King-Salomon

NEW
 
- Allow crowbars to be used to remove wood barricades, and use animations for it
- Added context-menu commands for adding all fuel items, and all fuel items of a certain type, to barbecues, campfires and fireplaces.
- The warm-hands-by-a-fire now works with fireplaces.
- Added 'world' attachments to shotgun models.
- Added a shit ton of new male names, female names and surnames taken from 1994 US census so every other character isn't called Marina Hodgetts. (Thanks to Jam for putting these together.)
- The inspect-clothing command will transfer items to the player's inventory if needed.
- Inflating vehicle tires will stop at the maximum pressure instead of always adding 5. It was annoying having to cancel the action at the right time.
- Play the "craft" animation when adding patches to and removing patches from clothing.
- Updated translations.
- Display "Sleep on Ground" instead of "Sleep" in the context menu when no bed is selected.
- The "Sleep" tooltip displays the quality of the bed which can be Bad, Average or Good.
- Added cooler (can be worn in hands).
- Added satchel (3 variations, can be worn on back or in hands).
- Added briefcase spawns
- Added pistol case.
- Updated some textures for bags.
- Allow the player to shove (and stomp) sooner after attacking with a weapon.
- The crafting ui displays the the player's skill level for recipes with required skills (such as Make Trap Box).
 Required skills are displayed in red text if the player's level is below the required level.
- Added methods Recipe.getRequiredSkillCount() and Recipe.getRequiredSkill().
 Recipe.getRequiredSkill(int index) returns a RequiredSkill object with methods getPerk() and getLevel().
 
IMPROVED FOG SYSTEM
 
- brand new awesome fog now added
- added display option for new fog, can toggle between high quality, medium quality and legacy (build 40)
- changed fog generation, now variable duration based on day mean temperature.
- added chance of grey tinted fog effect to storms.
- added guaranteed strong tinted fog effect to tropical storm, now very distinctive.
- modified blizzard effects to work well with new fog.
- added new fog control panel to debug menu.

FITNESS
 
- Xp gain from exercises can now be different.
- Regularity will not drop until 24h after doing an exercise.
- Fixed some fitness animation weirdness.
- Remove the fitness UI when entering a car.
- Fixed NullPointerException in Fitness.decreaseRegularity().
- Fixed exception in Fitness.load().
- Moved fitness to health panel (new button) instead of right click menu.
 
BALANCE
 
- Allow washing dirty bandages from clean-water sources such as sinks.
- Dismantle Flashlight recipe is allowed if there is a battery in the flashlight.
- Renamed two Jackets to Leather Jacket. They were already leather.
- Increased antique stove weight from 20.0 to 40.0.
- Decreased gardening spray capacity
- Reduced size of zombies target outline by 20%.
- Reloading a gun will look for magazine in bags and not just main inventory.
- Toilet paper can now be used the same way as tissue (equip in main or secondary hands to reduce cough noise).
- Toilet paper can now be used to start and fuel a fire/BBQ.
- Slight bump in sneak skill (when in plain sight, will reduce the zed vision/footstep volume)
- MSR700/MSR788 now doesn't require magazines.
 
OPTIMIZATION

- Optimized ScriptModule.getRecipe().
- Declared SpriteRenderer.instance and SpriteRenderer.ringBuffer 'final'.
- Avoid some string-related gc with cutaways (parsing sprite names).
- Big optimization to cutaway rendering - moved testing of TallHoppableW, WallWTrans, TallHoppableN and WallNTrans to IsoFlagTypes since they were doing lots of string comparisons and slowing rendering down

MODEL AND ANIM CHANGES
 
-adjusted geometry so the gas mask works better with hats.
-added another body location to BodyLocations.lua (MaskFull)
-made welding mask part of the MaskFull body location
- Changed the cough/sneeze/fidget animations (the 'ext' state) to play as a sub-state of the 'idle' state.
-re-exported TShirt_white to not have buttoned front
 
FIXES
 
- Fixed the wrong animation playing when putting on baseball caps.
- Fixed NullPointerException in IsoGridSquare.getPuddlesDir(). This happened with a fireplace.
- Fixed some missing translation files
- Fixed not being able to equip and unequip items while aiming.
- Fixed zombie fence-flop crawling attacks hitting the player through closed doors.
- Fixed recipes without required skills not working.
- Fixed items not being taken from bags when equipping a light source.
- Fixed equipping an item in one hand when it looked like it should be equipped two-handed when dragging an item onto the primary/secondary icons.
- Fixed being able to climb through closed windows sometimes.
- Fixed not being able to reload an empty magazine while aiming.
- Fixed gunshot sounds and muzzleflash effects while sitting on the ground.
- Fixed exception when lighting a barbecue or fireplace with gas.
- Fixed timed actions not working while the warm-hands-by-a-fire animation is playing.
- Fixed warm-hands-by-a-fire animation possibly continuing long after the fire goes out.
- Fixed being able to fish at long distance with spears. (also one of the problem was if you only had a spear and open the UI, it was considered as a fishing rod!)
- Fixed transition animation from standing to sitting on ground not playing.
- Fixed available hotbar slots not updating when using a controller.
- Fixed timed actions not starting while aiming in a vehicle.
- Fixed the player getting stuck exiting a vehicle if it was done while aiming.
- Fixed toggle aim on/off not working in vehicles.
- Fixed the aim-assist cursor not disappearig after the player dies.
- Fixed long lines of text extending outside the crafting and switch-vehicle-seat windows.
- Fixed the automatic moving of items on vehicle seats not moving an item if it used all the remaining space on a seat.
- Fixed regularity map being re-initlized if fitness instructor/fireman.
- Fixed regularity progress bar showing incorrect values (it could never be at 100%!)
- Fixed the info popup in the profession/traits ui not being hidden when going to the previous or next screen.
- Fixed containers with capacity 3 or less not getting extra capacity from the Organized trait. This affected Fanny Packs.
- Fixed corpse inventory capacity being affected by the Organized and Disorganized traits. Player inventory capacity has never been affected by these traits (only bags).
- Fixed issues with the "Campfire Info" command after right-clicking on a campfire that is behind a wall.
- Fixed being able to drive a vehicle forward in reverse gear.
- Fixed being unable to look around by holding the right mouse button while in a vehicle with the window closed. This worked when holding the Aim key, but not when holding the right mouse button. 
- Fixed "All All" not adding all charcoal to barbecues, campfires and fireplaces. It will add one unit of charcoal (30 minutes) at a time until all is used.
- Fixed zombies moving through walls after climbing over a fence sometimes. This was easy to reproduce north of the West Point police station when fast-forwarding.
- Fixed cough/sneeze/fidget animations playing more frequently at higher framerates.
- Fixed context-menu cooking translations for latest version of Translatoid
- Fixed clothing mod data being lost when reversing caps, putting hoods up/down, etc.
- Fixed not facing doors when locking and unlocking them via the context menu.
- Fixed not gaining only strength and not fitness exp when doing some fitness exercices.
- Fixed being able to open multiple fitness UI.
- Fixed double door and stick traps returning more than they took to craft.
- Fixed sleep traits not affecting how much a char sleeps
- Fixed not being able to disassemble large metal shelves
- Fixed not being able to remove tiredness with restless sleeper
- Fixed front strength not showing properly in debug climate plotter

exercise sounds really cool :D
 
will there be a decay after reaching say skilllevel 5 if you don't exercide/use the fitness skills (like sleeping for 5 days or reading books decay the fitness skills in a small amount) ?

exercise sounds really cool :D
 
will there be a decay after reaching say skilllevel 5 if you don't exercide/use the fitness skills (like sleeping for 5 days or reading books decay the fitness skills in a small amount) ?

How do all. Now, for the past few weeks we’ve been working on general polish and fixes for the Public IWBUMS Build 41 beta while the MP Strike Force get on with their work – so as not to change anything fundamental to get in their way.
 
To keep the wheel spinning, however, we thought that for the 41.44 patch we could be forgiven for widening the net a little – and add in two side projects that we knew would be features that wouldn’t mess with the game or the foundation code too much.
 
(Quick note to say that there are more involved and foundational new features also being worked on that will 100% be build 42 features. RJ and Turbo have also solemnly sworn to keep their polish and fix tasks going in simultaneous to these additions)
 
 
EXERCISE
The first, of these is exercise and a fitness system – which is a good example of the relative ease in which the anims system allows us (and modders) to slot in new functionalities.
 
Once upon a time players shoved trees to raise their physical skills – a bug/feature that was removed, but made us aware that an ‘official’ version of this was most likely required.
 
The new system, then, is a way to boost your fitness and strength stats – taking into account various factors like fatigue, nutrition, exercise regularity etc.
 
The more you do an exercise, the better you get at it – but the harder you train the more fatigue and pain you’ll feel a few hours later. This will lower combat abilities if your arms are aching, or impact on movement if you’ve been too strenuous with your leg exercises.

 
 
THE FOG
The second thing we’ll be allowing in, meanwhile, is a new way of rendering our foggy scenes. Our current fog system does the job fine, but obscures all characters and objects in the same way – all dependent on the opacity at a certain spot. It doesn’t really allow for that classic ‘zombies lurching at you through the mists’ feeling.
 
Taking inspiration from the excellent Graveyard Keeper, however, in a recent side project Turbo has worked out a way to adapt a more layered and atmospheric fog for our game.
 
The new system also means we can play with the height of the fog, as well as the opacity. It’s great in motion, and made for a fun addition to the game that wouldn’t mess with the ongoing MP fix-up party. Speaking of which…
 
 
MP STRIKE FORCE
 
In the MP Strike Force, we had a productive catch-up meeting on Tuesday with grand overseer TEA/Bitbaboon Mark – while Yuri and Andrei have been continuing to busy themselves in the surrounding times.
 
