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King-Salomon

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  1. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to nasKo in Sasha’s Sense of Snow   
    Hey all, quickfire ‘what we’re up to’ blog today.
    We had an impromptu Community Megatest last night. It was really useful in terms of spotlighting a few things we need to iron out before we can release Build 40: namely some potential lag caused by extreme weather that we’re digging into, a ‘joining server’ error that some experienced and the ‘dead zombie leaves a weird graphical glitch’ issue which, admittedly, we already knew about.
    Internal testers have also flagged a few issues that *might* be an issue on Linux and Mac, so if you’re on those platforms and the new IWBUMS beta isn’t behaving then please let us know.
    Our plan is to patch these issues up over the coming days and then have another Megatest next week.
    As mentioned, we’ve just released IWBUMS beta version 40.21. Among other things this includes:
    Skybox generation for vehicle reflective windows. To give a better indication of what the weather and climate systems are doing, car window reflections now take into account: the time of day, the Global illumination colour, fog, cloudiness, precipitation intensity, wind direction, wind speed and the temperature of the ambient air (as in winter the clouds are lower than the ground) Please note that the overall effect of this might be toned down a little, and that a primary motivation for this is also as it being a first step towards reflective-looking water – seeing as bodies of water for a long time have been one of the ugliest things in the game. (This will be a Build 41 or 41+ thing though)

    An ugly thing that we have addressed in the latest 40.21 IWBUMS, however, is more natural looking snow on the ground. Previously snow would appear in blocky tiles, but now Turbo has made it look far more natural when it gathers and melts away.
    Other new stuff added in the new beta version: temperature now has an impact on the chances of starting a car in super-cold temperatures (especially on low quality engines), less fiddly chat/admin options and some tweaks to how MP usernames work. As discussed last week, we’re biting the bullet in terms of Build 41 being the animation build – so that TEA aren’t playing endless catch-up with the main game. As well as preparations for the big switcheroo the guys at TEA have also been fixing issues like zombie outfits randomising and disappearing, renderer crashes and sorting out z-ordering issues so that bags are now drawn correctly.

    This week’s featured image from our tester Sasha, who’s awesome. 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. 
  2. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to Fenris_Wolf in ORGM Rechambered   
    v3.09-beta-rc1 is up. (see the Beta/Experimental link in the initial thread post)
     
    changelog in the spoilers, its pretty massive:
     
    The main highlights are the new mechanics. Barrel length matters. All guns spawn with one of the factory barrel length options produced by the manufacturer (firearms updating from previous versions will have one of those barrel lengths assigned to them).
    You can see the barrel length of any firearm by bringing up the inspection window and checking the 'details' tab.
     
    Shorter barrels will reduce range and damage and weight of the firearm, and increase recoil. The action type/feed system now also has a greater effect. For automatics, gas pressure is absorbed cycling the action reducing the bullets velocity and energy, while absorbing recoil. There is now a noticeable difference in performance firing a .308 from a bolt action with a 24" barrel then a automatic with a 18" barrel.
    Also strength now effects recoil, thereby effecting accuracy when firing in full auto.
     
    To compensate for the new mechanics, the default damage multiplier in the settings has been raised from 0.5 to 0.6. If you are updating from a previous version you may have to go to the ORGM tab in the PZ options screen and manually change it.
     
    New options have been added to the ORGM tab, as well as several advanced options that can be defined in the ORGM.ini but do not show on the options screen that allow fine tuning of the performance and handling of firearms (mainly for tweaking by server admins)
    Unlisted options include:
     
    Please be aware this is still in beta/testing phase, and should be considered as a 'I WILL BACK UP MY SAVES' scenario.
     
     
  3. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to nasKo in Men with Ven   
    Hey all, here’s a quick run-down on where we’re at with Build 40 and beyond.
    BUILD 41+
    With the final touches being made to build 40, we’re now at the point of making a decision on what to do for the next build.
    The issue with huge features like our new animation and clothing system, and everything that comes with it, living on another code branch is you tend to have to play catch-up a lot. The developers on the base game add or fix things on the non-animation branch, those changes need merging in – and due to the vast differences in the underlying code due to the animations this tends to add in extra work for the four guys over at TEA working on the new systems.
    There comes a point you’ve just got to go all in and commit, or you’ll be playing catch-up forever. So (even though we have a few non-anim things ready to roll for Build 41 – like improved MP admin and gamepad functionality) as soon as build 40 is live and patched, we will be making the leap and merging in both the work we originally did, and all the extra animation tech that’s been worked on by TEA into the main development branch
    This will mean that every developer at Indie Stone, including the chaps at TEA and at General Arcade, will all be working directly on the same version, and the focus of the entire team will be shifted onto making sure the entire game functions with the new animation system.
    There is still a lot to do, there’s a lot of game there and things like cars and multiplayer will need some work to get functional, but this move will commit us and the next non-hotfix and non-patch build after 40 goes live will be the animations build.
    It also means that blog updates about it all (once the dust has settled from the big switch-over) will hopefully become a bit clearer and less dry and technical. As well as, say, this week’s news that ‘Zac has made improvements to the BlendField renderer to help visualise how the anims blend together’ we can increasingly show how the PZ gameplay we all know and love/hate is coming together with the new visuals etc. Which will hopefully prove less frustrating.
    Before this happens, though, TEA need to bed down a few things and prepare some documentation –and we need to get Build 40 out of the door and patched. So….
    PUBLIC IWBUMS BETA 40.17 RELEASED
    We just released version 40.17 to the IWBUMS beta, patchnotes for which are available here. We’re pretty much done with Build 40 at this point, but do need to smuggle in some more temperature balance and seasonal SFX.
    We’re going to do a new internal test build for 40.18 tomorrow with some required fixes for admin commands and the chatbox, with the intention of then releasing it to IWBUMS early next week so we can have one final Community Megatest to shake out any remaining cobwebs.
    There will, as always, be free PZ codes for people who help out – and due to the additions to the game mentioned below it should be a lot of fun. Please keep an eye on the forums for details.
    Turbo has added climate and weather MP admin panels that should make for some really interesting roleplay and gameplay opportunities on PZ servers. Storms, snow and fog can be triggered at will to cover the entirety of the map – as well as overall climate values can be now be ticked to override what the game has conjured itself depending on what time of year it is. Server admins can also play around with how night appears, whether the game appears in monochrome etc We’re hoping that it’ll be a lot of fun.
     
