HerioJohnX

A lot of stuff in a WIP state at the moment, so not too many big flashy shiny things in the blog this time round. Hopefully enough to whet your whistle though.
 
In terms of work on the four central pillars of 42, the next big thing happening will be the next merge-in of the crafting revamp to the central trunk build. This will primarily be the crafting station code, which has had a bit of rewiring – and now will also allow for benches/machines etc to (optionally) have ‘parts’ items that degrade on use and can be viewed/added/removed via a maintenance tab.
 
Meanwhile, RJ is working on integrating his deer tracking with the foraging/search mode integrated into Build 41, while in our tech upgrade ‘optimization / lighting / more depth & height’ branch we continue to play a bit of whack-a-mole with issues that have arisen with such foundational changes. So, this week, as an example that’s been stuff like: savefile thumbnail creation being borked, zombies spawning on water, the tops of tall tiles showing through the floor above etc.
 
Finally, in the realms of MP and the continuing mission to bring inventories etc. server-side the gang have been working on getting trapping and nu-fishing working with the new systems, and solving various issues that occur with new object creation also.
 
FARMZ
Let’s pop quickly back into the revamped farming, which this week has had some ease-of-use controls added in to make things less of a click-through-UI nightmare and bring a touch of extra Stardewwy-ness.
 
This video shows various elements of fun stuff – but primarily that by taking a farming tool into your primary, pressing RMB and aiming, and then pressing ‘E’ will have you go about the farming action. Likewise with sowing seeds, and harvesting.
 
CAVEAT: Please note that these controls aren’t final, and also that there’s a fair amount of animation polish required to make it all look super-smooth.
 
 
Also, here’s a quick timelapse of them plants a growin’.
 
 
OTHER STUFF
As previously mentioned, alongside readable newspapers and newsletters, players will now be able to pick up flyers that advertises places of interest on the Knox Event map – and then also reveal that location on the player’s own personal map. This week we’ve really been knuckling down on this, as we’ve realized it’s a great tool to direct new players towards buildings favoured by many in the community for their safehouses. Anyone able to name the following locations from the real estate advertising? As well as expanding the current map, we’re also giving existing areas of the map a loving glow-up. Take this amazing improvement from Ayrton as an awesome example. Clearly any new build will also be coming with new clothing, hats and whatnot. Martin’s also pumping out loads of new fun stuff for you to loot, wear, and also for those tricksy zombies to wear too. Finally, we spotted this out on the wires. How good does this make our lore look and sound?! Maybe AI doesn’t provide a terrifying nightmarish future after all! (Or if it does, it at least it will make the chaos look and sound really good on YouTube!)
This week’s survivalist from SerØ. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. 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. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here.

Now then, survivors. Let’s do the thing.
 
NEXT
This week we released version 41.77 into our Unstable beta. This is primarily aimed at fixing the Linux crashes that have been plaguing server hosts, and so far seems to be a mission success in that regard.
 
It also improves client to server connections by preferring a direct connection to the server. Servers now have two ports for clients to connect to, configurable through the server options. The game port (UDP 16261 by default) is used to handle Steam queries. The additional port (UDP 16262 by default) is used to handle the direct connection.
 
We’ve had a successful wider test of 41.77 with more than 30 people on a server without any crashes, and we’ve tested a modded setup afterwards as well.
 
Upon release there were servers running mods with 41.77 just fine, but unfortunately it seemed that some mod setup constellations caused conflicts that resulted in black screens for some servers.
 
We have just pushed a hotfix we believe will resolve this.
 
If, however, you run a 41.77 server and you are still experiencing players unable to log on (only seeing a black screen) then please send us: the list of ModIDs (specifically the “Mods=” line from their server.ini, the workshop= line, and your server logs.
 
Posting these in the forum release thread or in our Discord techsupport channel would probably be best.
 
Likewise, any reports of ongoing server instability or general misbehaviour – please let us know ASAP.
 
THEN
We’re still adding tweaks and polish to our final B41 patch that we’ll put out once the current network improvements are fully tested, released and stable.
 
This is the current changelist, with notable additions in the past few weeks on show here if you already read up on what was incoming in our last blog.
 
OOH, 42
Build 42 will be a very big update, and it will appear a sizable amount of time after Build 41 is fully wrapped. We’ve announced most of the things that we currently have brewing for it, but there’s one thing we’ve only hinted at so far – and which is very likely to feature.
As regular readers may remember, a while ago we wrote a blog called Techdoid that detailed some of the big engine improvements we have slated for 42.
 
Amongst them is a new rendering pipeline which allows for entire chunks to be cached with a depth buffer, which will afford us MASSIVE rendering and scene construction improvements and should rid us of all the performance issues we’ve been plagued with due to the isometric draw order over the years.
 
 
There’s also a new light propagation system, which allows for light to naturally leak through doors and windows, providing much more atmospheric and believable lighting
  We also got rid of the 8 storey limit on chunks: specifically we allowed each chunk to have its own unique defined height up to 32 levels.
Finally, we discussed that we’d fixed the many areas of the codebase that used static casts to round the player’s position to determine what chunk or tile they were on to using Math.floors instead. This method allows for negative coordinates to work where prior the calculations would have failed if the player was stood on a tile with a negative coordinate.
 
This in theory will allow for us, or modders, to build north or west to the same extents as we currently build to the east and south, effectively quadrupling the maximum size the map could be extended to and open up a great deal of extra land to populate should we need to in future.
Whilst all these features are gamechangers in themselves, they were also done in service of another very specific feature we’ve had planned for a long time, which required each of them to be made feasible in any way.
 
The current in-game lighting system means that the indoor ambience levels are defined solely by the time of day. If it’s daytime, the ambient light levels inside a building are above zero, giving just sub-daylight levels, even if there are no sources of natural light that should fall on a tile just by virtue of it being day. That wouldn’t work very well if we were wanting to do… a certain other feature.
 
The previous eight level hard limit and high rendering cost of multiple levels was rather restrictive if we were to… want to do a certain something.
 
The lack of support for negative coordinates for character positions? Well that was IMMENSELY restrictive if we… were to want to do a certain something.
 
A few people may have been able to read between the lines of what all these lead toward. Many more will have just watched the video already.
  The plan we have for basements and sub-levels is an interesting one, as it will provide a lot more replayability to the game map, which is otherwise completely static at the moment.
 
Essentially in 42 we, or modders, can list positions on the map (along with staircase orientation) that have the space for a basement and can be allocated the potential to have one. However, no basements are placed within the map itself.
 
When an area is streamed in for the first time, an appropriate basement ‘building’ created in the building editor and exported as a binary file is selected randomly from the list of all possible basements and will be injected into the map as it is loaded.
 
We could add tags to make it pick an appropriate category of basement to fit the specific house, though right now the code has it set as completely random. Each basement has stairs leading up from its ‘top’ floor and these stairs will be aligned to the correct position when it is injected into the map.
 
This means that despite the map being static, any areas with basements will yield surprises in every playthrough. This will also, clearly, cause the least disruption to the existing map development, modded maps and everything else.
 
Whilst most of the basements will be modest basement rooms, that will have their own unique layout and lootable containers and will change on every new world and be populated with our own collection as well as any collections of mod basements that are subscribed to.
There may be a few, however, which are more extensive, the player could happen upon a super rare and extensive underground complex. We have 32 levels to work with that can be distributed in any way above or below ground per chunk as required, so there’ll be few limits particularly in what modders can do with this.
 
We can also hardcode some specific basement levels, so we could say provide key buildings within the map with bespoke basement levels that fit that particular building and will always be the same on every map.
 
Also, with the new light propagation system, you better bring a torch – because unless there are light switches, its gonna be dark even if it’s daytime!
 
We’re also considering the possibility of other sub-surface structures, such as sewers for locations like Louisville. We’re still researching what would be appropriate and sufficiently realistic for this, however, and it’s not certain what could/would appear in b42 beyond what’s discussed above at this stage.
 
SPIFFO: BEYOND
If you are a Terraria player then right now you are likely enjoying the amazing Labor of Love update, and maybe you’ve even discovered a certain someone has made the jump into another game – heralding the beginning of some sort of Spiffo Cinematic Universe.
Our endless thanks to everyone at Re-Logic for letting our little dude spread his wings (or spin his tail, I guess) and treating him so well.
  This week’s stunning outdoor scene from Citro. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. 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. Experienced games dev and want to work with us, especially if you’re an Animations Engineer as Christ alive that would be handy? Details here.

For the "Skill learning" mechanics, I always picture our character will be able to teach other character with sitting and chatting.
Also, skill progress will lost a bit after character didn't perform that skill related action for a while (They forget!) 

Also, what I know about version 42 is also include trait balancing, any chance you guys will discuss that in the future thursdoid?

I always think anxiety / depression should have a serious affect on our character (Even lead to death!). 

41.55 Patch
 
NEW

- Added new 3D items + fixed some.
- Added a context menu for choosing which CD/VHS to insert into the device (when using a controller)
- Display CDs and VHS tapes in the Training Materials UI
- Updated main-menu credits.
- Updated community translations.

ANIMS
- Changed climb fence success anim to a quicker finish  
- Tweaked climb fence fail  
- Shaved off a few frames from Bob/Bob_StaggerBack_3m  
- Adjusted Bob_AttackPistolWhip02.X to same length as shoves  
- Tweaked head of Bob_WalkBwdAimHandgun.X to better blend with other anims  
- Shaved off some frames from Bob_StaggerForward.X  

MODDING

- Added optional vehicle.passenger.showPassenger=true|false parameter for iBrRus.
 When true, the player model isn't hidden when entering, exiting or sitting in that particular seat.

BALANCE

- Player running through a horde will now have greater chance of falling
- Full helmets less likely to fall from zombies attacks.
- Gave vehicles more engine force in first gear.

TRANSLATIONS

- Added translations for Boredom/Stress/etc notification text above the player's head.
- small delay when switching cd/tape on/off
- bzzt-fzzt and zap sound when switching on tape

SOUNDS

- re-balanced the whole reverb/direct signal mix
- tweaked the music volumes of individual tracks a bit (though there might still be more minute things to tweak)
- adjusted player and zombie footstep loudness 
- new scratch lacerate and bite assets with mix adjustments to make them stand out more
- new window thump sounds with 70% chance of additional window "squeak" layer
- first set of new door thumps, we're planning to add a condition parameter to change the sound based on door condition
- some mix adjustments to wind/rain 
- added some fake occlusion for the zombie voices based on their character inside / outside states relative to the players inside outside state until the occlusion system rework
- adjusted balance of finish sound to make them pop out more
- "fixed" the timing issue of the stomp -> head smash delay by delaying the stomp sounds 200ms in general
- turned down drink from sink sound, that was too loud
- fixed the glass breaking sound being too low
- adjusted ambient bed mix to reduce general air backdrop loudness
- made birds / wildlife a bit more sparse
- tweaked the standard car engine a bit
- reduced the volume of the car damage layer
- Added multistagebuild.CompletionSound, the sound that plays when a wall is upgraded.
- minor tweaks and balance
- Fixed some ambient sounds being controlled by the Sound Volume slider instead of the Ambient Volume slider.
- Play the Painting sound when painting signs.
- Added optional ISBuildingObject.completionSound which plays when finishing a carpentry or metalwork action.
- Allow a food item's CustomEatSound script parameter to be an empty string to play no sound instead of the default eating sound.
 This can be used when the animation will play a sound at the right time, instead of starting the sound at the beginning of the action.
- Smoking cigarettes plays the Smoke sound once during each animation loop.
- Updated scripts with BuildMetalStructureXXX and BuildWoodenStructureXXX sounds (they are not implemented yet).
- Play a breaking-object sound when picking up furniture fails.

