Geras

1136. Use broken spears for fuel in fires. 
 
Allow us to throw broken spears into a fire as a source of fuel. They are crafted from planks and tree branches which can be used as fuel. Why wouldn't a spear be able to be used as fuel?

I'd love that as well, would make less clutter as the only way to get rid of them is deleting through bin. Same applies to broken Stone Axes which I use a lot and similar tools (Stone Hammer, Stone Knife but also broken Planks, Pool cues, Spiked Planks and Baseball bats, though these at least can be repaired).

1135. Add existing gardens of vegetables to the game. 
 
There are lots of farms and houses with garden plots. None of them have potatoes, tomatoes, radishes, strawberries, cabbages, broccoli, or carrots growing in them when starting a new map. 
 

There's a cool mod on steam for just this.
 
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1974106155

1. Graves are not visible on snow (I mean the open grave there).
2. Digging graves doesn't seem to give any worms, which it should. (I might be wrong here)
 

It would be nice if there was a default scenario to play with sprinters, similar to Apocalypse or 6 months later.
 
Currently there's no benchmark for the sprinter gang to compare survival time. Sure, someone can say they survived for a year with sprinters, but it's never clear what settings they used, and death screen just says "Sandbox".
 
My personal preference for this kind of scenario is a blend of Apocalypse and 6 months later:
 
Default Apocalypse settings, but:
 
- sprinters (duh)
- normal zombie strength and toughness
- zombies trigger house alarms ON
- December start
- instant water/power shut off
- very slow world erosion
- erosion advance 180 days
- world advance 6 months
 
We could name it Sprinter Apocalypse.
 

1134. The new cooler item should be able to hold water and collect rain when placed outside.
 

In a fire place:
1 log gives 4 hours of fire
3 planks give 6 hours of fire
 
Default icon of fuel are logs:

 
Seems a bit counter-intuitive that sawing logs into planks is more efficient than using logs as fuel.

As on screenshot:
 

 
Location: https://map.projectzomboid.com/?#0.5436613053477233,0.33797869891037957,317.9873888135632

This sprinter turning behaviour is rather unfair, as they sprint behind your back, what is pretty much a death sentence if you don't manage to do a 180 degrees turn with the slow player turning animation.
 
https://streamable.com/dw717e
 
I'd suggest to change their behaviour to turn around on the spot to face the player and then start running instead of this early sprint and turning in a wide angle.
 
The current wide turning angle behaviour also leads to sprinters orbiting the player, which is very easy to consistently reproduce.
 
Sprinters orbiting:
https://streamable.com/lv0e0l

Basicaly i was killing zeds with a spear. I was suddenly facing a horde and some sprinter zombies, so i decided to sprint to the opposite direction while holding the spear so i could kill the incoming sprinters without the horde being too close.
 
Now here comes the issue. The sprinter that was like 2 tiles behind me somehow made me spearcharge into the empty space ahead of me. Even tho the sprinter was right behind me. This made my character stand still and get mauled by the horde.
 
So the issue is: Player does spearcharge attack to any zombie near them, not infront of them.
Suggestion: The player shouldnt stand still while spearchargeing a zombie.
Suggestion2: The player needs to press another button to spearcharge while sprinting.
 
Sorry for my bad english.

It had to happen. We always knew he’d come for us.
Anyway, onto the dev news.
MULTIPLAYER
Work continues on the MP Strike Force’s smoothening out of the client zombies transplant. Early this week we had a few serious bugs that resulted in the player being teleported inside the bodies of zombies, which are fixed now but we’re mentioning as it was a WEIRD TIME.
 
 
This week’s Wednesday test was another positive one as it turned out. Still some issues, though after a few weeks where bugs introduced with the client zombie work were getting in the way, it was clear the testers were having a lot more of a fun experience.
 
As stated before, the client zombies are the last ‘big piece of tech’ to fall into place before we’re vaccuming up the last few game breakers and looking toward getting it out there. The client zombies will allow servers to leverage the cpu of the clients in order to handle the expensive zombie AI. They will not only heavily reduce the amount of server load zombies will cause, but also reduce latency in combat to zero, and provide a close to single player experience for one on one zombie combat. Any unavoidable lag or glitches that do occur will only ever affect zombies that are not interacting with the player.
 
It’s been a tall order but issues are increasingly being patched out. On this week’s fix list are improving the zombie synchronization, working out why some zombies appear at the last minute in fog or the dark, some zombies duplicating on death and a variety of lesser issues and broken things. Car physics also still need some work to ensure that climbing in a car isn’t risking being bounced around like a pinball due to some unexpected lag.
 