    Rain and snow now look like they hit the ground, which makes for a huge visual improvement. Rain then disappears, and snow fades out. Likewise, Turbo has also fixed how precipitation wasn’t clearly visible when zoomed in.
    There’s also a bunch of fixes including: issues with various in-game tiles, gun sounds not being heard far enough away in multiplayer, two bugs that spawned a random zombie in a barricaded bathroom and the ability to learning from the TV and radio when asleep. Full list here! This week’s van diagram from La_Chaise™. 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. 
  4. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to nasKo in Soda Scream   
    Thursday, Thursday one and all. We’re currently knuckling down on the Build 40 IWBUMS beta – as it’s pretty much feature complete at this stage, and are currently sweeping up as many issues as we can to package with the public release.
    To this end, we’ve just released IWBUMS beta version 40.16. In amongst the longer changelistof bug fixes and polish this version contains the following.
    Reflective windows on vehicles. Player temperature rework including better time control and overall system improvements, and clothing insulation values. This also includes a moodle to show, in extreme cases, wind speed and wind chill factor. Added ability to switch between Celsius and Fahrenheit Improved weather effects to show snow, rain and clouds being better reflected by windspeed. This is also alongside improved blizzard and storm effects, and more ‘vertical’ appearing rain so it appears less snow-like. Bug fixes including passengers no longer falling out of moving cars during short disconnects, the issue with not being able to refill propane torches, Q not attracting zeds, zeds appearing black on reloading, snow covering up fire tiles and upgraded door frames blocking player movement. It works on Macs again now. If you are one of our testers then please be aware of two issues while you’re playing.
    This version might come packaged with an issue on some graphics cards due to a shader issue. We have a Radeon 390 on our internal testers, and it’s playing up a bit. Please let us know if you have any problems, so we know how widespread an issue it is. If you are impacted, then please try turning off the Steam Overlay and see if it helps. EP has also fixed an OLD bug that had zombies being immune to attacks while staggering backwards. This might create other bugs though, so please let us know if anything weird happens around smacking zeds around with melee weapons We’ve compiled some guidance as to how the new chat functions work, and you can find them here on the forum. Hopefully there’s not too much wrong with it, as that would make a Russian man cry. That said, some functions might not be 100% yet, and likewise chat history will come in the next version. Still to do on Build 40 are tasks like adding admin control to the new weather and climate system – which we will then use in a Community IWBUMS Megatest to flush out remaining bugs and issues. We think the ability to accompany bans from servers with the sound of thunder might be quite fun, alongside the added RP value that a godlike control of the elements will bring. We also have a soundbank of seasonal effects that Turbo would still like to add in, if he has time before release.
    Elsewhere we have plans for upcoming features in future builds crystallizing now (the power network, car upgrades, some thoughts on the farming revamp etc), and clearly have the guys at TEA working on the animation system too.
    After we put out our guidance on how to get new vehicle mods into the game alongside the official vehicles then it’s been really gratifying to see them starting to appear in the Workshop. Please check out Filibuster Rhymes’ Used Cars, for example. Hopefully one car set of many to appear in the future.

    This week’s soft drink capitalism from Slurp Burp. 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. And finally, vaileasys and the wiki have gotta know, where’s your favourite location in Project Zomboid?
  5. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to Batsphinx in RELEASED: IWBUMS Build 40.18   
    VERSION 40.16 RELEASED TO IWBUMS!
     
    NOTES:
     
    1. This might come packaged with an issue on some graphics cards due to a shader issue. We have a Radeon 390 on our internal testers, and it's playing up a bit. Please let us know if you have any problems, so we know how widespread an issue it is. Thank you!
     
