Geras

I like bravery as a stat. It makes a lot of sense and would be a fun indicator of player progress. 

1137. The boarded up survivor homes should have extra loot in every container in the house, not just the kitchen counters.
 
I always found it very strange to have just the kitchen stocked up, but rest of the house was like i.e. a book, a comb, and a t-shirt.

1139. Washing cars should prioritize using tainted water if available in inventory or bags on the player. Currently if I have a water bottle with clean water in main inventory and buckets with tainted water in backpack, the character uses clean water from the water bottle.

1140. It would be cool if houses didn't hold so much heat during winter, so actually having a fire going for the night, or sleeping in warm clothes would have an impact on sleep quality.

1143. More foraging zones.
I find it strange we can't forage i.e. on farmland, or in green areas in towns. I'd be cool if foraging in these places was possible for stones, branches, earth worms, insects, etc.
 
1144. This one isn't probably a small suggestion, but the fitness system should be reworked. Every exercise, however small, should be beneficial for the player, increasing the damage/carry weight and endurance pool by tiny increments. This way we'd know that however small our workouts are, we get some bonus out of it.
 
As it is now, there's no point in using the fitness system if you have 6 or more points in strength or endurance - gaining the 7th point would take ingame months to get afaik by mostly exercising and doing little else.
 
1145. Removing grass should give us grass to use as kindling or to use in composter.
 
1146. Painting picket fences using different paints and colours.


 
1147. Cigarettes should spawn in random amounts from 1 to 20 in a pack, not always 20 in a pack.
 
1148. Traps with bait should have bait visible in the world to know at a glance which traps have bait, and which don't.
 

Are flies going to be visible in winter? I always found the flies sound in winter to be out of place.
 
I suggest adding an animation of holding one hand to your nose when there's corpses overload. The flies visuals and sound should only be there in seasons other than winter imo.

High beam, reversing, and braking lights when?

Hmm... the first animated animal became a fly,
I thought that the first would be pigeons and other birds.

Are flies going to be visible in winter? I always found the flies sound in winter to be out of place.
 
I suggest adding an animation of holding one hand to your nose when there's corpses overload. The flies visuals and sound should only be there in seasons other than winter imo.

Are flies going to be visible in winter? I always found the flies sound in winter to be out of place.
 
I suggest adding an animation of holding one hand to your nose when there's corpses overload. The flies visuals and sound should only be there in seasons other than winter imo.

High beam, reversing, and braking lights when?

Are flies going to be visible in winter? I always found the flies sound in winter to be out of place.
 
I suggest adding an animation of holding one hand to your nose when there's corpses overload. The flies visuals and sound should only be there in seasons other than winter imo.

Are flies going to be visible in winter? I always found the flies sound in winter to be out of place.
 
I suggest adding an animation of holding one hand to your nose when there's corpses overload. The flies visuals and sound should only be there in seasons other than winter imo.

Are flies going to be visible in winter? I always found the flies sound in winter to be out of place.
 
I suggest adding an animation of holding one hand to your nose when there's corpses overload. The flies visuals and sound should only be there in seasons other than winter imo.

It's not dead, I think we'll probably talk to Blindcoder about updating it once MP is present/correct and 41 gets officially released - so we catch any further additions and fixes.

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

Tl;DR: really didn’t fit the feel we were going for with  the combat changes to build 41.
 
There seems to be some confusion about why the star is gone:
 
I pointed out that the star wasn’t useful anyone because it was too small on higher resolutions, it being an original sprite from 10 years ago. It was also quite imprecise because it was small and only had a few frames. It didn’t fit the game’s art anymore or really convey that it was for condition (in other games it would be quality or favourite status).
 
We all discussed options for how to improve it, make it clear that it was the condition of the weapon  … but then that conversation took a turn. We realized that this took away any pre-planning and lead to people who actually noticed the thing were just riding the star condition in their attempts to kill as many zombies as possible  instead weapon breaks happening more naturally and thrillingly while playing the game. So, it was instead removed.
 
So far, very few people have seemed to notice (far less than I expected). I think we’re more comfortable with letting modders add back their own version of the condition star, and will pass adding a new version to the game at this point. 
 
 

So i think that one of the biggest problems with house alarms currently is that you have no way of knowing which house has one and which house doesnt. No one likes having every zombie suddenly start b-lining straight to their location for no other reason than picking the wrong house to loot food from. I think a good solution to this problem would be having signs out front of houses indicting theres an alarm active, like those little ADT signs. Some might find this a little broken or defeats the purpose, but Im not done just yet. They would be toggable in the settings, they could be made to appear very rarely, or simply appear for every alarm-rigged house. 

Ok, so. I've noticed that when the power shuts off, it's map-wide. Realistically (from what I gather!), there would be substations, and as the power plant fails, the grid would go down in sectors. I really don't know how difficult such a thing would be to code in. But assuming it's feasible, perhaps add not only substations, but a regional power plant? Basically so adventurous solo survivors, or even a group on a server (When MP drops) could restore power? Heck, make the substations require maintenance like the generators, as well as once the power shutoff happens, there'd only be X substations able to be online at a time without overloading the system and causing another blackout? Maybe put this max substation amount in the sandbox options? Idk, just thinking of some ways to make the game more immersive.

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

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

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

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

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

WELCOME ERIS
Many players will know Eris from her fabulous mini-map mod, and we’re delighted to say that she will be joining the PZ team.
Behind the scenes we’ve been seeing her work on an excellent improvement to our existing foraging system – in which players have to actively move between foraging spots in woodland rather than click through the UI.
 
