PoshRocketeer

Items here are separated in case you want to discuss them separately. I spent a lot of time on this so I hope you enjoy.
 
TL:DR Because that's a lot of reading:
Infections cause pain and fever, infections can get worse or better depending on how the player treats it, first aid skill, traits, and a little bit of luck. If you don't treat the infection or are just really unlucky, it will get worse and spread, but isn't going to kill you if you're treating it properly. If you don't treat it, it will start to damage your player, and will do more damage if it spreads. You can stop it from dealing damage by treating it properly relative to its threat level, and heal it faster by treating it better than what is strictly necessary.  You can use medicines and poultices to deal with symptoms and help them heal faster. You can use clean/sterilized rags and bandages to clean wounds to be at a slightly better chance of avoiding infection than if you hadn't cleaned them at all, but not as well as if you had sterilized them with alcohol, wipes, or disinfectants.
 
This not only adds a few new features to First Aid that make it much more important and useful overall, especially in a group of survivors that lack it, but makes dealing with wounds much more engaging and risky, so that even when transmission is off there is a real threat in dealing with wound infections that may alter the course of your character's story, but isn't super likely to kill you if you know how to deal with it. Right now most wounds you can just slap a bandage on and forget about it, and even if infections made them heal slower the same would likely be true.
 
 
Main Text:
Right now in the live game, infections do literally nothing at all, I'm fairly certain this is a bug, but even  when they did they weren't particularly engaging or threatening, and didn't even really need to be treated. I propose a system that will give them a little more depth and urgency, but also make First Aid significantly more useful of a skill to have.
 
1) Infections can occur with exposure to open air, dirty bandages, infrequently with unsterilized bandages, and almost never with sterilized bandages. Higher first aid reduces chance of wound infections while the wounds are tended to, and wounds being cared for with higher First Aid will become infected slower once the  bandage becomes dirty.  Infected wounds heal much slower than non-infected wounds.
 
1A) Higher First Aid skills allows for better treatment of infections, making them more likely to heal quickly and less likely to progress. Applications of poultices and similar treatments also improve with First Aid skills.
 
1B) Relevant poultices already found in-game can be applied to infections to make them heal quicker, reduce pain and fever, etc.
 
2) Larger wounds (Lacerations, deep wounds) are more likely to get infected, and those infections are more likely to be more dangerous. All infections can progress to a more severe type of infection, or can regress to a less severe type of infection depending on how well they're being treated, whether or not the player is taking antibiotics, etc. 
 
3) Infections can have 3 characteristics. Mild, Severe, Deadly. Mild infections cause a bit of pain in the area where they occur, and aren't likely to progress if the wound is cared for. Severe infections cause more pain and progress more quickly, with a noticeable chance to spread through a limb. Deadly infections always cause agony, spread MUCH more quickly and can kill in as little as 3 days if untreated or treated poorly, usually requiring several doses of antibiotics, occurring much more frequently from large wounds like Lacerations, Deep Lacerations, and Bites (assuming that transmission is turned off) unless you're especially lucky and have the traits  necessary to pull through (resilient, fast healer, etc). 
 
3A) Characters with low first aid skill can try to identify the severity of an infection, but are not likely to be able to tell the difference. Players can attempt to identify infected wounds every 12 hours. Players with low First Aid skill will more often than not have to make do with judging based off of the symptoms. At level 2 First Aid, wounds will immediately be tagged as "Infected" when they occur, and at level 5 First Aid you will always be able to identify the type of infection on first try. (no check failures) At First Aid level 7, you never have to check infections manually to determine what level of infection they are, and you will get more accurate information on how not only the infection is doing, but all wounds in general. Characters with NO (0) First Aid skill will not be able to tell that the wound is infected at all, with the exception of Deadly Infections which will always display the "Infected" status when they occur at low levels of First Aid. This means players with no First Aid skill will have to pay close attention to their moodles, and watch for the "Pain" tag to appear or watch their body temp. This also means that as such, their characters will not be able to apply poultices for dealing with infection to wounds as their character does not know that the wound is infected, only being able to apply more generalized poultices for wound care. (Last part totally debatable) 
 
3B) Characters will get loose guidance in the form of first-person text from the character when hovering over (confirmed) infected wounds, depending on their first aid level. They will also get some loose guidance when hovering over things like Antibiotics, if relevant. This system could also be applied to regular wound treatment, but this post is already very long as it is

FIG 1: "I don't know what to do about this..." (Level 2 First Aid character hovering over a (confirmed) infected wound.)
 
FIG 2: "I need to clean the wound..." (Level 4 First Aid character hovering over a (confirmed) unidentified, Mild or Severe infected wound.)
 
FIG 3: "I need to clean the wound, but sterilizing is better..." (Level 5+ First Aid character hovering over a (confirmed) Mild infected wound)
 
FIG 4: "I need to keep this as clean as possible, I should sterilize the wound and any bandages..." (Level 5+ First Aid character hovering over a (confirmed) Severe infected wound.) 
 
FIG 5: "I really should sterilize this, but cleaning it should do for now..." (Level 5+ First Aid character hovering over the "Clean wound" (as opposed to Sterilize wound) option over an uninfected wound, Mild infected wound, or Severe infected wound. Severe infected wound gets "if my supplies are sterile..." added to the end of its blurb)
 
FIG 6: "This infection is going to kill me, I need antibiotics, antiseptic, and sterilized bandages..." (Level 5+ First Aid character hovering over Deadly infected wound)

FIG 7: (Normal antibiotics description followed by:) "Can treat mild infections on their own, greatly assist in the treatment of more severe infections, are absolutely necessary in treating deadly infections. Continue treatment until bottle is empty, even after symptoms have cleared." (First Aid 4+ Character hovering over antibiotics in the inventory.)
 
These are the basic examples, more can be added to pad the "in-between" states as well as encompass more medical items and wounds.
 
4) All infections cause both localized and generalized body temp increases, localized pain to the infection and the surrounding areas, more pain when using the area that they're localized to, and can cause sickness/fever if severe enough.
 
5) Severe and Deadly infections can begin to spread through limbs (mentioned above), once this has happened they require antibiotics to treat, Deadly infections almost always require antibiotics to heal.
 
6) Each infected region will roll for damage (and chance to spread) independently once per hour if the wound is untreated. For Deadly Infections to be considered "Treated", the player must be using antibiotics and caring for the (sterilized) wound with Sterilized bandages, for Mild wounds, simply tending to the (cleaned or sterilized) wound with clean bandages is enough to stop them from dealing damage.  Alternatively, taking antibiotics and using unsterilized bandages (even with an unclean and unsterilized wound) will prevent Mild infections from dealing damage OR have a sterilized wound with unsterilized bandages. Severe infections can be treated by having at least a cleaned wound with a sterilized bandage. The wound must be at least clean when taking antibiotics to prevent Severe infections from damaging the player, but a sterilized bandage would not be necessary on antibiotics. Any excess conditions met will help the infection heal faster.  This separation between the infections and their treatment minimums is designed to make them unpredictable enough to be engaging, but still allowing for some flexibility in treatment up until the most severe cases.
 