Yuri’s work on syncing player characters between clients is progressing nicely – building them up at a point at which he can start mixing in some zombies and start debugging the combat itself.
 
He’s also been modifying player clients to reduce their frequency (to reduce bandwidth requirements for them) as well as fixing some issues with characters weapons not matching between clients. Here’s the latest vid he’s shared with us this week.
 
Andrei, in the meantime, has been continuing his investigations into the memory usage of the servers – adding in more and more diagnostic systems and checking in with many and varied graphs and tables that dish the dirt on the various things we need to clamp down on.
 
Anyway, that’s about it for this week – although perhaps worth adding that other smaller polish and fixes that have gone into the next IWBUMS patch (41.44) include: bloodied and dirtied backpacks now washable, general tidy-up of drinking and water supply functionalities, scrap metal now obtainable from car wrecks, nerfed foraging exploits and quite a few polished/smoothened anims from Martin.
 
This week’s vision of 2020 from MachuPikcuinta on the reddits. 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!

Maybe you also could make bench presses and treadmills usable? They're already in the game.

NEW
 
Added emote wheel, you currently press Q to open it.
- Emotes wheels binded to Q by default.
- Emotes wheel is now a long press to bring up.
- Emotes wheel includes different looking emotes if you are in stealth 
- Pressing Q (shout) while crouched will now have different text and smaller sound radius.
- Swinging your weapon in the air (not hitting anything) won't attract zombies anymore.
- Added new sets of anim for fishing with spears.
- Can now fish with a fishing rod while sitting on ground.
- Updated the MacOS application icons.
- Allow medical items to be dragged onto the list of injured body parts in the Health ui. Previously items could only be dragged onto the image of the body.
- Made right-clicking items on the ground more reliable by checking if the item icon is within a certain distance of the mouse pointer.  Previously, only items on the square that was clicked were detected.  If the item was near the corner of a square, the user had to hunt around to find the right place to click.
- Updated map to include recent fixes and Ben's Cabin
 
 
DEBUG
 
- Added a Reload button to the lua debugger file list.  It appears next to the file name of the item the mouse is hovering over.
- Added an in-game animation-clip viewer accessed by CTRL+F7 in debug mode.
 
 
TUTORIAL
- Quality of life changes and fixes
- Updated with new controller icons from Binky
 
 
MODDING
- Moved the code for clicking on curtains, doors and light switches from Java to ISObjectClickHandler.lua so modders can change this behavior.
- Added back code to IsoPlayer.removeSaveFile() to delete map_pN.bin savefiles to help Nolan on SuperSurvivors and other minor changes to make his life easier
- Added a new item property called Tags. Tags is a list of strings that can be used to specify what the item is used for.
 Instead of checking lists of item types such as Hammer/HammerStone or Saw/GardenSaw, the game can check for items
 that have certain tags. These tags are: ChopTree, ClearAshes, CutPlant, DigGrave, DigPlow, Hammer, Saw, TakeDirt. Also, digital watches have the tag Digital which affects how the clock is displayed.
- Moved recipecode.lua functions into a global table called Recipe.
 The functions are organized into sub-tables Recipe.OnCreate, Recipe.OnGiveXP, and Recipe.OnTest.
 This is similar to how vehicle-script lua functions work.
 For example, CutFish_TestIsValid is now Recipe.OnTest.CutFish.
 The old function names are still available to avoid breaking mods.
-  Error messages are printed to the console when loading a game if any recipe's OnCreate, OnGiveXP, or OnTest methods are undefined.
 
 
BALANCE
- Reduced crit chance of knives.
- Ignore the slowdown from injures, negative moodles, etc when closing or opening vehicle doors.
- Reduced the distance at which light switches can be clicked on.
- Ball-Peen Hammer can now be used for carpentry etc.
- Spears used for fishing lose condition when damaged, and don't disappear from the player's inventory.
- If you were about to do a close knife kill (jaw stab) forbidden when zombies are attacking - but your alternate normal attack will deal more damage. This avoids risk of unwanted jaw stabs when you have high small blade skills.
- Increased reloading/aiming XP gain when level is under 5.
- Increased minimum damage of M14 from 1 to 1.2.

ANIMS
- Hide left-hand items when reloading firearms.
- Hide any left-hand item when chopping down trees.
- Tweaked normal glasses UV's so the arms show, male and female versions.
- Tweaked drinking anims to be a bit more natural.
- Tweaked gun recoils, loading and racking blends to eliminate some popping.
- Adjusted recoil of handgun and rifle a bit.
- Tweaked Trousers.xml, Trousers_Black.xml and Trousers_NavyBlue.xml masking to avoid clipping.
- Tweaked Shorts_ShortFormal.xml to avoid clipping.
 
 
FIXES
- Fixed non-empty containers sometimes looking like they had no items in them (in random toilet-paper-filled buildings).
- Fixed lua error with the "Rest" context-menu option when extremely tired and no bed/chair was clicked.
- Fixed being able to fish from infinite distance, you'll now need to be at max 6 tiles from body of water with a rod and 2 tiles with spears.
- Fixed various issues with moveables - primarily metal ones.
- Fixed vehicles not colliding with zombies after the engine shuts off while the vehicle is still moving.
- Fixed zombies sometimes attacking instead of playing their hit-reaction animation. (Difficult to reproduce, somehow this person had it happen twice in a row!
https://clips.twitch.tv/HonestMagnificentGaurKlappa)
- Fixed animation event garbage collection.
- Fixed ActiveAnimXXX events occurring every frame after a new node is started in the same AnimSet.
- Fixed two DebugLog.txt files being created during startup. One of these files was being closed via garbage collection, which has caused problems on Linux in the past.
- Fixed not being able to jaw-stab a zombie from behind when the zombie was playing the Zombie_DoorClaw animation.
- Fixed action animations (like reading) not playing when sitting on the ground after trying to attack while sitting.
- Fixed timed actions continuing while getting up from sitting after pressing a movement key.
- Fixed parts of clothing not being visible through a hole in a layer above sometimes.
- Fixed zombies playing their aggression sound after killing the player. It kept playing during the eating-body sound.
- Fixed multiple death screams playing sometimes when the player is killed by zombies.
- Fixed zombies sometimes playing their bite animation again after dragging the player to the ground.
- Fixed the player-info avatar animating more slowly at higher framerates.
- Fixed the animation-clip viewer animation running more slowly at higher framerates.
- Fixed not being able to interact with tents placed by the map-maker.
- Fixed rooms sometimes appearing unlit when the light switch was on. This happened when loading a part of the map with room light switches but no lamps or porch lights.
- Fixed wearing each item of clothing in a stack, when those items have the same name but different underlying types (like Jacket).
- Fixed favorited items being used for campfire fuel.
- Fixed a bug with reusing zombies which could result in a zombie trying to walk toward a sound it heard before it was removed
 from the world.
- Fixed the player info avatar not updating when hats and glasses are knocked off the player.
- Fixed the loot window not updating to show hats and glasses knocked off the player.
- Fixed the player-info avatar animating while the game is paused..
- Fixed the carpentry menu Door submenu appearing disabled when a doorframe can be built..
- Fixed food in a bag in a Fridge/Freezer not cooling or freezing.
- Fixed Big Garage Doors / Windows showing as doubled normal sized doors / windows in cutaways.
- Fixed logging out and back in with the "Winter is coming" challenge (and others) resetting the timer.
- Fixed some item weight discrepancies.
- Fixed not being able to start a BBQ with any other materials apart from paper.
- Fixed unlimited sugar being allowed to be added to a beverage.
- Fixed lockers not cutting away correctly.
- Fixed lunch box always spawning with fresh food even a long time into the apocalypse.
- Fixed pouring water from bottle to bottle not reserving empty bottle's favourite status.
- Fixed Filling up broken Saucepan repairs it.
- Fixed sandbox option "Infection Mortality" set to "Never" not working.
- Fixed placing and removing bait from a trap duplicating it.
- Fixed the crafting ui "Name Filter" entry and "Filter All" checkbox displaying different values in each tab.
- Fixed the fishing ui not being tall enough to display the caught items sometimes.

Hey all, let’s do some IWBUMS 41 public beta chat.
 
We released 41.41 to the beta last week, and 41.42 is starting to shape on the internal build – with the focus still being on fixes and polish rather than adding any complex systems that directly impact on the gameplay – while the MP Strike Team continue to hammer away at online stuff.
 
To this end there’s currently stuff like improved fishing anims, less clunky car entry and exit if you’re injured, tweaked gun recoils, less clothing clipping, some anims optimization, new gamepad icons and a fix for this tricky-to-replicate ‘bite on attack’ issue that somehow this poor streamer ran into twice in a row.
We will most likely be looking to release this next week at some point.
 
EMOTES
In MP-land meanwhile, a system we’ll be needing that shouldn’t impact too much on general gameplay balance is the emote system – which RJ and Martin are working together on.
 
Emotes will be accessed via a vehicles-style radial menu, and you’ll be able to customize which ones you’d like to have easily accessible (including those that have been modded in) via a window also accessible via the radial.
 
Emotes we’re currently hooking up include clapping, beckoning, follow requests, nose-holding, shakes of the head, polite refusals, nervous pulls at the collar, surrenders, saying thank you, waving goodbye, waving hello and yawning.
 
There will be no dancing, however, as we’re not Fortnite – you guys will have to mod that in via AnimZed once it’s released if you want it!
You’ll be able to do emotes in SP too, as we’d imagine it’ll make for some fun screenshot-taking. Likewise emotes will also be triggerable via the MP chatbox.
 
Super work-in-progress video of RJ and Martin’s current work seen below! Icons, placements etc all due for change.

