Veromaye

Howdy survivors.

We’re approaching a point at which the Vehicles build (details on how to play here) is feeling increasingly fully-formed. On Monday we released Vehicles 29, which most importantly brought back some FPS lost to towns and around tall buildings – as well as getting our Mac/Linux players back into testing.

Aspects of the build we’d like player feedback on, meanwhile, are the latest updates to where car keys spawn – and also how vehicles will now drift to a halt when the accelerator isn’t down, rather than it acting like an active brake.

We also gave the dashboard’s heater a dual-purpose with air-conditioning – meaning that your character can find relief from the elements in both summer and winter months. Rules on sleep consistent with the rest of the game were also added to the mix – meaning that taking a nap in a car is just as dependent on pain and panic levels as anywhere else.

In non-vehicle affairs, meanwhile, Vehicles 29 also added darkening to levels below player’s z height to help sense of depth between levels – saving many of our future construction enthusiast survivors from smashed-up limbs.

NEXT UP

We have Bitbaboon Steve’s map streaming optimizations running backstage, and they appear to be mixing in fairly nicely with ChrisW’s rendering improvements. We’ll give them a bit more of a test, and then they’ll likely be released alongside the stuff that EP, Connall, RJ and Yuri are beavering away on the upcoming Vehicle Build 30.

Most likely due for release early next week, 30 will introduce new materials for those with Mechanic attributes: Mechanic skill books, different types of muffler to let you tinker with engine noise, new tools like lug wrenches that are required when you remove tires etc.

We’re also doing our best to clear up confusion over car keys – who can get into what, and which car key starts up which car. As such if a player is near a car that they have the key for then from 30 onwards then a key icon will appear above their head – while keys both in inventories and in said icon will be colour coded to the colour of the vehicle itself.

Keys inserted into the ignition will also now be visible on the dashboard – alongside a fancy new temperature gauge to show you whether you need to be wearing your big coat. Here’s a quick vid that covers much of the above.
 

Future vehicle builds (at this point likely to be released as IWBUMS betas rather than in the current Vehicles beta slot) will also include Turbo’s work on mist, fog and snow [latest vid found here], as well as a map update that will fill in many of the more empty slices of countryside between our major towns with fields, tracks and farms that should complement vehicle exploration quite nicely.

Yuri’s current task, meanwhile, is the physics collision work that needs adding to the system so that RJ can implement Artist Mash’s smashed up mailboxes, garbage cans and road signs.

Also due for more immediate release in Build 30, meanwhile, are some fixes to longstanding tidy-up issues like the see-through MP chat window conflicting with snow (and, now, the upcoming fog), weirdness with syncing door locks in MP and pants that never get dirty.

Connall, meanwhile, has also coded in the ability for modders to support 1x and 2x tiles in their mods. Previously, modders would have to choose whether to support 1x or 2x but not both – so hopefully this will be of help.

Finally we’d also like to flag ShylokVakarian’s latest scientific study of PZ and loot house halls. Enquire within for details.

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

dont wanna make a seperate thread for these heres some cabins that are closely around the pleasant valley farmstead
sadly its messed up cause i dont know how to move around images and it uploaded them all jittery 
 
 
 
 

Interior
not an accurate recreation as a lot of tiles that would be needed arent there but I did the best I  could along with adding my own lil spin to it

Can't wait to see how my potato will explode with those effects. 

Great job guys! Keep it up.

Can't wait to see how my potato will explode with those effects. 

Great job guys! Keep it up.

Umm, you mean like what? Like reading what's in the newspaper or the magazine?

If that's what you mean, It would be very interesting. Way better than having wallets or credit cards for immersion lol. 

So I am 99% sure I read somewhere about a character trait or type in the game eventually being a nerd or movie buff and would quote movie lines. I got to thinking that it was a pretty neat idea, it makes players feel more customized and less cookie cutter of a meat-sack that is waiting to die. We already have things in game such as pressing "Q" and from what I see, hunting (I have a mod, might be it) and reading books that are too advanced.

Oh and before I go on to this suggestion, this is purely aesthetic and non-game changing in terms of mechanics. However it definitely adds flavor to the game and I would love it.

Also a dedicated turn off button in the options since it is aesthetic, and a cooldown on lines.