    2. EP has also fixed an OLD bug that had zombies being immune to attacks while staggering backwards. This might create other bugs though, so please let us know if anything weird happens around smacking zeds around with melee weapons
     
    NEW
     
    Reflective windows on vehicles Added player temperature rework including better time control and overall system Added insulation value (0.0 to 1.0) for clothing items Added ability to switch between Celsius and Farhenheit Added proper windspeed kph & windchill factor, and info moodle Wind is better reflected by fx (snow, rain, clouds) Added options to debugger to trigger storms and blizzard Improved storms and blizzard BALANCE
     
    Updated translations. Renamed Metal Tube as Metal Pipe. Removed Pipe (plastic one) from recipes/dropping table, and now use Metal Pipe instead. Improved the appearance of crafting tooltips. 'Road Rage' trait renamed as 'Speed Demon' Digital watch now shows temperature Adjusted increased min cone night a bit MODDING
    Changed spawnchance for vehicle type definition from an Int to a Float. FIXES
    Fixed upgraded door frames blocking player movement. Fixed the delay before right-clicking starts aiming being shorter at higher framerates. (At 120fps, right-clicking to bring up the context menu could often initiate aiming.) Fixed player entering attack stance when pressing the Control key while the mouse is over the inventory window. Fixed the player aiming when the mouse is over the inventory tooltip Fixed fire and smoke sprites being drawn as part of the floor - being covered by snow etc Fixed corpses appearing black when first loading a saved game. Fixed items that should spawn in bags sometimes spawning in the container the bag is inside. Fixed adding bait to traps not working. Fixed not being able to get command history in chat panel Fixed 'Plays Baseball' trait not working properly. Fixed 'Q' shout not attracting zombies. Fixed not being able to make a pot of soup with a canned mushroom soup. Fixed not being able to refill an empty Propane Torch Fixed 'GameServer.hitZombie() doesn't handle vehicles being hit by players' issue Fixed BodyDamage.FoodSicknessLevel going below zero. Fixed slices of Cake and Pie not inheriting stats from the original item. Fixed sound-related exception when smoking cigarettes or drinking from a bottle. Fixed a second-story room in the Mall that wasn't considered a room for plumbing/electricity purposes. Fixed zombies being immune to attacks while staggering backwards. (This is an OLD much-complained about issue in MP, so yay.) Fixed zombies with 3D models not facing the player when shoved. Fixed News.txt not being read from mods. Fixed passengers being able to fall out of a moving car in MP and be run over if they disconnect briefly Fixed cold damage only when hypo 4 Fixed damage not stopping when in positive surroundings and rate of damage limited to x per min Fixed fog oversaturation during night Fixed viewdistance value not being adjusted properly Fixed rain appearing to be stretched Fixed campfires no longer trying to spread to non-burning floors regardless of items/objects on it.
     
  6. Like
    King-Salomon got a reaction from Massi in Small but Important Suggestions Thread   
    +1 !! maybe even possibility to "paint" icons on the box like a hammer-icon, green cross icon, food icon, fishing-rod-icon, seedpacket-icon, weapon icon etc to chance the art of the boxes (would need new art, so something for the future maybe - till then a tooltip "note" would be great
     
    some more tooltips would be great too .. like (but not only)
     
    485: mouse-over tooltips for skills - for newbies it would be a QOL point to get informations about what the different skills are doing/effecting/can be raised by a simple tooltip for overmouse the skill - maybe the text could be copied from the wiki http://pzwiki.net/wiki/Skills (effects) if still up-to-date 
  7. Like
    King-Salomon got a reaction from Massi in Small but Important Suggestions Thread   
    478 :  chance the icon art for some of the containers - it's no big deal but seems unnessessary to loot the mailbox from a regal-container etc - even no new art needed, just use the mailbox head as a picture (others might need new art maybe)  (maybe even the kittchen- and bathrooms sink container show a sink icon instead of the normal regal one)
     
    479: desks in living rooms (like the desks in the childrens rooms which would be used for homework) should be container like desks in school/offices
     
    480: standardize some commands (atm: using a TV is "device options" - for using the stove it's "settings" )
     
     
    what was already asked I am pretty sure:
     
    -  washing maschine as container and useable (with power) to clean clothes
     
    - for QoL: naming some of the items to better find them in inventory (like the books should all beginn with the topic, no "jumping" of cooked items in the inventory when you add something to them because the name chances to something completly different, boxed items should be listed with the items they contain, paints not sorted by the color but by paint etc)  (I know it's not as easy as this as it is different for every translated language but for the "original english" version it would be great - there are some mods which do this but for QOL it should be into the base game)
     
    EDIT: 
     
    481: some forum-mod to copy all the suggestions and start a new topic with the list which can be better sorted by @Connall    guess a lot are multiples, some are already dealt with, others are "no-goes", some are low priority for the devs etc - could be some kind of color coding (red = nogo, green = already included, yellow=wip, orange = later etc) or some sorting by topics... 
     