 
MP STRIKE TEAM
Andrei has been continuing work on the client bot system. For a quick refresher on this, this is a debugging tool to allow us to simulate large population servers, to provide us with information we’ve never had access to before: both to allow us to see where we can optimize network traffic in the Strike Team’s current work, and to debug why our high population B40 multiplayer servers often grind to a halt and suffer terrible lag spikes, black borders on map streaming, stationary zombies etc etc
 
Andrei’s fake clients currently spawn in a random spot in the middle of the map, and move in a random direction at greater speeds than a normal player is capable of. Here are a bunch of them in their first WIP blink-in-and-out-of-existence form.
So, these little automatons will then separate and force the server to send the data for the map and load up simulated zombies: purposefully straining the server as much as possible so it can be debugged to discover where the choke points and bottle necks are.
 
Right now Andrei is optimizing the memory and CPU requirements for client bots, there’s still some way to go with this but he’s  managed 60 of them to run on a single machine now – but in the meantime here’s a fun little video showing 10 of the little fake lads and ladies in action on the PZ map overview.

Yuri meanwhile has been working on syncing player states across the network, with a side salad of fixing up zombie network issues when they crop up.  There’s still lots to be done here: character animations are not yet translated between clients, and there’s still some slight glitches to resolve with zombie behaviour not matching, but it’s great to see it all starting to take form.
 

This week’s secured streets from Greedy Dwarf. 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! The CBOIT also wishes the Dead Matter team success and high infection rates during the launch of their closed alpha this week.

 

NEW
- Enabled the "New Character" button after the player dies in singleplayer, so it's more clear that players can continue the save with a new character. This button was already available in splitscreen and multiplayer.
- Added "Corpse Shadows" display option. Corpse shadows are drawn as a separate pass (along with player, vehicle, and zombie shadows) so could affect performance with lots of corpses.
- Added a sandbox option to disable zombie lunge after climbing over fence (in the zombie lore).
- Allow sleeping anywhere when the character reaches a fatigue level of 4. The sleep is short and has more negative side effects than a "bad bed".
- Allow the player to go to sleep outdoors when it is raining. 
- Added "Simple Clothing Textures" option to disable blood/dirt/holes/patches on clothing textures. The blood/dirt/holes/patches are still on the clothes but aren't drawn. Turning this on can save texture memory and possibly improve performance on lower-spec hardware.
- Added "Simple Weapon Textures" which disables drawing blood on weapons. Turning this on can save texture memory and possibly improve performance on lower-spec hardware (but not as much as Simple Clothing Textures).
- Allow multiple map windows to be opened at the same time.
- Added UIElement:onKeyPress(), onKeyRepeat() and onKeyRelease() methods so top-level UIElements can intercept keypresses without having to use events such as Events.OnKeyPressed or Events.OnCustomUIKey.
 
BALANCE
- Slightly lowered spawnrate of watches on zombies
- Slightly lowered the chance for pre-set alarms on watches
- Rebalanced M14 Single Shot Assault Rifle. 
    - Changed model
    - Now uses proper ammo (.308) instead of 5.56. 
    - Magazine size set to 20
    - Damage has been balanced to bring it in line with other rifles
- Reduced damage for Wood Axe to 1.3 Min and 3 Max, down from 3.6 Min and 4.6 Max. Previous damage values were workaround for a past bug that ended up way overpowered when said bug was fixed.
- Added hoodies to some zombie outfits.
- Big metal shelves now require metalwork to disassemble, also gives metal bars & plates (previously was only screws).
- Increased spawn rate of fanny pack.
- Increased weight of rifles.
- Lowered min angle of shove to stop shove working on distant zombies
- Lowered max range of shove as the range "extends" when player shoves (as body leans forward, so does the range)
- Traps can get destroyed when the player is out of range
    - when destroyed, a destroyItem takes the traps place, by default this is 'unusable wood' but can be set in the trap definition
- "Put in Container" inventory context-menu option now shows the name of the container (if any). Hopefully, this will make it clearer that the item isn't going into an equipped bag.
- Increased the range the player prefers to target lunging zombies instead of prone zombies from 0.5 to 1.0

ANIMS
- Adjusted the 2-handed miss animation to leave the weapon in left hand during the miss anim
- Disallow fishing when sitting on ground, as said action has no playable animation at this time. If the UI is opened first and player then sits before starting fishing action a forceGetUp is performed.
- Removed excess frames from "zombie get up from back" anim
- Tweaked blend settings for "zombie getting up"

FIXES
- Fixed jaw-stabbing zombies through unbroken or barricaded windows.
- Fixed jaw stab animation playing but character missing
- Fixed splatting blood and playing weapon-impact sounds when hitting a window between the player and a zombie.
- Fixed cancelling attaching an item to the hotbar leaving the model visible on the player but not in the hotbar.
- Fixed UI updates slowing down when the GameTime.Speed.XXX debug options are enabled.
- Fixed IsoZombie AnimationPlayer being freed, then recreated after death.
- Fixed model-rendering debug code accessing AnimationPlayer from the rendering thread. This was the code that rendered the character's skeleton and other things.
- Fixed a bug in the JOML Matrix4f class.
- Deleted some old unused classes.
- Fixed unnoticeable splitscreen rendering issue when the game is paused.
- Fixed lua error with the Horde Manager ui when the spawn location goes out of bounds.
- Fixed zombie models unfolding when they first become visible.
- Fixed NullPointerException climbing through a windowframe without a window.
- Fixed the close-window animation not playing when using a controller.
- Fixed being able to sleep in a moving car.
- Fixed Movable-cursor not being able to pick up office cubicle walls from west/north side, also made them hoppable.
- Added functionallity for any object existing as Iso and Inventory (such as radios) to be dismantable/scapable in their IsoObject form by looking up the inventory item dismantle recipe. For this to work the spriteproperties must be set to 'CanScrap' AND have at least one dummy material defined for the scrapcode to recognize it as valid scrapable, the actual materials returned will be from the recipe
- Fixed walls on the same tile overlapping door when the latter was opened.
- Added a check that makes sure the door index is always after the last wall and wall index is always before the door.
- Added a tileproperty TreatAsWallOrder for objects that aren't walls but should be treated as such in the indexing (such as the shower glass panes)
- FPS multiplier now capped to a maximum of 5 (6fps->30fps). This possibly fixes death by stairs, along with other possible sudden deaths due to lag related pauses, as time will not pass significantly during such a pause. 
- Fixed some lambda garbage collection
- Fixed duplicate Keyframe.BoneName strings (Bip01, etc)
- Fixed death music not stopping after creating a new player using the New Character button.
- Possibly fixed bug that treated walking zombies as if they're still knocked down, causing wrong target priorities when attacking affected zombies.
- Fixed player movement stopping when playing the one-handed crit attack animation.
- Fixed wrist-worn items clipping through long-sleeved clothes by hiding the wrist-worn items.
- Fixed character-creation Beard Type "None" not being selected when loading a preset without a beard.
- Fixed blur at certain zoom levels
- Fixed blood not being drawn temporarily on hotbar weapon models when equipping or unequipping them.
- Fixed various debug panels affecting a dead player after creating a new player with the New Character button.
- Fixed recipes not preserving the "favorite" status of items when the result item has the same type as a source item.
- Fixed zombies ending up on their back when they are hit while flipping from their back to their front.
- Fixed the "close window" animation playing when the E key is pressed on a closed barricaded window.
- Fixed empty assault rifles in Burst or Single firing modes killing zombies.
- Fixed clothing items that can't get blood and dirt on them from getting wet. This includes belts, jewelry, and watches.
- Fixed SleepingEvent not working correctly in splitscreen.
- Fixed corpses being drawn underneath stairs.  They still get clipped if they overlap a lower stair tile.
- Fixed knocked-off hats being drawn underneath stairs
- Fixed some cases where empty containers looked like they had items in them.
- Fixed some invalid item types in the loot-spawning tables.
- Print a warning to the console when invalid item types are in the loot-spawning tables.
- Fixed some gc with item spawning.
- ProceduralDistributions Lua table is parsed one time during startup instead of each time items are spawned
- Fixed the hotbar shortcut keys not working after the player gets bumped just before an attack starts

Howdy all, bit of a short Thursdoid today since the usual writer is away this week, however still a few bits to share!
 
BUILD 41.40
We’re feeling very close to getting 41.40 out, and given the short Thursdoid was hoping we could squeeze it out today to compensate, however really we need a little more time to test the latest changes which went in last night. We’ve made combat balance changes and early indications are that it's improved the combat imbalances that the animation changes talked about the last couple of weeks have been added, however this isn’t something we can be lax on since bad balance on combat could upend the game quite badly.
 
As soon as we’re confident things are back close to how they were, we’ll look to get the build out for everyone to play.
 
Other cool changes related to this have been added to the build by Tim, which should resolve a few long standing frustrations.
 
The player will ignore zombies standing on the other side of a fence if there is a prone zombie on the near side of the fence. The player may target the head, waist or feet of prone zombies, instead of only the head, though targeting the head still does the most damage. Fixed some issues with attack range calculations. This should make the character more likely to attack a standing zombie instead of a closer knocked down one if they are likely to be a threat to the player.
  MULTIPLAYER
Not much fancy to show, but Yuri’s been putting the more boring under the bonnet finishing touches on the zombie networking, in preperation for moving onto player syncing. Earlier work meant all the zombie animation state xml were duplicated, and he’s been optimizing this so that multiplayer and single player action states for animations can coexist together.
 
This will help going forward, and once the player stuff is synced, we should be able to get some much more interesting videos to show off of players interacting on MP servers. After that will come diagnosing and fixing the issues that cause high traffic servers to grind to a halt, and we’ll be looking to start our first tests of the servers. It’s still a way off but there does seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel now!
 