It’ll take some time to get her hooked up to the PZ mainframe and to convert the mod, but right now it looks a little like this.
 
It’s our intent that Eris will be joining RJ in future endeavours to bring this kind of interactivity to all the zomboid survival mechanics, which is a direction we’ve wanted to move toward for a long time. At the moment a lot of mechanics involve operating the right click menu and waiting a lot which (while functional) does not offer any real ‘gameplay’.
 
RJ has made some initial steps toward this with his quality of life improvements to farming, but our plan is to go further in areas like farming, fishing and construction:  mixing some basic player skill and decision making alongside, and augmented by, the character’s skills.
 
Our overall plan is to make all the individual survival systems have a lot more meat to them: make them more fun, give you more satisfaction and involvement, and make them far less laborious and menu-ey. Eris popping up with her foraging overhaul was perfectly timed and showed she would be a great addition to the team to bring this into the game.
 
That’s all for now, next week we’ll have another mod blog from the dainty fingertips of Pat_Bren. The Thursday beyond that we’ll have the latest on MP dev alongside where we’re at with all the features mentioned above and maybe a few more. Thanks all!
 
—————
 
This week’s desperate last stand from Feiticeira Supervixen. A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too!

It would be really nice to hit a key combination after walking indoors and have my character take off his hat, mask, jacket, jumper and over-shirt without me having to do it manually (lest he overheat while transferring items to my storage and become soaked through).
 
Then hit another key combination on the way out so he re-equips them.

If I choose to rename an item, it would be nice if the input field automatically had focus instead of me having to click it.
 
It would be especially good if the existing name was currently highlighted so immediately typing would overwrite it.

With a risk of getting jammed up in the busted fence.
 
I feel like TiS could unnerf vehicles if they made them handle more like real vehicles.
 
Taking more damage striking sturdy things like big trees, brick walls, and to some extent other vehicles(perfect opportunity to add seatbelts that may prevent the character flying through the windshield in 90 degree head on collision), but less when striking standing zombies. Or have a risk of getting stuck, slowed or stalled or driving over things.
 
An off road 4x4 vehicle could navigate off road, but maybe less so for the station wagons. Slow or stop em.
 
Program curbs as geometry into the game and have those wreck tires and alignment if driven over, to varying degrees based on speed and the angle of approach.
 
Hiting standing zombies head on should only kill them at really high speeds, perhaps forcing them to first become crawlers before the car is able to deal sufficient damage to kill them. Match that up with the possibility of getting stuck on their bodies/corpses, the mobile murder wheels no longer seem a viable option.
 
Regardless, vehicles should take some kind of damage when hitting zeds, just not as significant as it is presently. Damaged hoods may pop open,  obstructing the player's view forward, but can be 'looked around' by rolling the window down like you need to to look around/use a gun from the car.
 
Just a handful of thoughts.

Since we're getting a whole load more cursors (e.g. with farming) and radial menus (e.g. the emote radial menu), there's some QOL that I think would greatly benefit them.
Firstly cursors.
It would be nice if there was a keybind for cancelling (or turning off) a cursor. I know esc cancels the cursor, but it also cancels any action you're doing, and any time warping. I instinctively right click to cancel them, which kinda, as opening the right click menu turns the cursor off, but I think it could be streamlined a bit more, e.g. right click cancels a cursor if you have one selected, but doesn't open the right click menu, until you click again. Maybe even have it as a bindable key, incase you prefer e.g. using mouse thumb buttons for that kind of thing.
 
Secondly, it would be nice if you could queue up cursor actions. It's done a wonder for getting rid of the tedium of farming etc., but I feel the next step could be to let you for example queue up a whole load of watering actions, and speed through them with time warping, instead of going one by one. It might be a bit contentious though, because that would essentially open the door for the game playing itself for you idk.
 
Now radial menus are great.
I would suggest however, a similar thing to my first suggestion on cursors. I instictively right click to go back a layer/close a radial menu, and it's sometimes jarring to have to use esc, which requires taking my hand somewhat off the movement keys, which can be quite deadly. I think it would also greatly improve the emote menu, which has submenus, if you could just right click (or an equivalent key bind) to go up a layer, instead of having to rotate to the "go back" segment, which can be in a different location in each menu, depending on the amount of segments.
 
Speaking of the emote menu, it can get quite cumbersome when there's a lot of segments, as they get quite small, and muscle memory can't take over.
Warframe, a game that uses radial menus for gear/items during gameplay (and also emotes) solves this with an infinite gear wheel, that you can rotate through to go to multiple layers (Example), which actually works quite well. Now i'm not necessarily suggesting going for a system exactly like this, but I think some ideas from this system could potentially improve the radial menus when you have a lot on them (I'm especially thinking of how tiny segments get on the old controller weapon select menu, which I imagine is getting replaced at some point).
 
As a side note, I think replacing the carpentry menu with a radial menu could work great. Any modders out there who would be willing to give it a try?

I understand that the star was removed for being innacurate, someone said that supposedly you could check its durability by mousing over it on your hotbar, but you can't. Or at least I can't. Maybe a bug, but it seems like other people aren't seeing it either. I don't understand why it would be removed entirely, as it's not really an improvement on gameplay to remove any kind of durability indication from the hotbar, if anything I'd say it's more of a detriment. This is of course assuming that it really was removed without replacement,  and not just a bug.