6A) If no tools for sterilizing a wound are available in the player's inventory or nearby containers, they can clean the wound with clean or sterilized rags/bandages. For mild/severe infections this is enough to be considered properly treated, but won't heal as fast as sterilized wounds.  Deadly infections will have better rolls for damage if the wound is cleaned but not sterilized.
 
6B) The game will first roll to determine whether or not the player will take damage from that infected wound, based on the factors listed above, the player's First Aid skill, as well as traits like Resilient/Prone to Illness. If the wound is actively being properly treated by conditions listed above, this roll will always be in the player's favor.  If the roll is not in the player's favor, it will roll for how much damage it deals, taking these factors into consideration again for the minimum and maximum possible roll. 
 
6C) Infections that have spread will roll all infected regions together, as opposed to separate wounds which roll separately.
 
6D) For example, and by no means a finalized set of figures: A player who is Prone to Illness with a First Aid skill of 7 is treating a Deadly infection that has spread from their hand to their lower arm with Anitbiotics, but has not sterilized or cleaned the wound and has been using unsterilized bandages for the last 3 hours would look something like this, potentially, maybe, I'm not good at math:
 
Start with 125% to take damage on a roll from Deadly infections.
 
First Aid skill of 7 reduces this chance by 56% (8% per point), 69% (nice) is the result, THEN:
 
Using an Unsterilized Bandage (as opposed to a dirty bandage) reduces this chance by an additional 5%, 64% is the result, (using no bandage would increase the chance by 5%, using a dirty bandage imposes no change, using a Sterilized bandage would reduce the chance by 15%) THEN:
 
Using antibiotics reduces the chance to take damage by an additional 10%, 54% is the result. THEN:
 
Prone to Illness multiplies the new chance to take damage by 1.5x, 81% is the result. THEN:
 
The wound hasn't been 'properly' treated for the last 3 hours, add a flat 2% increase for every 2 hours this has gone on. The result is 83% (85% after the next hour.)
 
The wound is unsterilized, Add a flat 10% increase to the chance of taking damage. The final result is a 93% chance to take damage, pretty much exclusively calculated based on player input, skills, and traits. If the result is to end in a decimal, it rounds up and down as per standard rounding rules.  It may seem unfair that someone with level 7 First Aid has such a high chance to take damage from the wound, but lower ranks of First Aid would have pretty much guaranteed taking damage in this scenario, and the player is not using several tools available (poultices, sterilizing wounds and bandages) to further reduce this chance or prevent it outright. Essentially, if you know how to treat a wound, you could knock even Deadly infections down to a manageable level without being able to 'properly' treat it, at least for long enough to find a solution.
 
A similar process is followed for how much damage is taken from that roll, doubled as the infection has spread to one other region. I don't know what the health values in the game look like so I don't know what numbers would be reasonable. The idea is that mild infections could kill in 1.5-2 weeks when ignored if they never progress, deadly infections could kill in 2-5 days if completely ignored assuming that they never regress or get better on their own. 
 
7) Severe and Deadly infections can come back if the player does not continue antibiotic treatment for a couple of days after the infection clears up, even if the wound is healed. This is intended to happen maybe 1/10 times, but often enough that using antibiotics for a couple of days is still the preferable option if resources allow it. Using poultice treatments on open wounds (such as Wild Garlic) make this even less likely. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A random event, now that they added the rats in build 42, it would be very immersive if after a few months this event would be possible. When entering a basement or some dark place, the character becomes frightened by several rats running away.
It's the prototype of the idea, you can polish it better.

I was playing the TWD game a few days ago (I was at the part where Clem is amputated by AJ,) and I wondered if maybe it was a good idea to have as a mechanic in Project Zomboid, considering how strict the game is with bites and giving you no second chances. If we were to see it in Project Zomboid one day, I have a few ideas that might balance it out.
You can amputate yourself with a saw, it could be any saw, but I think if a medical saw could be added to the game it could mean you get a lesser chance of getting infection (the normal kind.) After you amputate yourself, which would take about 20 seconds, you immediately lose 33% of your health and you will start to bleed very quickly, near the same rate as if you got lacerated on the neck. While performing the action, your character or the person you may be performing it on will scream loudly, alerting any Zomboids nearby. Both the amputate and the person amputating will begin to become more and more panicked. If the amputate has a tissue or toilet paper in their inventory, they can use it to muffle the screams by equipping it.  There are specific disadvantages depending on which body part you amputated.
If you amputated your hand or arm:
You will immediately be given the All Thumbs trait, or instead lose Dexterous if you have it on your character.
You cannot wield weapons with two hands or hold items in your secondary after being amputated. 
You cannot climb sheet rope.
Climbing fences or windows will be slower.
You cannot use shotguns or rifles, only pistols or revolvers.
If you amputated your foot or leg:
You will not be able to walk without a walking stick or two crutches. (Crutches could be made with level 5 metalworking or found in hospitals and can be used permanently, and a walking stick could be crafted with a short blade weapon and a tree branch but will lose condition over time.) If you don't have either item, your character will have to crawl instead.
You move slower than normal when first using crutches or a walking stick, but over time your character will get progressively better at moving with them and will return to normal speed after a period of 3 weeks.
Swinging weapons is slower. Guns are not affected.
If you climb a high fence with crutches, you will have to leave your crutches behind. However, a walking stick will not be left behind and can still be used after climbing the fence, which incentivizes the player to have one on them in case of an emergency.
You will not be able to sprint.
 
Other features/changes I'd make for amputation:
The perk name "Dexterous" would be renamed to "Ambidextrous" to make the feature with arm or hand amputation make more sense.
Getting bites on your leg is more likely because having your legs attacked is a rarer occurrence.
Fear of Blood will cause the person to become panicked much more quickly when amputating or being amputated.
Doctors will get a new career trait: Emergency Medic.
Emergency Medic decreases the time it takes to amputate to 10 seconds, decreases the probability that the wound will get infected, allows the wound to be bandaged up much faster than normal, and they do not become panicked when amputating themselves or others.
 
What do you think?
 
 

I'm a bit confused and torn with this setting. Setting it to None has the desired effect of making sure Zeds cant track your movements through walls, ensuring they can only path to the players last seen location. But setting to None also unfortunately increases the chance Zeds will forget what they were doing and give up navigating towards distant sounds. This makes it hard to lure zeds reliably with loud noises.
 
Is it possible to have these two things seperated? I like my zombies dumb as heck but also very persistent.

Cool story

I know that you've put a lot of work into it, but a sandbox option or an audio setting to bring back mute characters would be great. I'm really not a fan of the character voices, and I think it kinda overwrites some of the "roleplay" aspect the game has. With the player voices, you don't imagine your character as they are, the game will assign you a voice and you need to deal with it. 
 
Also, inevitably, no matter how many voices you include, you'll start seeing repeats, or even have two players in the same server who have the same voice. I don't like that, personally.  
 