…aaaand that’s it. Sorry for the short Thursdoid, hopefully things will be back to normal next week!
 
This week’s house party from xclickitx. 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!

Ello all. PZ Dev news time for progress on the ongoing IWBUMS public beta for version 41 of Project Zomboid. Let’s start where it matters most 41-wise.
41 BETA MP WORK
This week Yuri has been working on dynamic packet rate customization. The plan is for us to be able to tailor amount of traffic the zombies use based on the situation, the server load, the player count and various other factors.
So, for example, players on a co-op server will have much more bandwidth available for keeping track of  the zeds, as opposed to a server with 60 players that’s under strained which can then automatically pull back the number of updates and rely more on prediction and light ownership on clients.
Likewise with light ownership, the range at which this system kicks in can also be modified on the fly to deal with high traffic situations. Currently they are using 150 ms interval for target packets and 200 ms for info packets. In this case that means that they have ~50 Kbps(6-7 KBps) for ~250 zombies, which we’d say is about a third of the maximum budget per player to reliably run a 60 player server.
Meanwhile, Andrei has been laying the foundations and making plans for the ‘bot clients’ or, nudge nudge wink wink, ‘zombie clients’!
Bot clients will allow us to easily simulate 60 players running around the map within a test environment, something we’ve never managed to do before, and will allow us to finally be able to close in and circle the situations that seem to cause huge lag spikes and servers grinding to a halt, map streaming failing and all the rest.
PZ multiplayer previous to 41 has always performed fine with a few testers connected, but unfortunately as soon as so many players in the community join a public server (which we don’t have the ability to poke in the guts of to debug) then we always hit severe problems with server reliability and speed.
This will finally provide the ability to simulate these environments from a single PC. The bot clients are one of our ‘big things’ that needs to be done for multiplayer, along with the revamp to the zombies and the players net code to work with animations and AI prediction, so we are excited to see it starting to flower, though recognise it’s a big job for the Strike Force to push through.
41.40 patch content
There are two primary things we need wrapped before we can release 41.40 to the public IWBUMS beta – the first of which being the gamepad version of the new tutorial, alongside the addition of the new objective markers and general polish that’s been put in.
Another element that we want to get in and well tested / experimented with is a fix to a strange kink in the animation system that Martin spotted, and that today Zac has managed to fix.
This was a very slight pause that could appear after one animation ended and second began – most especially noticeable in things like spear combat. Zac has now gotten to the bottom of the issue, but the fix’s impact will be felt throughout movement and combat game-wide so we need to keep an eye on balance how it all plays before we push it out.
Other stuff that’s gone into the internal test build this week:
Watches, rings, bangles and chains. (Rings slightly hard to see, we know but should be great for RP and noticing a poor dead zed was married etc. Added ability to refill water dispensers. (We know! Thanks to Casey-Jo on Team Tanglewood for this) Many more drainable items now change their weight depending on how full they are. More ‘container type’ icons for the Loot window so it’s clearer what you’re putting where. Added the ability for mods to add new languages separate from the hard-coded language list – which also means we can have more versions of existing languages. We can now easily have a UK English translation alongside the current US English translation – an addition that has recently become a necessity what with the addition of the Fanny Pack (aka Bum Bag). Some fixes for the Challenge Maps from Xeonyx  – including more places for generators to spawn in Kingsmouth, and some fixes for non-cutaway walls in Studio. Also lots of general polish on both. Better fence cutaways from Fox on Team Tanglewood, and hopefully a fix for the strange looking ‘white single door outlines’ on garage doors etc brewing ready for next week. ROCKSTAR MARK’S MISSION
This is one of those ‘we’ll mention it now, but won’t mention it again for a while’ blog nods – but it’s something we’ve alluded to in the past so it’ll be good to pass it by you all.
There are two primary visual things in the game that we’re not super happy with these days – the first is fire (which Yuri has been working on), and the second is the way that we still use inventory icons to show items that have been left on the ground.
‘Rockstar’ Mark Wright (so-called as he *used* to work at Rockstar) has therefore been chewing through all our items and rendering them as 3D models that’ll one day be used to pretty up our environments, and your own object-strewn bases.
This probably won’t be in Build 41 as he has a lot to go through and we’ll need some engine jiggery-pokery to make it all work okay – but he’s done such a good job on the first batch we thought we’d share.
This week’s invasion of the naked dead from Jeka. 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!

First, an MP update from the Strike Force.
Andrei and Yuri have been working on the client ownership of zombies this week. For those unaware this is a system that’s designed to remove all latency from zombies chasing the player.
Gameplay on current Build 40 servers currently has two big problems:
1) On a populated server, if players are all separate from each other in the world, the server needs to keep track of sometimes potentially thousands of full AI zombies. This can get extremely taxing on the server.
2) Compounded by the first problem, zombie AI has to then be transmitted to the clients to show the zombie positions. Zombie movement and bites are done on the server and thus only travel to the clients with latency, meaning clients are viewing zombies slightly in the past and thus, especially if the server gets clogged or data packets are lost on the way to the client being chased, they could see an unfair death due to a lag spike.
The system being worked on now means that the server determines ownership for each zombie. The server is owner for zombies if the zombies are standing or idly walking, which means it will keep track of their movement and position using its own AI routines.
With Yuri and Andrei’s latest work, the client now has ownership transferred to it under certain circumstances and becomes the owner for zombies.
The server will eventually check to make sure the zombies are behaving normally to avoid cheats, but otherwise zombies that are chasing or attacking players will be processed entirely on the client of whom is being chased, and transmitted back to the server.
Eventually the decision will be made whether to process zombies independently on all clients, to maintain smooth movement in critical situations, or whether a chasing zombie is only processed on the client its chasing and not on other clients witnessing that. This is a decision for another day.
In process of developing this feature, Yuri and Andrei have coded it so if the zombie lunge to player or attack player, the client they are attacking will take ownership of the zombie. 
Notice the triangle under some zombies. This is to show that the client is owner of this zombie, and thus all AI is being carried out on the client – thus happening without any latency whatsoever. Otherwise, the server is owner of the zombie.
You can see that the server is owner for a zombie if said zombie is far from the player. The client becomes the owner of the zombie when the zombie comes close, before reverting again when the player runs away.
In this video you can also see that zombies are often updating their targets. This is an adjustment of the target using “ZombieUpdateTarget” packet. The video last week, while a huge improvement on zombie movement than b40 multiplayer, was updating the target point a zombie runs to extremely infrequently, which resulted in sudden turns instead of the smooth player tracking players are used to.
Balancing may still be needed to find a sweet spot between traffic and precision. We’ll see how it goes!
There’s still plenty of work on the table for the MP Strike Force, but week on week hopefully everyone can see the improvement, and level of quality we are aiming for, with the new multiplayer architecture.
IWBUMS BETA 41.38 IMMINENT
The 41.38 patch is pretty much ready to go, our apologies for it not being earlier in the week but new tutorial glitches kept on jumping out of the woodwork. It’s the end of the Euro working day now though, and we’d like folks to be on-hand for any hotfixing that needs to be done – as it’s a patch with a lot of content that’s built up over the month. So we’ll be putting it out as soon as we’re able and at our keyboards, basically.
The TLDR is that it contains a refreshed and expanded tutorial, a reloading radial menu, briefcases, flip-flops, fanny packs, blood build-up on vehicles, tweaked female models, new hairstyles, a fill-all option, improved community translation support, crawler improvements and about a bazillion fixes fresh from the EasyPickins furnaces.
You’ll also notice that homes appear a lot more ‘lived in’ from some lovely little additions from Mash. Hope you enjoy it when we flip the switch, and as ever report any bugs or issues on the forums and we’ll try to get everything fixed up for you ASAP.
This week’s last stand from Battlemints. 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 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!

*** I am proud to announce DemolitionDerby is now a Co-Contributor to Hydrocraft and can update the Steam Workshop! ***

We'll only release MP after one of these threads goes 3 days without a similar post.

DVDs in 1993? Wow! Rural Kentucky must have been on the cutting edge of consumer technology.
 
Seriously though -  that's a feature I've been looking forward to for a while! Now TVs will no longer be useless hulks after the first week or so.

Hey all, a quick round the houses of things in the works at PZ HQ. This Monday we released IWBUMS beta version 41.30, while yesterday we hotfixed it with version 41.31 that fixed up the more egregious of its bugs.
There is still an issue (rooted, we think, at Steam’s end rather than our own) in which a minority of those running the beta with mods can’t launch the game. If this is you then a workaround can be found in this thread, while we will endeavour to have it patched in 41.32 ASAP.
We already have an internal test build for 41.32 up and running – and at the moment this also includes ropes that can be used as sheet ropes, caught fish of increased nutritional value, cutaway improvements and a variety of other improvements from the lovable bunch we know as Team Tanglewood. There’s also a load of fixes to the main map that have been added in after we received a quick kick up the bum on this subject from the chaps and ladies of the PZ reddit.
Given as we need to patch out the above Steam/mod issue this will released as soon as we can safely do so, and after another internal update of our build-making machine.
Some good progress on MP this week, with Mark’s network sync clock done and awaiting integration. This is one individual part in a wider process, but also a vital one. Longstanding doid-readers might recall our former MP experiments with Yuri establishing an overall MP loot syncing system, which we ultimately put on the shelf due to requirements elsewhere. So thankfully Mark has been able to bring this back and build on it within the codebase – saving some time in the progress.
This also gives Mark a point to inject stress test code (fake missed data, out of order data etc) for stress testing fake clients – so we can troubleshoot on non-populated servers. This will be one of Mark’s next tasks, and he told the blogger this week that “if you want a cool word to use then say that next we will be building the tools to ‘netstorm’ the server and clients so we can debug against real world worst case scenarios”. So there you go: we will be doing a ‘netstorm’.
What else then?
41.31 came with some changes to how zombies act around fences – either breaking them down in crowds, or knocking over players lying in wait. RJ is currently and improving the latter – most likely mixing in player stats/moodles/situation to determine whether or not you’ll fall, making it less automatic, potentially mixing in some more general crawler behaviour and also adding in some sandbox options. It’s not perfect currently, we know, but we’re confident we can improve it. The merge with the Zoom branch has brought us crisper character models, which also means that we can now experiment with more character customisation options – such as tattoos. Here’s a test texture that we came up with this morning both in-game and in the character creation window. (The numbers are us fiddling around with resolution and such.) Yuri is moving onto the next stage of his fire development work – which is essentially tying fire effects into the game-proper. He is currently making sure fire does not spread over unsuitable materials, and addressing current issues with the fire system like tiles not being destroyed, uncharred tiles being left behind and fires getting out of hand on the map. Turbo meanwhile, while he waits for feedback on the implementation of the current temperature system (could people please see what it’s like surviving through winter and feed back to us?), is reviving his slightly dormant work on in-game devices. The basis of this the kind of extendable IO systems you might get in something like modded minecraft, but on a more basic level you’ll finally be able to watch DVDs after broadcast transmissions have dried up. This week’s sneaking past Dr Cortman from Max0Rda. 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!

