vek

"there’s debate on the team as to whether the player character should have a little more clarity in the darkness"
 
I suppose no light=dark; Cat's eyes trait should maybe give a little more light blue clarity exactly like in the "doors and lightning" video?
Also filters while wearing glasses/sunglasses would be a plus in my opinion
 
Please, no Bethesd* bright nights and indoors !
 
I'm also very exited to try the new lightning system !
 
Cone is a little light, hope it will be possible to make it a little darker in options, that would be great; (I might be wrong tho, probably because i didn't try it myself).

Keep up the good work guys !

This is probably how those who live 800 km south of Canada imagine log cabins without central heating.

It's an isometric game, so why wouldn't you know which direction is which?

Everything is fine, we are waiting for the release of b42, it remains only to finalize the raccoons!))

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.

The short answer is that it’s not far enough along for that or it would be out.

The long answer,  in addition to what Puppers said, is iwbums only had around 10-100 players at any time despite how popular game was during 41. It’s not as impactful as you’re making out and we have groups of both volunteer and paid testers pulled from the community, anyway. Until it’s reasonably complete, passes through their hands, and satisfies all involved parties, there’s nothing to release.
 
This is also the same process that we used for b41.

It will be necessary to carry out deratization! Molotov cocktail must have!

Sky High
So… hmm, where were we?
 
Okay so, recent weeks have seen two mega-merges into our trunk internal testing build.
 
The first was latest from our MP team, to top up the central development branch with their latest from their ongoing server work to flag up any unexpected issues and to get a few gameplay systems back online in MP.
 
The second was the guts of the long-awaited crafting revamp from Turbo, which means that the functionality for all our primary crafting stations is now in – and it’s a matter of banging heads together and integrating everything we’ve had stacked up for it.
 
To this end we’re pleased to announce that we’ve hired yet another stalwart individual from the modding community to aid us in this quest.
We were thinking about the different modders who could give our crafting team a little extra grunt, we have so many amazing ones after all, but the offerings of Soul Filcher stood out as being produce of exactly the sort of brain we needed.

We’re really happy to have Soul officially on the team, and while his initial introductory task has been some tidy-up work and minor improvements on our many and varied different traits he should be diving into the new crafting stations with the others in the weeks ahead. 
 
SKY HIGH
The engine upgrade is now in a phase of finding all the edge case issues where something doesn’t render correctly due to the new caching rendering method.
 
Alongside this, very excitingly, the map team are working on larger buildings and basements to be slotted into the game map.
EP tested out the first building to use the increased floor limits, a literal 32 floor skyscraper which looks super impressive to see in-game. This, as yet unnamed, skyscraper also allowed us to get a fun new animation into the mix as well…


PLEASE NOTE: Impact with pavement is WIP. There’ll be far more crunchy SFX, far less blending issues with the character standing back up, and also more blood obviously. Screaming too.
 
 
Elsewhere we are making the most of the improvements to how sprites are cached and handled. This now allows, for example, sprites to be combined with overlays into a single cached texture.
 
With this we can create nicer, and more accurate, highlighting and borders when they are selected and moused over. As seen here:
 
 
Increasingly with the engine upgrade it’s become ever more clear that with it we’ll be able to polish up more oddities and visual quirks of Zomboid in the long term.
 
If you’re interested, this is made evident by the testing tools that we’ve added to Zomboid’s debug menus that put the new tile depth system through its paces.
 
 
In this video you will see a large debug 3d cylinder that can be moved around to test how it interacts with the map environment.
This now interacts with walls and other objects as if they were bona fide 3D geometry within the iso scene, which was impossible up till now. Previously it would have inserted itself in its entirety between tiles laid on top of each other.
 
This will allow us to increasingly have a more believably 3D looking world despite using 2D tiles, getting rid of a lot of unsightly glitches and potentially opening up other gameplay avenues in the further future.
 
To be clear, this vid shows the sort of stuff that we’re now able to finally nix – although whether that will happen prior to 42 going unstable or later on is still an open question.
 