After a few weeks that felt a little disheartening with new bugs getting in the way, we’ve been feeling much more positive this past little while – and hopefully this will continue as we scale up the number of players on the server during our Wed/Fri test sessions. Here’s a vid of edited highlights from last night’s 4-5 player sesh.
 

OTHER STUFF
The Noiseworks sound revolution continues apace. This week they are primarily looking at our music implementation, but they also dropped this little treat off last Friday. Behold! A vehicle that sounds far less like ass.
 
(STANDARD WIP WARNING: Not all sounds integrated. Sound balance not final. Etc etc.)
 
 
While the zeds-on-clients MP work is being bedded in, RJ has been ticking off various smaller MP issues and QOL improvements. He has also implemented the first pass of Martin’s new car wrecks – which will provide a halfway house between our current burnt out cars, and our usual more beat up / rusted vehicles. While these will largely be cosmetic and non-drivable, you will be able to go under their hoods, into their trunks and to siphon out their gas.
 
 
As mentioned two weeks ago, Kukrapok’s initial mission after joining the PZ mapping team is starting to bear fruit – as he is getting involved on the main map files to bring bendier roads to the masses. Less broken bones from ninety degree turns in future perhaps? Well, hopefully not all of them.
 
This week’s modded tank engine image from xseif_gamer on Reddit, from a forthcoming mod by AuthenticPeach. Yes Spirit1678, you were correct. 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!
 

Also, slightly rounded corners and crosswalks on crossroads could be nice, for example:
 

On those undriveable cars- Will we also be able to tow them away, or remove whatever good parts they may still have left?
 
As a dude who's worked on Junkyards before, I can tell you that even the most wrecked of cars still has plenty of useful parts you can pull out. Also, even if I can't do that, I'd like to be able to remove them from, say, a road I'll be driving on often. Will we be able to?
 
 

Now, I understand that not everything should be craftable. You shouldn't be able to just build a microwave, you should have to find it and bring it to your base. That's a good concept, it's genuinely fun hauling things like chairs to my base because I know it'll pay-off in the form of, well, having a nicer base. I gain essentially nothing from bringing more than one chair or building a pretty big mansion for myself except the sentimental one, but that's what this game is about.
 
...Which is also why it baffles me that there are some arbitrary restrictions on what can be picked up or be built. I can pick up counters, sinks and even set up plumbing systems powered by rain water, but I can't pick up a door. I can build myself a three floor mansion, remove the floor boards from several houses and use them in my mansion, even build and plaster walls, but I can't pick up a garage door for a garage. I can build stairs, but I can't either move or build guardrails for those stairs . I don't understand how I can install and uninstall windows but not doors.
 
Can you let us move the things like garage doors (Which you shouldn't be able to build, fair enough, but at least let us move existing ones.) and let us both grab, place and build things like guardrails because you'd think ''Building guardrails'' would be the logical conclusion to ''Building a house with several floors.''

In a fire place:
1 log gives 4 hours of fire
3 planks give 6 hours of fire
 
Default icon of fuel are logs:

 
Seems a bit counter-intuitive that sawing logs into planks is more efficient than using logs as fuel.

In a fire place:
1 log gives 4 hours of fire
3 planks give 6 hours of fire
 
Default icon of fuel are logs:

 
Seems a bit counter-intuitive that sawing logs into planks is more efficient than using logs as fuel.

Finding a police cars road blocks with badly damaged cop cars on every part of the car.
 
Would be nice if vehicle scenes had more better condition vehicles.

Hey, since you do work on crashed cars now, can you please change it that these cars in vehicle stories and crashes have some good parts in them?
 
Last time I played every vehicle story i.e. the manhole crew, had cars in like 1% condition.
 
It would be nice if, i.e. in case of a t-bone crash, only 1 side of the car was damaged, not the entire car (front for the 1 car, and 1 side for the other), and no critical damage whatsoever in fender benders, etc.

Hey, since you do work on crashed cars now, can you please change it that these cars in vehicle stories and crashes have some good parts in them?
 
Last time I played every vehicle story i.e. the manhole crew, had cars in like 1% condition.
 
It would be nice if, i.e. in case of a t-bone crash, only 1 side of the car was damaged, not the entire car (front for the 1 car, and 1 side for the other), and no critical damage whatsoever in fender benders, etc.

Hey, since you do work on crashed cars now, can you please change it that these cars in vehicle stories and crashes have some good parts in them?
 
Last time I played every vehicle story i.e. the manhole crew, had cars in like 1% condition.
 
