Akimbo Swords

Hey community, I finally made a Forum account <3

Ello’ all, and happy Bank Holiday for UK-ers and beyond.
 
 
RIVERSIDE RELEASE
The town of Riverside and the countryside around it was added to the IWBUMS public betaBuild 38 last Thursday in 38.8, and we’re getting plenty of positive reports from the testers exploring its separated rich/poor districts, the Scenic Grove trailer park, the stone angels of its graveyards and the delights of the Knox Heights Country Club.
 

 
We’ve also added a lootable map, and have been adding foraging zoning etc to it since release. Here’s a section of it, but there’s plenty more besides.
 

 
We’ll be adding the map to the vehicles build imminently, tomorrow hopefully, which will probably help you in your exploration as it’s been constructed to favour drivers a little more than previous map expansions. Initial reports suggest people are digging the different building styles, and there’s still some more to come from Mash in terms of extra buildings and detail. It sounds like zombie numbers need to be topped up a little, though, so if the Country Club tennis courts feel like they need a bit more action then please let us know.
 

 
 
MEGATEST RESULTS
Last Wednesday we ran the IWBUMS Megatest II to try out Bitbaboon Steve’s new effort in the War Against Zombie Lag – and we’re very pleased to report a resounding success.
We opened up the server toward the end of the test and had 141 people playing off/on over the hour, and 87 at its peak – and the usual peril of ghosting zombies, unfair bites and general combat sludginess was hugely improved. Even better, things didn’t seem to degrade the more players got online.
 
If this summary from Svarog is anything to go by, life for our MP players should be vastly improved when 38 is released: “I’ve gotta say that it’s incredible how much better it is when it comes to zombies. There is almost no lag, combat is much, much more pleasant. I can even use knives as weapons. Awesome job.”
 
Our thanks to Steve for his eagle eyes and code skills – and also for his ongoing work as there’s still room for improvement. During the test he set up various headache testcases with groups of helpful players, and there’s still plenty of areas he feels he can ratchet MP performance tighter, before moving on to general PZ optimization to aid and abet both vehicles and the animation system that his colleague Mark is helping out with. Hurrah then!
 
 
NEXT
Current focus is to tidy up Build 38 and get it out of the door – with IWBUMS 38.9 fairly imminent with Riverside forage zoning, new spawnpoints, Yuri’s recent gamepad work and some work on legacy bugs from Connall.
 
[Incidentally Connall is now taking ownership of much of the ‘Small but Important Suggestions thread‘ so if there’s any minor thing that you think could make life that little bit more fun or realistic in the game then feel free to holler at him there. From 38.9 if you’re sleeping outside then rain will wake you up, for instance.]
 
Yuri, meanwhile, continues his work on the public vehicles test – and is currently adding brake lights, and a change in appearance of the physical headlights to accompany the light beams we already have in the game. He’ll most likely be turning to co-op issues later in the week, while we’ll also be internally testing his engine optimizations when they’re integrated into Build 38 so that we can pave the way for the release of the first iteration of vehicles in Build 39.
 
A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless Mondoids for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.

so we got parts of 2 us states in a single map now? holy shit project zomboid got waaaay far from the early days this is great to see.

@Queen Glory I didn't make it on time either  would've been fun going on a road trip.

PZ Party <3 I'll try getting on the server myself after work.

Plenty on at the moment, and a new Community Megatest with free PZ codes up for grabs coming up on Wednesdoid…
 
NEW BUILDS
We released a new build of the Vehicles test branch today, in preparation for it becoming Build 39 once Build 38 gets a full release. Vehicle Build 15 fixes bugs with car wrecks spawning in the air and gently floating down, and also goes through and corrects the vehicle shadows and collision boxes of all our car models – meaning that flipped cars can no longer be walked through.
Yuri also finished off his gamepad integration work, adding gamepad control to our lootable map interface, which he will be transferring to Build 38 alongside the rest of his controller work.
The original plan was to release our new map expansion featuring the town of Riverside and the Knox Heights Country Club into the vehicles build, but as the week has gone by it’s seemed increasingly daft to sit on something that’s finished for longer than is necessary. As such we’re currently working on the zombie spawn maps and player spawn points necessary for it to be released earlier with Build 38.
 
Our intention is to get this out, alongside rooftop rendering and general RJ fixes, in time for a Community MP Megatest we’ll be holding on Wednesday evening. This is as a result of the…
 
 
WAR ON ZOMBIE LAG
We currently have two technical director chaps working on Zomboid. There’s Mark who’s setting up animations and currently getting a character skinned renderer active on a toggle (so we can turn on the new anims on the dev-side one-by-one as we go), and Steve who we’ve initially tasked with optimizing MP connectivity.
 