Oh and here’s another player/zed falling vid as we love it so much…
 
 
OH, RATS
We’ve shown rats in blogs before, but previously they didn’t have many rules or conditions attached.
 
Now, as we close out what has internally been dubbed as ‘rat week’ we can say that rats will procedurally spawn as the world is explored – and they will also appear in special randomized ‘rat stories’. They can randomly spawn with trash, trash containers, and corpses.
 
 
As the days of the apocalypse tick by we will slowly approach the “Maximum Rat Index” –  which is currently two months on default non-Sandbox settings – which is the point at which rats will have the highest chance of spawning and a higher chance of appearing in greater numbers.
 
In buildings with rat problems we will also be working with the sound team over at Formosa to make sure we have fun stuff like noises for rats in ceilings, rats in the walls, rats gnawing on flesh, rats scuttling over different floor surfaces etc.
 
We’ll keep a lid on the majority of our special randomized rat stories, but expect some gross supplies and destroyed loot. That said, are you familiar with the concept of a rat king crown? Google it if not!
Oh, and would you like something to wash down with that bleach?

 
MAP LATEST
Lots of fun stuff going into the map expansion, not least the 32 level skyscrapers we have going into Louisville.
 
Our plan is to have a few of these pepper the urban landscape, where appropriate, for 42 – and then to come back for more fully-fledged urban replanning later down the line.
 
If you take in all the new basements required for the new build, and the new swathes of land to the west of Muld that are being finalized, there’s a lot of ground to cover for the map team – even if so much of it already in the can. We want everything to be good quality, and don’t want any aspects rushed.
 
With that in mind, let’s have another more detailed look at Xeonyx’s ‘scraper showcased in the first video. What a beaut!
Elsewhere, what better place to explore in an update where lighting and lightsources are going to be far more than an issue – than Ayrton’s spooky abandoned orphanage in a forest?
 
All the cool kids will want to hang out there, we’re sure.
 
Finally, for a map expansion we need signs for homes and businesses. So expect all sorts of new fun stuff, alongside adverts and map-reveal flyers for them on the radio and in peoples’ homes.
 
 
IT’S A GAS, GAS, GAS
Alongside other new clothing, bags, holsters, and functional gear in 42, we’re also adding fully featured military webbing and SCBA gear.
The webbing provides two hotbar slots that can be used to attach walkie talkies, special new angle headed clip-on flashlights, and appropriate knives. The SCBA gear, meanwhile, provides one. Military webbing also serves as a wearable container that is superior to wearing fanny packs.
Some of this coolness can be seen in the following video – alongside the shemagh scarves that will allow British fans of a certain age cosplay as Simon Reeve.
 
 
As seen in the next video, SCBA gear is also functional in that, when it has an attached tank with oxygen remaining and is turned on, it will protect the wearer from inhaled atmospheric hazards. This also applies to the Hazmat suits.
 
 
We have also made Gasmasks functional, although they require filters that are drained by exposure to airborne contaminants, and have added Halfmask Respirators that use different filters that are consumed at a faster rate.
 
Some other, appropriate, masks will now also provide mild protection from corpse sickness. However, your character will remove and replace their mask when eating, drinking, smoking, taking pills, and such.
 
Engineer characters, and characters that learn the recipes, can also craft improvised gasmask filters, as well as recharge gasmask and respirator filters. All of these new items spawn in appropriate locations, vehicles, and on appropriate zombies.
4K REVOLUTION
One of the primary complaints we get about PZ, and a rightful one, is our lack of support for higher resolution monitors.
 
There have always been workarounds, but they haven’t been effective enough -and on a 4K screen the resolution makes our UI look to be a size that only a furrow-browed ant could use.
 
Well come 42 unstable (hopefully – it’s a big task) our local hero Fox will have climbed Resize Mountain – and up-rezzed our entire UI to make it far more amenable to those lucky folks with super-snazzy monitors. So good news for many, we hope.
 
HOLSTERS
In 42 not only are we adding visible holsters, in multiple colours, but also special shoulder and ankle holsters.
 