Some random little thing that doesn't actually do much for your character, but makes them unique. As with the suggestion of a "movie buff" that can comment things like "Wow, this reminds me of those old Romero movies" and the like, we can have others and maybe that can be replacing "Unemployed" with "Movie Lover" "Optimistic" "Pessimist" "Fashion Lover"

Maybe like Dragon Age or Saint's Row where you can choose a "personality type" or "interest" that has the player say things randomly. 

NOW I DO NOT mean anything that would upset the balance of the game. Maybe it is italicized or something for the player thinking it. Maybe a player would say something while he is already being attacked by zombies but it doesn't attract zombies. For example, saying "Come on come on..." while already having a horde on his butt. It wouldn't attract zombies (he already is hunted) and he might mutter it.

It could also give some players more clues who are new to the game. "I think I lost them" when the player is being hunted by only one or two zombies since they will lose the player through trees. "Still bleeding, have to do first aid", and this doesn't replace the bleeding moodle, but would encourage players to look for the moodle, in case they forgot (I have confused moodles by not looking correctly). "It is getting really hot out." for heat and "I am freezing!" for cold.

Plus you know... toss these randomly on NPCs when they come out...

So you have the following options, which can be spoken (text line) or thoughts (italicized):

- Generic "Man I hate these zeds!" "I think I hear growling..." [Obvious zombie nearby] "Oh no they heard that..." [Window Smash] "Please don't be infected, please don't be infected" [Bite/Scratch] "Hello?" [sneak Q] "Come get me!" [Weapon ready, Q]
- Movie buff "I think I saw this in a movie once." [General] "What we've got here is failure to communicate." [NPC Interaction] "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" [Weapon ready, Q], "Game over man! Game over!" [Bitten/Scratched] "Queue up the violins and showers..." [Equip kitchen knife, ready weapon]
- Optimist "I think I gave them the slip." [Low Zombie Count Hunting] "Hopefully some food in here." [Getting into a house] "Tomorrow is another day!" [Sleep] "I'll do even better next time!" [Level up]
- Pessimist "Five bucks says I run into a horde soon" [Low Zombie Count Hunting] "Just my luck..." [Zombies attacking] "Honestly, best outcome possible" [Drink Bleach] "Sure, generator will totally not make too much noise." [Starting up generator] "Oh great, canned food." [Canned food > 3] "F*ck I am so dead..." [Scratch, Bite]
- Tough Guy "You think you scare me?" [Low panic, Weapon ready Q],  "Let's smash some heads" [Equip 2 handed weapon, blunt] "Let's give Ivan a run for his money" [Equip Spear weapon], "Not going down like this" [Low health]
- Boris, the Russian Lumberjack (fun while I think, replace Boris with PLAYERNAME) "Come at me! Fall before Russia!" [Weapon out, Q] "Who there? Friend of Boris?" [sneak Q] "Boris would like to... axe you question." [NPC Interaction] "Russia may fall, Boris may fall, but the dream lives on brothers!" [Infected, dying] "Ah! And Mother said Boris couldn't learn new things!" [Level up!] "Timber!" [Tree cut]

Of course, modding would open this up too, even if a basic framework was added (obviously late) in development.

Yes, I mean if Pokemon games had it since gen 4, why wouldn't PZ :P?

But seriously, that would be nice for ambient, specially if you're the kind of person who doesn't play with a watch.

Hello
I think it would look nice to have colourful overlays in the game at dusk/dawn/night/whenever
so sunsets and sunrises could have pink/orangey colours
night time could have deep blue and whatnot
very early dawn before sunrise could be a nice light blue

Y E  S    P        L               E                           A                                                  S                                                                                      E                TIS

Hello,  I am speaking for both the community and the Dev's, could you please add an Official Test Map for your latest updates ? For example a large parking lot with all vehicles having a place to spawn and such, different types of roads, terrain, etc. Zombies to roam a side of it, and a bunch more. Would love to see that kind of a test map. You could get a lot of information out of it and we could test all kinds of bugs and, fps decrease and other issues that pz needs fixed and as such I think it would be a good idea to be able to test the new features on a such said map. We could have trees to crash in or to chop, a mechanic shop filled with the parts you need to test out anything else and so on. That way it would be easier to test and see where problems arise. 