Steve’s primary aim is to remove zombie lag (teleporting zeds, unfair bites and general server strain) and this past Friday he might have made a bit of a breakthrough – which has now been coded and is due to be released into our IWBUMS public beta for testing tomorrow. Essentially Steve discovered a way to optimize zombie transmission – limiting the amount of zombie placement and zombie movement data that’s shared between players, while still keeping the online gameplay rolling.
 
This, combined with Stas from General Arcade’s ‘server save pause’ that’s already part of Build 38, could hopefully provide a massive improvement for all our MP players and server owners when released.
 
Through the power of maths we can tell it’s likely to be a nifty optimization, but we can’t tell how nifty it will be without putting it to the test… and so…
 
 
SERVER COMMUNITY MEGATEST II
This Wednesday 23rd August at 8pm BST (GMT+1) we will be opening up a server that’s running the current IWBUMS build, and we’d politely ask those interested in helping out to attend. Full details in this thread.
 
As with our previous Build 38 Megatest, participants will all receive a free Project Zomboid code to give to a friend/enemy/close family relation. All we need is for you to be running around on the server for an hour or so, and it’ll probably be quite a fun escapade.
 
The only difference between this time and the last Megatest is that, to properly emulate a normal live PZ server, we will be capping the number of participants at 50. When the test is over, however, we will open the server a little wider. This does mean, however, that there will only be 50 Steam codes up for grabs.
 
 
AND FINALLY
Massive props to SoulFilcher for recreating this little scene in LEGO. Terrifying indeed.
 

 
 
Today’s featured image from SAS 6007. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless Mondoids for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.

Undying Zombies - Every zombie you kill has a 50% chance to be resurrected after some time and annoying you some more. Same zombie can get resurrected however many times he wants to if he's lucky enough.

More a proof of concept than a real mod that I made when goofing around with lua but it does work. If someone wants to take it and do something else with it be my guest.

Download Link - MediaFire
Steam Workshop

I'm looking forward to the extra gamepad support so much,  Yuri will do it proud!

Every time when someone says that TIS developers are lazy just tell them how it's hard to make one simple skin for Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas ( i making it for 3 days. On first day it was literally 9 hours without break time. AVE COFFEE! )

Current focus is getting 38 out of the door, while putting roots down for the initial vehicles release in Build 39 and beyond. And so…
 
BUILD 38
We’re fixing up and polish Build 38 for release, and want it to be as clean as possible so we can drop the vehicles build straight into IWBUMS beta testing afterwards as Build 39 – with the new map expansion that includes the new town of Riverside and the Knox Heights Country Club.
 
This includes ironing the final kinks out of ChrisW’s rooftop rendering and peeking changes – as right now in the beta we’ve still got a few irritations like occasional see-through roof slants, canopies around the edges of buildings that never disappear and wonky player-built second floors. It’s ‘tidy up’ work more than anything, but we want it all to be as seamless as we can make it once it hits public.
 
As such, while this is done and in the build-up to release, we’ll continue to fix and polish RJ’s existing 38 work with graves, sandbox options and other stuff – alongside turning as much of the Bug Tracker from red to green as possible.
 
Yuri meanwhile, he of Vehicles Build fame, is going to transfer as many of his branch’s optimizations as we can into the IWBUMS version – so they’re not stuck in a holding pattern. He’ll also transfer his current work on improving gamepad controls and making sure that screens like in-game maps, foraging and sandbox game creation can all be navigated without a keyboard.
 
BITBABOON GANG
As regular readers will know we’ve now got Mark and Steve from Bitbaboon, both established Technical Directors from the land of AAA, bedded down with the team to help with animations (Mark) and MP/general optimization (Steve).
 
Steve’s first task is to optimize MP connectivity – and so we’ve set him up with a build so he can get some detailed stats back on bandwidth, cpu and memory for servers, and track what happens when latency rises. While he does so he’s also marking targets for when his role turns to more general FPS optimization.
 
Mark, meanwhile, is approaching the point at which the new animation system is merged into the main game code, but on a (development side debug) toggle. This means that it will always be integrated into the PZ build, allowing our coders to flick its various visual/gameplay switches ‘on’ as we go and start releasing test versions – keeping it in date with the main game much easier and allowing it all to co-exist with vehicles much more neatly.
 