    482:  make more items "not go through" - you can walk through some items instead of "walking against them" like chairs, toilets (!), mailboxes, stop-signs etc ... maybe it is for later with the anmations update but walking through a toilet or chair when I am stopped by a small low table seems wrong
     
    EDIT2:
     
    483:  First add should be a "survivalist" skill not a "crafting skill" !!!! maybe even rename to "medicin" 
     
  8. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to GalopaWXY in RELEASED: IWBUMS Build 40.18   
    Well try it IRL- big storm, you're in your car driving, see how far your visibility goes not much. You're supposed to stay indoors during storms.
  9. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to Icy Motto in Thurs…weather…shaders….chat!   
    I am glad you've made the decision to leave away optimization for decade old PCs. It seems that it has used alot of you guy's time to just try and optimize every single thing possible just so a few users can run the game. It should not be a problem to just save up some money and get with the times. With that out of the way, it seems that more work can be done towards other stuff like anims etc... Great job guys.
  10. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to nasKo in Thurs…weather…shaders….chat!   
    Welcome to this week’s Thursdoid! We’re a bit light on the team this week as a few of us (including, as you can probably guess, the developer in charge of Thursdoid punnage) are having a well deserved holiday after the exhausting and mega stressful vehicle push for so many months finally came to an end, and like buses several of those holidays coincidentally happened to come at once, but still a few things to report.
    Weather Build Update
    We’ve just updated the weather branch. The main addition is the first version of our overhauled multiplayer chat system developed by Stas at General Arcade. The new chat is a bit fancier and more functional and more in line of what you’d expect on an MMO or similar types of games. You can activate the window to chat by pressing T or Enter. Let us know how you get on with it and if there are any problems.
    Various fixes include reintroducing the low lighting mode, and an option for disabling the new building hiding system, which will provide better performance on low end machines (more on this subject in a moment), removed the weird sound echoes, various Linux compatibility / java fixes, fixed multiplayer zombie attacking / defending issues, and many more. We’ll try to get you a complete change-list soon.
    Work continues apace with animations, nothing flashy to show or talk about, but many fixes have been made to the tool and Martin the animator now has access to regular builds to help integrating all the anims. Steve at BitBaboon nears completion of the new build system overhaul, which will vastly improve our internal organisation of builds, and should allow us quicker testing and releasing of builds. With this we’re making wider changes to the team organisation to help us deal with the bigger team size and the various irons we have in fires.
    Shaders & Compatibility
    We’ve had a small number of people reporting that cars are invisible on their low end machines. This is due to the fact that the way the vehicles are rendered require shaders to overlay damage and other effects, so cards that are unable to use shaders, as with the 3D characters which use GPU skinning, will not be able to render the vehicles.
    We’ve fought for many years to keep our minimum specs where they are, wanting to keep our potato running Zomboiders in the game for as long as possible. However, as the years progress, the numbers dwindle as more people upgrade, and at this point we’re talking about an extreme minority of PCs, bottom end Intel laptops any of them close to or over a decade old, at least in terms of technology, and constituting less than 1% of all our customers – It’s gotten to the point where retaining compatibility with machines mostly over a decade old is starting to hamper development in several ways.
    1) For example to add support for vehicles for this minority of machines, including testing and bug-fixing would take a substantial amount of development time, which at this stage could be spent working on the features, optimisations and improvements the vast majority of our customers would benefit from and that would take us toward the fabled 1.0.
    2) There are a whole host of avenues for optimisation that we’ve for a long time written off because they would end up raising the minimum spec by requiring shaders to work and would be too fundamental to switch off. Since the game and simulation have become massively complex at this point, optimisation is becoming ever more important. Vehicles at one stage ran so badly on top end machines that we simply had to spend significant time doing extreme and very disruptive optimisation work, and the game still doesn’t run adequately in built up areas on machines that should on the face of it be able to handle it.
    However the available routes for optimisation are becoming extremely sparse–there’s only so much blood you can wring out of a stone and we’ve shaved practically every millisecond we can from the game’s frame time, so we really need new directions to be able to explore to keep the game running well particularly when features such as Louisville, the new animations (which will bring performance benefits and pressures, and it’s unclear what the net result will be) and of course the NPCs go into the game.
    The way the rendering system works with the lighting, shading and isometric perspective is hugely costly and it’s difficult to see how it can possibly be improved having no guaranteed access to literally any of the rendering advancements developed in the past 13 years.
    Having guaranteed shader support will open up many optimisation opportunities in the future, our rendering being far and away the biggest bottleneck, and there comes a point where it becomes unfair to the huge majority of our customer-base not to exploit these. While it’s frustrating the game not running well on an old laptop, it’s certainly much worse for it not to run well on a top of the range gaming PC and that’s something we have more responsibility to fix and avoid in future.
    So while we understand this decision will upset a few of you (though it’s a decision we hope you appreciate we did not take lightly, and resisted as long as humanly possible to give as many the opportunity to upgrade as possible), we hope that the few affected by this understand why we’ve come to this decision. In the meantime, build 38 will always be available via the Steam betas, and there are many affordable old laptops with GPUs that have the requisite shader support, so hopefully we’ll see you back in the new builds before long.
    This week’s tense disagreement from QwencGames. 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.
  11. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to nasKo in Hotdoid   
    A balmy/sweaty Thursdoid to you all. We’ve got what will be our next IWBUMS beta running backstage, but it’s a little too rough around the edges to put out properly just yet. Internal testing has flagged a few errors created by the new chatbox, some invulnerable zombies in MP and car spawns running pretty low – all of which would be pretty annoying for people even if they did know they were in the unstable version.
    If you are interested in checking out some of Turbo’s work on a simulated climate, storms, fog and temperature having a greater impact on the player though – the weather test beta is still open, and contains the backbone of what’ll be going into the wider community testing in the coming week(s). On top of tidying this up, then, this is what else is going on.
    RJ has been improving the life of our MP admins – tightening up some longstanding issues with admin commands, improving the Admin UI system (for example with a new screen that lets the user spawn items more easily, selecting from a menu system of categories and filters) and also fixing up some MP glitches with duplicating logs and the like. Our thanks to Ricky from the Good Old Dayz for his help and advice in this. [We will also have Bitbaboon Steve looking into MP Network optimization in coming weeks, once he’s finished up his work on our new internal build system.] Martin the Animator is now working directly with the four guys over at The Eccentric Ape who’re working on the new animation system – in particular with Zac in terms of identifying issues with the new AnimZed tool and suggesting improvements and systems that’ll make his (and modder) life easier. Meanwhile the rest of TEA are looking at issues like models not rendering correctly and Grant’s work on the state system. Martin, meanwhile, is using AnimZed to eliminate some foot sliding that’s crept in during anim code work and making player travel distance match feet movement within the animation – which itself will anchor a stable ‘anim speed’ for the whole project. Over at General Arcade, as mentioned, Stas is buttoning up a few chatbox issues as well as implementing a few suggestions that’ve come in from internal testers so that it follows wider gaming convention and the ‘muscle memory’ of everyone’s fingertips. Yuri, meanwhile, is following on his work on reflective windows and bodywork on vehicles (vid here if you haven’t seen it) with some general vehicle tidy-up: adding missing SFX from collisions, adding skid noises, improving some weirdness around getting in/out of some vehicles and also improving VOIP ranges. Our very own EasyPickins has been reworking how sounds work under the hood –  currently modders can’t override sounds in our FMOD soundbanks, while when players find certain sounds are too loud or annoying (heartbeat, zombie alert, flies, level up noise etc) it’s tricky to raise/lower them independently. As such, from the next build all details about all the game sounds will go into media/scripts/sounds.txt – and stuff like parameters like min/max distance of them being heard will be found there too, while an in-game UI will let users change the volume of any sound they feel is too oppressive. EP has also been finishing off his work that makes items placed by mappers (campfires, BBQs etc) usable in-game. In the background to all this, Mash continues her mapping work on our version of Louisville – a task so big that it won’t be for many versions to come. She will, however, occasionally allow an image or two to escape from her travails.
     