FIXES

- Fixed hotdrink not working with some mug + double recipes. (Reminder: you need a mug with water to start a hot drink)
- Fixed the selected container in the Loot window changing due to the player turning while transferring items.
- Fixed untranslated Perk names in halo text when a new level is attained.
- Fixed endurance not being drained due to running during "Walk To" movement (or any automatic movement).
- Fixed Lua error trying to play a CD/VHS with the controller.
- Fixed the hotbar remaining hidden after unplugging player #1's controller and reverting to keyboard and mouse.
- Fixed (hopefully) random textures appearing when displaying corpses for the first time.
- Fixed a Lua error with commit 7143 "Fixed the selected container in the Loot window changing"
- Fixed auto-zoom while in a vehicle not respecting the enabled Display zoom options.
- Fixed attaching trailers to vehicles that were removed from the world after being replaced by smashed versions.
- Fixed missing comma in FertilizerEmpty item script.
- Fixed collision properties of stair pillars not being set properly after constructing stairs.
- Fixed "Index -1 out of bounds for length 8" exception in FliesSound due to negative z corpse coordinates.
- Fixed the position of the rotate-item prompt in splitscreen.
- Fixed IsoStove.doSound() exception that happens when a running stove is destroyed by fire.
- Fixed rotate-item prompt appearing when using a controller.
- Fixed the tooltip for the farming cursor and wall-upgrade cursor not being hidden after shoving.
- Fixed missing Tooltip_item_StackWeight (got lost in community-translation update).
- Fixed the Survival Guide being displayed when using a controller; it doesn't work with it currently.
- Fixed the Training Materials button overlapping other text with 3x font size and many traits.
- Fixed missing "/" characters in the Log Wall context-menu tooltip.
- Fixed crafted double-door objects losing some properties when opened (in particular, the thumpSound).
- Fixed missing Tutorial zombie noise, but temporarily using old TutorialZombie sound
- Fixed replacing roofs_accents_xxx sprites with the wrong burned-roof sprites.
- Fixed the Smash Window action being immediately cancelled due to the controller B button being pressed.
- Fixed displaying a context menu of CD/VHS choices when dragging an item to the Device Options window. It is only needed when using a controller.
- Fixed being unable to wash a single bandage in a bag (it wasn't transferred to main inventory first).
- Fixed Joypad tutorial
- Fixed various aspects of tutorial where people were going wrong
- Fixed inventory pane no longer stuck open after nullify mouse drag in tutorial
- Fixed right click menu working after nullify mouse drag in tutorial
- Fixed duplicate issue in more places, when dropping on other locations (ISInventoryPane + ISInventoryPage) in tutorial
- Fixed inventory pane no longer stuck open after nullify mouse drag in tutorial
- Fixed right click menu working after nullify mouse drag in tutorial
- Fixed bandanas providing far too much head protection
- Fixed some containers being rendered high off the ground after being moved by the player.
- Fixed zombies rotating to face the player during hit-reaction and stagger-back animations. This usually happened when hitting zombies from behind.
- Fixed zombies climbing through windows that are behind them. This sometimes happened after the player shoved a zombie into a window.
- Fixed a Lua error in the main menu after deleting the last savefile. The Continue and Load buttons were hidden but still accessible using a controller.
- Fixed some wrong calcul when doing multistage building, ending doing a lvl1 wall, upgrade to lvl2 having more health than a "pure" wall lvl2.
- Fixed placed 3D items being removed by the SandboxOptions WorldItemRemovalList 
- Fixed furniture not appearing when in a stationary car - this was caused by an optimization. Furniture will now only disappear if cars are moving at a middle-high speed.
- Fixed the "infected" flag on body parts not being set to false after a wound heals.
- Fixed an issue placing 3D items with the Double-sized Textures option turned off.
- Fixed the hotbar remaining visible after hiding all UI elements.
- Fixed item container being set to nil in some cases.
- Fixed 1-frame delay before corpse textures appear.
- Fixed the stove-running sound not stopping sometimes with two-part stoves.
- Fixed ingredients not going back to their original container when using the Crafting window.
- Fixed ingredients not going back to their original container sometimes when doing "Craft All".
- Fixed duplicate context-menu "Rest" options for tents.
- Fixed some instances of zombies turning while lying on the floor - needs further feedback.
- Fixed (hopefully) an "invalid direction" exception in BrokenFences

I downloaded version 41.53 the other day and noticed that zombies seemed to be very difficult to shake.  I wasn't sure what was causing this at first, but after a little testing, I discovered that zombies have unlimited memory if the player maintains a direct line of sight with the zombie -- even if the player is well outside the zombie's sight range.
 
Observe:
 
In the above example, I aggro two zombies.  These zombies follow me some distance, then I take off running down the street in a straight line.  This is very important.  After a couple of blocks, I stop and wait.  Despite being well outside the zombie's sight range, they continue to follow.
 
After that, I get up, run down the street again and take a break after a few blocks.  This time, I run even further, and the zombies are still following!
 
Lastly, I run down the street, climb over several fences, all in a straight line and then take another break.  One of the zombies continues to follow, and shows up a minute or so later.  The second, zombie, after a quick check, apparently got hung up on something, but was still following me despite having traveled well outside of his sight capabilities!
 
 
 
Now on to the second example:  If the player does in fact break the line of sight, zombies will forget and no longer follow the player, as they should.  Re-entering a line of sight will not aggro said zombies, allowing the player to elude them like normal:
 
 
As far as I can tell, this has nothing to do with stealth, and only to do with line of sight.  In my proper game, I am playing a stealth character with utterly insane stealth stats (almost like stealth points are bugged...) and she is having the same problem.  Zombies continue to follow, no matter what, as long as a direct straight line is maintained -- regardless of how far away the zombies actually are.
 
Technical information:
No mods
IWBUMS 41.53
GoG Archival Version (not from GoG Galaxy)
Windows 7 Pro
 
Thanks for reading.

Hello all!
 
Last Thursday we released Build 41.54 to the IWBUMS public beta, and right now we’re working on a quick 41.55 patch (most likely released next week) so we can balance it from public feedback and fix up a few bugs.
 
Here’s what the changelist currently looks like, the highlights of which run as follows:
 
Adjustments to the new soundscape from Noiseworks – primarily in instances where gameplay messaging was getting lost in the sound mix and the zoom. Also: changes to the mix balance for reverb return/sends, rain surfaces, adjustment to camera zoom effect on world sounds, and some mix tweaks for too loud sounds. More 3D items, and some resized ones. Some animation smoothening for a few instances in which folk were getting unfairly killed Some much needed balance for the player’s ability to run through a crowd of zombies without being stopped or falling. Something fun for the vehicle modders (in an area that we won’t be covering as soon as we’d like ourselves) that top modder iBrRus prodded us about – which should see some cool new stuff appearing on the Workshop.
NOISEWORKS NEXT
Phase 2 of the Noiseworks is underway, and will be mixed into IWBUMS builds and patches as we go. Some aspects of it will require TIS-side code resources (like vehicle-related sounds, which we recognise could be improved) so will be addressed a little later down the line while we work elsewhere. That said there’s plenty of other cool stuff that will be dropping in from Noiseworks from build to build.
Of primary note for those with a favourite weapon that don’t sound quite right yet: far more individual sounds are on their way.
Right now weapons are divided between six different loosely-affiliated groups each with a generic set of Hit / Swing / Break sounds:
 
Blunt Metal Weapons (Light, Medium, Heavy) Blunt Wood Weapons (Light, Medium, Heavy) Blunt Plastic Weapons (Light Medium, Heavy) Blade Weapons (Light, Medium, Heavy) – these are used for small Axes as well Stab Weapons (Light, Medium, Heavy) Heavy Axes
These share a generic set of additional hit surface sweeteners, but right now in the game a generic one is used as default hit for impacts on metal/wood/plastic/stone surfaces, and a set of sweeteners for hit impacts on body/head surface (a gore layer).
 
We’re planning to extend these with additional surface sweeteners covering all in game surfaces for different weights, and additional impacts for bodyparts that fit the specific weapon type that aren’t generic – as they are at the moment. The more individual stuff that is added, the more accurate the noises of the various strikes and blows of the different weapons will be.
 
On top of this the NW gang will be adding new additional weapon sounds for all the special weapons like music instruments etc. and extending the current set for greater variety.
 
Also on the menu, meanwhile, is making world sounds inside buildings sound different based on relative elevation level to the player, and also to incorporate object condition to affect certain sounds like door bangs for instance.
 
Something else that will have far less of a generic catch-all soundbase will be with water-related sounds – right now water coolers don’t sound like water coolers, it doesn’t sound quite right when you are filling a bottle from a body of water and the like.

41.56+
Beyond what is (probably) next week’s patch there are many and varied different functions and features bubbling away – alongside, clearly, the Multiplayer Strike Force at General Arcade who are reporting continued good progress with their work that we’ll look more deeply into in the next dev blog.
 
In terms of SP additions, we have the entire map of (our version of) Louisville now ready to go into internal testing.
 
This does not mean it’s ready for public consumption (there’ll still be a lot to do with zoning, working out spawn stuff, new loot definitions for new stores, zombie heat maps etc etc) but it does mean that we will have boots on the ground looking for bugs and hunting out issues.
 
On top of this all the polish done on the current map, like the curved roads and general improvements to wilderness and shorelines, which will all get its first major runout too.
 
This will be a HUGE milestone for all our map team – Mash, Binky, Ayrton, Xeonyx and RingoD – and we’d like to thank all of them for their hard work even if we will initially be rewarding them with a big pile of bugs to fix.
 
Please note that the map being in internal testing will not necessarily mean it’s part of 41.56 / 41.57 or any other imminent-ish numbered build. It’s too early to say and there’s still a lot of work required to get it into the game proper.
 
We will also likely be overhauling connected systems, like spawn points, alongside it – and there’s a lot of other features we can and will be getting in earlier.
 
Primary amongst these is the new Foraging/Search function, which we are still steadily improving behind the scenes. Recent additions include the ability to spot the newly super-small 3D items like keys and berries within the same system, and a cool saturation effect in the world shader to make it clearer when the activity has been engaged.


 
We have also been considering tying the system to other ‘hidden’ things that are easily missed in the game, such as the hidden floorboard stashes currently connected to the discovery of annotated maps.
 
PZ ON THE GO
We got a present from kindly old Uncle Gabe in Seattle the other day.
PZ looks and sounds great on it, but there’s a few minor control issues that could do with some polish. We should have them licked in time for the launch though.
 

 
Thanks all!

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

Added Noiseworks Sound Revamp - Stage #1
Stage #2 is going to introduce a wider range for zombie voice sets as well as further improvements to the music and ambiance systems. Melee weapon SFX - currently mostly based on material rather than the weapon in question - will also get more specific to the weapons themselves; same goes for firearms. 
 
Added VHS, CDs etc.
- Added functionality and data for for Disks and Tapes. Data is stored in 'recorded_media.lua'.
- Media line effects will apply only once per player upon first time listening.
- Home VHS's spawn uniquely.
- Retail CD and VHS can have 'common', 'rare', 'very rare' spawn chance.
- Added learnRecipe method to gamecharacter. Adds the ability to learn recipes via the radio line codes.
- Added new translation file 'recorded_media_EN.txt'
    - This translation set keeps a translation of the english versions which can be retrieved seperatly.
    (needed for LCD which only supports basic ASCII chars)
- Added event 'OnInitRecordedMedia' to setup any recorded media data, see ISRecordedMedia.lua for modding.
- Added new Media UI section to device control panel.
- Added UI popup for disc's and tapes, some of them can show backcase info via the rightclick context menu.
- Removed item 'CDplayer' and added 'Radio.CDplayer' a portable device able to play CD's.
- Added ability to play media, RadioRed = CD, Black/Wide television = Tapes
- Changed display of overhead notifications for skills etc
    - Softer pastel colors and outlining, red for negative green for positive effect
    - Replaced skill/stat effect numbers by arrow up or down
- Small overhead text for skills and stats are no longer being displayed if there is no effect on their value.
- Removed overhead text code from ISRadioInteractions
- Added static class HaloTextHelper.java for more universal use of the overhead text.
- Added a few functions to add text, options for color and usage of the indicator arrows.
- If a text is already being displayed the next text is briefly queued.
- If multiple text are being added on same tick or while queueing they are combined and seperated with a grey ','.
- If a text is added which is already being displayed, it's discarded.
 
- Added world lights for flashing vehicle lights.
- Added animated flies texture displayed where corpse-flies are buzzing.
- Added new mugs
- Display read books in the character info panel ("Training Material"). This might move to the Crafting UI later on.
- Added highlighting to dragged items that can't be moved to the destination container.
- Added a loot-window container icon for mannequins as well as the container title "Mannequin".
- Added a context-menu command to empty a rain collector barrel onto the ground so it can be moved.
- Added a history of the last three catches to the Fishing menu. They will not fade out anymore. 
- Added the option to select a dedicated container for catches in the Fishing Menu. All catches will go to this container until full.
- Heart UI icon will shake when player character takes damage. It will stop shaking once the player is no longer losing health. 
- Draw a faint border around the player's health bar so the amount of lost health is easier to see.
- When crafting, items will be put back in their original container/bag. E.g. when adding Salt to a Salad, the salt will be grabbed from a counter, used, and put back.
  
- Upgrading walls (multi-stage building) takes items from the ground similar to carpentry.
    This includes opening boxes of nails automatically.
    For metal walls, propane will be used from multiple propane torches as needed. Only one propane torch needs to be in inventory, and it may be empty, as others will be used from the ground.
  