NEW
 
- Spiffo's Secret Special Sauce. CONTENT REDACTED.
Zoom improvements:
- Used the same zoom levels with the not-double-sized textures as are used with the double-sized textures. This is mainly to allow zooming in further with the not-double-sized textures.
- Fixes to non-diamond floor sprites' tile seams.
- Fine-tuned padding to 0.5% at Zoom <= 1, and 0 when zoomed out.
- Cleanup of sprite shapers.
- Added WallOverlay property to some trailer sprites to fix seams (not completely fixed).
- Added is-floor property to two flat trailer-roof tiles to fix seams and lighting.
- Fixed missing flags on a couple of floor tiles to fix seams and lighting.
- Revised Iso sprite padding to reduce overlap and minimize seams.
- Changed the way texture filtering is selected, for better aesthetics at all zoom levels, and minimal visual artefacts while in motion.
- When zoomed all the way in, the filter used is Nearest-neighbor for that crisp, pixelated look.
- When zoomed less than 100%, the filter used is Bilinear, for a smoother appearance and no visual artefacts
- When zoomed out beyond 100%, the filter used is TriLinear, also known as Linear MipMap, for smoother appearance and less pixel shimmering.
- Fixed edge-tile seam artefacts on shorelines.
Cutaway improvements:
- Player made walls now display walls, windowframes, doorframes on north and west when build it on Z>0.
- Timer now stops cutaways and other visibility/hiding effects flickering
- East walls from character on Z=1 levels now work correctly
Polished animations when working on vehicles:
- Fixed character angle snapping when opening the hood.
- Play an animation before the mechanics window shows (while examining the vehicle).
- Play animations when adding/removing gas. Display the gas can model in the player's hand when using one.
- Play animations when installing/uninstalling parts.
- Increased the time to install/uninstall tires.
- Ensure the player is facing the vehicle before smashing a window.
Temperature system improvements
- changed room temperatures to be more accomodating until heating/cooling devices are introduced
- fixed bug where bodyheat would sometimes prevent clothes getting wet in the rain
- reinstated food consumption for combatting teh cold, but decreased impact severely
- toned down other consumption of fatigue and fluids, tho fluids still remain a strong factor when overheating
- changed energy impact on thermoregulation to be less harsh when energy still is high but worsening as energy depletes.
- changed core celcius recovery faster when trend is moving towards setpoint
- changed bodywetness having a slightly stronger impact on heat gain/loss
- changed capacity weight factor on energy produced stronger as capacity nears max, negligble when low
- reworked and finetuned some parts of thermoregulator
- removed hunger effect of Thermoregulator in favor or increased calories intake.
Vehicle/Player DB
- Players are now saved separately from vehicles.
- Players are saved in a file called players.db. Vehicles are still saved in vehicles.db.
- The hitching when entering unexplored parts of the map (when new vehicles are created) should be fixed.
- Added a cursor to choose squares to remove blood from.
- Multi stage build now show a plank in player's hand when building.
- Added pouring water with watering can (for farming eg).
- Take fuel from gas pump now use an animation.
- added debug panels for radio system to monitor all channels, broadcasts, scripts etc including their settings
- Zombies now can't bite you mid-air while climbing tall fences/wall, but can make you fall.
- Added sewing kit texture.
- Smashed bottle is now a stab weapon, won't do damage to door or trees anymore.
- Sync the sound and action of racking a rifle with the animation better.
- Added a note in a gun's tooltip when it requires racking to chamber a round.
- Allow corpses to face arbitrary angles instead of being restricted to one of 8 different angles.
- Changed the "wash yourself" animation.
- Now possible to recover and repair a weapon used in Spear creation
- Increased chance to hit ranged weapon when zombies are really close.
- Sprinter zed attacks now slow the player down.
- The controller B button toggles sprinting on and off.
- Increased time to heal some wounds.
- added ability to remove grass and wind effect that appears on street cracks
- added notice "Needs to be turned off." when trying to pickup moveable that cannot be picked up when operational (BBQ)
- added DeviceData getEmitter for modder purposes
 
BALANCE
 
- Increased spawning of cigarettes on zombies.
- Zombies can now spawn lighter, matches & digital watches.
- Increased various metal working related items spawning rate.
- Increased mouse trap, gardening spray spawning rate.
- Chainlink fences are dismantlable, giving MetalBar and Wire items.
 
FIXES
 
- Fixed sprinter zombies running through the player.
- Fixed crashes on some intel systems due to the unused includes on floorTile.frag not playing nice
- Fixed the clothing dryer being plumb-able (removed waterPiped property).
- Fixed race condition leading to an exception when starting up the game.
- Fixed pistol spawning without a magazine in the last stand challenges.
- Fixed lot_barn_03 which used an old dirt tile (floors_exterior_natural) and had the flat part of its roof on the wrong level.
- Fixed fishing line always breaking when catching something.
- Fixed foraging action not auto-repeating if nothing had ever been found in that area.
- Fixed which animation plays when taking dirt/gravel/sand with a Trowel.
- Fixed bottom-right quarter of the screen not being painted black with three coop players.
- Fixed broken spear remaining in the secondary hand after it breaks while fishing.
- Fixed some "require xyz failed" error messages.
- Fixed water-related rendering exception.
- Fixed zombies breaking and climbing through the metal-grate-covered windows at the mall.
- Fixed lighting on floor blood splatters again.
- Fixed the rake animation (used when cleaning blood with a mop) only affecting upper-body bones, and not looping.
- Fixed the forage animation only affecting upper-body bones.
- Fixed AxeMan trait not affecting animation speed when fighting or chopping trees.
- Fixed saw logs not defering lower bones.
- Fixed grab items (right click on item -> grab) not using any animation.
- Fixed lua exception when a zombie's clothing is destroyed by a player's attack.
- Fixed vehicle headlights starting too far in front of the vehicle.
- Fixed overlapping text in the inspect-garment ui.
- Fixed players and zombies moving through doors/walls/windows/windowframes when climbing over obstacles.
- Fixed zombies getting stuck inside an object adjacent to the one they climbed over (they can only climb over one obstacle).
- Fixed players climbing through windows over obstacles and then onto water.
- Fixed obstacles being solid when placed adjacent to carpentry windowframes, unlike non-carpentry windowframes.
- Fixed the Riverside hotel swimming pool having sand around the edges.
- Fixed missing ParkingStall zones in cell 33,36.
- Fixed some TownZone not being Nav zone in cell 33,36.
- Fixed (again) player getting stuck aiming after their weapon breaks.
- Fixed custom object tooltips (such as the farm-plant tooltip) being rendered dozens of times each frame.
- Fixed a bit of lambda-related garbage creation in StateMachine.
- Fixed not being able to 'clean' dirty bandages/rags with contaminated water
- Fixed sandwich giving extreme amount of boredom when using bread that's still fresh but will turn stale in less than 1d 12h
- Fixed clothes instantly becoming "slightly dirty" after just being washed
- Fixed some walls & cars giving you 0% bonus when sneaking behind them.
- Fixed ClimbThroughWindowState bug with zombies.
- Fixed molotovs disappearing if the attack is cancelled.
- Fixed exception when climbing over a fence with fire nearby.
- Fixed players catching on fire when inside a vehicle.
- Fixed not being able to rack a gun with a magazine if no round is chambered already.
- Fixed not being able to repeat-fire rifles from vehicles.
- Fixed racking handgun/revolver/shotgun (added rackBullet event)
- Fixed random corpses always facing the same direction.
- Fixed some story-based corpses clipping with furniture.
- Fixed see-through floors blocking vision to other levels.
- Fixed rendering issues by changing Muldraugh trainyard buildings so the upper levels are considered rooms (cells 38,32 38,33 and 39,33).
- Fixed not being able to interact with doors and windows behind the player using the controller A and B buttons,
as could already be done using the E key.
- Fixed overlapping debug text in the health panel.
- Fixed incorrect dirt tiles in the Muldraugh soccer field in cell 35,33.
- Fixed VehicleType static tables not being recreated after reloading lua files.
- fixed automated broadcast generating frequencies that werent being able to be tuned in manually
- Fixed corpses or zombies spawning when they should be disabled (on vehicle or house stories)
- Fixed the player ending up inside a solid object after falling backwards while climbing through a window with a zombie on the other side.
- Fixed hard-coded use of "Zombies/Male Pain" FMOD event name instead of using a script-defined sound.
- Fixed mannequins facing the wrong way.
- The application's main thread is now the RenderThread. Previously, the render thread and game thread were started
and then the application's main thread would exit. Now there is no separate RenderThread. This was a change I already
made on the lwjgl3_upgrade_2 branch. Apparently MacOS requires the window be created on the application's main thread,
so I'm not sure why that hasn't been a problem before.
- Create texture mipmap data on the asset-loading threads instead of on the render thread.
- Tried to reduce the long delay after clicking "Click to continue" the first time.