Not asking for it to not be added, just to have the option to turn it off.

I can still understand the character's panic when he sees danger in front of him that could kill you. But it is very strange when your character after a power outage, water outage, lack of any help from the government, the army. The collapse of the community and the constant risk and danger outside the character's home. Plus possibly loss of loved ones and family. And the general apocalyptic nature against the backdrop that our character has lived a quiet American life before, and now his long life is in big question because he could be killed by zombies, raiders, or a dumb lack of safety precautions.
 
The character needs to create the initial realistic reaction they will experience during such a colossal traumatic experience. Because it looks ridiculous when you feel like this character hundreds of hours later - just because you know the routine, you know the rules of the game. And you only suffer from panic, nothing more.
 
It would be realistic to add a character with deep depression and constant anxiety for a week, which will have to be treated with antidepressants (otherwise the character will be treated for depression for about a month, along with the Brave perk). After the character will be in a random time period (another month). Get a sudden depression, after which after 2 months he will get used to the lost civilization and new life.
 
Again I'll solidify - we are not SUPERHEROES in this game, and if the game wants to be realistic, and act according to its canons. Let it do it to the end!
If that's not enough - put yourself in the shoes of that poor schmuck
 
EDIT: Character also could take more sickness when killing zombies itself, because you know. Realistic gore, people who don't used to work with such a meat don't prepared to see that. And they probably get nausea just from looking it

This is actually planned, though good luck figuring out when

I can still understand when a player can have a stockpile of canned food that will be edible next year after the apocalypse starts. Different canned goods should have different dates. Junk food should also have an expiration date. Because it turns out that I can loot all the gas stations, and live for almost two years without thinking that I had a problem with food at all.
This is also very relevant when almost every house has enough of such food, from - because of which the same survival skills such as gathering, fishing, trapping become useless because it is enough to prepare for a raid and wipe everything until the space in the trunk does not run out.
 
Expiration dates for all products should be dynamic
 
For canning jars
- The expiration date of the cans can be viewed on the can using the context menu. The character will say a phrase like "29.06.1994". To know which canned food is worth taking, or they will soon cease to be edible
- The character will see the external condition of the can by name (Bloated - Stale canned food; Rusty - Spoiled canned food)
 
For non-perishable food in general
- Cereals and similar types of food have no expiration date, like Pepper, Salt, Rice, Spaghetti, Sugar, Flour, Dry Ramen
- Light alcohol like beer should have a shelf life of 6-8 months, and the same goes for sodas. The same goes for juice
- Condiments like ketchup, tomato paste, oils, syrups, sauces also have a shelf life of up to 1 year
- Grains should have an expiration date, too, to eliminate the point of living your whole fucking life on them. Chips, granola bar, tortilla have a shelf life of up to 1 year, after that they become stale, after a 2 months they become "damp". 
- Chocolate remains eatable 6 mounts, after became filthy
- Can of Oats, Mac and Cheese remains eatable 1.5 years, after becoming damp.
- Peanut Butter with Marmalade, Honey remains eatable 6 mounts after became rotten
- All Sweets has a shelf life of up to 6 months
- Miscellaneous food like Pancake Mix, Gravy Mix become unusable for crafting after 1.5 years
- All foods like Gum, Licorice's, Globes, Candy, Lolipops, Cookies become inedible after a year or more (crusty)
- Sausage/meat jerky can be eaten for up to 2 months and soon they become stale and soon spoiled.
 
The game should spawn canned items much more often
When a lot of food will be inedible after a year of apocalypse the player will have to think about creating personal canned food that will have a shelf life of two years. In a standard game, you have to be incredibly lucky to get one box of cans in the whole game. And to make sure you survive the winter you need at least 50 canned goods for 3 months
 
In project zomboid player can not worry about food and water. because these resources are easily-mined and do not present any - a problem in obtaining. If all the fresh food spoils, the player is left with tons of canned food, non-perishable food that have an unlimited shelf life.
 

Hi, I really think the content from this mod should be in the base game, as it is just tweaking the values of XP in the custom sandbox. Sadly, this mod doesn't seem to work 100% but I believe the dev team would be able to implement this.
 
DISCLAIMER: I did not create this mod. I just think the features it adds are essential for the sandbox customisation experience (as a flat multiplier covering all skills isn't sufficient). Seems that the mod author has gone dark thus my decision to post it here.
 
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2827283808
 
In case the mod gets removed, here is the description of the mod.
 
Basic Features Ultimate XP Tweaker allows you to set an XP modifier for every individual skill in the game! For example, if you think most skills level up fast enough, but Fitness and Nimble are too slow, you can make only those skills level faster.
The multipliers used by the mod are properly applied in every case, respecting other built-in multipliers in the game, such as the global XP Multiplier, "XP Boost", skill books, Fast Learner, Slow Learner and Pacifist.
 
 
Advanced Features Power users may also use the "Advanced" sandbox settings tab, where more intricate settings are located. These settings can safely be ignored by users just looking to multiply the XP for a certain skill. The following features are listed under this tab:

Modify XP Boost: +X%
Every XP Boost value in the game (normally called +75%, +100%, +125%, etc) may be modified, per individual skill. For example, a character starting with 0 Carpentry normally gets only 0.25 times the amount of Carpentry XP that a character starting with 1 Carpentry gets. If you think this is too extreme, you may change this to any value of choice. A good starting point could be setting the boost for 0 starting points to 0.6666.

Level 5+ Aiming and Reloading XP
Characters with Aiming or Reloading levels of 5 or higher gain a large debuff to their XP gains for those skills. Optionally, this mod allows you to change those.

XP Derandomizing
In vanilla Zomboid, XP gained from moving has a random chance to apply every frame. This mod contains an option to derandomize these and gain XP at a regular rate instead. This includes: Strength XP from walking while at >50% carrying capacity, Fitness and Sprinting XP from running, and Nimble XP from walking in combat stance. This is enabled by default, with the XP gain rate being exactly the same as vanilla Zomboid would be on average, but all of this can be configured. As an exception, Lightfooted/Sneaking XP or Fitness XP from walking at excessive exertion or exhaustion are not derandomized, because those mechanics are part of the game's Java code and not the moddable Lua code.

Reducing XP gains
While the configuration of this mod only allows you to increase XP multipliers, and not reduce them, if you really want to decrease XP for specific skills, this is still possible by the following workaround. Set the vanilla "XP Multiplier" under the "Character" tab in the Sandbox Options to a value lower than 1.0. Then adjust the mod's values accordingly. For example, if you only want Cooking to level half as quickly, set the vanilla XP multiplier to 0.5, and set all the skill multiplier values from this mod, except for cooking and strength/fitness (the vanilla multiplier doesn't apply to passive skills), to 2.0.
 

 

I honestly think these two ideas are inherently linked more than I had initially thought. A lot of the weapons have very particular 'quirks' in their animations. Hammers for example give a bit of a jab forward so that you hit with the head, and to see that represented in gameplay as a side-and-back swing as oppoosed to something like a night stick which has a wider arc that would be knock things to the sides with very little backward momentum would be an interesting choice to make on its own.
 