- Removed StopCar and HitByCar properties from one of the walls_exterior_house_01 south-east wall pillars.
    The properties were only on one of the several south-east wall pillars.
    This put "tree" physics on the center of the square.
    These pillars should be removed when one of the two adjacent walls is removed.
 
  
- Added 3D models for items placed in the world. 
    Right Clicking an item will show the "Place Item" option. This will display a rendered model of this item and highlight the square to know where it is being placed. On controllers, the item is currently always placed at the center of a square.
- Items automatically go on a table/counter if the mouse is over one of them.
- Press R to rotate clockwise, shift+R to rotate anti-clockwise.
- If you select multiple items and one does not have a 3D model yet, you'll simply drop it at your feet.
- Fixed rotation speed at different framerates.
- Added snapping to the nearest 5 degrees.
- Place items one at a time at the current rotation. 
- Shift-click to place all items. With a controller, the X button toggles between placing one or placing all.
- Improved lighting of 3d items in-world, to closer match the tiles lighting.
- Added rotation to the lighting in 3d items in world, before their lighting would rotate along with the item when rotated.
- Improved lighting on all 3d objects, characters, vehicles, items etc.
- Added "itemHeight" so players can place things on a microwave that is on a table for example.
- If you have a counter with a shelve on top of it, you can press tab to change the height of the item.
- Default "Iso Cursor Visibility" changed to 50% due to the regular cursor being hidden by default.
- 3D items can be disabled in the options.
 
- Table stories. Random chance to have some stuff on a basic home's table to tell a story.
- Multi-stage building QoL: Now if you upgrade a wall frame, wall, etc, you'll have the item displayed until you press ESC (like normal building), allowing to build multiples without having to use the right click context menu every time.
- Added a "Can't Sprint"-moodle which will appear when the character is unable to sprint. The moodle will shake for a bit when you can't sprint but try to.
 
Last Stand Compatibility changes:
- Player files are saved in Zomboid\Lua\LastStand instead of Zomboid\Lua\Players to avoid conflicts with Build 40.
- Player files have VERSION=1 at the top for compatibility with future versions of the game.
- Existing Build 41 player files will need to be moved into Zomboid\Lua\LastStand and add VERSION=1 at the top to work.
 
- The character-creation "Save" button dialog now fills in the name of the preset selected in the combobox, if one is selected.
- Require the player to be near a vehicle before the context menu displays refueling options to fix gas E.S.P.
- Changed the vehicle radial-menu icons for adding and removing gas (they were the same before).
- Added BaseTimedAction:setCurrentTime(). This is used by ISReadABook to set the start time based on the number of pages already read.
- Added blood and dirt stats to the Wash context-menu item tooltips.
- Added "Stack Weight" to inventory-item tooltips to show the total weight of a stack.
- Added a "Training Materials" button to the character Info panel. This displays a window with two tabs, one for skill books and another for magazines that teach recipes.
    For skill books, the item name is displayed in white once the player has read the book completely, or has gained the skill levels through other means.
    For magazines, the item name is displayed in white once the player knows all the recipes taught by the magazine.
- Updated/added Radio translations for Japanese, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese
 
 
BALANCE
 
- Allow plumbing a non-moved sink before the water shuts off if there is a rain barrel above. The water is still infinite for plumbed sinks before the water shuts off.
- Allow plumbing a sink to an empty rain barrel.
- Allow metal drums to be picked up with the furniture-moving tool.
- Allow pouring water into metal drums.
- Boosted loot spawns in stash.
- Display what perk just levelup up on top of the char (like exp gain from TV).
- Sheet ropes can now be attached to metal railings on balconies. (Currently doesn't work for fences on the south or east of a floor)
- Car wrecks appear less often, but can now be dismantled.
- Increased odds of curtains being already closed in houses.
- Holes will be added to clothing after the check for protection, meaning 100% protection will always defend you from a bite and lowered protection from a hole will only affect future attacks. Thanks to PseudonymousEd for pointing this out. 
- Shooting out of cars now has a more limited angle than the former 360°.
- Player will now be unable to control the car while reloading. 
- Reload time increased while driving.
- Control of the car is also lost when shooting rifles, but not with pistols.
 
Distribution changes:
- Updated distributions.
- Added a weightChance property, so you can try to make X spawn more than Y. Defines all the weight chance in said list (total can be over or under 100, doesn't matter).
- Added a forceForTiles property, this'll check that a specific tile exist on this container's square to spawn items from this distribution list (ex: force something in counter under a sink).
- Added a forceForRooms property, we'll check that a room specified in this list exists in the building of the container.
    Example: Police station has an "office" room with a desk, but we don't have ways to spawn more police themed items in their desk. 
    Simply define a new distrib PoliceOfficeDesk, and add a forceForRooms="policestorage" so if we detect a policestorage room in this building, we'll use PoliceOfficeDesk instead of a regular desk)
 
Changes to knives:
- If you're too close to a zombie but there's another zombie chasing you (thus not be able to do a jawstab) the character will shove instead of stabbing normally.
- Slightly reduced movement speed while attacking with knives, similar to other weapons.
- Reduced Hunting knife damage a tad.
 
- Balanced some clothings Speed Reduction and Protection to be more consistent.
- Small chance of having some house windows being left open.
- Curtains can now spawn closed.
 
 
MOD SUPPORT
 
- Added outfit zombie distribution (see example in Distributions.lua). Allows modders to add items to specific zombie outfits (e.g. bigger chance of finding ammo on police zombies, etc)
    Quick example, add Outfit_ in front of the outfit name, like Outfit_Generic01 and define your loot table.
- Added getters and setters to Recipe, Recipe.Result and Recipe.Source for mods.
- Added a system for respawning zombies on island maps (e.g., Kingsmouth).
    Normally when respawning zombies, a random location on the edge of the map is chosen as a start location.
    The game then attempts to find a path from that start location to the chunk that zombies are respawning in.
    This doesn't work for maps that have water on all edges, since paths cannot be found through water.
    Map creators may now specify valid start locations by adding objects to the map's objects.lua file.
    The objects.lua file is normally created by WorldEd.
    These objects are rectangular areas along edges of the island indicating respawn start locations.
    These objects should be right on the edge of the land next to the water (but not in the water).
    Alternatively, these objects may be put into a file called spawnOrigins.lua in the map's directory.
    This file has the same format as objects.lua. See Kingsmouth/spawnOrigins.lua for an example.
- Added ISLiteratureUI.SetItemHidden(fullType, hidden) function so mods can prevent items being displayed in the Training Materials ui.
 
 
FIXES
 
- Fixed being able to fish from swimming pools.
- Fixed the "randomAngle" field of a VehicleZoneDistribution always being false.
- Fixed triggering OnObjectLeftMouseButtonDown and similar events on objects that have been removed from the world.
- Fixed long braided hairstyles not pointing to correct hairstyle.
- Fixed belt not working as 3D item.
- Fixed buildings having more than one table story.
- Fixed issues adding water to and taking water from rain-collecting items on the ground.
- Fixed aiming cursor being less visible on light backgrounds.
- Fixed changed shader files not automatically being reloaded.
- Fixed an infinite loop occurring when require()'ing a Lua file recursively.
- Fixed "invalid direction" exception when a fence is broken by zombies.
- Fixed "VanAmbulance" instead of "Base.VanAmbulance" in RVSCarCrash.
- Tutorial: Fixed the dad zombie's eating sound not stopping after he stands up.
- Tutorial: Fixed the player getting stuck using the Open Curtain context menu option.
- Fixed RVSCarCrash.
- Fixed some container types.
- Fixed issues with automatically opening boxes of nails when doing carpentry.
- Fixed tainted-water status of metal drums with water in them.
- Fixed some vehicles not playing Lock/Unlock/IsLocked sounds for trunks.
- Fixed the game hitching every second while in a vehicle until zombies are near again.
- Fixed no sound playing when hitting objects with bare hands.
- Fixed a multithreading issue with keyboard input. This only affected entering text, not keyboard controls while playing.
- Fixed vehicle radio text staying onscreen after turning off the radio when not in the driver's seat.
- Fixed the player's animation locking up when charging with a spear after a zombie is hit.
    This happened when the "Manual Floor Attack" key was the same as the "Sprint" key.
- Fixed impact and death sound not playing when spear-charging a zombie.
- Fixed "Place Car Battery Charger" displaying for every item clicked on
- Fixed the "Plant Information" window not handling different font sizes.
- Fixed bomb explosion sounds not playing.
- Fixed the weapon swing sound not playing when using the "Smash Window" context-menu option.
- Fixed class-cast exception in Moodle caused by HumanCorpse updating Moodles.
- Fixed HumanCorpse update() getting called when zombie spawning is disabled, which caused a NullPointerException with Moodles.
- Fixed overlapping disease text in the Plant Information window.
- Fixed farming with a controller.
- Fixed some of the excessive head movement when swinging a spear.
- Fixed Lamp On Pillar losing it's battery and on/off state upon reloading. This raises the WorldVersion to 183.
- Fixed rendering the isocursor and aim-outline in splitscreen.
- Fixed the position of the vehicle dashboard in splitscreen with more than two players.
- Fixed conditions of cooking vessels resetting the condition when adding water and rice or pasta. 
- Fixed Welding Masks getting soaked in the rain.
- Fixed Thick Skinned and Thin Skinned incorrectly calculating the chance to do damage from zombies.
- Fixed being unable to remove Thin Skinned using the Player Stats debug ui.
- Fixed Lua error after removing a trait in the Player Stats debug ui.
- Fixed showing zero-cost traits such as Axeman as "bad" when adding traits in the Player Stats debug ui.
- Fixed setting the Occlusion FMOD parameter to simulate the Hard Of Hearing trait, since it is now done in FMOD Studio.
- Fixed infinite carry capacity after making rotten-strawberry salad.
- Fixed the layout of the microwave and oven UIs with different-sized fonts.
- Fixed Lua error wobbling the non-existent heart icon of splitscreen players.
- Fixed endurance being reduced while holding down the Run key when not moving.
- Fixed misplaced halves of Large Modern Oven in one orientation.
- Fixed not being able to barricade carpentry Wooden Door.
- Fixed the layout of ISAlarmClockDialog with larger fonts.
- Fixed ISTabPanel:getWidthOfAllTabs() when equal tabs widths are used.
- Fixed native-code exception when opening the Option screen. This was a bug in GLFW.glfwGetKeyName().
- Fixed animation and sound issues when attacking zombies that are eating corpses
- Fixed VehicleAmbiance using the wrong event name.
- Fixed the vehicle horn continuing to play after the switch-seat ui is displayed while honking.
- Fixed Radio items without a WorldSprite being assigned an invalid module.type.
- Fixed duplication bug when crafting from containers.
- Fixed not being able to make coffee and tea with the Spiffo mug.
- Fixed hot beverage not being hot right after it is crafted.
- Fixed hot and cold drinks not giving a happiness bonus.
- Fixed not being able to tie a rope to player-made windows (gracias dito!)
- Fixed ranger car siren light colour.
- Fixed annotated map loot not always spawning when it should.
- Fixed crash when trying to go forwards & backwards at the same time in a car.
- Fixed Firearm Radial Menu coming up when any ISBuildingObject cursor is already displayed.
- Fixed trying to play multiple instances of WorldAmbiance since only one is allowed.

 
TECHNICAL
 
- Added a bunch of performance probes to IsoCell.renderTiles to help track down the inner-most causes of the performance lagging issue.
- New class: PerformanceProfileProbeList
    Allows us to have arrays of performance probes, suitable for profiling arrays of code blocks, like with IsoCell.renderTile layers.
- Added a few WorldDictionary.DebugPrintItem calls to some functions to help find some mod problems
- Moved updating some global FMOD parameters out of IsoPlayer into AmbientStreamManager.


________________________________________


Additional Hotfix:

- Fixed small clock
- Fixed DrinkingFromBottle sound continuing forever after the action completes.
- Fixed the Training Materials button overlapping other text with 3x font size and many traits.

Good progression! Thank you for the hard work! 

Hey all, it’s an MP Strike Force update blog this week – so here’s the latest from the test server.
 
We now have three coders from General Arcade working on Build 41’s multiplayer – alongside two dedicated QA operatives. Work primarily takes place in GA territory with regular code top-ups from the in-dev 41 codebase, though there’s clearly a lot of communication between our relevant QA and organisational peeps.
 
First off then, here’s a quick update from someone who has been playing it more than most – multiplayer QA chap Oleg. Welcome to the blog, Oleg!
 