    Two final items of note!
    RingoD has put a quick modder’s guide on how to reskin the current PZ vehicles on the forum. The PZ Wiki is getting some serious renovation under the awesome guidance of Vaileasys, which is needed now more than ever given the recent boost in player numbers that the vehicles release has brought about. He can’t do it alone though! If you fancy yourself as a wiki-editing maestro, then please check out the details here. This week’s zed-filled chink the defences from Starman. 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. Let us know how your visit to Spiffo’s panned out Lazy Joe.
    Bug squashing
  12. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to nasKo in Snow DaZe   
    Happy Thursday all. Work continues on two fronts: the stuff that was developed concurrently with the vehicles build that we intend to get out into an IWBUMS beta as soon as we can, and the stuff that the five guys over at T.E.A. continue to improve our new animations system with in terms of more flexible/data-driven code and an improved AnimZed animation tool to match. Let’s go round the houses then and see what’s new.
    WEATHER TEST BUILD
    As flagged on the PZ website last week, we currently have a public test version of Turbo’s new weather, climate, storms and fog system available for players to try out. You can find full details on how to access this in the forum thread.
    Initial player reports have been really positive – with people reporting that they’re feeling a greater sense of seasonal change and are feeling nicely hemmed in (and are having more difficulty driving) in heavy fog.
    The primary piece of feedback we probably need at this point is whether players feel some of the new time of day and season shaders are too intense or washed out – you can find details of the debug tools that’d be useful if you wanted to quickly check a variety out in the link above.
    Turbo has also just released an updated version of the test weather beta, which features a multiplayer component of his IsoRegions system – this should allow the information about enclosed player-built spaces across an MP network so fog/precipitation can only be shown in outdoor areas. Please note that this will break current saves on this test build.
    Turbo will now start to address some of the great feedback he’s received this past week in terms of bugs and suggestions, such as the occasional foggy starting houses and black lines that are visible on some zoom levels.
    NEXT IWBUMS
    In amongst the bigger headline features like weather and MP chat improvements currently in the mix, there a variety of smaller features and fixes also on the boil to benefit players, modders and admins. In-game fonts have been made bolder to help with legibility, car wrecks can now be dismantled with a propane torch and welding mask and we’re also tightening the difficulty levels of our more noob-friendly scenarios – as we can’t help but feel that some of our players are getting too easy a ride at first.
    Also fresh from the coding furnace, meanwhile, is EasyPickins’ in-game Sandbox Options Editor for server admins. This will allow admins to change in-game settings that don’t require a full restart, and should make managing a server for you and your friends a little more forgiving experience.