I do agree that not all weapons should be 10/10, I just want to see more of a "podium" style to picking your weapons rather than a "pedastal", that is to say multiple viable options sharing within the top slots, with one or two that edge out the rest, or have limited use but are great weapons, like machetes and katanas as an example, rather than a single option that is objectively better than everything else.

Yip yip, hello. Let’s dive in.
 
SWING BOTH WAYS
Another exciting addition to the build 42 tech upgrade branch has just dropped.
 
The tech upgrade branch is what contains our optimizations, improved view cone, basement/skyscraper technology and now… an immersive improvement that we’ve wanted for a long time, that could potentially lead to many cool additional gameplay opportunities that weren’t possible before.
 
 
That’s right, kids, doors have now entered the third dimension.
Where before doors would just flip instantly on the tile the moment they are opened or closed, now they are animated and use the tech branch’s depth buffer.
 
This is obviously a huge improvement for immersion, but could potentially lead to cool new mechanics in future (note, certainly not b42’s initial release) like opening doors at different speeds, doors being left slightly open, peeking, bashing open, one-way fire doors and such.
 
While easy to overlook, our doors are pretty much unchanged since the 0.1.5d days yet also one of the most fundamental things about PZ gameplay – so getting some visual niceness, and some future gameplay opportunities, feels like a win.
 
So let’s have a quick noisy vid in which doors open and slam shut in unison.
 
 
(In future we clearly also already have the tech to have doors and visibly opening and closing on vehicles too, it’s already in the code and used by many mods, however in the main game it’s always been the plan to couple this to in-car character animations, visible interiors and such.)
 
CRAFTING STUFF
We’re operating in various different areas with crafting, but the one that’s becoming most interesting and fleshed out with recipes and new items is definitely blacksmithing which has come a long way in the last month.
 
So let’s head over to Blair to have a chat about the ways in which you’ll be getting to grips with the creation of some of these beauties.

“For blacksmithing in build b42 we have the tiers, workstations, and materials worked out; now most of the crafting recipes have been made as well, and it’s a case where content is being added almost daily as the art assets are completed.”

“Most items that one could reasonably expect to be blacksmithed can be blacksmithed, and in most cases the resultant item is a more rugged, crafted version than the default version of the item that you may be used to.”
 
“In many cases there are multiple tiers of items, requiring better skills, stations and materials to produce, where it serves the game. Weapons are an example of where this extra attention is being put into the system, where there are distinct tiers of the basic types, that differ in both appearance and performance.”
 
“A lot of work still needs to be done with balancing, as well as getting the fun stuff like animations of the character performing the actions, with fire and smoke. Our artists are hard at work making the assets for all the new items needed for this, but otherwise blacksmithing could be considered ‘mostly done’; you could say that all of the design hurdles have been crossed, and we have solved the ‘Riddle of Steel’.”

“One conceit of b42 crafting is that you should be able to start on a theoretical all forest map; this isn’t a concrete thing that we’re testing yet, but we’re providing foundation for it. Steel production from nothing being one of them.”
“Although iron ore outcroppings are more commonplace in games than in real life Kentucky, we have tiles of them, for use for our own forest maps, and maps of modders.“
 
(ALERT ALERT: we are aware this is quite game-y, and may well refine in future. For now, however, it works for our purposes.)

“Once you have smashed them into iron ore, you can dig a charcoal pit, and build a primitive forge and furnace, and use the charcoal to extract an iron bloom from iron ore.“
 
“With a stone hammer and some crude wooden tongs (which won’t survive the process) workable iron is beaten out of the iron bloom, and that iron can be used to produce simple iron implements such as tongs, smithing hammers, nails, and basic masonry tools.”
“Eventually you can work your way up to building a proper come kiln, for both making charcoal, and also coke out of the charcoal for steel production, as well as a smelting furnace, and then an intermediary forge and a grindstone. With this you can produce medium-quality iron implements, that benefit from proper hardening and quenching, as well as higher carbon content.”
 
“From there one would work there way up to a blast furnace, for producing steel, and then, with the steel, cast and harden a proper blacksmithing anvil and make an advanced forge, and eventually a metalworking bench for making high quality, precision tools and items.”
Elsewhere, meanwhile, we have been going through the game and converting existing systems to the new fluid mechanics that come as a part of the crafting system.
 
A good example of this, as it clearly shows in the end product, are our hair dyes – even if they are relatively cosmetic as far as the game-proper goes.
 
In the following video, then, you see the dyes being transferred to (and used from) any fluid container – whether bottles, cans or buckets. Here too you can see them being mixed, and the resulting new colour being applied to the character’s hair. (Elements of this still WIP)
 
 
GAS 2 GONE
We’ve given you more sandbox power over how much gasoline is stored beneath Knox gas stations, as previous work in the area didn’t go far enough. You’ll have options to select whether gas pumps are infinite, what their minimum and maximum potential amounts of stored gasoline is, and indeed what the chances are of it spawning completely empty (see image below).
 
We have also made these a little more user-friendly with better right click feedback on power, required containers, admin info on fuel remaining etc. We’ve also added a more visible fuel caps on our car models, and indeed a fuel-side indicator icon on your vehicle’s dashboard.

 
VOICE SETS
After the successful integration of the body noises, “hey!”s and “psst!”s of a real actor and a real actress – we made the call to widen the net a little and get a variety of different people to record specific voice/noise sets for the game.
 
There will now be four male and four female voices that you can choose at character creation stage, which will also mean that in MP those around you will likely have slightly different puffs, pants and combat exertions.
 
Likewise having a more particular sound to your voice and character will likely be good for your own personal RP reasons.
(Please note here, again, that exertion noise frequency hasn’t been 100% balanced yet.)
 
 
  ANIMALS
It’s relatively easy to slot in new animals to RJ’s system, the modding scene will likely be fairly extravagant, so while fixing bugs with our chickens, cows, sheep and pigs – he’s also slipped in some raccoons and wild turkeys to roam alongside the deer.

 
 
4K PZ
Fox’s up-rezzing (and slight tidy-up) of all the game’s many windows, icons, menus and general game furniture continues. In fact, we’re now at a point in which many aspects of the game can be played at 4k without the need for squinting and a magnifying glass.
 
Folk with higher-res screens have long-suffered with Zomboid, so we’re excited to finally put this issue to bed – as can be seen in the following 4K video.
 
Please note, however, that some windows here still feel a little crowded – we probably need to loosen up the crafting window that could use a bit more padding, the tabs feel a little close together etc.
 
 
MAP NICETIES
The map expansion, and elevation/lowering, continues apace. Something else we are bringing to your exploration is a little more colour and character to the places you are surviving within – as such there’ll be more variety of things left on whiteboards and chalkboards in schools, universities and laboratories for example.
 