“Multiplayer is quite solid at the moment. There are no critical errors that would lead to a crash, data loss or anything like that. I’ll be honest, right now it’s far more interesting for me to play in MP than on my own!”
 
“At this exact moment we’ve got some smaller problems with zombie corpses, synchronization of various animations and many and varied other issues popping up from areas throughout the MP game – so there is certainly still something to work on.”
 
“The difference between the game that myself and Mikhail started playing two months ago when we started QA and now is pretty big. In terms of the smoothness and synchronization of the movement of the characters, most of the animations, how pvp feels – all this stuff has changed for the better.”

“Big thanks to Yuri, Andrei and Aleksandr – and of course to TIS’s Sasha who has been a great go-between answering questions and raising issues between the teams!”
 
So that’s the baseline stuff but, as Jennifer Aniston once said in a commercial that half of the people reading this blog are too young to remember, “here comes the science”. Over to Yuri.
 
“Our focus this month has been in improving the synchronization of zombies between different players, and also in PvP.”
“Our QA team has been spotlighting bugs, and right now the majority of them aren’t zombie or player character related – but are in other areas of the game that need polish like throwable weapons/items, vehicles etc.”

“As such the focus of our next month of work will likely be in turning to these issues and fixing them up to raise the overall playability.”
 
So, right now, everything seems to be ticking over and on-track. We should have a clearer overall picture when we put out the next MP blog.
Some of the individual items fixed recently:
 
Zombies didn’t have the ‘alerted’ animation in MP when they heard a sound, leading to various issues and it not looking as good. Character sync accuracy was increased. The remote character makes less extra movements when turn around. Standing characters are now on the same square on all clients due to setJustMoved and isJustMoved functions being added. Further improvements to positioning through prediction points when players turn around, a new PZMath.roundFromEdges function and the threshold for starting and ending remote character movement being reduced. The algorithm for calculating the forecast of the player’s position has also been changed. Many and varied new debug tools Fixed gunshots happening twice at the end of zed bites.
    Many PvP upgrades and improvements starting with the calculation of damage in PVP – meaning that the game uses BodyDamage instead of Health for player hits now. Addition of sync for falling players in PVP. Fixed clothing on zombies sometimes disappearing after being killed. Fixed issues with bomb devices not causing damage to zombies. Calculation of damage from bombs had to be moved from server to client. Fixed an issue in which some zombies were not visible to the other player. Refactored a loooot of complicated things that the blog writer could not hope to understand.
    Zombies could get up if the remote player hit  the zombie first. Remote clients would see the zombie on the ground in different poses after each hit. Desynchronization when one player enters the an area where certain events caused by another player had already happened – for example if a zombie was on the ground, and a new player appeared the zed wouldn’t be lying down.
   
41.54


We are currently finalising 41.54 for a release to the IWBUMS public beta. The biggest items of note in this are the full Noiseworks sound revamp, the new VHS system and the placeable 3D models. You can read the full current changelist here.
 
Foraging needs some more time in the oven at the moment so that is being put back to a later build we’re afraid, while we are currently at 90% of our available 3D items sized, imported, tested and signed off – with the full range of food items most recently mixed in.
We’d like the full list of these in-game, and some important bug fixes, to go in before we release. So we’ll see where we have gotten to next week. Fingers crossed it’ll be good to go.
 
In the meantime here’s a quick vid of a wintry scene to whet your whistle.
 

Likewise we gave a key to the Noiseworks build to our good friend (and total PZ noob) Dean Cutty in the run up to 41.54’s release, and this is what emerged.
 

RJ would also like it mentioned that this week he’s also put in a nerf to the current 360 degree shooting from cars, will only allow shooting with one-handed guns when the car is in motion and other such weapons/driving polish.
 
NEXT BUILD
Also underway currently is the second phase of our work alongside Noiseworks, the amazing sound team redesigning our soundscape. This work will effectively straddle 41.54, which contains many of the new sounds mentioned below, and 41.55. Over to NW’s Michael Klier for some details on this.
 
“The next phase of the Zomboid sound overhaul will add new content to many other areas of the game – with our emphasis on the stuff heard most often by players while they play. There’s additional foley for player actions like climbing fences, tripping over obstacles, carrying heavy bags, cooking, smoking, UI sounds for map interactions… the list goes on.”
 

“We will also be adding new zombie voice sets, and the zombie voices in the context of hordes will be improved upon.”
 
“On top of this we will be adding even more content for melee weapons when it comes to weapon-specific hits/impacts to further build upon the general/generic melee set that was covered in the phase 1. The same will go for the firearms, which will have more specific weapon sounds for each available firearm as well as additional foley for things like shell drops. We are also currently redesigning some of the current firearms, like the shotgun, from internal tester feedback.”
 
“Something we want to include and redesign, but which will involve a fair degree more work with the TIS coders, is how sounds are affected by obstacles in the world. We want this to have more realistic behaviour, so sounds get occluded more or less based on the properties of the occluding obstacles.”
 
“Inside buildings for example, sounds should be occluded differently depending on there is a concrete wall between a zombie or the player or if there’s a wooden wall. In 41.54 the occlusion is a catch-all – if there’s something in between the player the sound is occluded.”
 
“And last not least the ambiance and music systems will further be improved upon.”
 
TILL NEXT TIME
Pat_Bren’s mod blog will return next week spotlighting on the remarkable Daegu map and our amazing Korean community, while in two weeks’ time the dev blog should be covering some of the 41.55 content we’re currently working on including a pretty cool cartographic feature. Till then!

 
 
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!

What should we expect to see in 41.54?

Thank you for the hard work! hype for the 41.54 update!

Talented screenshotter!
 
This update will not go live this week, no.
 

Always the same story with Indiestone. Having updates and stuff but never updates pushed
 
Getting a strong hatred towards you for having so much good stuff that just keep coming! But we just have to wait and wait! Most games today get worse and worse for every update but PZ we claw after updates like they where BRAINS!
 
I want curved roads and stuff! And the best for Indistone! Get 41 done so the game bloom up!
 
 

Good Progress, love the CD and TV tape feature, can't wait! 

Thank you for your hard work! 

What should we expect to see in 41.54?

How do all, let’s get on into it.
MP WORK
This week we were excited to welcome a new MP Strike Force team member into the ranks from General Arcade. Aleksandr comes to us with a lot of experience in Java projects, and will be working alongside Yuri and Andrei for the foreseeable future.
 
Whereas before our own team of testers and volunteers were putting the MP build through its paces, now the TIS team are working on mainline SP releases we have also separated testing duties – and GA have their own branch and testing channel populated by two other bright, shiny new faces – Oleg and Mikhail.
 
This allows us to concentrate on the more imminent 41 releases (Noiseworks, 3D items etc) while allowing General Arcade to come to us with cleaner builds for wider internal testing when the time is right – as opposed to our previous weekly TIS-side sessions.
 
Recent work has concentrated on combat between zombies and groups of players, though the guys have also hooked up a few things like thrown objects etc that had been left untouched thus far. As in the current build the latter still looks like the jankest thing in the game currently, but will do for now until we have time to input throwables that at least look like they obey the laws of physics.
 
“Last month we implemented a system in which zombies would visibly react to hits from their target player, but attacks from other players present would only create splashes of blood and drops in health” explains Yuri. “Unfortunately, this didn’t look good at all. You never felt that you’d hit the zombie if you weren’t its target, as it wouldn’t play a reaction animation.”
 
“As such, we allowed the zombie animated reactions to all players – but made it so that the super-close zombies within 5 in-game metres of their target would be far less likely to be distracted by other players. To add some texture to this, however, zombies also now have an aggro level – meaning that if attacked sufficiently within a short time interval a zed closing in on its target will change its target. The server now calculates aggro level for each zombie and sends a ZombieControl packet to change the owner.”
 
“We also put a lot of work into our syncing of zombies falling to the ground – which when allowed to happen out of time can lead to increased desync. Our first implementation was working fine for solo players, but when multiple players were attacking zeds the fall position was being rewritten and there was confusion between all the different clients. We believe we now have a solution for this by concentrating on the attacks of the target player, which the team are now testing.”
 
“We have also been fixing bugs discovered by our QA team, like players not being able to kill each other, debugged issues of corpse teleport, worked on various aspects of throwables that were not already implemented and many other issues.”
 
  NEXT 41
We don’t want to mix in too much more to the upcoming 41.54 version of the IWBUMS public beta feature-wise, as it’s already pretty packed. Likewise we also need to make sure that everything going into the 3D items behaves visually and performance-wise, so it’s going to be at least two weeks away most likely.
 
This said we are SUPER jazzed by how the 3D items are looking in-game, and look forward to being able to provide more varied in-game starting / zed story scenes to bring more variety to the map.
 

 
Please check out the entirety of this vid showing a player-decorated safehouse, and also note that since this was taken RJ has added in first iteration of a system that allows you to drag an item from your inventory and place it more accurately on the floor, and to rotate the item using the R key.
 
WIP NOTICE: You may notice when the camera is panned the 3D objects don’t match the 2D tile positions perfectly. This has been a longstanding issue with vehicles and zombies, but has never really been this noticeable as there’s been less of it to see on-screen. We’re setting Zac and his magical maths abilities on this fix tomorrow, and will also be looking to match the lighting of the 3D objects closer match the 2D tiles before release. Despite all this, we hope you’ll agree that it looks awesome.
 
  Oh, also clearly there’s Noiseworks sounds in here now too – we’ve covered the revamped PZ soundscape enough in the past now, but everything the NW team have done up to this point is now in the internal test build.
 
Phase two of their work is starting next week, alongside fixes and required changes brought up by our internal testers and agreed by the core team. Here’s a quick ‘latest’ vid on that front. (There’s some debate internally on the shotgun ‘bang’ noise – so please treat that aspect as WIP for now.)
 
 
 
Other smaller fun/necessary stuff going into 41.54 will be:
 
A fix for those pesky framerate chugs you can get after long journeys in a vehicle (hurrah!) Visible flies over corpses (and, later, rotten food etc)  
 
Some required nerfs to knife-fighting QoL improvements to multi-stage building Better lighting effects from emergency lights, to go along with the better Noiseworks sirens. (Sirens not playing in this vid, but oh well it looks good)  
 
On top of this there’ll also be Turbo and Pat_Bren/Will’s VHS and CD entertainment system – which we’ve covered in previous blogs and is also now in testing.
 
Pat and Will (but mainly Pat, in all truth) have provided 3900 new lines for the new system, which should keep the translators busy.
 
ALL THINGS LOUISVILLE
As we’ve mentioned before, our PZ version of Louisville is now certainly on the horizon – so we thought it might be a good idea to check in with our map team to provide you with a clearer idea of what to expect when it does arrive.

Q. To what extent is Louisville based on reality?
A. Mash:
 
“Initially Binky made the general layout follow reality for the most part, but from that base I took some liberties- some larger than others. For gameplay reasons I wanted to have our (necessarily smaller scale) LV to encompass the types of neighbourhoods you might encounter in any city: the “bad neighbourhood”, the “business district”, the “rich area”.”
 
“As such, the locations of these are not at all based on the real Louisville. For one thing, the city on our map is much smaller (though still relatively huge), so we couldn’t really adhere to reality. The main goal was to make map exploration more fun and engaging, and having varied neighbourhoods that might not be totally realistic but makes organic sense within the map is part of that.”
 
“I think there won’t be much recognition of Louisville and it feeling just like the real world one when you are exploring it on the ground, but that said you will see some recognizable buildings here and there, such as City Hall.”
 
“We are also taking some inspiration from real world districts when we are designing some of our own, for example I know that Xeonyx has loosely based our version of NE Louisville (home of our new Grand Ohio Mall) on the St. Matthews district east of real world LV, and his old town district around Fossoil Field is based off the real world’s Smoketown and Phoenix Hill.”
 
“As I said previously however, in terms of being close to reality it’s better to think of our version of Louisville to be closer to our more recent additions to the map, rather than having the veracity of places like Muldraugh and West Point”

 
Q. How does it differ when you’re designing a city, as compared to when you created PZ’s smaller towns?
A. Mash:
 
“The size of the city and the new map makes things exponentially more complicated, which led us to choosing to knuckle down on identifiable themed neighbourhoods which would benefit a game like PZ more clearly. From this we then had to make sure it transitioned from one area to another in a way that made some sort of sense. The smaller towns are, for the most part, fairly uniform in feel within each individual location.”

 
Q. Clearly with PZ you are limited to seven storeys and a rooftop – is it frustrating not being able to go higher?
A. Mash:
 
“I think things are pretty relative, and since buildings are only 1-3 storeys in other locations, the 7 storey buildings of our Louisville give a good sense of size and, I think, allow for pretty identical gameplay as if the game had even taller buildings.”
 