    T.E.A. WORK
    This week Zac has built a ‘Paper doll’ interface into the AnimZed dev/modding tool, as seen below this replaces a big list of numbers and toggles – letting you/us design zombie and survivor outfits for in-game use and testing in a far more user-friendly and efficient way. He’s also got 2D blends working in the tool, but still needs to work out the best way to visualize them in AnimZed.

    A lot of what T.E.A. are currently doing is improving the system, and adding flexibility, by making large chunks of it data-driven and greatly simplifying (and modularising) the player code. It’s complicated stuff that’ll make devving and modding easier, and should put the game and community in a good shape for many years to come. This has been Grant’s primary work with the ‘state machine’ recently, while Bitbaboon Mark (although we should probably call him T.E.A. Mark at this point) working out the best ways to transition the T.E.A. workflow over into the core PZ team.
    Our thanks to Mad Dan for his snow pic, and indeed just for being Mad Dan. 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.
  13. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to Code in (Poll) Should there be new skills added to the core game?   
    My 2 cents, before adding more skills they should rework/finish the ones that are already in the game, trapping, fishing, farming, metalworking, etc, most of them feel a bit underwhelming after a while.
     
    Mods like "le gourmet evolution plus" by Snake kinda adds so much content in this skills without breaking the gameplay that i would love the game to have more of this instead of new skills even if new skills would be cool.
  14. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to nasKo in Monkey Bizness   
    The Build 39 Vehicles build (playable in public IWBUMS beta) is essentially ready to go, but we need to be sure that a couple of issues have been solved by today’s release of Build 39.57: one that saw crowds of zombies pinging vehicles off roads in MP, and another on some dedicated servers that had zeds attracted to a vehicle’s previous position that we also think was to do with the physics interpolation. [So please let us know if you encounter either!]
    39.57 also improves the way vehicles are arranged in parking stalls by adding directional pointers to the mix, addresses issues with watch alarms, adds extra options to help you tailor/toggle world degradation (erosion) in the game and some tweaks to help modders with the change to the vehicles build. Amidst a lot of under the hood stuff to keep stuff ticking over. EDIT: A complete changelist will appear here in the next day or so, but due to last minute issue with the latest code we’ve released a build that was already in testing and thus we’ll have to recompile the changelist to suit.
    In the mean-time let’s go round the houses and find out what other PZ types are up to:
    ANIMS
    Last week we announced that we’d teamed up with a gang of renegade coders called The Eccentric Ape – ably led by our current anims-focussed Technical Director whizz (Bitbaboon) Mark. This past week has seen them getting up to speed with PZ, and right now they’re getting their hands dirty in the codebase. The plan is for them to do a big push on the animation system, and overall intention is that we’ll be working alongside them on many of our big features going forward.

    So, for the next little while TEA’s Grant is fixing up remaining issues with layer/node and blending code, and then adding in the common state conditions that animations will ‘trigger’ – stuff like collision being on/off for combat and swings. Snitz, meanwhile, is setting to work on movement, idle and swing states to remove anything still hard coded and tie them instead to the new in-game variables.
    Finally, Zac and Gaz are working on AnimZed, making it more user friendly, filtering and sorting the anims into the first set of released animations and focussing on it from the end user perspective. By the time this push is complete the system should be in a state where Animator Martin, and ultimately modders, can dive in and start layering new anims for the remaining states with very little required coder intervention.
    WEATHER
    Turbo’s big challenge at the moment with the new precipitation and fog that go hand in hand with his simulated climate system is how to handle it when you look out of windows – in the current game rain isn’t visible outside, and this bug will become much clearer with better rain and fog effects. Particles currently get drawn after the world has been drawn, and the weather is drawn over this final image – so we need a solution for this so you can check the weather outside your safehouse without walking out into it.
    We anticipate that looking out of a window when hearing the noise of, for an example, an approaching thunderstorm (thunderclaps at the correct timing, taking into account to your distance away on the map from lightning and the centre of the storm) will be a much more common occurrence with this new system – likewise with checking out the fog. As such it’s something we need to fix up before release.
    While he puzzles this all out alongside our other coders, Turbs is also creating a new sound bank for ambient sounds to signal seasonal change. He’s currently got a supply of forest zone sounds, insect noise, rain effects for both indoors and outdoors, extra SFX for heavy weather, birdsong and indoor/outdoor wind effects.
    He intends to have it so that, for example, on a hot summer afternoon with little to no wind you can hear the crickets chirping – and for birds to become silent when heavy weather hits. It’s intended to be soft background noise, but if implemented well should really improve your sense of the time of year – and the current weather state created by the simulated climate system. After a meeting with the PZ art brigade Turbo is also going to add some more direction to his ‘clouds overhead’ effect, as currently they look a little too smoke-like.
    OTHER STUFF
    Bitbaboon Steve is finishing off our updated internal build system, while Connall is investigating ways to help our community translators keep up to date with translation strings that are updated from build to build. Mash continues with Louisville, while RingoD is building a wider roster of house and apartment buildings that she can drop into residential areas when she moves into the suburbs.
    When they return from Russian Victory Day vacations General Arcade’s Yuri is working on MP network physics, and Stas continues his work to improve gamepad and mouse settings/bindings. ChrisW is also back with us and will work on giving final polish to his existing rooftop occlusion system when it comes to player-built structures, before returning to his work on Sims-style interior cutaways in houses.
    Due to a necessary forum upgrade we’re also having to decommission our current Bug Tracker, which is annoying but has to be done unfortunately. We’ve harvested all the longstanding issues that were present in it, so if you see any of your reports disappearing – please don’t worry as they have a new home in our internal system. We’ll work on getting a decent replacement in the weeks ahead.
    This week’s 911 call out from Ghost. 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. The CBOIT would like to apologise to Mark for calling T.E.A. ‘The Educated Ape’ last week instead of ‘Eccentric’, although that would also have been a good name for his new company.
  15. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to MashPotato in RELEASED: IWBUMS Build 39.67.3   
    Thanks for the thorough report Capt. Motty! I've gone through them and have made fixes  However, just a couple of comments regarding some things I didn't change:
    - I don't consider more than one light switch controlling the same light a bug; this is a fairly common feature in many homes
    - While I altered some fence alignments, not all are "meant" to be aligned and so they were left as-is
    - Quite a few of your reports of missing light switches were in rooms that definitely have light switches in my files; we're going to double-check to make sure those light switches have the correct properties, but if you still see these missing in future builds please send me a PM as that means something is majorly screwy.
     