Meanwhile, there’s clearly elements of signage Americana we can use for our game too. Case in point, being a wide range of different signs outside our churches.
We’ve also got an, as yet unnamed, Wild West tourist attraction going into the game – which could also potentially be a good place to find some of the crafting gear that’ll be new to 42. Maybe a couple of cowboy actor zeds shambling about as well, for good measure.
 
 
DRESS UP BOX
We generally don’t populate the map with Mad Max lookin’ zeds, but people certainly seem to like having a little more freedom in terms of the threads you choose to go a hunting and a’ looting in.
 
As a side project from his crafting duties, then, Blair has worked with animator Martin to improve the clipping issues folk often come up against with certain combinations of clothing. This issue was becoming more and more apparent with the crafted straps and metal shin guards being developed in the blacksmithing aspect of 42, so needed nipping in the bud.
 
Essentially, now clothing items and body locations can have set definitions – which then instruct the game to use alternate clothing models in particular circumstances. So a different arm guard model, for example, will be automatically used if the character is wearing a bulky jacket. We feel that this will have massive potential for modding.
 
On top of this we have also made it so accoutrements like limb armour (shin pads, for example) can go on either limb; you can wear just one, or a pair, or a mismatched pair. This said, so it’s not too annoying, they’ll appear as matched pairs in loot or on zeds.
 
Finally, while not entirely linked to this endeavour but still in the same ballpark, helmets/headgear/masks all now affect your vision cone and your hearing (modestly) which we’ve added as a balancing measure for when crafted helmets are in the game.
Oh, and the above also means we can have (American) Football Shoulder Pads in-game too, so expect some varsity jock zombies wearing those around campus also.
 
Here’s a somewhat silly, but fun, screenie showing a little bit more of what this system can create – including a bunch of the new items that will be craftable with the new blacksmith/forge systems.
 
NEW HIRES / RETURNING FACES
We’ve expanded a lot over the past year, and we had called time on anyone else for fear of things running away with themselves.
 
Clearly Soul Filcher joined recently, and unmentioned in this blog we’ve got Fenris in the guts of our Discord integration, Patrick with his (very encouraging) experimentation with ragdolls, and there’s a hugely experienced guy called Matt who we haven’t announced before who’s putting in foundations for future engine improvements. After all this we mentally shut the door on likely changes and additions, until…
 
Zac, the coding maestro behind 41’s animation systems, made his return to work after a long period away this month – and is now working the kinks out of issues we’ve had since he was last with us with character rotation and movement.
 
Here’s a link to show his WIP improvement – though it might not be super-perceptible in vid-form. When this is all sorted the in-game character should feel more responsive, and also give us more flexibility when improving on the general animation suite.
 
He also brings alongside him a lovely guy from Tea Games called Ash, who’s helping integrate the video play middleware Bink into the game which will (among other things) help us mix some improvements into our title screen, and to provide combat video examples in our tutorial windows and such.
 
THE PROF
The other guy, meanwhile, who’s burst onto or internal development scene is someone we know as ‘The Prof’.
 
Thomas ‘ProfMobius’ Guimbretiere comes to us by way of Minecraft, and some players might already be familiar with his mods and work over in block-land. He started modding Minecraft something like 13/14 years ago and co-produced MCP, the predecessor of Forge, before later authoring important mods like Waila, Jabba and Opis.
 
He was then hired by Mojang themselves for work on Minecraft Java (ooh, Java) and went on to work on oceans, corals, new villager AI, village construction and a full rework of the game’s world generation. All of which is, clearly, hugely relevant to our interests.
 
Since his Mojang days, he’s been working on the backend of Razzleberries (https://razzleberri.es/) but now he’s in the iron grip of Spiffo. To begin, to we’ll be easing him in on something he’s familiar with that we’ll probably cover next time. There’s plenty of fun stuff planned beyond that too though.
 
HAPPY THANKSGIVING
For all you Americans, Amz has made you a Thanksgiving vid. It’s got some WIP raccoons in it and everything.
Though, thinking about it, maybe we should have gone with the turkeys. Anyway…
 
 
Many thanks also to everyone kindly voting for us in the Steam Awards. We really appreciate your support and associated reviews, but also if you are in two minds about whether or not to click for us – please consider the likes of No Man’s Sky or Deep Rock Galactic which are both amazing. It’ll still be a while till 42 is in public beta, and we’d be more comfortable with the nomination-love once it’s out, all-singing and all-dancing.
———————-
This week’s misty mess from CAPSens Crim. 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.

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I mean the meta of this is that "it's on you to learn how to play the game, it's quirks and features, and to act accordingly." If you can't do that, or you don't enjoy it, then all I can suggest is either tweaking it in sandbox, using mods, or finding something else to play. There's no point trying to force it, you'll only frustrate yourself and others.
 
In detail:
* You don't understand how the movement system works. Sprinting is meant to go fast in a straight line. If you encounter obstacles, you're going to have a bad time, full stop (pun intended). Same thing for the forest -- there are no "invisible obstacles."
* You're in control of your character. It's your responsibility to equip 'em with weapons. Don't blame the game for failing to reach into your backpack and doing it for you.
* We've never been able to reproduce the instant-bite thing, outside of the Hypochonriac trait. Of late, some users have mentioned that they healed themselfs in debug mode, likely only removing the wound state instead of overall infection. They get infected again, they're already fatally infected they instantly die.
* Zombies can't bite you through the windshield? Do you mean car doors? The reason they can bite you through a door is that you interrupted the close door command by doing something, like driving away immediately after getting into the car. That there is not a visual indicator that the door is open or closed is indeed "our bad" but now you know. Don't interrupt the action; wait for the door close sound to play. It takes roughly a third of a second. (If the car door window was down or smashed, they can also bite through that, naturally.)

There is obvious cause and effect in all this.
You ran into a tree, you fell.
You ran into a wall, you fell.
You didn't equip a weapon. Your hand got cut smashing the window.
You got into a car and immediately drove away. The door wasn't closed and you got bit.
 
There's observable cause and effect. Unless you refuse to experiment and learn from it, it should be "fairly" intuitive, aside from the last one.
 
You are not the arbitrator of what is right or good in game design outside of your own personal self. Don't expect others to agree with your personal feeling of what is reasonable, good, or lazy -- especially not when there's millions of people who've bought and seemingly largely liked the game at this point.

Regardless, you have sandbox and mods. You can make it (almost) anything you want without our intervention. If you disagree with any of the above, feel free to use the tools you were given and help yourself.

Condensing a few old posts and some new ideas into something more readable at a glance.
 
Saw the devs saying they wanted zomboid combat to be more difficult and more interesting, and I agree, right now it's trivial to just backpedal to victory. They mentioned the possibility of having random tripping while backpedaling and while I think it may have been a joke, I would still like to go on record that I am not a fan of the idea of your character randomly tripping and getting mauled on a dice roll as punishment for even attempting to engage with the 'fun' part of the game. 
 
When I say "should", I'm not saying that I think this needs to be in the game or that I know better than anyone, it's just a way to denote that it's not currently like that now.
 