Shoulder holsters will conceal the holster and handgun when garments like jackets are worn over them, and also can store two pistol magazines as a container. Ankle holsters can only hold the m36 Revolver currently, and the holster and firearm will be concealed by long pants, skirts or dresses.
 
You’ll be able to find them on both existing, and new, zombie costume types – and we strongly suggest seeking out a plainclothes police detective zombie. (Might be tricky though).
 
 
OTHER STUFF
Following the successful integration of the effort and body noises from real actor people in a real recording studio into the game we’ve decided to get a load more done (three new men, three new ladies) so we get a range of different-sounding people – which in turn will make for more interesting character creation, and for more variety when players stand and fight around each other in MP.  
For the longest time, since forever in fact, alcoholic intake hasn’t had enough impact on the player – outside of some fun stuff when drink-driving. We haven’t gone as far as implementing a whole new animation set, but as a fun little side project you might find a few extra complications next time you’re utterly shit-faced.  
FINALLY
A MASSIVE thanks to everyone who bought a Steadfast Spiffo from Makeship!
 
We sold 2000 more plushies than the first run of Spiffos due to your amazing charitable instincts – and we raised over 73,000 US dollars for Cancer Council Queensland in memory of our friend Vicki Ann Woods!
 
Thank you so much for helping us with this, and we hope you enjoy your Steadfast Spiffo when he arrives on your doorstep later this year.
We’ll see you back here next month (details on the temporarily monthly Thursdoids here) for more cool stuff. Thanks again all x
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

Can't wait for this update! Keep up the good work guys!

• Version 41.78.16(Steam)
• Singleplayer
• No mods.
• Old save.
 
At a furniture factory, the door from the women's toilet opens directly into the iron shelves that prevent you from getting out.
Coordinates: 12622x3752
It is better to move the stick by one square.

• Version 41.78.16(Steam)
• Singleplayer
• No mods.
• Old save.
 
Probably it's not a bug, just illogical. In the bedside tables of patients at the clinic south of Louisville, you can find shotguns, double-barreled shotguns and pistols with cartridges. In reality, this would be extremely strange. It seems to me that hospital containers should have some kind of modifiers separating them from ordinary cabinets in residential buildings.

Often players kill hordes of zombies in one place. Hundreds, sometimes many hundreds, are lying in one pile and around. During such a tense battle, the player does not have time to loot zombies. You have to loot after the fight. I want to suggest developers to think about making it possible to mark/highlight already looped bodies with color.

I really like playing with everything set to random, specially hearing. However, I feel like zombies with pinpoint hearing are too strong at the moment. Often you will spawn in a place and get overwhelmed by them a in a matter of seconds, having to deal with around 50 zombies before even finding a weapon. Game is too easy without it, but too dysfunctional with it. I suggest a minor/medium nerf.
 

Thanks, there do not seem to be any mods enabled, nor are there any errors there that might cause this issue. From looking at your game options, it seems like you have the "Simple Textures" setting enabled in your game options, which would cause what you are experiencing, since it simplifies the game textures for higher performance. Can you try disabling it to see if it fixes the issue?

If it does not, can you try doing a full reinstall?
First, uninstall the game, then go to "Steam\steamapps\common\ProjectZomboid" and make sure there are no leftover files or folders there.
After that, go to “C:\Users\YourUserName\Zomboid” and delete everything there except the “Saves” folder.
Then just install the game again and see if that helps.

• Version 41.78.16(Steam)
• Singleplayer
• No mods.
• Old save.
 
In the building of a military camp near Louisville, the stationary radio of the US Army cannot be disassembled.
It is located at the coordinates: 12487x4298.
Others that are nearby can be disassembled.

Muldraugh 10,000 years later... That would be epic!

• Version 41.78.16 (steam) • Singleplayer. • No mods. • Old save. 8151x11489x1
In rosewood, in the farthest stall of a second story gigamart bathroom, I found what appears to be two overlapping toilets.

logs.zip

• Version 41.78.16(Steam)
• Singleplayer
• No mods.
• Old save.
 
