Zork

Adding to this, food placed on the ground outside should also incur a risk of being eaten by animals or ruined by rain.
Yes, root cellars would be neat.

Adding to this, food placed on the ground outside should also incur a risk of being eaten by animals or ruined by rain.
Yes, root cellars would be neat.

Adding to this, food placed on the ground outside should also incur a risk of being eaten by animals or ruined by rain.
Yes, root cellars would be neat.

Adding to this, food placed on the ground outside should also incur a risk of being eaten by animals or ruined by rain.
Yes, root cellars would be neat.

I liked the idea of wandering traders a lot. Late game should not only be about zombie populations but also about survivors forming bigger and better groups. Dynamic content in the form of quests you give to or receive from survivors. Maybe even a community establishing itself and dealing with hordes, the breaking down of technology and the scarcity of certain items such as ammo and medicine.
 
Having options to improve player structures, player vehicles, clothes, better food storage etc. would also provide a lot of late game fun for me.

Agreed. Door opening sounds very forceful, while it should always sound like the player is attempting to do it quietly.
Maybe with the exception when the player is in running mode and hitting E at the same time, it could use the louder noise (And also create more noise).

Agreed. Door opening sounds very forceful, while it should always sound like the player is attempting to do it quietly.
Maybe with the exception when the player is in running mode and hitting E at the same time, it could use the louder noise (And also create more noise).

1. Multiplayer. Everything what you do is good, however you need to give private key for streamers ( Ras7a from Russia for example who make your game more popular  - 120 -150 online every stream ) and they could be record stream (what they do without MP) and found bugs. You should be more opened for comunity. A lot of people make popular your game for free , a lot of people make mods for free and doing everything that interest to game not fall down. I think streamers - testers is good idea. Open your hearts, eradicate your pride. Be nearer to comunity.

2. Sounds of door is not real, too noisy and not realistic ( also doors needs animation - for modders it's deal for day ). The sound of katana also not real. I don't know exactly, but in my opinion there should be a whistle of steel when you take out a katana and when you swing it. When you chop a zombie, it seems that you are hitting a paper box, not live meat.

3. The rounded roads is cool , but please don't forget about road markings for all angles. This is also will need for my Yamnytsya village project. Hope these new tiles will be available in TileZed and WorldZed. Kukrapok , good luck , you doing very boring work. I know that.
 
Be more opened to comunity guys. Good luck survivers.

I think after a gun is shot, the could play birds flip the wing and flee sound effect and disable bird sing for few minutes until things quiet down.

I liked the idea of wandering traders a lot. Late game should not only be about zombie populations but also about survivors forming bigger and better groups. Dynamic content in the form of quests you give to or receive from survivors. Maybe even a community establishing itself and dealing with hordes, the breaking down of technology and the scarcity of certain items such as ammo and medicine.
 
Having options to improve player structures, player vehicles, clothes, better food storage etc. would also provide a lot of late game fun for me.

Hello all! Here’s a rundown of what’s been going on this week. But first:
 
For all those not interested in multiplayer progress, since we went so MP heavy last week with our deep dive, we thought it only fair to give you something non-MP releated, and a little more than we’d normally tease. Here’s a little taster of a few sounds from the Noiseworks team!
 
Please note that these are previews of sounds often in isolation, without zombie vocals, footsteps, or often ambient sounds. They are also still in WIP so don’t fret if you feel any of the sound balancing seems odd in isolation. They are all meant to be part of a much broader soundscape. We’ve also already discussed slightly lowering the squishiness of non-kill hits for e.g.

We think you’ll agree they sound great and, crucially, the sounds being synced exactly to the action make all the difference in the world! We’re super excited to see what comes next!


Also note the soundtrack in this video is not quite the same as you might remember! We have started receiving separate multi-tracks from Zach for the soundtrack to the game, essentially the individual instruments for all the tracks you know and love! And the plan is for Noiseworks to use these to create a more dynamic and flowing soundtrack that fits the events in the game much more closely rather than just playing tracks one after the other. Maybe pulling in the drums on their own here, adding cellos at a key moment after that, pulling back to quiet at a tense moment, bringing in a string trill when a zombie approaches as you crouch behind a fence, and so on.
 
However young Zach is very busy with his life at the moment, so it may take a while to get the entire soundtrack off of him so its not clear when Noiseworks will get to work on the system. we’re looking forward to it greatly though!

 
MP UPDATE
The Wednesday test this week was a little different, given that the client driven zombie rework is still in progress. The main focus was stealth between players, given RJ has updated the build with the more in-depth version of our stealth system. A few highlights from the session can be seen below, heavily including what looks like some special kind of ‘run’ that those anime fans seem to like so much!