VEHICLES
We released Vehicle Test Build 16 on Friday, which was something of a ‘wider IWBUMS testing’ preparation build as it put vehicles on a toggle accessed from the Game Select screen. It also corrected and darkened shadow positioning as well as, hopefully, prevented unrealistic car-climbing and bouncing on zombie corpses.
 
Next up Yuri will be integrating Mash’s redone burnt car models, an example of which is below, before moving onto a spot of optimization. This said, in amongst it all, there are a few other aspects we’d like to see integrated before/during the 39 IWBUMS: specifically clearer headlights, red brakelights, car horns, sirens and accurate numbers of seats for each car model. We’ll see how much we can fit in, basically.
 

 
WOLDREN MAPS
If you fancy holding out somewhere new and different than can we also suggest you check out the wide range of awesome maps that Woldren has created? Over the River, especially, is pretty awesome – as it creates a huge bridge over from West Point, with its own docked ship nearby, and a range of interesting locations for you to explore on the opposite bank. Definitely one to check out.
 
NOLAN GATES
Something we’ll need to be adding to the main game in build 39+ are player-built gates that’ll allow vehicles inside. In the meantime the lovely Mister Nolan has you covered with his new Log Wall Gate mod. Vid here.
 
Today’s featured image from Boop. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless Mondoids for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.

Will this also include adding functionality to all the perfectly-good shutters and garage doors that have been part of the maps since forever?
 
(Also, will garages as a whole be fixed size-wise? I mean, many of the WP garages barely look capable of fitting in one of those mini-smart cars, let alone an 80-90s sedan....)

Who are you on the server?

Well, that's kinda normal in the dog days of summer.  Also depends what time you are on I guess.
 
We had 20 on last night, but its usually on North American primetime as opposed to Europe Primetime.

Another bunch of more or less usefull stuff
 
More Medicine
  A Box wich can containe random Medicine (open the Box and get ... dont know 5 random Pillboxes)
 
Smaller Boxes wich contain ampoules (i think 4 is a good number)
Box with Adrenalin
Box with Morphin
Box with Testosteron
 
Other Medical Stuff
Adrenalin ( think a Syringe full of Adrenalin can give you more Endurance but will raise your Stresslevel)
More Adrenalin
Syringe with Adrenalin
 
Some Pillbottles i posted before (for something other .. dont know Appetite Suppressents or Methadon ... put in what you want)
Empty
Empty with Label
Filled
Filled with label
half filled
half filled with label
Label
Label empty
 
Some Tools
Glasscutter
Pipebender
 
at least
Ketchup, Mayo, Mustard and Relish in sweet tiny packeges.

100 times they said that bicycles and moto's is "yes"..

@Batsphinx

What Patrick H is describing is actually fairly easy to reproduce with every single building in the game. Just destroy it and what will be left is a bunch of visibility issues because of the way the game handles whether or not a "room" is visible.

In most buildings you can enter the kitchen and every other room blacks out if you're not looking at it. Having an entire building, all of it's walls destroyed and looking at it from outside is problematic.

The video should show what I mean, I have the debug stuff on the left so you can see how the room def changes and what effect it has on visibility of surrounding world.
 
 

In PZ we have a lot of diverse furniture. Fridges , tables , sofas , wooden pallets , etc.
Why we can't use many of them for store our good? Only british scientists know the answer.
Just add possibility to store items is such furniture , as :
every table , pallet , washing machine ( why not? They useless ) and etc suitable things that i can forget.
Capacity should be 50 KG for tables and pallets , washing machines maybe 15 or 30.

finally i could hide all of my cocaine money inside my couch like the lil pablo escobar i am

hate to be this kinda guy but honestly
backlash aside i gotta be brutally honest here
this game isnt gonna be nearly a fraction as serious and believable as it currently is, if people running around with shotguns and spiffo fur suits is gonna be a thing when animations roll in.
 
i dont really care about multiplayer anyway especially when singleplayer npcs roll in but id just like some comforting confirmation that this kinda stuff is atleast very, very rare to find?
 
dayz has already been enough of a turnoff as is with grown men running around in pink schoolgirl backpacks and grandma coats

Already planned that these won't be common and will be limited only to appropriate locations.

I think they're on the server list and not whitelisted, so you just find them on the list and join.

Delete possibility to view your current ammo with hardcore reloading on. For view your ammo you need to insert magazine and watch it usual way.
With shotguns you can't know current amount of ammo. If you want to know your current  ammo inside gun  - just count shoots.
 

Cool to see you still expanding this mod <3

Thanks - I'll update the tasklist

I am mad Scientist! So cool.