In the warehouse building at coordinates 12622x4731 in the locker room two cabinets are superimposed on each other

Let’s have a dig into what’s happening in everyone’s favourite apocalypse. (Although other apocalypses are available.
 
First off a quick check-in with three of the four main pillars of Build 42 – the pillars in question being crafting system revamp, MP improvement, the depth/performance/lighting tech upgrade, and finally animals – which will have to wait till next time as RJ is only very recently back from his summer hols.
 
Turbo has been finalizing his machine and crafting station systems for a check-in next week, after we decided on some ways to maximise their utility for both our own devs and modders and give them as broad and solid a foundation as we can. The results are exciting and the design process for machines and the numerous crafting stations continues to expand these systems over the new tech tree and across existing devices over the entire PZ map. (Stuff like gas stations, wells, water pumps etc will also eventually be tied to the new system – but maybe not in the initial release.)
 
Next up: tech upgrade. Lots of stuff going on in codeland for this – but the topline additions have been improvements to the new visibility polygon, and continued work on the tile depth addition that will remove annoying character/wall clipping and ultimately make proper addition of lying and sitting down in all four directions feasible for mainline addition. (As well as the rendering optimizations it will entail obv.)
 
Alongside this the continued whackamole of things broken by the foundational changes made by the engine upgrades – stuff like (to grab a few random examples) doors not shaking when thumped, muzzleflash not showing, railings not being cutaway properly, rendering of zeds on hidden floors not working and many/varied other important stuff.
 
Finally, we now have four coders and two MP-devoted testers beavering away on our multiplayer – two coders devoted to the ongoing mission to bring all player inventory operations server-side, and another two knuckling down on general MP bugs and required polish. Over the past two weeks the guys have also been hooking up ‘new for 42’ systems, like the revamped fishing, to the netcode – and looking ahead to properly wiring up the animals too.
 
SOUNDSCAPE IMPROVEMENTS
Last week our Formosa UK’s primary PZ-dedicated chaps, Michael and Matteo, took the opportunity to do a full new mixing session for the game while they were both on the same island – said island being Great Britain.
 
A proportion of this was done with MP in mind, and especially gunshots, but seeing as multiplayer is currently broken/WIP in our dev build they instead hooked up an in-game barbecue to a long sequence of gunshots and worked around it like that. (Enterprising chaps, these two.)
We’re still waiting on some improved occlusion settings for indoor/outdoor, and the like, and some tweaks to player related sounds – but otherwise the following has been tweaked and added.
 
Re-balanced all the firearms so they make sense in relation to each other Changed the firearm inside/outside setup for general improvements Rebalanced the ambience setup (from beds, to fog, to rain, wind etc) to make it all more coherent Re-worked some mixer setup/routing for reverb – which has made for a very pleasant upgrade, especially with birdsong. Brought backsome volume/filter changes on the camera zoom, but still subtle. Improvements to zombie voices so when you get bitten to death by a dozen zombies the mix doesn’t wig out anymore. Zombie vocals, music and animal noises now play more nicely over the music – so it all cuts through a bit better.  
 
We are also super-pleased with the new player effort / sneeze / “hey!” sounds – and have also realised that we’re missing a trick not having a range of different voices beyond the current two male/female versions. This would especially sound a bit weird in MP, so we are looking into recording a wider range of actors and actresses for this.
 
OTHER NEW STUFF
As ever we have a wide range of smaller additions going into the game from other team members while the pedestal pieces are under construction.
Recently these have included:
 
New containers! Pic-a-nic Basket, Garden Basket, Fishing Basket, Musical Instrument Cases, an improvised Sheet Sling Bag, new Sheriff and SWAT versions of the duffel bag, protective cases, rifle cases and ALICE Belt and Suspender webbing – green and camo version.
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
Continued farming revamp improvements. Working on the systems for fertilizers, compost, and pests. Optimizing, rebalancing, constituting, simplifying and working out what other new crops we will require – then pestering the art department for them. Making the scarecrows actually spawn in scarecrow-y outfits.
 