 
Some testimonials:

“The main focus was on the functionality of stealth. It still needs some fixes indeed, but it’s slowly becoming something it’s meant to be.  
We had a lot of fun with sneaking from behind and attacking each other. Ninja-mode-on session. Hiding names is a good new feature, however, hovering mouse would give player’s position away. And some blinkings while sneaking. The rest was great! 9 Narutos\10.”

-
 
“I’ll have to say that it was remarkably (but albeit not entirely) stable and i was able to play uninterrupted for sometime, being able to drive around and get into car chases with others was wonderful i know i am starting to see something wonderful take shape”

-
 
“The sneaking is a great mechanic. Like NAME REDACTED said, he was invisible for me but afaik this is already known“
 

Hopefully next week we may be seeing the new client zombie code drop in in at least its initial form, and we should have a much clearer idea of what lies ahead in terms of the stuff discussed last week.
 
Stealth will be a big deal in PvP situations, allowing for players to crouch behind fences to set up ambushes, or sneak into an enemy base if there aren’t vigilant guards keeping lookout. There’s quite an intricate system for determining if a player is spotted, and requirements for them to become ‘unspotted’, however now it’s a case of ironing out all those bugs and making sure no matter how ‘ninja like’ no player can ever do a jig in front of another and remain invisible. It should always make sense.
 
A big change that comes with stealth is us defaulting to only showing the nametag on mouseover. This is for many reasons, not only so that a player in the dark even if you could see them will not instantly be recognizable, and could even escape notice if you just assumed they were a zombie milling about outside. It’s also a key component in our attempts to improve immersion with the smoother character movement, and to make stuff like RP feel a little more natural than everyone having floating nametags cluttering the screen.
 
We have some extended plans for this system, a kind of ‘identification system’ with face recognition range and clothing recognition range, players formally introducing to eachother and such (all configurable in server obviously), that could lead to some fun infiltration tactics. There are some RP friendly items we’re discussing too which may lead to some fun gameplay, though disclaimer its not certain they will be in the first builds!


 
Other things:
  The mapping tools are set to be updated, including all changes made since build 41! This has a few new things that mappers have been craving, new tile sets and the like, as well as support for newer features such as river flow directions, QoL improvements and so on. We’re aware that we’ve been a little lax on documentation on some of the modding processes, its been very much all knuckles to the grindstone of MP of late, but we do have plans for some additional support for modders, particularly those trying to crack 3d rigged / skinned models, its just we’re wary of diverting some key people’s time at the moment!
 
Daniel Grusuk, known as YellowExxhy on Discord, has made this amazing rendition of the PZ Theme! Listen and be amazed!
 

Go drop the dude a subscribe on the Youtubes!
 
That’s all for this week! Thanks for reading!
 
This week’s screenshot from Noah on Steam! A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too!

Let’s start off this week with something exciting that’s not piped straight out of Build 41 MP testing.
 
Long-time readers of this dev blog might recall that our writer / creative director / dogsbody Will wrote for renowned horror sci-fi game Alien: Isolation a few years ago.
 
Alien Isolation is widely seen as a cult classic for a variety of reasons, but its BAFTA award winning sound design is one of the most compelling. The noise of the creature in the vents, Amanda’s trainers treading and squeaking on the floors of Sevastopol, the way you’d strain to hear where it might be approaching from, the subtle beeps and whirrs of the machinery around you etc.


 
Will really got on with both of the main sound guys on the final approach to the Alien project’s release, Byron Bullock and Sam Cooper, who both very generously allowed him to hold their BAFTA on the night they won it.
 
While Sam remains at Creative Assembly, Byron went on to start up a company called Noiseworks with another Senior Sound Designer from the CA Total War team called David Phillipp.
 
Ever since then we have pined for Byron and the Noiseworks team, dearly wishing that Project Zomboid could one day have soundscape with the same stratospherically high quality bar as Alien: Isolation.
 
And so…

   “We are excited to be working on Project Zomboid and can’t wait to craft an immersive and compelling sonic landscape for all of its survivors!” said Noiseworks Creative Director Byron Bullock when requested for blog content.
 
“We plan to re-work the entire sonic landscape and have plans for some pretty awesome zombies, detailed and highly-dynamic world audio and an overall exciting soundscape that helps immerse players in the world of the Knox Event Exclusion Zone!”
 
We currently have a roadmap plotted out for Noiseworks over a period of many months, and their work will not be appearing (or mentioned in blogs) for quite a long time.
 
What with their Technical Sound Designer Michael already in the guts of our new FMOD project, however, and us deep in discussions with Byron about how zombies should sound, foot-steps, the ambient sounds of Kentucky nature etc etc we wanted to share the news so you know about the team-up.
 
We know we rarely discuss stuff that won’t be a part of our current build, but in the instance of teaming up with another group of experts and widening our skillbase we thought we’d make an exception. Exciting times!
 
41 MP TEST NEWS
Now back to your regular programming. We had a small W.N.I.T.S. (Wednesday Night Internal Test Session) last night, with the intention of holding a wider one on Friday.
 