The upcoming 41.30 IWBUMS beta patch is a bumper edition, built up over a few weeks now, and has now been locked, tested and is ready to roll. It was due for release today, but due to a dev illness it’ll either be out tomorrow or Monday.
Here’s some new 41.30 stuff that’s gone in recently:
Temperature system improvements. Room temperature now more accommodating until heating/cooling devices are introduced. Reinstated food consumption to combat cold, with reduced overall impact. Toned down other consumption of fatigue/fluids, though fluids remain a strong factor when overheating etc. Lots of other improvements/nerfs/tweaks to how the system was in the builds before the Thermoregulator system was taken back into the garage for extra work and fiddling from Turbo. Improvements to our backstage player/vehicle save database – meaning that the hitching when entering unexplored parts of the map (when new vehicles are created) should be fixed. Gun improvements – including some gun racking fixes, and also an increased ability to shoot zeds from close range. Sprinter improvements. Sprinters should be a lot more playable now, but still a crowd you don’t want to mess with. Running zombies will no longer run through the player, and their attacks will also slow you down for a more real-feeling experience. Gamepad players will now be able to sprint! Yes, through a toggling of the B button you too will be able to dash away from zeds. Your feedback on how well it works will be warmly received. A slight reduction in zed player-spotting distances, and a buff of stealth around walls and cars that weren’t giving any protection. Fixes to burnable in-car survivors, wounds that were healing too quick, corpses that were spread-eagled in too rigid a fashion, automated broadcast generating frequencies that weren’t being able to be tuned into manually and much more besides. Stuff we mentioned before, but you might not have read up on in 41.30:
A fix that should resolve intel GPU crashes we’ve been seeing since the zoom branch was merged into IWBUMS Zoom improvements that provide a clearer image on different levels of zoomed-in and zoomed-out, as well as various fixes to seams and lighting Spiffo’s Secret Special Sauce. Some small but extremely meaningful changes and tweaks to general gameplay that we’re keeping quiet on. Primarily due to our love for the dramatic, and an undercurrent of sadism. New and polished animations for: washing yourself, examining vehicles,adding/removing gas, installing and uninstalling parts/tires, multi-stage building and more. A cursor to help in blood clean-up duties. Cutaway improvements from Team Tanglewood, including a timer to stop cutaways and other visibility/hiding effects flickering. Fixes for Last Stand, foraging, fishing lines always breaking, vehicle headlights, stuck zombies, swimming pools with shorelines and our famous too-boring sandwiches. ELSEWHERE
It should be a bumper patch then, and apologies for the extra day-or-so of delay. But what else is happening in IWBUMS beta 41 dev?
Well, let’s visit MP as we know that’s the biggie. The full story on this can be found here, but the update from TEA’s MarkR follows thusly:
“I’m almost done with the new synced MP clock. This will be a big deal for PZ players, as it will give us the ability coordinate ‘characters’ on the server and on the map. It lets us say things like ‘Zombie X will be at position Y at time Z’.”
“The trick then will be that the position and rotation of Zombie X will be forced – so it’ll be ‘physically’ in-sync as well as in-sync via the maths, while the new anim system makes it look pretty and believable.”
“For things like zombies this means we can make an overall reduction of the bandwidth that goes to commands – which is essentially whenever something happens to make the zeds change their minds about the direction they’re going in. It’ll be a lot more of a matter of ‘fire and forget’ for the server, and that should reduce network traffic by an absolute boatload.”
Also this week behind the scenes we’ve been experimenting with some potential extra player character customization options that the sharper visuals granted to us by the zoom build has given us.
Meanwhile, Yuri’s work on fire continues – with any variety of effect we conjure up now playable of the animation bones of each zed/player character. So basically we can have more realistic fire-deaths. Hurrah. Video below.
#UNPAID ADVERTISEMENT
We also just wanted to flag a cool game that people might like – made by a nice man called Dan Marshall. PZ seems to attract a fair few… shall we call us gamers of a certain vintage? Wise elder statesmen (and statesladies) of the gaming community? Yeh, that’ll do it…
So, for your wise and knowing taste, allow us to suggest a look at Lair of the Clockwork God – a game full of great gags and an interesting mash-up of modern platforming and old school point-and-click. Currently riding high on some amazing steam reviews too.
Anyway, shilling over (sorry!) here’s a trailer, and bye bye till the patch release tomorrow or Monday.
This week’s island fortress from Yuri”Dr.K”. 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 all, here’s a quick dev round-up from TIS headquarters.
IWBUMS BETA 41.30
We’ve currently got the next patch being tested on an internal branch, and with a fair wind it should be released early next week. It contains the following.
A fix that should resolve intel GPU crashes we’ve been seeing since the zoom branch was merged into IWBUMS Zoom improvements that provide a clearer image on different levels of zoomed-in and zoomed-out, as well as various fixes to seams and lighting Spiffo’s Secret Special Sauce. Some small but extremely meaningful changes and tweaks to general gameplay that we’re keeping quiet on. Primarily due to our love for the dramatic, and an undercurrent of sadism. New and polished animations for: washing yourself, examining vehicles, adding/removing gas, installing and uninstalling parts/tires, multi-stage building and more. A cursor to help in blood clean-up duties. Cutaway improvements from Team Tanglewood, including a timer to stop cutaways and other visibility/hiding effects flickering. Fixes for Last Stand, foraging, fishing lines always breaking, vehicle headlights, stuck zombies, swimming pools with shorelines and (finally) Fox got to the bottom of our famous too-boring sandwiches. And there was much rejoicing. Also: other stuff. Improved body temperature stuff from Turbo. We also intend to get some stealth polish/balance in, but that’s dependent on making sure that Spiffo’s Special Secret Sauce has been accurately deployed.
MP
For discussion and explanation of current 41 IWBUMS beta MP work please check out last week’s blog.
As discussed though, Bitbaboon Mark is currently prepping the code for the implementation of a true synchronized clock to make all our future MP endeavours go a lot more smoothly. Zac, meanwhile, is laying down his plans for decoupling the animation deferred movement so that it can work in reverse – where movement can also translate to appropriate animations, instead of animations driving movement.
Once this is done, no matter how a character moves due to client interpolation and approximation, we’ll hopefully have appropriate animations with minimal foot sliding to account for it. These tasks will then lead to us hooking the animations in wholesale, and we’ll be rolling full speed on the track to full MP compatibility.
If you want to play Build 41 SP and want to switch between it and 40’s MP functionalities, by the way, then SeskaRotan’s guide is extremely helpful.
FIRE
Here’s the latest from the Yuri fire department – as ever with the usual WIP warnings. This shows camp fires of different sizes with different amount of fuel, an improved molotov effect and some early examples of flaming zombies.
Please note a) we know we need to improve the appearance/physics of thrown objects, b) we know more body parts of the zeds need to be on fire, c) we intend to improve the burning tiles so they have edge blending – they look very square at the moment.
GOODBYE CONNALL
In more bittersweet news one of our devs, Connall, who anyone involved in community translations will know very well, has had a too-good-to-pass-up opportunity down in that there London and will be moving on to pastures new at the end of February.
He’s not publicly said where he’s heading, but we know and it’s cool as all hell – and while we’re sad to see him go, we’re extremely proud that someone who has been an integral part of the Zomboid story, from literally being a young lad to having a manly goatee, has gone on to do such cool things. We were there for his first legal drink, and now he’s heading off to the big city to seek his fortune!
In his own words on twitter (https://twitter.com/ConnallTheCoble/status/1227604245832179712😞

“Hey, I will be leaving TIS at theend of February. I’ll still be around in the community and also in the translators section of Discord for the time being. Don’t worry, I’m leaving on great terms, It’s just I have an opportunity in London I can’t ignore.
I am immensely grateful for my time working for The Indie Stone. It’s been a blast and I owe those folks so much. I been a part of this community for just under 10 years now, I got Project Zomboid when I was 15 and I’m almost 24 now!
I have been a player, community member, wiki contributor, wiki administrator, forum moderator, administrator, website developer, tracker developer and programmer. I have met and been hosted by community members in their homes!”
Having good localization and community translations are really what keeps Zomboid a popular game the world over, it’s an often overlooked and undervalued part of game development.
We want to thank everyone in the community for their efforts, as well as of course Connall for organizing and facilitating all our translators getting all those lovely foreign words into our little game! And of course all the other ways he’s contributed over the years.
On the up side, as Connall says, he’ll still be around. No one is ever really gone (unless they get a bite, of course) and he’ll still be around to help and be a part of the community when his new life allows. We wish him all the luck down on that there London gravy train! ❤️
Today’s featured image is probably one of the best we’ve ever had. What an amazing screenshot Tughril! 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!