 
 Zomboids should cause a little stumble animation for the player if they fail to grab on but still manage to get halfway through the animation before the player escapes. This would be most punishing to players carrying large loads, injured players, or exhausted players who are just barely outwalking the zombies due to their moodles. Not to say you shouldn't be able to outwalk them for a long period of time, but if it's obvious that you should be getting grabbed, zombies giving little love bumps to trip you up seems reasonable to me, not making the situation impossible, but forcing you to find a solution quickly as you can only shrug off so many pushes. It would also be punishing to players who don't know when to "cut and run" during backpedal fights, making it much harder to push zombies on top of you away before they grab you, forcing you to really think about your timing and the spacing of the infected. Nimble and lightfoot determine resistance and recovery, naturally. Conversely, when shoving zombies in hedges, they should be more likely to get tangled up and fall over. Also, zombies should have a chance to stumble or even take other zombies down with them, depending on the strength of the pusher, especially on inclines. Additionally, pushing zombie's heads and upper torsos onto table tiles, curb tiles, stair tiles, etc should deal a little damage and have a higher chance to make a crawler. Zombies should also be able to slide down stairs, taking damage on the way (posted about this previously). Also pushing them out of windows and over fences would be neat, especially if it did damage/made crawlers more often as well. Backpedaling over corpses should cause problems for characters with less than 5 points in nimble. This would take the 'random' element out of the idea to randomly trip the player and give it a set trigger that THEN rolls the dice once you've already failed to account for environmental factors. It's semi-realistic, but in a way that adds to the gameplay by making you consider your surroundings rather than (in my opinion) taking away from the gameplay by randomly messing with you just for the sake of it. Zombies, when knocked back, should stumble in a direction correlating directly to the swing's direction, including a little chance to make nearby zombies stumble.   Weapons should have distinct stats, even if it's a small tradeoff like the wrench has better durability, but the nightstick can knock zombies around with lower strngth, but  the hammer has more damage and can be repaired without skill in Metalworking (and the relevant tools), despite being a little heavier and therefore costing more stamina. This would make for some interesting choices between weapons, even the "meta" weapons. Right now weapons feel practically the same for all purposes and it sucks a lot of the meaning out of picking a weapon. If I've got a supply of nightsticks, why would I bother using hammers? Some weapons should defintely be the 'coveted' of a category, but some more variance in the stats to make a wider variety of options worth picking would be nice. Weapons knocking zombies around in directions related to the swings would also give some of the weapons a different 'feel' to use, as the animation now directly correlates to how zombies react to your hits. Killing zombies, being surrounded by zombies, nearly being grabbed by zombies, actually being grabbed by zombies but escaping, or being injured in any form should give a sadness/stress penalty, which similarly to panic, you gain a resistance to as time goes on and you kill more zombies. This would make it not impossible, but way less enticing to just go on a 100+ zombie killing spree on day 1 in order to clear the area. If you are constantly in danger and nearly dying or getting overwhelmed constantly while killing hundreds of the undead, your character should be a depressed, nervous wreck who's paranoid that something is going to jump out and get him at any moment. (Addendum)  Lower strength characters should have to put much more time and effort into shoving a zombie, resulting in somewhat of an animation lock similar to fighting off a grab attempt at low strength. Perhaps with some nimble and 3-5 strenght you can shuffle around a bit while in the animation to try and avoid other grabbers, and progressively get to shoving everything as it is in game between say, 6-10 where it's an instant push with its intensity dictated by strength. It'd make picking low strength a much more serious debuff that's much harder to offset with weapon skills and cars than what we have presently. In short: Zombies should require better timing and situational awareness to deal with, right now they're incredibly generous once you learn how to kite them, and the player should be rewarded for using their environment to offset the more difficult threat. Weapons should have more variety in their function amongst categories, and killing zombies should take a toll on your character's mental health. (in my opinion)

There is definitely more that can be done to make them a bigger deal, and I'll be periodically coming back to this as a "master list" for combat related suggestions when I think something up.
 
If anyone's got some suggestions that don't involve things like random critical misses or random chance to get the varus I would quite like to hear from you
 

1: That's still random critical misses, regardless of moodles. It would be so unbelievably unfun to try and attack a zomboid and just instantly kill yourself because you hit yourself with a bloody weapon. Combat with zombies should be difficult because they're a relentless force that are genuinely threatening on their own, the threat shouldn't come from the player just bonking themselves like a lemming.
 
2: We are literally outright STATED TO BE IMMUNE to the airborne strain of the virus. We are literally, objectively 'special' compared to the rest of the population. We can be infected through bites, but that's it.
 
3: How about just not adding it?
 
None of these 3 suggestions would add anything to the game, and would just make it frustrating and unfun.

Condensing a few old posts and some new ideas into something more readable at a glance.
 
Saw the devs saying they wanted zomboid combat to be more difficult and more interesting, and I agree, right now it's trivial to just backpedal to victory. They mentioned the possibility of having random tripping while backpedaling and while I think it may have been a joke, I would still like to go on record that I am not a fan of the idea of your character randomly tripping and getting mauled on a dice roll as punishment for even attempting to engage with the 'fun' part of the game. 
 
When I say "should", I'm not saying that I think this needs to be in the game or that I know better than anyone, it's just a way to denote that it's not currently like that now.
 