Overall we had improved (but not fixed) zed teleportation issues, but we also had some annoying server instability that suggests more work ahead – we need to investigate this and that some of the work we’ve been doing on map-load / driving issues need a good, thorough debugging.
 
When there was less than five players a generally improved experience was reported, despite one super-distant player reporting some lag issues early on. Hopefully the latter was caused by the aforementioned instability, but we shall see.
 
Here’s the changelist for what we were testing last night, for those intrigued by the nitty-gritty.
 
And here’s a quick fun video of what went down. As you can, hopefully, see the close combat with zeds is really starting to come along now.
Friday’s test will again shake fresh issues out of the bug tree though. There’s still much to be done.
 

OTHER STUFF
Zac has been wringing out a few more chunks of performance gain from the 3D animations. His shared SharedSkeles eliminate the need for 99% of updateModelTransform calls on IsoZombie (blog writer does not understand this I’m afraid) which should give a 33% boost to overall animation performance on IsoZombie crowds. A video, with before and after!
 

Meanwhile in MP land RJ and Martin have been working on PvP and new PvP animations, while Tim has also added some improvements to controller detection – which will hopefully improve a lot of gamepad compatibility issues.
 
Turbo meanwhile has been optimizing his fog and mist which, as has been reported by the community on several occasions – thank you, has a tendency to tank FPS at inopportune moments.
 
Finally for inclusion this week: ‘Rockstar’ Mark Wright is now nearly at the end of his mission creating 3D models for all our inventory items – so it’ll all look more realistic when seen on the floor. (Just as weapons currently appear when placed down)
 

  Thanks all, more next week – with rolling updates on the Twitters.
 
This week’s base from intvkng. A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too!

Weight stat should not be removed. A person can gauge his own weight. Maybe with the addition of these items, weight on the character screen could be grouped into categories in 5 lbs steps instead.

Yeah, sugar is more of a luxury addition and really shouldn't be mandatory for coffee or tea. We are survivors after all. You know, Rose Hips are already in the game. Rose Hip tea is a thing. Why not make it a thing? That way, we can actually have a tea that's used and useful beyond the very early game.
 
Stir Fries / Cooked Stew is already a powerful happiness booster anyway, so I don't see the advantage we would get here beyond a bit of flavor.
 
I get that you want to balance hot beverages/tea/coffee, but this makes these a thing that are almost never used. Any "sustainable" recipes for more foodstuffs would just be awesome because I enjoy playing open-ended games.

It's a cool idea but, as was said, keeping a log of which books you have is a thing you can do with good old notepad.exe or a piece of paper.

It's a cool idea but, as was said, keeping a log of which books you have is a thing you can do with good old notepad.exe or a piece of paper.

They already shred sheet ropes though. And the thought of zeds climbing up there on their own seems silly. We are in Romero-land after all.
 
In my late game, I don't see many zombies around the base anymore. What I think would be better than just making life more difficult for first floor tenants would be to actually have more zombies gravitate over longer distances towards the player base. It's easy to go overboard with this. But just seeing a couple of zeds once in a while bothering my base would be an improvement.

Yeah, I think this is only done as an alternative to zombies being able to climb over cars. Since cars have various models and climbing is more difficult to animate.

It's a cool idea but, as was said, keeping a log of which books you have is a thing you can do with good old notepad.exe or a piece of paper.

Yeah, I think this is only done as an alternative to zombies being able to climb over cars. Since cars have various models and climbing is more difficult to animate.

Well unless its a big Van both players and Zs shud be able to climbe/crawl over an car. 
 
And yes to have an siting/sleep animations in sofa and beads + be able to jump over them sounds good.

This.
I find it so annoying to see my cars etc. wobbling on the ground. It's been around so long I'd started wondering whether it was just me that noticed it.
Sorry to hijack your post, but I would really like this issue to get more attention (along with the character occaisionally visually clipping through 2d objects).

I noticed the character getting bored (which leads to depression if stacked for too long) when exercising, like the game counts this activity as idling - so i opened this suggestion.
As title says, generally speaking physical exercise does help to soothe these irl -- perhaps even anxiety.
 
Some individuals may disagree or naturally not like physical activity, or have other side effects from it, in such case this could be represented by one or a series of selectable negative trait(s) in the character creation.
 
As complete opposite, some people can be fitness lovers so there could also be a positive trait (exercising increase happiness/boredom).
 
This could be a gradual, overtime effect (requires to exercise for quite some time), that way it won't be always preferred over smoking / drinking and other methods  which are otherwise more immediate, but come with their side effects.

Wow, that was a quick reaction to my foraging thread (I think?). You guys are awesome.

You will note however that PZ features almost exclusively "classic cars" from the 90s or earlier. These are heavier built, and I bet going by the models used that many of these are supposed to have steel frames rather than aluminium.