NEW
 
Added zombie turn alerted
When climbing through a window and a zombie blocking it making you fall back into the house, zombie will emit a sound so you know it's there.
Can now shoot at windows (they'll be highlited if in range/direction).
Zombies now won't get up if a player is standing on top of them.
Game now detects when zombies have been walking-on-the-spot for several seconds, then stop moving.
Groups of zombies attacking vehicles now coorindated better to avoid them endlessly walking into a vehicle they can't possibly reach.
Added prediction for melee combat. If you're attacking a zombie that is lunging toward you, we increase virtually the range of weapon to detect an attack, this should make the "miss" animation play way less often when you actually will hit the zombie.
Drivers now look behind them when the vehicle is moving in reverse. This fixes players not being able to see the vehicle they are in when reversing into unseen areas. Drivers and passengers may look around by holding the Aim key or the controller right-stick when windows aren't opened.
Control-mousewheel now cycles between containers in the inventory and loot windows when the mouse is over the items list.
- Quality-of-life improvements to taking dirt/gravel/sand.
1) The most-full bag is chosen automatically from inventory (and in backpacks) instead of having to choose one from a submenu.
2) A cursor is displayed for picking locations to take from. This allows the player to click four times in a row
to fill one bag, instead of having to right-click and choose the same action four times from the context menu.
- Quality-of-life improvements to pouring dirt/gravel/sand.
1) The cursor displays a green or red outline to make it easier to see.
2) The first non-empty bag is chosen automatically from inventory (and in backpacks) instead of having to choose one from a submenu.
 
BALANCE
 
Reduced damage done by falling from 2 storey windows.
Fixed being underweight/very underweight causing immediate death when falling from 2nd storey windows and over encumbered.
Allow lunging zombies to climb over fences and through windows instead of walking-in-place into them.
Agoraphobic/Claustrophobic are now mutually exclusive.
Increased hemophobic points given to 5.
 
FIXES
 
Fixed no zombies sandbox options still spawning zombies in vehicle stories.
Fixed still turning toward some items when doing various action when it wasn't needed (filling water bottle).
Fixed zombies thumping vehicles not attracting other zombies (missing WorldSound).
Fixed AttackState clearing StateMachineParams (for all states, instead of just AttackState).
Fixed two multithreading bugs.
Fixed not being able to attack after closing a map when using a controller.
Fixed Transfer All moving hotbar items.
Fixed Hemophobic stress increasing faster at higher framerates.
Fixed the player getting stuck in the fishing state if they performed other actions while fishing.
Fixed driving through forests is bumpy even when wood floors have been placed.
Fixed NullPointerException in IsoGridSquare.RenderOpenDoorOnly() when there is fire in a house.
Fixed blocked buttons in the New Game screen after deleting the last savefile.
Fixed not being able to take water from puddles if Dynamic Skybox = No.
Fixed plumbed sinks taking water from puddles.
Fixed Lock framerate = Uncapped not being saved.
Fixed BodyPart.RestoreToFullHealth() not stopping bleeding.
Fixed invisible players and other errors when spawning a splitscreen player in the same location as the other player.
Fixed IsoPlayer.getJoypadAimVector() and IsoPlayer.getJoypadMoveVector() doing sqrt(x * x + y + y).
Fixed passengers seeing the "B for Brake" prompt when using a controller.
Fixed DebugChunkStateUI not updating the display when selecting new squares.
Forbid using the name of an existing directory when creating a new game.
Forbid entering various invalid characters in the savefile field when creating a new game.
Fixed being able to double-click a spawn location to advance to the next screen when an invalid savefile name was entered.
Fixed not spawning zombies eating corpses inside rooms.
Fixed spawning zombies eating corpses in a room when zombie spawning is disabled.
Fixed spawning zombies eating corpses with a wall or door between the corpse and the zombie. Try harder to find a place to spawn a corpse inside a room, instead of always choosing the center.
Fixed blood splatter causing bushes and trees to rustle.
Fixed not being able to walk off the floor in all directions after building a new staircase.
Fixed corpses/items/zombies in rooms spawning in inaccessible areas behind stairs (when the area is 1x1 or 2x1 or 1x2 only).

NEW
 
- Change the color of non-icon buttons when clicking them for visual feedback.
- Removed Tutorial from main menu.
Added new sandbox loot options:
- Canned food, Medical, Mechanics, Survival gears, Ranged weapons, Ammo, Literature.
- When loading a previous game, these new loot modifier will be based on existing one (so ranged wpn/ammo will take weapon modifier, the others will take "Other" loot modifier)

BALANCE

Zombies have less chance spotting the player during night (it was already there, but happen only during really dark night, lowered the threshold a tad)
Halved the odds of jamming a gun
Growing hair now take 20 days instead of 30.
Balance weight of some clothing.
Burglar profession can now hotwire vehicles & have less chance of breaking lock when opening windows.
Hard of earing now gives 4 points (from 2).
Increased ThickSkinned cost to 8 points (from 6).
Increased ThinSkinned points given to 8 (from 6).
Some weight related traits now reduce fitness.
Weight related traits have now a bigger impact of chance to fail climbing big fences.
Nightowl fixed, now works properly.
Being Hemophobic and having blood on your on your clothes now slowly increase panic.
More forgiving about the direction the player is facing when auto-vaulting over fences.

FIXES

- Temp fix for Kingsmouth hanging while saving. The island is surrounded by water, preventing the game from finding any path to respawn zombies.
- Fixed fake-dead zombies in House in the Woods challenges.
- Fixed walls flickering on fast-forward.
- Fixed zombie skins changing at random.
- Fixed belts etc not drying over time when worn.
- Fixed missing zombie footstep sounds for slow-moving and sprinting zombies.
- Fixed IsoGameCharacter.DoFootstepSound(String) volumes being ignored.
- Fixed sprinter zombies lunging at full speed through trees and bushes.
- Fixed animation and turning issues when performing medical actions on a splitscreen player.
- Fixed bandage models appearing on the doctor rather than the patient in splitscreen.
- Fixed rapidly clicking a button ignoring every second click (buttons were ignoring double-clicks).
- Fixed Frying Pan model rotation when on the ground.
- Fixed Revolver & dbl barrel shotgun getting hammed
- Fixed invisible bandage (used to apply bandage model to player) weighting 1.0 (now it's 0).
- Fixed sometimes bandage model not being removed (e.g when getting bite).
- Fixed zombies attacking while still turning to face the player. This was most noticeable when the player was sitting in a vehicle; a zombie would walk to the vehicle's window, then
attack as it was making a 90-degree turn. It could also happen when opening a door with a zombie behind it, or walking around a corner into a zombie.
- Fixed inventory-context-menu command "Move To > Floor" moving items to the player's inventory but not dropping them on the floor.
- Fixed NullPointerException in IsoMovingObject.checkHitWall() when adjacent chunks haven't been loaded.
- Fixed playing the player's hit-reaction animation after exiting a vehicle. It looked like the zombie hit the player from the other side of the vehicle.
- Fixed the player dying twice sometimes while getting dragged to the ground.
- Fixed multiple issues with zombies knowing the location of players for a period after losing LOS
- Fixed zombies seeing the player behind them as soon as they heard noise from the player. Now they don't see the player until
they have turned enough.
- Fixed metalworking actions failing because the Welder Mask can't be equipped in the hand anymore. Now it is worn.
- Fixed ground attacks hitting doors, trees, etc.
- Fixed a bit of debug code blocking the main thread every frame.
- Fixed ISInventoryTransferAction failing if the item is already in the destination container. This fixes not being able to put gas in a vehicle when the Gas Can is in a bag to begin with.
- Fixed duplicating items exploit involving corpses.
- Fixed NullPointerException in ThunderStorm when the player's current square is null.
- Fixed players getting blood on them after shooting zombies from a distance.
- Fixed VehiclesDB not reporting many save/load errors. Now it uses the little-red-box-of-doom.
- Fixed multithreading bug with the player/vehicle database. Existing files with already-corrupted vehicle data will repeatedly throw exceptions.
- Fixed VehiclesDB throwing exceptions repeatedly if BaseVehicle.load() failed
- Fixed NullPointerException in IsoPuddlesGeometry.
- Fixed VERSION=1 not being written to keys.ini in some cases

It’s a slightly strange time currently. We’re updating/polishing the 41 IWBUMS beta, but waiting for work to be completed on big ticket ‘need’ items like the close fire and hi-res updates, and the more distant reintegration of Multiplayer. Things are ticking over well, but this Thursday blog won’t be a blockbuster we’re afraid.
41 IWBUMS PATCHING
The weekly patch cycle still seems to be working out okay. Yesterday’s 41.22 contained stuff like:
More and improved vehicle zed events to come across as you explore – roadblocks, crashed ambulances and such Moodles now shake and shimmer to signal combat being impaired by panic, injury and the like. Pressing one of the hotbar keys for half a second now displays a radial menu for choosing an item to equip in that slot. Healing items can be dragged onto the Health panel to treat injuries. All containers in the loot window now displayed in the 3×3 area around the player – which among other things makes corpse looting a bunch easier. Fixed: missing rust on cars, hotbar weapon-switch anims, ultra-fragile headlights, resetting sandbox loot options (yay!), car duplication (again!) and much else besides. The next patch will contain Turbo’s latest improvements/pondering on the temperature system, and hopefully some renewed fix/polish for the Sims-style cutaway system.
Already in the internal test build, meanwhile, is some balance for clothing weight, trait balance and fixes to weapon-jamming – as well as a some work on zed footsteps and the new challenges. We anticipate that this, and more besides will be released in the first half of next week.
UP NEXT
Apologies for repeating ourselves, but so everyone knows – work is ongoing on the following for the more imminent of our upcoming patches.
Zac is continuing his push on the zoom / hi-res model branch, and when work on this is stable will be moving over onto MP. The lighting algorithm has been rewritten, condensing the old twin-step color+lighting stages into a single pass. This fixes a myriad of flickering ‘light-leakage’ artefacts, as well as halves the fill-rate costs for buildings, floors, and terrain. This should also provide a performance boost, particularly on older GPUs where fill rate is a premium – though it’s not clear just yet how much of one. Yuri is optimizing his fire system, seen last week, and also making it possible for the PZ modding community to create their own effects. Modders will be able to set textures, shaders, particle numbers and parameters for how it all moves – meaning that ultimately people will be able to implement different fires, smoke, vapours, swarms, magic, geysers, blood eruptions and whatever else floats your boat. In more boring non-game affairs, meanwhile, that you may well still be interested in – we will also be using the full launch of 41 to coincide with a bunch of other ‘new’ stuff. New trailer, new website, new all-kinds-of-stuff – so there’s also a lot of activity in non-game areas of Zomboid too. More of which we will hopefully see emerge in the weeks ahead.
Thanks all, hopefully a kickass Thursdoid next week when the stuff mentioned above starts to come online.
Many thanks for all the bug-hunting and feedback the community has been doing for us too, by the way. There have been some really nasty gremlins eradicated that could only be exposed by the forensic reporting of our IWBUMS beta testers, and all your efforts have been very much appreciated. 
This week’s image from Penelope Graves. 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!