Below is a really poor example (really poor) but I think that everyone gets the idea. We can test houses, how the rendering will affect buildings and such and vehicles. We can have a dense area with a bunch of houses, a bunch of two story buildings and then just normal country road. Tight curves, intersections, etc. We could basically do a lot of stuff on it and it would be a fun way for everyone to test out new features before playing or if they are willing to make the game better and report anything unusual. This is just a suggestion but I hope it will come true.

 
A cell or four at max would probably be enough for the car to accelerate, do leaps and anything like that. Please think it through and share your opinions with me and anyone else.

Hello. I've been playing the PZ vehicle branch recently and having a lot of fun with it.
 
My system is:
Intel Core i5 3.30GHz
8GB RAM
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Nvidia GeForce GTX 950
 
Here's my feedback about PZ vehicles, and a video to back this up: 
 
 
I've tried vehicles with "proper zombies", and also with variations of lesser zombies. So far, I've played with Easy Use Vehicles switched ON.
 
Vehicles in general:
I really like the vehicles and find the general "feel" of their handling to be good. I particularly like the way you lose control and skid if you take a corner too fast.
 
Do vehicles make the game too easy?
In general, I don't think vehicles make the game too easy. In fact: I think they make the game somewhat harder, as you have to be careful with engine sounds attracting zombies. Initially I tried "proper zombies" on a normal sandbox game, and found it difficult to get a foothold (dying after 3 days in two quick, successive games). Then I tried zombies set with low sight, hearing, smell and memory, and a low multiplier on the engine noise attraction. This was definitely too easy, but gave me chance to get a feel for using vehicles without too much panic. I'm currently playing with "proper zombies" senses and memory, and normal (1.0) on the engine noise multiplier, and I'm finding it just about right. That said, I've set population density to high (one down from Insane), because I'm screenshot-chasing for an article I'm writing. I can just about get a foothold, but it's not easy.
 
I found that I had to change my style of play with vehicles. When driving around, and approaching a building I was targeting to enter, I would leave the car in a place that would lure the zombies away from where I would be running to. The car engine noise would alert them and they would start walking towards me. Then I would jump out and run past them towards my target. I would do the same when approaching one of my safe house too. If there were lots of zombies around I found it wasn't a good idea to pull up right outside a safe house in a vehicle, as this would attract them right to your doorstep.
 
Performance:
Generally, performance was good with the vehicle branch on my machine, although I did eperience SOME slowdown, and screen juddering. Not a huge amount - only occasionally. Only once or twice did it interfere with play. I do tend to have other unrelated software running in the background, while I'm playing the game.
 
Bugs:
On occasion (in my current game), I smash into invisible wreckage in the road. I'm guessing that these are car wrecks that haven't rendered properly. My current game is the only one so far where I've switched on car wrecks at junctions. When I had this switched off in previous games I didn't encounter it. You can also crash into tin cans and other small objects in the road, but then you probably already know this.
 
I noticed that, in a couple of my recent games, that the yellow taxis were randomly bouncing on their suspension, by themselves. Driving them was okay, but leaving them would set them off bouncing again. I haven't noticed this in my last couple of games (I wonder if this is related to car wrecks being switched on, as my last two games have been the only ones that have had this).
 
Not sure why, but in my current game there are houses where I can't close the curtains on windows that seem to have curtains. I've not seen this bug in any of my previous vehicle games, just my current one.
 
Vehicle damage:
I like the vehicle damage so far. It's not too harsh, and driving a favourite car around for a long time does result in a beaten-up motor that looks like it's been through hell. Which is good.
 
Stalling:
I like that some vehicles stall. Finding a car that keeps stalling as you try to drive away is scary. Even cars that drive well should stall every now and then. But also the majority of cars should just run normally. It's that small, random element that makes it tense.
 
Game crashing:
On a couple of occasions, I've gotten into a car, only for it to stop dead, and then crash the game. When I restarted the game first time this happened the car had disappeared. On other occasions: I restarted and the car was still there, but it was unusable (I could get in, but not drive anywhere).

Suggestions for vehicles:
 
Killing zombies in vehicles:
The only disappointing thing I found about PZ vehicles was that they were not as effective at killing zombies as I had hoped. Unless you were driving into zombies at high speed, often the zombies would get back up and follow you. I would like it to be easier to kill zombies with vehicles, at least at certain game settings. If I drive into a crowd of zombies at speed with a large vehicle I would expect more of them to be put down for good with one pass, and more to be incapacitated or splattered. If I was driving through them at medium speed I'd expect more to put down for good too, and at lower speeds: more to at least be mangled.
 