A. Xeonyx
“To me, being limited to 7 stories isn’t really a problem. It doesn’t negatively affect gameplay, and the buildings offer a nice mix of high risk/high reward while still retaining the feeling of a large city.”

 
Q. What are your favourite new buildings and locations?
A. Mash:
 
“Some of my favourite buildings I want to leave as a surprise, but one of my favourite areas is the university area.”


  A. Xeonyx
“The scale and design of Louisville offers many new playstyles and challenges to experience, but if I were to pick a favorite new location, it’d be a tie between the gritty industrial district, and the South Louisville district which was designed to be similar to the real life Auburndale district.”

NEW NOLAN MOD
Some areas that we are very aware that PZ needs some improvement in are those related to accessibility – some stuff we’re okay at, some stuff needs a lot of love.
 
For this reason we just wanted to take a second to highlight Nolan’s new mod – which will be of massive help to those who are hard of hearing.
 
Likewise it’ll probably be handy for those who like to PZ while doing another activity, watching TV or similar, where you’re not always glued to your speakers for audio cues and clues.

So, all in all, if this is something that you need improved in PZ, then for now please please check out the Sound Direction Indicator. Thanks Modding Hero Nolan!

  Thanks everyone next week we’ll have a Mod Spotlight on that beautiful creature Filibuster Rhymes, and in the dev blog following that there’ll be lots more goodies including a first full look at TIS newbie Eris’ awesome improved foraging system.
 
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!

Afternoon all. Here’s where we’re at with life and love in Kentucky.
 
IWBUMS PUBLIC BETA
Last Monday we released Build 41.51 to the IWBUMS public beta, which was then followed by a 41.52 patch the following Thursday.
This update was a general mixture of changes, fixes, balance that had been building up over the six months we were working on MP before deciding it needed extra time – while also providing some important foundational updates to the underlying systems that the game runs on and some advances in optimization.
 
Given the breadth of things covered in the patch and the java/lwjgl upgrades we were expecting a few bugs, and got a few bugs, but overall things went quite smoothly – and a final patch to clear up residual issues is releasing today.
 
Many thanks also to all the modders who have worked so hard to update their wares alongside the new version – your toil is appreciated by gamers, game developers and everyone in-between.
 
41.53 contains a few things but primarily the following:
 
A fix to a longstanding bug that has always prevented us from having the mouse cursor disappear when you prepare for a melee strike – leaving only the iso-cursor is visible. We have always wanted this fixed as it will mean that new players find it easier to adjust to PZ’s combat.

If you find this fix weird/annoying then we have also added a Display option to toggle it back to how it was before: “Show Mouse Cursor While Aiming”.
  Usual curtain/sheet service is now resumed. HOWEVER we reserve the right in future to swap this over to making sheets lootable in more logical locations like on beds, or spawn more readily in bedroom wardrobes. You will now be able to turn off the alarm on your watch via the clock UI. Various items of Mod Support, including a check for a change necessitated by our MP work that should help in terms of getting mods such as SuperSurvivors working again.
  There are a few things that we need from you in terms of feedback from the 41.51 – 41.53 builds also.
 
Primarily, we would like to hear about loot balance across all the different loot scarcity settings. How have recent changes impacted on your game? Are you finding too much or too little of your required items?
 
We would also like to hear back from our Mac players – how is the game launching for you? We have improved aspects of your game display but our Mac tester pool is quite shallow so need to hear from some more voices.
 
NEXT: NOISEWORKS
Barring any further fixes to the IWBUMS Public beta our next step will be to mix some of our game features that have been kept in a holding pattern over the past few months into our internal test build.
 
First and foremost in this will be our Noiseworks sound revamp, which you have seen a bunch of over the past few months in blogs – but just in case you’re out of the loop here’s a quick thunderstorm video. (Be sure to spin on to the middle of the video for when the storm really gets going if you choose to watch.)
 

We anticipate a few weeks of testing, rebalancing and fixing alongside the Noiseworks team once their work is in the internal test build.
Beyond this we have already arranged for ‘Round two’ of their work in which the Noiseworks crew will adjust anything that needs improving from the initial integration.
 
They will also work on improving (by a lot) the systemic music integration, and some of the sounds that are still missing like fence climbing, tripping, painting, plastering, farming, improved gear shifts and more in vehicles etc. They will also record some more rabid SFX for sprinters, and many many other things all on our shared spreadsheet.
 
NEXT: VHS AND ‘WELCOME PAT’
As mentioned last time, we are expanding our ‘in-game entertainment’ options by moving a lot of our existing TV and radio content onto playable (well, legible) CDs and VHS tapes that can be looted throughout the world.
 
We hope this will end a reliance on tuning into Life & Living for established players, and also allow those starting at times later than the first week to access any broadcast-based bonuses.

No new video from Turbo this week, but this also means that we can announce the first of two ‘new people!’ announcements for this blog.
The resplendent Pat_Bren, famed throughout these lands for his mod blogs, has a writing style and sense of humour that more than matches our existing writer – and as such he has been on-hand writing a wide variety of movies, TV shows, audio books and Kentucky residents recording themselves on camcorder.
 

This is being mixed in with new content from Will, and a bunch of our existing broadcast content, and should provide some colour for your more idle moments of survival. In all there’s 31 movie VHS tapes, 8 different TV shows with five episode seasons, 22 episodes of ‘Skill TV’, 75 home-recorded VHS tapes, 26 audiobooks and 27 music CDs.
 
We hope that this will add some colour to your survival adventures, making our 90s VHS rental stores feel a bit more real, and also provide some evidence of the former lives of the zombies that you are murdering.
 
ALONGSIDE THE ABOVE
The above two features are dead certs to be mixed into the internal test build once the IWBUMS beta is fully patched up. Here’s a few other items that’ll be going in alongside ‘em.
 
Zombie Outfit loot distribution system to give modders some new opportunities, and also for us to force-spawn certain items on our costume zeds – revolver, bullets etc. definitely on a cop zed for example. Better light bar and siren functionality for police cars, ambulances etc. to go alongside the new Noiseworks SFX Improved item categorization and sorting in inventory windows Improved fishing menu and fish catch options and catch history
  ALSO INCOMING: 3D ITEMS
The 3D objects made by Rockstar Mark are currently being implemented by RJ, though there’s still a fair amount of work to go on them so they might not arrive alongside all the above.
 
Here are a few WIP screens from our existing Zed Stories to show how things will start looking in future builds.
 

WELCOME ERIS
Many players will know Eris from her fabulous mini-map mod, and we’re delighted to say that she will be joining the PZ team.
Behind the scenes we’ve been seeing her work on an excellent improvement to our existing foraging system – in which players have to actively move between foraging spots in woodland rather than click through the UI.
 
It’ll take some time to get her hooked up to the PZ mainframe and to convert the mod, but right now it looks a little like this.
 
It’s our intent that Eris will be joining RJ in future endeavours to bring this kind of interactivity to all the zomboid survival mechanics, which is a direction we’ve wanted to move toward for a long time. At the moment a lot of mechanics involve operating the right click menu and waiting a lot which (while functional) does not offer any real ‘gameplay’.
 
RJ has made some initial steps toward this with his quality of life improvements to farming, but our plan is to go further in areas like farming, fishing and construction:  mixing some basic player skill and decision making alongside, and augmented by, the character’s skills.
 
Our overall plan is to make all the individual survival systems have a lot more meat to them: make them more fun, give you more satisfaction and involvement, and make them far less laborious and menu-ey. Eris popping up with her foraging overhaul was perfectly timed and showed she would be a great addition to the team to bring this into the game.
 
That’s all for now, next week we’ll have another mod blog from the dainty fingertips of Pat_Bren. The Thursday beyond that we’ll have the latest on MP dev alongside where we’re at with all the features mentioned above and maybe a few more. Thanks all!
 
—————
 
This week’s desperate last stand from Feiticeira Supervixen. 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!

Please keep up the good work! You guys rock!

Some people just don't understand the pipeline of game development.
 
I was worry about the connection and lag issue, but at least you guys found a way that seems work isn't it?
 
can't wait for the next post! 
 
I am also very interested about the plan for the next 2 , 3 years.
 
I know NPC and wild animal is one of the plan, but I would like to know more detail about it.
 
Much thanks! 

3044 footstep sound?! Noisework Rock!!!

The sound effect looks great! syn up with animation is fantastic!

Love the main theme adjustment, if PZ have a boss enemy, this theme will be suit when fighting him. 

Can't wait for the sound update, keep up the good work!

What is this?! I want MP!!!!

Just kidding, thanks for the update and hard work guys!

IMPORTANT TO NOTE:
 
Project Zomboid IWBUMS beta update 41.51 contains significant optimizations to our save game system. As such any saved games played in 41.50 will NOT be operational.
 
A separate Steam beta containing the previous 41.50 build has been provided so that you can continue and finish your current game.
 
Similarly, in a changelist as big as this some mods WILL become incompatible.
 
If you enjoy playing modded PZ then please consider using the provided 41.50 beta to allow the creators of your favourite mods some time to update to 41.51.
 
This version also sees some of the foundational aspects of PZ updated to more recent versions - with it now running on Java 15 and LWJGL 3.2.3. These have, and will in future, give us access to many new optimizations and engine features.
 
Although any incompatibilities found in our testing group have been fixed, some issues may occur on outlier system set-ups, so please report any misbehaviour to us!
 
If 41.51 fails to run then please make sure you are not running an non-updated version of Windows 10, as the 64 bit version of 41.51 is incompatible with some older versions. The game should account for this, and choose not to load incompatible optimization features, but this might still be an advisable first step on a failed launch.

NEW/QOL
 
Now running on Java 15
Now running on latest LWJGL (3.2.3)
 
- Previously, to seed/water/harvest, you needed to right click on every plant and select an action. Now once you selected seeds, water or harvest, you'll have a cursor to water multiple plants easily.
- Shift+double click can now be used on clothing items in the inventory to wear the item
- Newest earned skill level is now highlighted when the skill panel is opened
- Added filter icon to inventory panel to add additional filter/sorting options, currently has 'weight'
- Water source now displayed in parentheses for the Drink/Wash option (partially to diagnose issues with puddles and rain)
- Analog watches no longer have alarms
- Digital watch display now has alarm button that can be pressed on the UI
- 'Saliva only' transmission option - player is immune to scratch infection
- Added tooltip to show which gun magazine will be filled
- Required items to cure plants and crops now shown.
- Zombies faceplanting on broken glass now get lots of blood on head/neck, and some on upper torso.
- Alarm clocks now display the same bell as digital watches when an alarm is set.
- When trying to repair a door on a vehicle through the mechanics menu, a tooltip appears telling the player that they need to uninstall the door before they can repair it. They can also then repair the doors from their inventory.
- When pressing Shift+E from any passenger door you will then move straight through to the driver's side if no one is already there.
- Added more smashed car models.
- Zombies can now pathfind through destroyable objects. They prefer to go around, but if there is no other path, they'll thump on walls and crates, etc.
- Added brazilian portugese radio translations
- Added hair gel. Mohawk will now be flatten if you wear a hat. Now need hair gel to fix it.
- Added new options to add padding/patch holes on garments. This will patch any holes if there are some and then add padding to the other parts.
- Added a remove all padding/patches option.
- Added small XP gain when ripping clothing/sheets. Gaining small amounts of XP when you recieve some thread back from items so it can't be abused.
- Added sandbox option for decay of items that are knocked off / fall off zombies
- Added some variety to crashed cars
- Use a cursor to choose which walls or objects to paint or plaster, when using the mouse and keyboard. This cursor was already used when playing with a controller.
- Added a combobox to Items List Viewer to choose which splitscreen player to give items to.
- Hats/Gloves added to the remove/decay list. Default also now set to 24 hours.
- Updated Korean fonts and translations, and updated community translations.
- Added "Please check PZ Steam betas for version 41.50." for WorldVersion 175 saves.
- Require Windows 10 version 1803 (build 17134) or greater to enable the newer garbage collector, earlier versions will just run without it and not receive the optimization.
- Added TrailerCover to VehicleDistributions.
- Allow trailer bodywork to be repaired by welding.
- Added a cursor for removing bushes, plants and wall-vines.
- Replace north-west corner wallframes with two separate wallframe objects (the first time they are loaded). The player can't upgrade the north-west corner objects.
- Car stories can now spawn decomposed zombies corpses.
 