Wallpapering. And we’re also coding in the oft-requested ability to fully wash grime from walls.
 
 
New tools. New gizmos for managing our script assets; which upon release with B42 will provide ways to make modders lives easier, such as a utility which exports item display names from their scripts to create new translation files for those items if they don’t already have one. Likewise we’ve built an internal tool to help our sound team notice events that haven’t been hooked up, or are new additions that haven’t had a sound built for them yet.
 
Zoning. One of the more onerous of mapping tasks is underway for the map expansion – essentially tagging the whole map so the game knows what should be happening where, and what should be spawning where.
 
In this image light greeny-blue is crop fields, light green is forest, dark green is deep forest, blue is for navigation, purple-ish is for town areas and the blue squares are the new animal zones. Meanwhile the tiny pink dots are parking stalls for spawning vehicles of all sorts, and the yellow is for generic vegetation. Other colours designate different events, to special outfit zombie types etc.
 
Hiring. The success of B41 has meant we’ve been able to cast our net further, and higher, for additions to the PZ team to work on what the game will become in the mid-far future. We won’t shine any spotlights on anyone until they’re bedded down, and there’s something to show, but we are putting a lot of work into ensuring PZ stays fun, relevant and ever-evolving in the years to come.
 
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.
Are you a Spiffo admirer who missed out on the recent plushie Makeship campaign? Watch the wires next week…

I couldn't help but notice with the wallpapering video that the character emoted without using the emote wheel. Was this just devmode things, or will we be able to trigger emotes from hotkeys in b42 (cause that would be really cool ?

And I liked the vending machines. Now the administrator key will be very valuable and open access to the contents of these vending machines.
 I'm really looking forward to updating the game map.

Thanks guys! About the development of the visibility and lighting system is very interesting! But I have a question: now there is such a character trait as "acute hearing", which gives the character an increased radius of visibility even behind his back. How will this be implemented with the new visibility system?

Hi, we have been using haystacks to make our base pretty, and we have encountered that the Haystack items are strange...
 
There are haystacks that go from left to right, others right to left, some of them you can stack on top of others, some of them you cant,
and on top of those four kinds of 1 single haystack, there are also double stack items, also in different versions.
 
So the suggestion is, could we have one single haystack item combining all the types, so we can rotate and stack on top of others with all of them?
 
:D

And I liked the vending machines. Now the administrator key will be very valuable and open access to the contents of these vending machines.
 I'm really looking forward to updating the game map.

Haylo, here’s another dev-log sent down from the mothership.
 
Few different things form different areas this time around, starting off with an example system update from one of the four main pillars of Build 42 – which are the crafting improvements, and the sorts of places they could take the game to.
 
CRAFTY BUSINESS
For the past few weeks Turbo’s focus has been on making the new machine scripting system more versatile and easy to use.
 
As well as creating the crafting stations and machines required for the crafting tree we’re working on (potters wheels, anvils, woodwork benches and such) our ultimate goal is to allow all machines and appliances on the map utilize this system to unify how machines work within the game.
 
This overall goal won’t be present in its entirety for a first release of B42, but the framework will have been installed that allows for them not only to share the same UI systems to keep them consistent, but also allow for them to be connected together, and allow them to have more complexity of interior parts that could be salvaged and co-opted for other uses. From fire alarms, to clocks, to ovens, to microwaves.
 
The ramifications of this system will be huge both for the game and for modders, allowing for the machine UI and functionality to be both scriptable with lua and with the object scripting. It will then provide powerful and easy-to-use tools for devs and modders to create interesting machines quickly, cater for slots to place items, and allow for items to interact with these machines in a diverse way with a consistent UI.
 
Instead of needing to build a bespoke scripted UI, and the complex interactions between the player, machines will be able to be added with minimal code for functionality, and provide higher level details on what goes into them and what comes out. Likewise there’ll be stardardised knobs and buttons that this backend will allow to be attached for player interaction.
 