It would be nice if, i.e. in case of a t-bone crash, only 1 side of the car was damaged, not the entire car (front for the 1 car, and 1 side for the other), and no critical damage whatsoever in fender benders, etc.

I agree to this 100% – it makes no sense for them to be containers and to be them disassemble instead. I have listed them here: https://pzwiki.net/wiki/Tiles/Storage#Nature

When setting up a base on one of my playthroughs in the McCoy logging warehouse I discovered that I could not move or disassemble the small log piles. (Shown bellow) Their current implementation in game doesn't really make any sense as they are considered a container an can hold 19lb of weight. How can a stack of 5 logs be a container? I understand this is for gameplay, so that one log can spawn in the container and the player can pick it up. Honestly a better solution would be to allow the player to disassemble the log pile and gain 5 logs from it. Of course with this small log piles would no longer be containers. This could be a bit overpowered because there are so many of them scattered around McCoy. However number the player gets could be reduced to address this being potentially overpowered. Another thing would be to allow the player to stack logs in the small log pile this would be nice when making a base and wanting to stash some extra wood for later and instead of leaving it in a container or just on the ground the player could make a nice little pile. Large log piles, it would be nice if the player could remove these too, however the logs in the large log piles are pretty massive and it would be unrealistic for one person to be able to move one of those logs let alone all of them. If they remain the same it wouldn't be much of an issue. 

Thanks for reading and sorry for going on and on about a small log pile.
-Indyjunk

The team working on sounds is a team of sound engineers and designers that was specifically hired to make sounds. 
People do care about immersion and sound is a big part of that. 

Hi all, something of an intermediate dev blog this week as the work outlined in this coder-speak blog to remedy zombie teleportation in the internal build of 41’s multiplayer is still underway.
 
The tldr of this is that we’re moving the ownership of nearby zombies to the client rather than have it governed by the server – and in the following vid you can see the work-in-progress functionality of this.
 
Here you can see two clients connecting to the server, the server determining which client owns the zombie, and then the server changing the ownership between them. When it swaps the first client sends its prediction of the zed’s movement to the server, and the server then sends this information to the second client.
 
It seems to be working well, but has also has bugs that need addressing like incorrect ownership changes, some static zeds and some attacks not causing damage. Yuri is pleased with the progress so far though.
 
This isn’t part of the main internal MP test build yet, it’s being fixed up elsewhere, so we haven’t been doing any high population tests this week – so no Naruto run videos today we’re afraid.


Elsewhere Turbo has been further improving our chatbox – picking up the baton from General Arcade’s Stas a few years down the line. Quoth the Turbo:
 
“I’ve been restructuring the underlying chat system to accommodate for the various new features that have been suggested by testers: this includes a different way of handling the streams, adding new features, and fixing up some things that were broken such as radio.”
 
“The chatbox UI is getting a complete overhaul, most UI elements are new and tailored specifically for it – for example the text pane is now a javabacked UI element specialised in handling chat messages.”

“This new pane has fast paginate and caching methods so it can more easily handle a big history of chat messages then its lua variant. It also has new features such as text selection, links, timestamp indentation to name a few. I’m also adding various options to let folks customise how they want it.”
 


Meanwhile SFX development continues apace over with Noiseworks, with tying new noises to footsteps currently on the agenda (each different depending on what footwear you have on, and what you’re walking on). RJ meanwhile continues to work on the player-vision systems and stealth described last week.
 
Finally, as it has been a little bit of a drydoid this week while we wait for the new client zed structure to be ready for the main MP test branch… our mappers have reached a point with our version of Louisville where it would be sensible to do some more testing for feel, bugs, look and performance.
 
It’ll be a big task both testing and zoning (adding foraging/zed story/etc areas) the map, so we want to be doing that simultaneous to its construction rather than in one big lump at the end.
 
And for testing, really we need zombies – so this week we extended the current map’s zombie heat map to make sure they can spawn. The whiter the area, the more zeds will appear.

(USUAL CAVEAT: Our version of Louisville is still heavily in production, and isn’t going to be releasing any time soon. That said, it is now in the middle distance – rather than just peeking over the horizon)
Here’s also a nice little gif nasKo cooked up for us to show the existing map underneath better.


Thanks everyone! And, again, a big welcome to all the new players who’ve been getting into PZ recently.
 
What’s more a MASSIVE massive thank you to all our existing survivors who have been so supportive and helpful in providing hints, tips and answering their many questions. Times like this really underline that our community really is rather special.
 
This week’s renovated motel from Razor. 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!