 
 Zomboids should cause a little stumble animation for the player if they fail to grab on but still manage to get halfway through the animation before the player escapes. This would be most punishing to players carrying large loads, injured players, or exhausted players who are just barely outwalking the zombies due to their moodles. Not to say you shouldn't be able to outwalk them for a long period of time, but if it's obvious that you should be getting grabbed, zombies giving little love bumps to trip you up seems reasonable to me, not making the situation impossible, but forcing you to find a solution quickly as you can only shrug off so many pushes. It would also be punishing to players who don't know when to "cut and run" during backpedal fights, making it much harder to push zombies on top of you away before they grab you, forcing you to really think about your timing and the spacing of the infected. Nimble and lightfoot determine resistance and recovery, naturally. Conversely, when shoving zombies in hedges, they should be more likely to get tangled up and fall over. Also, zombies should have a chance to stumble or even take other zombies down with them, depending on the strength of the pusher, especially on inclines. Additionally, pushing zombie's heads and upper torsos onto table tiles, curb tiles, stair tiles, etc should deal a little damage and have a higher chance to make a crawler. Zombies should also be able to slide down stairs, taking damage on the way (posted about this previously). Also pushing them out of windows and over fences would be neat, especially if it did damage/made crawlers more often as well. Backpedaling over corpses should cause problems for characters with less than 5 points in nimble. This would take the 'random' element out of the idea to randomly trip the player and give it a set trigger that THEN rolls the dice once you've already failed to account for environmental factors. It's semi-realistic, but in a way that adds to the gameplay by making you consider your surroundings rather than (in my opinion) taking away from the gameplay by randomly messing with you just for the sake of it. Zombies, when knocked back, should stumble in a direction correlating directly to the swing's direction, including a little chance to make nearby zombies stumble.   Weapons should have distinct stats, even if it's a small tradeoff like the wrench has better durability, but the nightstick can knock zombies around with lower strngth, but  the hammer has more damage and can be repaired without skill in Metalworking (and the relevant tools), despite being a little heavier and therefore costing more stamina. This would make for some interesting choices between weapons, even the "meta" weapons. Right now weapons feel practically the same for all purposes and it sucks a lot of the meaning out of picking a weapon. If I've got a supply of nightsticks, why would I bother using hammers? Some weapons should defintely be the 'coveted' of a category, but some more variance in the stats to make a wider variety of options worth picking would be nice. Weapons knocking zombies around in directions related to the swings would also give some of the weapons a different 'feel' to use, as the animation now directly correlates to how zombies react to your hits. Killing zombies, being surrounded by zombies, nearly being grabbed by zombies, actually being grabbed by zombies but escaping, or being injured in any form should give a sadness/stress penalty, which similarly to panic, you gain a resistance to as time goes on and you kill more zombies. This would make it not impossible, but way less enticing to just go on a 100+ zombie killing spree on day 1 in order to clear the area. If you are constantly in danger and nearly dying or getting overwhelmed constantly while killing hundreds of the undead, your character should be a depressed, nervous wreck who's paranoid that something is going to jump out and get him at any moment. (Addendum)  Lower strength characters should have to put much more time and effort into shoving a zombie, resulting in somewhat of an animation lock similar to fighting off a grab attempt at low strength. Perhaps with some nimble and 3-5 strenght you can shuffle around a bit while in the animation to try and avoid other grabbers, and progressively get to shoving everything as it is in game between say, 6-10 where it's an instant push with its intensity dictated by strength. It'd make picking low strength a much more serious debuff that's much harder to offset with weapon skills and cars than what we have presently. In short: Zombies should require better timing and situational awareness to deal with, right now they're incredibly generous once you learn how to kite them, and the player should be rewarded for using their environment to offset the more difficult threat. Weapons should have more variety in their function amongst categories, and killing zombies should take a toll on your character's mental health. (in my opinion)

There is definitely more that can be done to make them a bigger deal, and I'll be periodically coming back to this as a "master list" for combat related suggestions when I think something up.
 
If anyone's got some suggestions that don't involve things like random critical misses or random chance to get the varus I would quite like to hear from you
 

So here's MY question: Why doesn't killing zombies increase stress and reduce unhappiness, even in the early game?

So here's MY question: Why doesn't killing zombies increase stress and reduce unhappiness, even in the early game?

I don't see how that fixes the problem of 'mindlessly disassembling things', it would just take way longer with the minigames and once you get into a rhythym it would still be quite mindless. What we need is a wider variety of sources to level up your carpentry through that are viable long-term so you don't HAVE to just tear apart entire neighborhoods of furniture and TVs, not a silly minigame. 

Items here are separated in case you want to discuss them separately. I spent a lot of time on this so I hope you enjoy.
 
TL:DR Because that's a lot of reading:
Infections cause pain and fever, infections can get worse or better depending on how the player treats it, first aid skill, traits, and a little bit of luck. If you don't treat the infection or are just really unlucky, it will get worse and spread, but isn't going to kill you if you're treating it properly. If you don't treat it, it will start to damage your player, and will do more damage if it spreads. You can stop it from dealing damage by treating it properly relative to its threat level, and heal it faster by treating it better than what is strictly necessary.  You can use medicines and poultices to deal with symptoms and help them heal faster. You can use clean/sterilized rags and bandages to clean wounds to be at a slightly better chance of avoiding infection than if you hadn't cleaned them at all, but not as well as if you had sterilized them with alcohol, wipes, or disinfectants.
 
This not only adds a few new features to First Aid that make it much more important and useful overall, especially in a group of survivors that lack it, but makes dealing with wounds much more engaging and risky, so that even when transmission is off there is a real threat in dealing with wound infections that may alter the course of your character's story, but isn't super likely to kill you if you know how to deal with it. Right now most wounds you can just slap a bandage on and forget about it, and even if infections made them heal slower the same would likely be true.
 
 
Main Text:
Right now in the live game, infections do literally nothing at all, I'm fairly certain this is a bug, but even  when they did they weren't particularly engaging or threatening, and didn't even really need to be treated. I propose a system that will give them a little more depth and urgency, but also make First Aid significantly more useful of a skill to have.
 
1) Infections can occur with exposure to open air, dirty bandages, infrequently with unsterilized bandages, and almost never with sterilized bandages. Higher first aid reduces chance of wound infections while the wounds are tended to, and wounds being cared for with higher First Aid will become infected slower once the  bandage becomes dirty.  Infected wounds heal much slower than non-infected wounds.
 
1A) Higher First Aid skills allows for better treatment of infections, making them more likely to heal quickly and less likely to progress. Applications of poultices and similar treatments also improve with First Aid skills.
 
1B) Relevant poultices already found in-game can be applied to infections to make them heal quicker, reduce pain and fever, etc.
 
2) Larger wounds (Lacerations, deep wounds) are more likely to get infected, and those infections are more likely to be more dangerous. All infections can progress to a more severe type of infection, or can regress to a less severe type of infection depending on how well they're being treated, whether or not the player is taking antibiotics, etc. 
 
3) Infections can have 3 characteristics. Mild, Severe, Deadly. Mild infections cause a bit of pain in the area where they occur, and aren't likely to progress if the wound is cared for. Severe infections cause more pain and progress more quickly, with a noticeable chance to spread through a limb. Deadly infections always cause agony, spread MUCH more quickly and can kill in as little as 3 days if untreated or treated poorly, usually requiring several doses of antibiotics, occurring much more frequently from large wounds like Lacerations, Deep Lacerations, and Bites (assuming that transmission is turned off) unless you're especially lucky and have the traits  necessary to pull through (resilient, fast healer, etc). 
 
3A) Characters with low first aid skill can try to identify the severity of an infection, but are not likely to be able to tell the difference. Players can attempt to identify infected wounds every 12 hours. Players with low First Aid skill will more often than not have to make do with judging based off of the symptoms. At level 2 First Aid, wounds will immediately be tagged as "Infected" when they occur, and at level 5 First Aid you will always be able to identify the type of infection on first try. (no check failures) At First Aid level 7, you never have to check infections manually to determine what level of infection they are, and you will get more accurate information on how not only the infection is doing, but all wounds in general. Characters with NO (0) First Aid skill will not be able to tell that the wound is infected at all, with the exception of Deadly Infections which will always display the "Infected" status when they occur at low levels of First Aid. This means players with no First Aid skill will have to pay close attention to their moodles, and watch for the "Pain" tag to appear or watch their body temp. This also means that as such, their characters will not be able to apply poultices for dealing with infection to wounds as their character does not know that the wound is infected, only being able to apply more generalized poultices for wound care. (Last part totally debatable) 
 
3B) Characters will get loose guidance in the form of first-person text from the character when hovering over (confirmed) infected wounds, depending on their first aid level. They will also get some loose guidance when hovering over things like Antibiotics, if relevant. This system could also be applied to regular wound treatment, but this post is already very long as it is

FIG 1: "I don't know what to do about this..." (Level 2 First Aid character hovering over a (confirmed) infected wound.)
 