In order to test the versatility of how this system could be applied to vanilla objects within the game (and how far we could push it) we wanted to apply it all to a system that wasn’t strictly a crafting station like the more standard one we showed off a month or so ago with some post-apocalyptic pottery.
 
As such, Turbo put together a test case that could have some fun utilization within a multiplayer settlement in the post-apocalypse – and indeed is pretty cool on your general solo survival adventure too.
 

There will probably be those out there looking at this at face value, perhaps even getting annoyed and asking ‘nggggh, why vending machines?’. (Hello, to those out there!)
 
However, the important aspect to take away from this video are the many unique interactions, systems and features that have been built into the vending machine using this same framework.
 
What we see here allows for a unique key to unlock the machine, allows it to be stocked with different items (which could be very useful for players on a multiplayer server wanting to run a shop, for example), allows it to take in money and deposit an item from its internal inventory, allows for buttons on the machine to pick particular products, and finally allows for a custom user interface for a particular machine that’s FAR easier to create than it is with B41’s currently somewhat unwieldly UI system.
 
That the new crafting / machine framework is flexible enough to be able to accurately create a vending machine is a huge deal to us, and in time to modders and the overall good health of the game as we continue to grow and expand.
 
Ultimately this framework will be expanded across all machines across the PZ map, as well as those that are craftable through the crafting tree. In turn, this will allow us to open up a ton of interesting crafting and engineering opportunities, as well as open up more and more of the existing machines and gadgets strewn around the PZ map.
 
As said before though, this is probably a longer term goal, and our focus right now is squarely on the new post-apoc crafting tech tree. This is all, however, our first (big) step towards the longer term goal of unifying how these things work across the entirety of Project Zomboid.
 
This will then free ourselves, and modders, to have as many possibilities as possible for machinery, and ensure a consistent framework to allow anything created in the game to interoperate with each other, power, liquids and item input/output. Beyond this it will minimize mod conflicts, and overall allow PZ to become a powerful framework for modders to add in all sorts of crazy fun stuff in future.
 
SOWING DISCORD
Fenris has been working on updating and improving Discord integration, which will allow for powerful features to help roleplay servers and servers running gameplay events, as well as general integration features.
 
Currently, chat within Discord rooms should be transmittable into the game chat and vice versa – but the code used is somewhat outdated and it doesn’t work brilliantly. Some may say: not at all. Server owners choose not to use it. With 42, however, everything will be polished and sparkly new.
What’s more server operators will be able to allow discord commands to trigger lua code on the server, for example to begin a timed event and trigger changes in gameplay. Likewise this will also allow for custom lua to trigger messages sent to different discord channels on the discord server.
Another feature we intend to include will allow for admin controlled radio / tv scripts to be executable from multi-line text from the discord server, to avoid admins having to quickly type out multiple pre-written text lines manually in the heat of gameplay.
 
This is all very limited and walled off, and the game side lua will require custom code to allow for these Discord interactions, so there won’t be any security risks associated with this discord interoperability.
 
For planned roleplay events or custom server game mode events, though, this should provide many cool tools for server operators to play with.
 
ELSEWHERE
Other mentionable work on the mighty PZ that’s happened this week has been:
 
Aiteron has been making improvements to our sandbox menu, mod menu general mod settings. Our sandbox settings panels had become so vast and unwieldy that they needed a redesign – now with an added search function, simplification in some areas to make things less impenetrable to noobs, and some ‘advanced settings’ for the long-term survivors amongst us. We will also be improving the server settings interface, simplifying the addition of mods, unifying settings, making it easier to add modded sandbox settings etc. Blair reports in for the blog with the ‘unsexy’ work of remaking farming interactions and its associated UI. He’s currently working out what information you receive, and where, and also at which farming skill level. He’s also sorting out some of the wonkiness you saw in the animations you saw in the last Thursdoid we did. We’re approaching a new merge from the map team into the internal testing build, probably taking place tomorrow, so our testers can gambol through even more new buildings and locations. Here’s a quick video of some of the existing fun places they’ve come across.  
 
New masks. New hats. 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.