MODELS AND ANIMS

- Added long hair style for when wearing hats
- Adjusted some clothes to accommodate new long hat hairstyles
- Adjusted a couple of female hats
- Tweaked female long hat hair to stop pixel flickering
- Added some new hairstyles
- Added some Braided hairstyles
- Adjusted some hairstyle definitions as they were pointing to a non-existent hairstyle and subsequently were invisible when wearing some hats.
- replaced the 'land gentle' anim with the heavier landing
- tweaks to turn 180 anims, first pass
- adjusted Zombie_Idle_FloorOnBack.X pose to match zombie death anim
 
BALANCE

- Added butter knives stuck in zombies.
- Reduced number of hunting knives stuck in zombies.
- Lowered zombie survivor in horde spawning rate.
- Lowered chance of alice pack on survivor zombies.
- Increased beef jerky nutrition values.
- Balanced weight of ammo/ammo box to be more consistent/logical (box weight is bit less than the full bullets stack)
- Dead animals (except rat/mouse) give unhappiness when you eat them raw, just cook them to remove that (tooltip was added to explain).
- White display counter (mainly in butcher shop) now also acts as fridge
- Added more tailoring books to kitchen.
- Added rifles in shed/garage.
- Zombies now do more damage to fences when crowding against/over them
- Now possible to recover and repair a weapon used in Spear creation
- M36 Revolver now only has capacity for five rounds
- Character can now auto-open nail boxes
- Beer can now returns an empty can after it's drunk
- Cockroaches and Grasshoppers can now be used to bait the StickTrap
- Tuna Can no longer requires a Can opener to be opened
- Increased health points of player built walls.
- Reduced the engine force & total speed of going in reverse with a car.
- Adding more items to partially consumed crafted foods will add new food values to original food, not partially consumed one
- Berries salad now reduces thirst
- Lowered amount of water in a bleach bottle.
- Increased recoil of pistols/revolver.
- Increased chance of creating crawler when hitting zombies with cars.
- Park Ranger/Lumberjack profession now gives a bonus to walking through trees.
- Leg fractures now reduce speed according to their severity.
- Splints increase walk speed with a fracture, depending on the doctor's Medical level.
- Can now add salt and pepper to sandwiches.
- Zombies spawning on vehicles stories now have high chance of having a key to a related vehicle.
- Increased the effect of injuries on sprint speed.
- Increased "wash vehicle" time.
- Crashing a car into objects can now damage the engine if hood condition is too low.
- Bags in hands/equipped now reduce run speed and walk speed. The more full the bag is, the bigger the slow down. Equipped bags in 2nd hand can also reduce combat speed.
- Fuel stations no longer have unlimited fuel.
- Added sandbox option under World category "initial fuel station gas", ranging from "Empty" to "Full" with "Low/Very High" etc. in between
- It takes a minimum of two zombies climbing over a fence at the same time to damage the fence. Metal fences take half the damage as wooden fences.
- Made firefighter clothing slightly heavier and increased their Run and Combat Speed Modifier accordingly.
- Lowered fanny pack capacity
- Increased empty gas can weight from 0.3 to 1.5.
- Added bullet defense in clothing tooltip.
- Some knives (mainly Stone Knife) slightly reduced in damage.
- Athletic trait now excluded when selecting Very Underweight.
- Adjusted weight of ammo boxes.
- Made tents thumpable so zombies can destroy them.
- Wooden wall frames placed by the mapper become IsoThumpables that can be upgraded, like user-placed ones.
- Did some balance on sneak/lightfoot exp gain: you now need to be rather close (15 tiles) from a zombie to gain exp, you also need to not be targetted by a zombie.
- Decreased damage done to feet when walking barefoot.
- Decreased damage done by trees when walking through them.
- Increased chance of spawning feeding zeds.
- Decreased chance of feeding zeds spotting you
- Set all bandana weight to 0.1.

PRE NOISEWORKS SOUND CHANGES

- Preload sample data ahead of time so that sounds can play immediately when started.
- Fixed some sounds randomly starting muted due to the Occlusion parameter not being re-initialized to the correct value.
- Don't set Occlusion to 1.0 as that seems to completely mute some sounds.
- Pause music when the game is paused.
- Fixed the BreakObject sound not playing when destroying carpentry objects.
 
DEBUG

- Added context menu option "[DEBUG] UIs > Spawn Points" for teleporting the player to various spawn points to check their positions.
- Added a context-menu to the "[DEBUG] UIs > Spawn Points" editor.  This can be used to reposition and remove existing points.
 To save the changes, use the "Copy All To Clipboard" menu option and paste in the appropriate spawnpoints.lua file.
- Added a separate menu "[DEBUG] Vehicle > Set Script (Smashed)" for smashed vehicles.
- Allow deleting map_zone.bin from the "More..." load-game ui in debug mode.

LOOT DISTRIBUTION CHANGES
 
Partially implemented new system - as yet untouched loot tables remain the same as before.
 
New more handcrafted loot placement / container system used for places like Giga-Mart and residential kitchens now applied to the rest of the map. Locations that previously spawned random grab-bags of loot (like Spiffo’s) should have their contents sorted into relevant lists: If you’re looking for a bladed weapon or some fresh-cut chops, try looking around the kitchen of any place that sells meat (i.e, not a bakery) for the meat-cutting station. If it’s baking supplies you need, look for where the sacks of flour are stored-- they’ll probably be next to a rolling pin.

Convenience stores, corner stores, and gas stations have had their shelves’ contents sorted so loose cigarettes no longer mix with the lollipops. Players who visit the pharmacy already have an idea of how the shelves are laid out: Some have snacks, some have drinks. You’re less likely to find medicine in a gas station but it’s not unheard of-- ditto car supplies in a Zippee’s. If you want the most of a particular kind of item, it’s best to stick to the relevant business. Gas station tylenol is a ripoff anyway.

Medical locations now sort their contents into tools, medicine, and doctor-related stuff like gloves, masks, and scrubs. Bars, beauty salons, butcher shops, cafes, and liquor stores all take the same approach. Giant ‘catch all’ loot lists should eventually be replaced with tailored selections of items that are relevant to the location they’re spawned in.

MOVABLES
 
- Fixed movable items, such as radios from cars, having correct condition when placed and picked up again.
- Movables can now be dismantled from inventory, except for the multi tile object ones i.e: beds.
- Added MovableRecipe which has no script definitions, instead gets created on the fly from movable definitions.
- Refactored some stuff so the MovableRecipe has the same chances, xp, resultitems, equipitems etc as world object dismantling.
- Single tile Movable items are now defined as 'Moveables.world_object_sprite_here" instead of all being 'Moveables.Moveable'.
 this also means these movables can be easily instanced directly now

CONTROLLERS UPDATE
 
- Removed the old JInput library which was used for controllers.  The GLFW library, part of LWJGL 3, is now used.
- GLFW has a database of several hundred Xbox-like controllers, including PlayStation controllers, so these should
 have a good chance of working.  Recognized controllers are listed in media\gamecontrollerdb.txt.
- The user can create their own gamecontrollerdb.txt file in their User\Zomboid\joypads directory.  This can be done
 to add new controllers or to override a controller in the game's media\gamecontrollerdb.txt.
- The game should handle controllers disconnecting and reconnecting during play.  If player 1's controller is
 disconnected, they can choose to revert to keyboard and mouse input.
- The controller X button now rotates objects in Place mode.