    Also, just a note that these fixes will not appear right away, though they should be in the next build I would think.
     
    Thanks again!
     
    And everyone who gives map bug reports, please note that while I don't fix all map bugs right away (I tend to do it in batches), if you report them I will fix them! I appreciate all your help with this  
  16. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to Hydromancerx in Hydrocraft Mod   
    Hydrocraft v10.1 has been released!
     
    Which includes ...
     
    - Updated Advanced Potted Plants
    - Updated Armor Mod
    - Hunting cannot be done indoors.
    - Fixed fixers
    - Fixed male cream cat
    - Fixed Jagermsibter
    - Fixed eye dropper with potassium permanganate
    - Fixed coffee
    - Fixed beehive in winter
    - Can keep pizza stone
    - Fixed Flint Tipped Bow Drill
    - Fish Bowls and Fish Tanks can collect Rainwater
    - Can recycle and craft Pruning Shears
    - Can craft fire suit from more types of clothing
    - Fixed making blast furnace with mortar
    - Fixed Cordless Drill Art
    - Fixed Herbal Medicine for anchored tables
    - Fixed Pullout paper recipie
    - Fixed empty beaker with water
    - Fixed baby food jars
    - Can turn unusable wood into charcoal
    - Added Jar of Glue and Jar of Wood Glue
    - Added Wooden Pulley
    - Crossbow and Longbow animation fixed!
    - Thanks to everyone who helped!
     
    Enjoy!
  17. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to ditoseadio in RELEASED: IWBUMS Build 39.67.3   
    Totally agree.
  18. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to B33ware in RELEASED: IWBUMS Build 39.67.3   
    1000% agree, it breaks immersion, world with cars and jams seem more natural and realistically.
    At least cars that you already discover should be always visible.
  19. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to Lexx2k in RELEASED: IWBUMS Build 39.67.3   
    I still hate how cars disappear out of your vision once you look the other way. This happens to no other big objects. Not to houses, not to furniture, not to garbage bins... but cars for some reason disappear. Yes, they can move around, but if I just parked a car outside my house, then I *know* it is there, even if I look the other way for a second. There should be either a delay, or just stop them from going invisible completely, even if they are behind a wall.
  20. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to EnigmaGrey in RELEASED: Build 38.30   
    But really, if you're going to freak out about a lack of recognition for wasting people's time on something you could have easily tested yourself (disable the mod), maybe it'd be best just keeping it to yourself from this point forward. 
     
    Both Beard and Sasha took time out of their day to address your issue, when they didn't have to at all.
     
    Someone that's been lurking here for 3 years should know better by now: we can't support mods, we have man-power so limited that even the things that we want to do can't be done, and stable builds don't get patched four months after release.
  21. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to Hydromancerx in Hydrocraft Mod   
    Hydrocraft v10.0 has been released!
     
    Which includes ...
     
    - Hunger from Crafting is Disabled
    - Fixed Plastic Utensil Spawns
    - Put Back in Fire Station spawn as custom loot
    - Adjusted Loot for Tool Box, Small Animal Cage and Medium Animal Cage
    - Can Use Stakes to Build Mine
    - Fixed Red and Black Empty Cans
    - Glue and Wood Glue need containers to make
    - Can make Finewood Floors
    - Can make various Colored Carpets
    - Fixed Barrel of Apple Mash
    - Fixed Homemade Pancake recipe
    - Fixed Plastic Water Container
    - Water Containers can now collect Rain Water
    - Mining Drill now uses Large Batteries
    - Multitool now uses Small Batteries
    - Some recipes require a Drill now
    - Updated Art for Sawbuck, Drying Frame, Steam Machine, Trip Hammer, Iron Anvil and Lead Anvil
    - Can Drill Hole in Cork and Rubber Bung
    - Can Craft Garden Apron and Cooking Apron
    - Removed Depleted Sourdough Starter
    - Can Dry Yeast
    - Removed Bug Stew but added in Bug Mash instead.
    - Can Recycle Metal Tube, Metal Bar and hand Drill.
    - Added 7 Colored Yarns
    - Added Hand Drill and Cordless Drill
    - Added 9 Misc Objects
    - Added Gardening Workbench
    - Added 15 Baby Food and Empty Baby Food Jar
    - Added Buildable Computer mod by Minnigin
    - Added Adanced Potted Plants by Leliana!!
    - Thanks to everyone who helped!
     