FIG 2: "I need to clean the wound..." (Level 4 First Aid character hovering over a (confirmed) unidentified, Mild or Severe infected wound.)
 
FIG 3: "I need to clean the wound, but sterilizing is better..." (Level 5+ First Aid character hovering over a (confirmed) Mild infected wound)
 
FIG 4: "I need to keep this as clean as possible, I should sterilize the wound and any bandages..." (Level 5+ First Aid character hovering over a (confirmed) Severe infected wound.) 
 
FIG 5: "I really should sterilize this, but cleaning it should do for now..." (Level 5+ First Aid character hovering over the "Clean wound" (as opposed to Sterilize wound) option over an uninfected wound, Mild infected wound, or Severe infected wound. Severe infected wound gets "if my supplies are sterile..." added to the end of its blurb)
 
FIG 6: "This infection is going to kill me, I need antibiotics, antiseptic, and sterilized bandages..." (Level 5+ First Aid character hovering over Deadly infected wound)

FIG 7: (Normal antibiotics description followed by:) "Can treat mild infections on their own, greatly assist in the treatment of more severe infections, are absolutely necessary in treating deadly infections. Continue treatment until bottle is empty, even after symptoms have cleared." (First Aid 4+ Character hovering over antibiotics in the inventory.)
 
These are the basic examples, more can be added to pad the "in-between" states as well as encompass more medical items and wounds.
 
4) All infections cause both localized and generalized body temp increases, localized pain to the infection and the surrounding areas, more pain when using the area that they're localized to, and can cause sickness/fever if severe enough.
 
5) Severe and Deadly infections can begin to spread through limbs (mentioned above), once this has happened they require antibiotics to treat, Deadly infections almost always require antibiotics to heal.
 
6) Each infected region will roll for damage (and chance to spread) independently once per hour if the wound is untreated. For Deadly Infections to be considered "Treated", the player must be using antibiotics and caring for the (sterilized) wound with Sterilized bandages, for Mild wounds, simply tending to the (cleaned or sterilized) wound with clean bandages is enough to stop them from dealing damage.  Alternatively, taking antibiotics and using unsterilized bandages (even with an unclean and unsterilized wound) will prevent Mild infections from dealing damage OR have a sterilized wound with unsterilized bandages. Severe infections can be treated by having at least a cleaned wound with a sterilized bandage. The wound must be at least clean when taking antibiotics to prevent Severe infections from damaging the player, but a sterilized bandage would not be necessary on antibiotics. Any excess conditions met will help the infection heal faster.  This separation between the infections and their treatment minimums is designed to make them unpredictable enough to be engaging, but still allowing for some flexibility in treatment up until the most severe cases.
 
6A) If no tools for sterilizing a wound are available in the player's inventory or nearby containers, they can clean the wound with clean or sterilized rags/bandages. For mild/severe infections this is enough to be considered properly treated, but won't heal as fast as sterilized wounds.  Deadly infections will have better rolls for damage if the wound is cleaned but not sterilized.
 
6B) The game will first roll to determine whether or not the player will take damage from that infected wound, based on the factors listed above, the player's First Aid skill, as well as traits like Resilient/Prone to Illness. If the wound is actively being properly treated by conditions listed above, this roll will always be in the player's favor.  If the roll is not in the player's favor, it will roll for how much damage it deals, taking these factors into consideration again for the minimum and maximum possible roll. 
 
6C) Infections that have spread will roll all infected regions together, as opposed to separate wounds which roll separately.
 
6D) For example, and by no means a finalized set of figures: A player who is Prone to Illness with a First Aid skill of 7 is treating a Deadly infection that has spread from their hand to their lower arm with Anitbiotics, but has not sterilized or cleaned the wound and has been using unsterilized bandages for the last 3 hours would look something like this, potentially, maybe, I'm not good at math:
 
Start with 125% to take damage on a roll from Deadly infections.
 
First Aid skill of 7 reduces this chance by 56% (8% per point), 69% (nice) is the result, THEN:
 
Using an Unsterilized Bandage (as opposed to a dirty bandage) reduces this chance by an additional 5%, 64% is the result, (using no bandage would increase the chance by 5%, using a dirty bandage imposes no change, using a Sterilized bandage would reduce the chance by 15%) THEN:
 
Using antibiotics reduces the chance to take damage by an additional 10%, 54% is the result. THEN:
 
Prone to Illness multiplies the new chance to take damage by 1.5x, 81% is the result. THEN:
 
The wound hasn't been 'properly' treated for the last 3 hours, add a flat 2% increase for every 2 hours this has gone on. The result is 83% (85% after the next hour.)
 
The wound is unsterilized, Add a flat 10% increase to the chance of taking damage. The final result is a 93% chance to take damage, pretty much exclusively calculated based on player input, skills, and traits. If the result is to end in a decimal, it rounds up and down as per standard rounding rules.  It may seem unfair that someone with level 7 First Aid has such a high chance to take damage from the wound, but lower ranks of First Aid would have pretty much guaranteed taking damage in this scenario, and the player is not using several tools available (poultices, sterilizing wounds and bandages) to further reduce this chance or prevent it outright. Essentially, if you know how to treat a wound, you could knock even Deadly infections down to a manageable level without being able to 'properly' treat it, at least for long enough to find a solution.
 
A similar process is followed for how much damage is taken from that roll, doubled as the infection has spread to one other region. I don't know what the health values in the game look like so I don't know what numbers would be reasonable. The idea is that mild infections could kill in 1.5-2 weeks when ignored if they never progress, deadly infections could kill in 2-5 days if completely ignored assuming that they never regress or get better on their own. 
 
7) Severe and Deadly infections can come back if the player does not continue antibiotic treatment for a couple of days after the infection clears up, even if the wound is healed. This is intended to happen maybe 1/10 times, but often enough that using antibiotics for a couple of days is still the preferable option if resources allow it. Using poultice treatments on open wounds (such as Wild Garlic) make this even less likely. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Its kinda strange to have "credit scrolling" where you have literaly 3 lines with: Time, Zombie counter, and Gamemode.
There a plenty of info you could insert to actually give death screen more reason to be interesting than ragequitting

I had quite a few moments where I could not go back when I entered the window, and there is for example a bollard or a box near which is a zombie that I could not see. It would be logical that if you press S while entering the window, the character will reverse animation
 
It's as dumb as possible when the character can't see a damn thing going on below and you're literally praying at random that there aren't any zombies waiting below. Even when the zone is cleared - you are not saved from respawning.
 
Therefore, the ability to climb the rope sheet back to "S" should be the same as with the window.

Think it was all said already the only thing I'd like to add is that for your first request there is a mod you may like
 
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2237300246
Workshop ID: 2237300246
Mod ID: NRK_NeedLightToRead