FIXES
 
- Fixed "delete all" on bins not working.
- Fixed tailoring book/farming mag not spawning in shelves.
- Fixed water container in office weighing 3.
- Fixed white display counter not cooling food.
- Fixed zombies not being able to pathfind through obstacles surrounding vehicles.
- Fixed some minor pathfind issues.
- Fixed zombies thumping windows when they didn't hear a sound or see the player, when the "Environmental Attacks" sandbox option is disabled.
- Fixed not being able to plaster doorframes built at Carpentry level 7
- Fixed stretched sprites in cutaways, including roof wall tiles, garage doors and certain windows
- Fixed heatable water containers not heating up if put into campfire/bbq before they are lit
- Fixed deep wounds having a shorter half-life than scratches or lacerations before healing
- Fixed GameWindow.StringUTF writing garbage characters at the end of strings. (Fixes saves)
- Fixed lights losing their custom color. (For example, the blue Pharmahug sign was only blue the first time it was loaded. Moveable lights lost their custom color when moved.)
- Fixed misplaced door models on the cars with door-models.
- Fixed keypad key names being the same as keys on the main keyboard.
- Fixed scissors not allowing jaw stab.
- Fixed corpses clipping through furniture and walls with the RBShopLooted story.
- Fixed FMOD .bank files not being found when the current working directory is not the same as Java's -Duser.dir option.
- Fixed some flying cars
- Fixed crawling zombies getting stuck while moving near walls.
- Fixed crawling zombies not thumping fences like they do with doors.
- Fixed crawling zombies trying to go through open windows.
- Fixed crawling zombies trying to crawl through fences when there is a nearby way around.
- Fixed zombies sometimes thumping on wall frames that they can climb through.
- Fixed WorldDictionary ID's not being reset uppon new game.
- Fixed the 'campfire bug'. in some cases sprite were not being set properly on IsoObject, this may have also affected erosion objects.
- Fixed edit item coloring not working.
- Fixed map issues.
- Fixed the fishing UI appearance not changing when a controller is disconnected.
- Fixed not being able to add any condiments to a Burger found in game
- Fixed Empty Pop Can appearing after char drinks a beer
- Fixed Sawed-off JS-2000 shotgun only being reparable with another Sawed-off.
- Fixed Hoodie unequipping when hood up + baseball hat
- Fixed cooking food increasing weight of the dish inconsistently
- Fixed player being able to eat by double-clicking when full to bursting
- Fixed Bourbon having two options to empty the bottle
- Fixed M9 pistol and D-E Pistol having their icons mixed up
- Fixed Wet Bath towel losing Favourite status after drying
- Fixed new ammunition types not being dismantlable 
- Fixed "Sleep on ground" option in the car when char is Ridiculously tired
- Fixed some furniture not being thumpable by zombies.
- Fixed unhidden "Hat" related hair type.
- Fixed incorrect alpha fades on non-updating objects such as roof eaves and furniture.
- Fixed being able to survive bleach death by eating lemongrass
- Fixed not being able to repair double doors
- Fixed Fish fillet / Chicken behaving strangely when used in salad
- Fixed filling up an empty bottle / bucket from a river or a lake incorrectly showing "Puddle" as a source
- Fixed not being able to hold RMB and use F to turn on flashlight
- Fixed "Easy use" causing all car trunks to be opened, not only unlocked
- Fixed Analog watches not having alarms if Spanish language is selected
- Fixed Padlocks that spawn in stores oftentimes getting called "house key" + a string of numbers
- Fixed not being able to freeze separate eggs
- Fixed inconsistence in rmb -> grab and basic transfer inventory action.
- Fixed some tile defs (bunker cutaway, railward vendor machine, changed shelves to clothing rack on certains container for clothing store).
- Fixed laundry basket acting as a dryer.
- Fixed zombies spawning outside very large buildings (eg. Mall) when unexplored rooms are seen for the first time.
- Fixed drinking from soup/stew bowl with a spoon not using the spoon.
- Fixed being able to bandage a fractured body part.
- Fixed cure flies/mildew on plants causing a crash.
- Fixed harvesting plant while plant info window was open causing a crash.
- Fixed some foods (notably a lot in Zed stories) having zero nutritional values
- Fixed not being able to wash blood stains off vehicle windows
- Fixed furniture sometimes fading away while the player is still close enough to see inside.
- Fixed not being able to freeze wild eggs
- Fixed seat naming weirdness by removing  "BigCarSeat" and "SportCarSeat" items, and renamng "NormalCarSeat" items to just "Seat".
- Fixed the random vehicle generator which was causing "Standard Seat" to be selected every time.
- Fixed being able to do fitness exercises when you shouldn't.
- Fixed a physics bug that caused the Sports Car to not accelerate to it's top speed of 120 km/h. This also caused vehicles to get pushed downwards at higher speeds.
- Fixed office water dispenser weighing only 5.
- Fixed blue hospital curtain requiring electrical skill to be picked up.
- Fixed "Hat" variants of hairstyles showing in the "Change" menu in the character-info ui. Some hairstyles (for example TopCurls) have a "Hat" hairstyle in their "Trim Choices". 
- Fixed dropping equipped container while being overencumbred duplicating the container on ground.
- Fixed being able to grab items through fences.
- Fixed being able to do fitness while climbing.
- Fixed house alarm and helicopter sounds ignoring the master sound volume.
- Fixed UI showing up on savefile thumbnail images.
- Fixed the clock not being centered in splitscreen and overlapping the button prompts.
- Fixed splitscreen savegames taking a screencap of the middle of the screen. Thumbnails will now be created from Player 1 screen.
- Fixed OpenGL exceptions when creating a new game due to trying to create the thumbnail image in GameLoadingState's thread.
- Fixed "can't create player at" error when going back from the character-profession screen and starting a challenge.
- Fixed being able to rotate carpentry objects while they are being built. ISBuildMenu.cheat no longer controls whether build actions complete immediately. Instead, IsoGameCharacter:isTimedActionInstant() is called, as is already done by most other actions. This makes it easier to test build actions without having to have all the materials.
- Fixed inventory tooltips flickering between visible and hidden when using a controller while in the main menu.
- Fixed controller glitch when closing a map by clicking the close button in the titlebar instead of using the B button.
- Fixed smart zombies triggering house alarms when opening windows when the "Zombie House Alarm Triggering" option is disabled.
- Fixed bumping into (and possibly being tripped by) zombies on the other sides of doors/walls/windows.
- Fixed being able to load bullets into or unload bullets from a magazine after it has been inserted into a firearm by a previous action.
- Fixed broken behavior assigning keys in the options.
- Fixed animation lockup pressing Alt + Space when Alt is assigned to both Sprint and "Manual Floor Attack".
- Fixed uninstalling parts resetting the condition to 100 sometimes
- Fixed items not saving condition if the condition was 10. Now condition only isn't saved when condition equals condMax (max condition).
- Fixed being able to open multiple sleep dialogues.
- Fixed sea horse bins not having "delete all" button.
- Fixed new liquor store in Muldraugh distributions.
- Fixed some wrong definition for bar.
- Fixed display case in pie restaurant.
- Fixed thin skinned giving more resistance to being damaged while walking in trees.
- Fixed icon for shooting glasses.
- Fixed Saucepan repairing itself after it was filled with water
- Fixed items being rendered in the wrong position (offscreen) after drying out on the ground.
- Fixed a Lighter being equipped when a Lit Candle is available when pressing the 'F' key.
- Fixed not being able to reinstall radios in vehicles.
- Fixed tainted water source being prefered over a non-tainted water source when drinking or filling bottles. Prefer a non-tainted water source over a tainted one when drinking or filling bottles.
- Fixed having to move and place sinks after water shut off to be plumbable again.
- Fixed not being able to use some shovels and handforks to pick up hedges, flower beds, etc. Any item with the DigPlow tag can now be used to pick up objects with the PickUpTool=Shovel sprite property.
- Fixed random horizontal and vertical lines appearing along the edges of some textures.
- Fixed the Crawl Under Vehicle sandbox option not being applied in some instances, so all zombies could crawl under vehicles.
- Fixed formatting of WorldItemRemovalList in xxx_SandboxVars.lua files.
- Fixed the player death-drag-down animation EndDeath being overridden by HitReactionFromBehind. They both had one condition that didn't exclude the other animation.
- Fixed the player always getting up from sitting sometimes.
- Fixed multiple different VehicleDistribution Specific categories of loot being applied to the same vehicle. Now a random Specific category is chosen for the vehicle as a whole, instead of for each container.
- Fixed LuaManager.refreshAnimSets() not checking all players in splitscreen.
- Fixed error clicking on a plant infested with flies without having Insecticide Spray in inventory.
- Fixed Fitness.save() saving exeTimer.size() twice.
- Fixed the inspect-garment ui not resizing to accommodate the Bullet column.
- Fixed being able to do exercises while climbing ropes.
- Fixed some cutaway problems.
- Fixed evolved recipe (cooking stir fry...) not resetting their base nutrition values, giving big boosts to nutrition on those recipes.
- Fixed invisible players triggering house alarms.
- Fixed some issues with zombie visibility.
- Fixed duplicate Scratch Defense stat in item tooltips where nothing or Bullet Defense should be.
- Fixed missing BodyParts\overlays textures by rebuilding UI2.pack
- Fixed layout issues in the inspect-garment ui.
- Fixed debug context menu exception when there is no zone on the clicked square.
- Fixed models with capital "I" in the name not loading on the Turkish locale.
- Fixed analog watches sometimes having the alarm set, which can't be turned off.
- Fixed a Lua error when running out of paint or plaster when using the paint/plaster cursor.
- Fixed some spawn points that were inside furniture or outside buildings.
- Fixed broken Perk translation in carpentry tooltips.
- Fixed unknown RemoveUnhappinessWhenCooked item parameter. Now "Cook to remove happiness malus." appears in the tooltip for fish, may want to edit this.
- Fixed thumbnail images for savefiles using mods not being updated after returning to the main menu.
- Fixed some hair type list.
- Fixed some parking spot in Muldraugh.
- Fixed wooden pillar acting like a wall.
- Fixed DataChunk exception with a user-created walkway on a guard tower.
- Fixed Lua error building fences.
- Fixed a garage in Riverside having an inside-out door and an old dirt floor tile (with a stray pixel in it).
- Fixed broken carpentry-tooltip perk translations.
- Fixed Shift-E allowing the player to switch from a rear seat to the driver's seat in the police car.
- Fixed "laundry" being in the list of buildings that RBShopLooted can happen in.
- Fixed WorldItemModelDrawer ignoring ModelMesh.m_transform. This fixes rotation of the forthcoming 3D item models so they match what is seen in assimp_viewer.
- Fixed font loading.
- Fixed InventoryItem.attachedSlotType being treated like an item module.type when it isn't. This fixes the "WARNING: Cannot get registry id" spam in console
- Fixed "Open File Location" button in the load-game "More..." ui, since it doesn't work with -Djava.awt.headless=true.
- Fixed the farming-cursor tooltip showing the exact water level for farming skill 4 instead of 5+.
- Fixed hats not rotating as they fall to the ground.
- Fixed the item type of Radios being changed to Radio.worldSprite which broke translations.
- Fixed untranslated names of movables being displayed for the Disassemble recipe.
- Fixed the Disassemble recipe for movables being displayed when the player couldn't actually perform the recipe
 (due to missing tools, for example) which is different than other recipes which aren't displayed.
- Fixed some tiles properties problems.
- Fixed duplicate VehicleDistributions.Hunter. One had TrailerTrunk, the one without it was removed.
- Fixed randomized building code adding barricades to double doors or garage doors, which the player can't do.
- Fixed campfire and tent options appearing in the context menu when in a vehicle.
- Fixed foraging ui being visible still when the player gets in a vehicle.
- Fixed duplicate radio items appearing in the "Install" men
- Fixed two unused files from "maps/West Point, KY".
- Fixed smashed StepVanMail using the StepVan template instead of StepVanMail (which didn't exist).
- Fixed upgraded doorframes blocking movement.
- Fixed weapon models without a "world" attachment not being oriented the way they used to be when on the ground. This is why things like the Club Hammer were standing on end.
- Fixed missing "world" attachments on several weapon models.
- Fixed some multi-hit sandbox problems in which some weapons would not multihit.
- Fixed TrailerCover missing from container distributions.
- Fixed Trailer-TrailerTrunk missing from container distributions.
 
MODDING

- Allow modders to add new vehicle zones to the global VehicleZoneDefinition table.
 Previously, only the game's zone names and types were allowed.
 This should work for any vehicle zone not called TestVehicles or containing TrafficJam.
- Added support for loading animations from a mod's media/anims_X directory (and subdirectories of that). It should handle activating and deactivating mods.
 
- Global ModData
Registers moddata tables with a given String key.
When Global Moddata is initialised during world loading it triggers the event "OnInitGlobalModData" with parameter: boolean isNewGame.
LuaTable ModData.create(String key) creates and returns the table with given key, returns null if the table already exists.
String ModData.create() creates a table with a random UUID key, note: returns the string key.
LuaTable ModData.getOrCreate(String key) gets or creates the table with given key.
LuaTable ModData.get(String key) returns the table with given key or null.
boolean ModData.exists(String key) return true if table with given key exists.
LuaTable ModData.remove(String key) removes the table with given key if exists and returns it or null.
void ModData.add(String key, LuaTable table) store the table with given key (overrides any existing table).
ArrayList getTableNames() returns a list of all registered tables.

Networking

Global ModData is not synced between server and client as depending on what the moddata is being used for this may not be required or even unwanted.
Syncing of data where needed is up to coder/author. There are however two methods for networking:
void ModData.transmit(String key)
- this will attempt to transmit the table with given key, when called on server this is send to all clients, when called on client send to server. (see note on receiving moddata below)
void ModData.request(String key)
- client only, this sends a request to server to send back the table with given key to this client.
When the server or the client receives a moddata packet it is not automatically added to the local register.
Instead the packet is read and the event "OnReceiveGlobalModData" is triggered, the String key and LuaTable table are passed as arguments.
NOTE: the table argument can be 'false' when moddata packet replied to a ModData.request.
The coder/author can then decide to parse, register or keep it as temporary lua table only etc.

- Fixed issues with setting appropriate texture flags when loading mod texture packs.
    - World textures were missing the flag to create mipmaps, resulting in "sparkly" textures when zoomed out.
    - Floor textures were using compression, resulting in visual artifacts sometimes.
    - UI textures were using compression and "mag linear" filtering instead of "mag nearest" filtering.
    - When a mod texture-pack name ends with ".floor", compression is turned off.
    - For texture packs containing UI textures and/or item textures, the mod.info file should add "type=ui" to pack= lines, like this:
    pack=MyPackFile 
    type=ui

- Allow vehicle scripts to override the "model" without a name.
 Previously, "model XYZ" would override a previously-declared "model XYZ", but "model" alone wouldn't override "model".
 
- Allow mods to define custom sandbox options.
 Each file called media/sandbox-options.txt that exists is loaded before Lua files are loaded.
 
- Allow mods to define custom perks (Skills ingame).
 Each file called media/perks.txt that exists is loaded before scripts and Lua files are loaded.
 New perks and perk categories can be defined.
 This required removing the Perks enum.  Now Perks is a class containing static instances of Perk.
 So Perks.Strength is now the Strength perk itself instead of an enum value.
 The Lua Perks table contains the predefined perks and also any custom perks.
 Fortunately, these changes didn't require any changes to Lua files. 

- Added textureShadow property to vehicle scripts to allow overriding the shadow texture.
 For example, write "textureShadow = schoolbag_spiffo," without quotes.

- recipe.Prop1 and recipe.Prop2 can specify a source item to display in the player's hand.
 For example, Prop1:Source=2 will use either the Saw or GardenSaw model:
 
    recipe Saw Logs
    {
       Log,
       keep Saw/GardenSaw,
       Prop1:Source=2,
       Prop2:Log,
    }
 The Log model could also be specified as Prop2:Source=1.

- Vehicle windows will have color from the textureLights texture applied. This was added for the boat mod. Call BaseVehicle.setWindowLightsOn(true|false) to control this.  This setting isn't saved, or synced in multiplayer.

- Vehicle-shadow size and position may be set using the shadowExtents and shadowOffset properties in vehicle scripts. These can be edited in the vehicle editor, under the Chassis section.

- Fixed "Mod: XYZ" in item tooltips for mod items always displaying the name of the last mod loaded.
- Added Tooltip.ModName debug option to control displaying "Mod: XYZ" in item tooltips for mod items.
 This could be changed to a Display option if wanted (translations needed though).
- Added GameTime helicopter-related methods for mods:
 int getHelicopterDay()
 setHelicopterDay(int day)
 
 int getHelicopterStartHour()
 setHelicopterStartHour(int hour) // 0-24
 int getHelicopterEndHour()
 setHelicopterEndHour(int hour) // 0-24
 
TECHNICAL

- Optimized game variable look-ups.
  - AnimCondition no longer repeatedly searches for the same variable by name.
  - Instead, it creates an AnimationVariableHandle and re-uses it.
- GameProfiler.invokeAndMeasure now check whether or not the recorder is running, and avoid capturing a new Lambda

- Performance improvement. Added an early-out to updateTwistBone
  - If the current twist is <1 degree, the function aborts.

- Savegame compression optimization from Turbo

- Refactored and tidied up WorldDictionary.
- Server now sends the WorldDictionary data to clients when connecting.
- Client now only saves WorldDictionaryReadable.lua in game folder.
- WorldDictionary now respects Core.noSave.
- World loading should now abort correctly if any problems are found with the dictionary.
- Added method getModID(), getModName() and isVanilla() to InventoryItem.
- Added the mod name which added the item, and optionally any overrides, to item tooltip.

- Performance improvements to BoneTransform calculations for a 2x boost to animation system.
 
- Fog optimization

- Memory optimization: placed IsoGridSquare.collideMatrix, IsoGridSquare.pathMatrix and IsoGridSquare.visionMatrix arrays to 32 bit integer and wrote bit access functions for those.