More variety:
I'd like to see a bit more variety in the type of vehicles you can drive, if possible. As good as vehicles are, they do feel a little samey in terms of speed and handling. The small, Japanese-looking car (one of the smallest ones) is the most fun to drive because it's the fastest and most manoeuverable. Would love to see larger vehicles (buses, trucks and articulated lorries), and smaller vehicles (motorbikes, micro cars like the Dacia Sandaro), although this may be asking too much.
 
Using the boot/trunk:
Vehicles could be more useful for transferring items between locations. Filling the boot full of planks to take to your new outpost sounds appealing to me. Transferring heavy items between safe houses is a still a major chore.
 
Handling:
I think I'd like to see a wider range of vehicle handling types. What you have now is good - I can see and feel differences between the smaller, European and Japanese style cars, and the larger American cars - but I still feel as though a wider range of vehicles would benefit the game greatly, and give the naysayers less to moan about.
 
The vehicle menu:
Initially it bothered me that the ignition key icon was not in the same place every time I brought the vehicle menu up. But then I thought that that would be similar to real life (the ignition key hole would be in a different place in every car), so I just learned to live with it.
 
Getting your vehicle stuck:
I don't think that PZ vehicles can currently get stuck in mud, or driving on grass, or in woodland.
In real life, vehicles would be getting stuck all the time, BUT you don't want to introduce a feature like "getting stuck in the mud" if it's going to make the game hell to play. That said, making it an option in the settings and balancing it so that it happens only occasionally, may add another layer to the tension.
 
Hitting things, versus not hitting things:
At the moment there are various poles and roadside furniture that you can drive though, without them stopping you. In some ways this is a relief, as having everything "hittable" may actually be a bit of a nightmare. I'm not sure about this.
 
Other suggestions:
Tyre tracks in blood or mud. I always play with Ultra Gore on, because I like the drama. Might be fun to see vehicles leaving blood tracks if driving through pools of zombie blood. Or even skid marks on tarmac.
 
Exhaust smoke from sick vehicles? Sick vehicles that burst into flames? Vehicles bursting into flames because of mis-use?
 
Stuff I've not tried yet:
I've not tried torching a car yet, so can't comment on what fire does to cars or the surrounding environment. My twisted mind wants to send burning cars into crowds of zombies... This is something I'm going to have to play with.
 
I've also not tried jumping out of a fast moving car yet. Why have I not tried that? Might be worth having that possible, although I can see it being a can of worms. I guess everything is a can of worms in game development.

Looks great! I love using metal shelves to stock food because it's the one that looks "better" and organized lol. 
So I would love that kind of storage, also areas or buildings would not look that much repetitive

I signed in just to like this post.

I thought id put this here just as a suggestion as well. I made these for my map but i think they make certain storage areas alot better than just piles of wooden crates. This is a supermarket for Eg.
 
These pallets appear full when they have loot on them and empty when no loot just like normal store shelves, It wouldn't take much to implement and its only a small idea but it looks alot nicer and more immersive than a huge pile of huge wooden crates
 
Hopefully something similar can be done for the vanilla map.
 

Felicidades por convertirte en padre! 
Tus trabajos se ven geniales aunque tristemente creo que si implementan esto mi PC le diría bye bye a PZ XD. 
 

Thursday: it’s back. Back from the dead. Back with the zeds.
VEHICLES
RJ and Yuri have been hard at work on Vehicles Build 25 – much of which has involved scrubbing up and polishing features added over the past few iterations. So you can expect optimization, UI improvements and general groundwork for the final ‘top down diagram’ vehicle UI screen – while Yuri is currently cracking down on a rogue memory leak and various aspects of non-syncing on MP servers.
Also in Vehicles Build 39.25 will come the end of drive-through streetlights and road furniture…
We’ve also added in the ‘random spawn’ car/wreck collisions on the Exclusion Zone’s roads to accompany the ‘lore’ wreck congestion , some new wreck models and map fixes – and have balanced a lot of aspects of the new Mechanic skills/profession and related car parts. We anticipate starting work on a better ‘dashboard’ UI once vehicles build 25 is out.
OPTIMIZATION
One of the biggest issues with the current Vehicles build is that driving through built-up areas results in performance hiccups – the game is being forced to draw too many tiles, too quickly. Currently, however, PZ draws *everything* – even when the player character can’t see it.
Stuff on higher floors, stuff in buildings you have no line of sight into and everywhere with doors and windows shut – it’s all being conjured up needlessly and chewing up unnecessary processor power. Enter stage left, then, our good friend Chris Wood.
“I’m culling squares inside the levels of buildings that are covered by the floors and walls so we don’t draw them”, he explains. “This is being done very simply, using building bounding rectangles that can hide about 20% of the scene in busy areas with lots of buildings, and thereby reducing what’s rendered by 20%. This does, however, leave window interiors looking a bit strange – as in these screenshots ”