Hey everyone, here’s a quick update on where we are with the current IWBUMS beta process. We do hope you’re well, and wish all Americans a happy Thanksgiving today – even if many of the PZ team only really know of it via films and soft focus television comedies from the 1990s.
41.21 PATCH
We patched the current IWBUMS beta on Tuesday, which was a version that contained:
Visible bandages A new ‘inspect clothing’ UI and improved tailoring Randomized vehicle events to come across on the highways of the Knox Event Improved Studio and Kingsmouth challenges Insulation/temperature system changes Loads of balance and bug squashes Annoyingly this patch also came with its own measure of bugs, and we had to spend a day hotfixing players who couldn’t survive through winter due to INTENSE SUFFERING and also a savegame issue.
These issues should now be fixed, so if you’re still having problems with them then please double-check your system has the very latest version of the IWBUMS beta by verifying files or reinstalling. If problems remain then please let us know on the forums.
UP NEXT
We’re slightly behind schedule in our new weekly patch release schedule, what with the above issues, so the next patch probably won’t be quite as bumper as recent ones have been.
However it should contain the return of rusty cars, more and improved vehicle events on the roads and a QOL looting improvement that displays all containers in a 3×3 area around the player – which should also make corpse looting a lot less fiddly.
EP has also, meanwhile, been experimenting with a function that provides  a radial menu for hot bar slots – that then lets you choose an item to equip in that slot.
UP SOON
Regular readers will recall that last week we were debating whether to put Zac’s work on the improved character fidelity and optimization into cold storage – which would then allow us to throw him into the mix on work on the much-awaited (but still not at all imminent, we’re afraid) Build 41 MP.
However, in the past week he’s slayed a whole bunch of rendering demons and the whole thing is looking a lot more positive. Here’s a video from his branch showing where he’s at right now. He’s really made some headway in the past week, and the seams and fuzz that were cropping up are increasingly in check.
Another big ticket item that’s on our list for the full version 41 release, meanwhile, are Yuri’s improved fire visuals. Working with assets made for us by a lovely effects specialist called Dan, this is the current look we have for in-game fire.
PLEASE remember this is still work in progress – and currently not tied to the actual PZ fire and firespread system.
Yuri is currently optimizing the fire for low-end systems, and is also implementing his fire effects in script, which will allow the community to easily upgrade and create their own visual effects.
That’s about it for now, but many thanks for all the enthusiasm we’re still (still!) seeing for Build 41. The last month has seen the highest average player count we’ve ever had for PZ – beating the full vehicles release by quite some way, and the animations build isn’t even fully released yet!
It’s great to see that people are digging it, and exciting to think what the MP scene and modding potential will be once it’s fully out in the open.
This week’s image from MrSopal on Reddit. 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!

This week’s Thursdoid is a quick walk-through of where we’re at we’re afraid – nothing super-sexy, but hopefully a few items of interest.
NEXT PATCH
The next patch, 41.21, is now in internal testing and feature-locked aside from any new fixes or balance. We’re trying to schedule these releases for the start of each new working week, so fingers crossed this coming Monday we will be seeing the following in the public IWBUMS beta:
The new (expansive) tailoring submenus replaced with a new clothing UI for each individual garment – where blood/rips can be seen clearly, and cleaning and repairs can be performed. WIP version below. General balance for the new insulation/thermos system. Includes: slowed body heat gain/loss rates, slightly easier to regain the feeling of warmth, less general sweat in colder temperatures, water resistance added to relevant garments and increased energy/fluid consumption in extreme conditions. We’ve also begun separating out the more technical aspects out of the current ‘debug’ style UI. Visible bandages on the player Fixes for: walking-in-place zeds (hopefully), sheet rope blockages, disappearing/reappearing vehicles and many/varied other issues BEYOND
Next of our required big ticket items will likely be Yuri’s new fire visuals, and also some specific ‘challenges’ for the Kingsmouth paradise island and film set maps.
In terms of other stuff required for the big relaunch and 41 release, meanwhile are the travails of Zac: poor old lovely Zac, still waist-deep in our zoom/hi-res branch.
Formerly we had this working well in testing, as both an optimization and  visual improvement, aside from occasional issues – but the fixes for those occasional issues have run ever more deep into the codebase.
We’re increasingly aware however that this has now begun to steal manpower away from MP, which isn’t really fair on those waiting for it, so might have to reassess the situation next week once it’s clearer how much longer Zac’s toil could be.
Finally, seeing as it’s been a dry-doid overall, here’s something else RJ’s been cooking up that will likely appear in a patch or two’s time:

This week’s image from Swordfish II 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!
 
We are currently looking for a few dedicated and active people that would like to test Hydrocraft and report bugs a bit closer with us!
 
So if there is anyone who would like to participate, this will surely help the development of the Build 41 version a ton! We will also send an invite to our Discord server to make communication easier!
 
Now on to the good news.
 
The "Beta 1" version of Hydrocraft for Build 41 is currently available!
 
Beta versions are to be considered "IWBUMS" so there could be game breaking issues and require some games to be restarted.
 
So for anyone who wants to play Hydrocraft until it is considered to be stable enough to be released publicly, there will be periodic releases there once in a while.
 
It would be really appreciated if bug reports would be done on GitHub but any other channel will still be considered Thanks!!
 
The Beta 1 can be downloaded right here:
 
https://github.com/DemolitionDerby/Hydrocraft/releases
 
Again and lastly, if anyone would like to hunt bugs to help us with the mod, please send Hydromancerx or myself a quick PM and I will send the link to our Discord server!
 
Enjoy! And thanks to everyone who helped!

Hi everyone, Thursday again. It’s been a busy week both out there in the wilds of the Knox Event and deep in the code-mines that have created it.
We were expecting player numbers to drop off a bit now we’re a full month after the initial 41 IWBUMS beta release but, somehow someway, they haven’t.
It makes us wonder just how many people will be booting PZ back up once we turn the MP back on – though please be aware that right now it’s still a way’s off.
In any case, on Monday we released Version 41.19 which reintroduced sprinters amidst a bunch of other cool stuff.
This left the following on our ‘big ticket item’ list that we want to have nailed before a full 41 release: MP, MP networking improvements, the improved visual fidelity via our ‘zoom’ work, optimization of zombie crowds, new fire visuals, fixed tutorial, new zed decay skins, a system for clothing repair, Turbo’s work on player body heat and finalising the ‘challenge’ of the two new Challenges.
Right now in internal testing we have a Version 41.20. We hope to release this next week, and it will contain:
NEW ZED AND PLAYER MODELS
Mash has created a better rang eof zombies, alongside various states of decay for them to show the longer you survive. These will look at their best once Zac has finished his work on the hi-res zoom branch, but already look pretty cool.
On the far left is the current base zombie level, then one to the right is the ‘new’ base level zombie appearance. The two more decomposed guys to the right are what happens when he stands in a hot room for a bit too long… 
And here’s a quick pic from the Zoom branch where, annoyingly, all the zeds are looking away from the camera…
THERMAL WORK
Turbo’s work with player character temperature, clothing insulation and a code-side thermoregulator that evaluates warmth of different bodyparts and overall impact on the player. As in real life your character should still quite easily maintain a core temperature of 37 degrees when the external temperature is in the 20 – 30 degrees Celsius zone and wearing light to moderate clothes.
When conditions cause overall heat gain or loss, however, your body will try to adjust to the conditions. Your alcohol intake, hunger, fatigue, aerobic activity, water intake and more will all have a part to play.
CLOTHING REPAIR
When it’s released into the beta there will still be some UI work required, but those wanting to pick up needle and thread will have the ability to patch ripped clothes – and maybe sew on some extra defence too.
The quality of repairs and defence will be governed by a new Tailoring skill. It will be possible to cut cotton, leather and denim into strips – and then patch up your damaged clothing.
GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS
Betterment of firearm hit rates and the way aiming abilities scale as you level up. Improvements to sprinters – giving them sprint abilities only if they have a target, a chance to trip and a wider turning circle. Many and varied fixes for reported issues. IN OTHER NEWS
We would like to formally introduce Sam, Casey and Fox to the PZ codebase – who will be working as Junior Programmers and focusing on bugs and QoL issues.
Sam and Casey are both students, while Fox is a recent graduate. They are all a part of Tanglewood Games’ new Revolting Creations team (who regular readers will know as ChrisW) and we’re very excited to provide them with one of their first steps into the wider gaming industry.
Chris is looking for programmers of all levels, including students with no industry experience, so if you think you fit that brief then here’s the deets.
IN AMAZING NEWS
Our heartfelt congratulations to Ocean and Valkoinen: a couple who first met while playing Project Zomboid, and who got married at the end of October! Spiffo (our Spiffo) sends all his love, and best wishes for the future!
This week’s image from Ashsjester who lives over on Reddit. 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!