    Enjoy!
  22. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to arkahys in [Vehicles Test Server] Spiffospace: Vehicles   
    battery drain. and when engine is on, gazoline drain.
  23. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to RobertJohnson in RELEASED: Vehicle Test 41   
    I'm aware that currently new car's damage models aren't working (damaged parts won't be shown) this will be fixed in a next hotfix.
     
    Build Vehicle 35:
     
    [New]
    Added 2 new cars: a Dash Ranger (similar, but not quite as good as a SUV) and a Luxury Car called a Mercia Lang 400. Basic parking stalls now have a small chance of spawning special vehicles (Spiffo van, Ranger car, police car etc) Added tooltip over Mechanic UI car overlay. You can now right click vehicle parts directly on the overlay, to bring the context menu that specific part. Updated some car textures. Force changing hotkeys of vehicle horn if it's the same as the 'open health panel' hotkey. Vehicle Mechanic system, emergency lights, car heaters and windows now work with a controller. Removed redundant vehicle options from the back-button radial menu. Added a UI for choosing which seat to get into. Added conditionAffectsCapacity property to vehicle containers. Added line in literature tooltip to reflect when recipes are already unlocked by Profession and/or Traits. Headlights and Tail lights can now be damaged in collisions. Added debug scenarios to help in testing for devs and modders (Create a new character quickly from Main Menu, setup params, sandbox options etc. Check lua/client/DebugUIS/Scenario/DebugScenario, can only be used in Debug). Added a -Dnosave argument in the command line for devs and modders. Use it to stop world saves when testing involves the creation of lots of new characters Added debug option to display circle around character's feet. Added ui for admins to inspect number of network packets sent/received.
    [Balance]
    Changed how car colors are picked. Previously there were mainly dull colours being chosen - vehicle colors should be a lot more varied now. Lowered chance of Muffler being damaged. Factorized a lot vehicle scripts. Increased damage done to vehicles by melee weapons.  
    [Bug Fix]
    Fixed small car 02 not having a Mechanic UI vehicle overlay. Fixed numerous bugs in vehicle script (missing tire updates, some parts not requiring keys to operate, missing required recipes etc) Damaged trunk lid now governs if items drop from the trunk, instead of the trunk itself that governs only its capacity for loot. Fixed trunk/trunk lid having wrong part info description. Fixed using java.awt.Color (doesn't work on headless servers). Fixed cars making breaking glass sounds while driving around. Added missing translation UI_optionscreen_binding_Vehicle horn. Fixed one cause of zombies walking in place. Fixed exception when dropping a key onto the ground from inside a vehicle. Fixed server log messages whenever a player hit something. More tooltips respect the tooltip font size option. Hide the vehicle dashboard when the inventory window is displayed and player is using a controller. Fixed vehicle mechanics window updating when not visible. Fixed vehicle ac/heater window updating when not visible. Fixed oversized gas-pump texture in the vehicle radial menu. Fixed server exception when food rotted in a player's inventory. Fixed vehicle dashboard disappearing when a splitscreen player is created. Fixed vehicle heater and seat UIs using wrong player after respawning. Fixed position of game-speed controls in splitscreen. Fixed post-death UI not being removed in splitscreen. Fixed putting/taking key from ignition not being synced in multiplayer. Fixed trove.jar location on the server. Fixed gas tank appearing empty and being impossible to uninstall. Fixed missing translations of some car's name. Fixed exception with new packet-inspector ui. Fixed multiple generators interfering with each other. Fixed container color overlay strobes. Fixed Error with packet 164. Renamed ISMiniScoreboardUI.lua.lua -> .lua Fixed trransferring a large object may result in duplication.
  24. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to halkaze in RELEASED: Vehicle Test 41   
    I hope this will help. 
    Favorite car colors of the years.
    Quote: Axalta Coating Systems
     

     
     
    Edit:
    Quote: DuPONT

  25. Like
    King-Salomon reacted to iwawa in RELEASED: Vehicle Test 41   
    Personally, I don't feel like you should be trying to be that "realistic" when it comes to vehicle colors. Zomboid has its own aesthetic and should focus on using colors that feel like they fit into the game. Although I do agree that more variety in vehicle colors would be lovely, forcing in tons of bright blue, red and white vehicles in just because "that was popular in america in the 90s" seems a bit silly  Do what you think looks good @RobertJohnson instead of what is "realistic".
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