- Refactored IsoRegion system
 including optimized region calculations and fixes for a bunch of things that could cause bugs.
- Added new IsoRegion debugger based of ZombiePopulationWindow
 (can build via debugger now for quick testing).

- Added IsoRegionLogger, logs can be viewed via debugger.
- WorldDictionary -> disabled logging of missing object ID.
- Colors.java -> added GetColorFromIndex, GetColorsCount.
- Added Character.Debug.Render.Vision option to display the player's vision cone and see-nearby-characters radius.

- Use the proper distance instead of Manhattan distance in IsoPlayer.updateLOS().
- Fixed IsoGameCharacter.updateSeenVisibility() not handling the see-nearby-characters radius, resulting in zombies behind the player (or nearby but outside the vision cone) not becoming visible when they should

- Don't use shared animations on the nearest 20 zombies, to avoid foot-sliding when they're lunging. IsoWorld.sceneCullZombies() already sorts zombies by visibility and distance, so it is used to set a flag on zombies that shouldn't use shared animations.
 
- Removed IsoPlayer.m_moveDelta because IsoGameCharacter.m_moveDelta already exists.  The value is always 1.0 in any case

And then, suddenly, fourteen days had rolled around once more…

41.51 IWBUMS BETA RELEASE
41.51 is pretty much cooked at this point, and the past few days we have been primarily addressing any potential incompatibilities on different / more elderly operating systems. We intend to release this early next week.
The latest changelist for 41.51 can be found here.

Some items of note:

As previously mentioned, 41.51 contains significant optimizations to our save game system. As such any saved games played in 41.50 will NOT be operational or loadable.
 
A separate Steam beta containing the previous 41.50 build will be provided so that you can continue and finish your current game.
Similarly, in a changelist as big as this some mods WILL become incompatible – especially those dealing with loot distribution.
 
We have kept the PZ Discord modding channels informed of the primary forthcoming change, but there will inevitably be a period of waiting before some of your favourite mods (and certainly mod packs) are fully operational again.
 
Again, if you enjoy playing modded PZ then the 41.50 beta will still be there for you to use in the meantime.
 
If you’re a modder who would like further information on what’s changing then please click through to this thread on our forum, where mapper extraordinaire TheCommander has also made a very handy forum post and easily understood infographic.
 
Please be patient with all the community’s modder crew while they find the time to update their/our beloved mods!

MP STRIKE FORCE
As discussed previously we are now updating on all things MP every month – for the reasoning behind that decision please click on through.
And so, here’s a run-down of what Yuri and Andrei have been up to over the past few weeks, followed up by a nice little vid that Yuri made for us.
First of all, we added FPS data to our statistics. Servers will now collect FPS data from each client and collect it their statistical data. Seeing as the introduction of local ownership may lead to performance degradation on clients, knowing client FPS will help us to improve performance and as such we can use this tool in load testing. We then spent some time investigating zombie desync. We noticed that our zeds were pausing after they changed ownership between clients. As such we’ve made a fresh implementation of how zombie behaviour syncs. Right now the zombies will continue moving to the target and restore their state on a new client after changing ownership. What’s currently in the build is an initial implementation – we’re going to test how it works before developing it further. We implemented ‘get up’ sync for zombies. This bug could lead to zombies that were laying down on one client, but standing upright on another. We synced zombie falling. Zombies in local ownership now calculate the position and rotation of their fall point, and the client sends this information in the hitCharacter packet. Now all clients will show the same falling anim, and desync where zeds dropped in different places for different places is avoided. This issue also led to players seeming to finish off invisible zombies while you were playing. We had a long think about how we can improve a fight between a zombie and more than one player. A primary issue was how a zombie should react to hits from other players, as often ownership change can lead to desync. We had the idea that zombies should react to hits from their target player, but hits from other players would only lead to splashes of blood and a decrease of their health without a change in ownership. We’ve made an initial implementation of this, but it doesn’t seem to be a full solution yet – as such we will debug it, and potentially think of ways to improve or replace the system. We’ve spent some time updating our tools, specifically the fake clients we use to simulate a full and active server. Now clients can process zombie AI, we needed to simulate the same in our fake clients. This will help no end in our future testing and edge-case scenario simulation.  
 
NOISEWORKS
Tomorrow (barring minor fixes) is the last day we have booked in for work with Noiseworks on their PZ Sound Revolution – although we are also making plans for a ‘Round 2’ to further improve the PZ soundscape, put some more work into the implementation of the procedural music system and respond to the feedback of the PZ community once it’s been released out into the wild.
 
As such the Noiseworks build shouldn’t be *too* far behind the release of 41.51 into the public IWBUMS beta.
 
The primary final polish that’s been put into Noiseworks over the past week or so has been on vehicles, music selection and general mix balance and bug fixing. Vehicles, especially, needed a little more love as gear changes / RPM and how the new sounds interacted with the existing PZ framework needed a fair bit of love.
 
The vehicles are now 10x better than the angry lawnmowers currently in Build 41, though we intend to come back to them in Noiseworks Round 2 when we have more time to make some code-side improvements to help them out.
 
Here’s a quick video of what they’re sounding like at the moment.
 
(Please note there will be improvements to zombie collision thuds, car door and trunk noises before we release!)
 
 
Something else we intend to release with the Noiseworks build are the 3D items that Rockstar Mark and RJ have been working with, but that’s not 100% at the moment as they’re working out the best ways to scale/rotate items in their export process. This is the way that a box of jars currently appears in-game, which isn’t… ideal?
 

  VCRS
We want to shake up the current ‘spend the first week watching TV’ meta, while also introducing some new and typically 90s loot, and as such Turbo has been working on the PZ entertainment systems.
 
This will be a simplified media playability version of the Devices branch that Turbo has had as a side project for a long time now, and will include retail CDs and VHS tapes – with common, rare and exceptional spawn changes depending on the recording. Clearly, some of these will also be the shows shown on the television with XP and skill bonuses. There will also be unique home VHS tapes, which will either be shows recorded by the people of the area or camcorder recordings, that have a 1 in 5 chance to attempt to spawn instead of a blank tapes.
Clearly all this will be textual, just as the current TV and radio channels are, but we hope it’ll be a nice way of adding some more flavour to the world. There will be lots of new movies, TV shows and general new writing content.
 
The ability to record material will not be in the build however, and will have to wait until Turbo’s fully fledged Devices side project (which includes computers and security systems) comes to fruition.
 
Here’s a quick video of its current implementation, along with the ways that recordings can impact on your player’s skills and moodles if we so choose.
 
PLEASE NOTE this won’t be how it ends up in the game proper. Being terrified by a horror movie to such an extent that it would leave you vulnerable to the zeds probably wouldn’t be much fun – so please consider WIP!
 

LOUISVILLE
Work on our version of Louisville continues, which as discussed in previous blogs is now visible in the mid-distance.
 
This week we won’t be showing any new chunks of the map, as our map team continue to be quite protective of their giant sprawling baby, but maybe we can have a quick look at some of the new brands and locations that the more urban environment will bring.
 

  This week’s featured image from Rexiem. 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!

Well, two weeks takes ages to get through right? Here we are with the first fortnightly Thursdoid which hopefully contains enough morsels to keep you satiated.
 
For details on what’s happening with MP, and why we’ve moved to blogs every two weeks for the foreseeable future, please check out our MP Status Update from last time.
IWBUMS 41.51
As we discussed last time, we have six months worth of polish, changes, additions and fixes waiting to go into the IWBUMS Build 41 Public beta that are completely unrelated to the parallel MP work.
In this past two weeks, then, we have removed/disabled its WIP multiplayer components, and are now preparing to release this as a beta update.
 
The changelist is pretty vast, and can be found here if you are interested.
 
Sometimes in the past when we have released builds with lengthy gestation times they have been buggier than we’d have otherwise liked, which is why we are putting this through a lot of testing – and are currently opening it out to an expanded pool of internal testers over the coming weekend. Please note that when we talk about holding this build back for testing, it’s not in the same league, stadium or planet as the testing for the MP overhaul, we just have to do our due diligence after all the talk of being careful about what we release not to completely break the current b41 build by hurrying to get going with the builds again.
 
This new version also includes some fairly foundational changes like updates to the Java and LWJGL we are using, that will improve a legion of compatibility issues we’ve often come up against, and many optimizations.
 
Likewise there is a big savegame file size optimization going into this version, which will mean that your current savegame will NOT be compatible. But, clearly, fret not – the current 41.50 version will remain available to you, and step-by-step savegame transfer instructions will be provided should they be required.
NOISEWORKS SOUND UPGRADE
The Noiseworks full soundscape upgrade has just gone into its first round of testing, and we’ve collated a full list of bugs and missing / wrongly wired sounds back over to them.
 
Primary issues include some rethinking of how we’re doing car noise due to some engine sound issues, lots of stuff that needs an adjustment in how its rigged, and a few sounds that don’t entirely fit the action on-screen. We’re making good headway with all this, but it’s probably best to expect its appearance in 41.52.
 
A video, and then a few tester quotes.
 
 
 
 
“The ambient sounds of the wildlife is amazing. I found myself a few times just listening to it all. hearing the zombies shuffle outside a building you are in can put you on edge, but you think you have time until that first bang on a door or window which will make you jump. And the rain sounds changing as it intensifies is amazing, you feel an urgency to immediately seek shelter, you know it’s about to get bad outside.”
 
“The game feels a lot more… full (?) with all the noises. I noticed it had tactical advantages too, as I heard the footsteps of a bunch of zombies around a corner before I got there. That was super cool.”
 
“WOW the UI makes sounds now??? Did not expect that it is awesome. Also the tweaks to the This is How You Died screen for loading into the world and all are incredible.”
 
“I haven’t felt suspense like that while playing for a long time, the jump-scares really get you as well. The new sounds give it a completely new, different experience imo, like just the eerie silence when you walk into a house all of a sudden, instantly makes you put your guard up and listen out.”
3D ITEMS
Also for likely inclusion in 41.52 are the 3D items that ‘Rockstar Mark’ has provided – which will mean that we no longer will have to use inventory icons for items left on the floor.
 
We still have to make sure these don’t dampen performance when used in extravagance, but they are already paying dividends in terms of the ‘zed stories’ we tell in abandoned houses – the frat boy zombies will have real-looking beer and chips on the floor now, while the ‘sex zombies’ we suggest were having rumpy pumpy will have real-looking clothes strewn on the floor around the bed.
 
This has also allowed for RJ to put in an extension of the world-building ‘Marie Celeste’ nature of various homes within the Knox Event – putting items on tables to suggest what was happening (or about to happen) in the build up to disaster striking.
Someone here, for example, was about to bake a cake.
This will be expanded on heavily in future, with our hopes that all items present on shelves will represent the actual items. This is a long term goal however.
 
In terms of gameplay the 3d items will bring, we do plan however in the more immediate future to make tables into containers, which allow items to be placed on them and be visible at a glance. This will surely be a welcome feature for those packrats looking for some extra storage space.
 
Also, Mark just sent us these, which should much better allow us and those like us to simulate our bedroom floors within the game with more accuracy.
MAP WORK
As discussed last week we are bumping the urban map expansion, our PZ version of Louisville, up the running order of releases – though it’s still too far off to pin down in any particular version.
 
This week Jamie (Xeonyx) has been on ‘Operation Building Heighten’ – as we have increasingly become aware that we need to reinforce how verticality in the city’s innermost districts will be a big part of the feeling of difference between it and our existing rural areas.
 
We have an upper limit of seven storeys and a rooftop in PZ, which is an unavoidable performance constraint (and also something of a balance issue even if we one day surmounted it) but it should still feel urban, new and different to what’s currently available. Here’s some of Jamie’s building heightening in action:
Kukrapok/Ayrton meanwhile continues with his own mission to bring more realistic curved roads and road patterns to both the existing and new areas of the PZ map.
There’ll also clearly be loads of new tiles and decorations that come with the map update and, while the blog writer doesn’t find it hugely exciting, I am reliably informed that the ability to spruce up your bases with lovely new vegetation will be of encouragement to some.
NEXT TIME
As discussed in our last blog, when we return for our next dev update we will get the latest from Yuri and Andrei on MP, who have now an entire month to do deep dives into their work without us poking them with a stick every week for something to show the world – as well as all the SP latest similar to that discussed above.
 
In the interim we will also put up the next Mod Spotlight from Pat_Bren, who this month will be talking to none other than the elusive Snake. Thanks all for reading!
 
This week’s featured image from KPKPlays. 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! Our thanks to all bratty stepsisters out there for refusing to relinquish their gaming PC!