clothing item's UnderlayMasks folder.
- Fixed black screen issues with certain mod constellations.
- Fixed the timed-action progress bar position not being updated during actions without a fixed duration.
- Fixed the animation speed of the timed-action progress bar at different framerates.
 

NEW
- Added a looping progress bar for timed actions that have no defined end. This is mainly a stopgap "fix" for entering cars, to visualize that there is an ongoing unfinished action until we can have visually open doors, etc.
Specifically added for the scenarios where players reported being bitten through the car door after they had entered a car and interrupted the "enter car" action before it could finish (e.g. by opening the map, etc), i.e. before the door was "closed".
This bar extends to other "infinite" actions like Walk To.
 

MODELS
- Added new body locations: Jacket_Bulky, JacketHat_Bulky, TorsoExtraVest, and JacketSuit.
- Assigned new body locations to existing clothing items to avoid clipping.
- Tweaked and added many clothing masks to avoid clipping through each other.
- Adjusted several clothing models and bone weighting to improve clipping.
- Removed Bowling shirt model from Bowling shirt definitions and made Bowling Shirt a texture. The model was left in the files in case mods use it.
- Improved base Body mask to help with clipping.
- Re-exported ALICE packs as some straps were missing.

Now then, survivors. Let’s do the thing.
 
NEXT
This week we released version 41.77 into our Unstable beta. This is primarily aimed at fixing the Linux crashes that have been plaguing server hosts, and so far seems to be a mission success in that regard.
 
It also improves client to server connections by preferring a direct connection to the server. Servers now have two ports for clients to connect to, configurable through the server options. The game port (UDP 16261 by default) is used to handle Steam queries. The additional port (UDP 16262 by default) is used to handle the direct connection.
 
We’ve had a successful wider test of 41.77 with more than 30 people on a server without any crashes, and we’ve tested a modded setup afterwards as well.
 
Upon release there were servers running mods with 41.77 just fine, but unfortunately it seemed that some mod setup constellations caused conflicts that resulted in black screens for some servers.
 
We have just pushed a hotfix we believe will resolve this.
 
If, however, you run a 41.77 server and you are still experiencing players unable to log on (only seeing a black screen) then please send us: the list of ModIDs (specifically the “Mods=” line from their server.ini, the workshop= line, and your server logs.
 
Posting these in the forum release thread or in our Discord techsupport channel would probably be best.
 
Likewise, any reports of ongoing server instability or general misbehaviour – please let us know ASAP.
 
THEN
We’re still adding tweaks and polish to our final B41 patch that we’ll put out once the current network improvements are fully tested, released and stable.
 
This is the current changelist, with notable additions in the past few weeks on show here if you already read up on what was incoming in our last blog.
 
OOH, 42
Build 42 will be a very big update, and it will appear a sizable amount of time after Build 41 is fully wrapped. We’ve announced most of the things that we currently have brewing for it, but there’s one thing we’ve only hinted at so far – and which is very likely to feature.
As regular readers may remember, a while ago we wrote a blog called Techdoid that detailed some of the big engine improvements we have slated for 42.
 
Amongst them is a new rendering pipeline which allows for entire chunks to be cached with a depth buffer, which will afford us MASSIVE rendering and scene construction improvements and should rid us of all the performance issues we’ve been plagued with due to the isometric draw order over the years.
 
 
There’s also a new light propagation system, which allows for light to naturally leak through doors and windows, providing much more atmospheric and believable lighting
  We also got rid of the 8 storey limit on chunks: specifically we allowed each chunk to have its own unique defined height up to 32 levels.
Finally, we discussed that we’d fixed the many areas of the codebase that used static casts to round the player’s position to determine what chunk or tile they were on to using Math.floors instead. This method allows for negative coordinates to work where prior the calculations would have failed if the player was stood on a tile with a negative coordinate.
 
This in theory will allow for us, or modders, to build north or west to the same extents as we currently build to the east and south, effectively quadrupling the maximum size the map could be extended to and open up a great deal of extra land to populate should we need to in future.
Whilst all these features are gamechangers in themselves, they were also done in service of another very specific feature we’ve had planned for a long time, which required each of them to be made feasible in any way.
 
The current in-game lighting system means that the indoor ambience levels are defined solely by the time of day. If it’s daytime, the ambient light levels inside a building are above zero, giving just sub-daylight levels, even if there are no sources of natural light that should fall on a tile just by virtue of it being day. That wouldn’t work very well if we were wanting to do… a certain other feature.
 
The previous eight level hard limit and high rendering cost of multiple levels was rather restrictive if we were to… want to do a certain something.
 
The lack of support for negative coordinates for character positions? Well that was IMMENSELY restrictive if we… were to want to do a certain something.
 
A few people may have been able to read between the lines of what all these lead toward. Many more will have just watched the video already.
  The plan we have for basements and sub-levels is an interesting one, as it will provide a lot more replayability to the game map, which is otherwise completely static at the moment.
 
Essentially in 42 we, or modders, can list positions on the map (along with staircase orientation) that have the space for a basement and can be allocated the potential to have one. However, no basements are placed within the map itself.
 
When an area is streamed in for the first time, an appropriate basement ‘building’ created in the building editor and exported as a binary file is selected randomly from the list of all possible basements and will be injected into the map as it is loaded.
 
We could add tags to make it pick an appropriate category of basement to fit the specific house, though right now the code has it set as completely random. Each basement has stairs leading up from its ‘top’ floor and these stairs will be aligned to the correct position when it is injected into the map.
 
This means that despite the map being static, any areas with basements will yield surprises in every playthrough. This will also, clearly, cause the least disruption to the existing map development, modded maps and everything else.
 
Whilst most of the basements will be modest basement rooms, that will have their own unique layout and lootable containers and will change on every new world and be populated with our own collection as well as any collections of mod basements that are subscribed to.
There may be a few, however, which are more extensive, the player could happen upon a super rare and extensive underground complex. We have 32 levels to work with that can be distributed in any way above or below ground per chunk as required, so there’ll be few limits particularly in what modders can do with this.
 
We can also hardcode some specific basement levels, so we could say provide key buildings within the map with bespoke basement levels that fit that particular building and will always be the same on every map.
 
Also, with the new light propagation system, you better bring a torch – because unless there are light switches, its gonna be dark even if it’s daytime!
 
We’re also considering the possibility of other sub-surface structures, such as sewers for locations like Louisville. We’re still researching what would be appropriate and sufficiently realistic for this, however, and it’s not certain what could/would appear in b42 beyond what’s discussed above at this stage.
 
SPIFFO: BEYOND
If you are a Terraria player then right now you are likely enjoying the amazing Labor of Love update, and maybe you’ve even discovered a certain someone has made the jump into another game – heralding the beginning of some sort of Spiffo Cinematic Universe.
Our endless thanks to everyone at Re-Logic for letting our little dude spread his wings (or spin his tail, I guess) and treating him so well.
  This week’s stunning outdoor scene from Citro. 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, especially if you’re an Animations Engineer as Christ alive that would be handy? Details here.