“My current task is to make this work more intelligently: by hiding all squares behind solid walls and floors by projecting back onto them. This will hopefully draw even less, as it won’t draw anything when a square is totally hidden – including the ground behind buildings. It won’t have the same visual artefacts and it’ll hide more squares.”
“The idea is that by the time I’ll have finished it will all look identical to the current public build – but behind the scenes it’ll be drawing a lot fewer tiles which will make a huge difference to performance since tile drawing is the biggest bottleneck in the game.”
On top of this we’re talking to General Arcade about picking up the reins on our LWJGL upgrade, which will also have optimization benefits, and have best friend genius BitBaboon Steve prodding a vehicles memory issue that will hopefully help out people with slower systems. So, all in all, performance improvement should be on the way.
COMMUNITY MEGATEST
Everything seems in place for a public release of the Build 38 megapatch that we’ve been building up over the last few weeks, but we want to be sure it’s run through enough of your machines – and specifically on online servers – before release.
As such we’ll be running a Community Megatest in the coming days on a fresh server, and as ever there’ll be free PZ codes for a bunch of the people who turn up to help out.
We’ve just released IWBUMS 38.26 (link) which is the build the server will be running on. Details on how to access the IWBUMS public beta can be found here, and info on the event itself will appear on the TIS forum over the next few days.
This week’s well-kept safehouse from RyuVladimir over on Steam. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.

Hello everyone - a shorter Thurdoid this week, just a few announcements.
 
Build 38
We've just released what will hopefully be the last IWBUMS of build 38 before we finally put it to bed. You can find the changelist for 38.25 here. We'll probably aim to go public with it on Monday, at which point the vehicle build will become the prime build and all hands will move onto it.
We've pretty much got the dedicated server system set up on the new build system, so will have updated that soon and will announce it when that happens with hopefully a good chunk of the weekend left to assure no issues remain with online play for a Monday release. At which point we'll upload to GOG and finally put this version to bed! Speaking of GOG:
 
GOG Builds
In the past, due to the difficulty of how we've handled builds it meant we haven't given GOG users as speedy or regular updates and we're sorry about that, it's clearly not been good enough. However part of the focus on revamping our build system means that we should be able to investigate IWBUMS support for the vehicles build once build 38 is out the door, at which point both versions will retain parity as much as possible. (It may be however GOG Linux will lag behind a bit since it requires a zip file upload to ftp, and is not directly uploadable via the GOG backend, but it will still be a lot faster and IWBUMS compatible).
 
Build 39
A few interesting updates here. ChrisW has been working on the new cutaway system for some time, which as you know provides sexier cutaways allowing for more buildings to appear in full without the entire world being cut away at once. He's now moved onto a rather huge optimisation in the same arena of code that should allow us to address the severe FPS loss we've been experiencing, particularly on the vehicle build. By removing unseen furniture and other tiles from inside building levels above the player that are hidden, it should massively reduce the amount that the game needs to draw, and should have a noticeable improvement on FPS particularly on a zoomed out view and in towns. As well as this Steve from BitBaboon has turned his optimisation sights onto the vehicle build, and we'll hopefully make some big gains to FPS in the vehicle build.
Meanwhile RJ and Yuri continue to expand on the various vehicle systems required for release, this week with a particular focus on balancing, while Mash has been doing major work on the damage and other overlay textures. Next on the list from RJ is more work on the mechanics UI. Yuri and Martin will be looking into visibly opening trunks/hoods/doors to make interacting with vehicles much more realistic.
That's all for this week, apologies its a bit of a short one this week normal Thursdoid will resume next week!