syfy

Hello! I guess there is not that many controller or Steam Deck users which probably also means lack of feedback.
I am a controller user myself (accessibility reasons) and since B42 is nearby I thought it's a good time to suggest a very simple to implement chage.

From the very first day I got this game about one year ago one thing bothered me: invenotry and loot menus cover half of the screen. Even though it is possible to adjust those using mouse or touchpad it is far from comfortable (or precise/symmetrical/alligned for all the perfectionists out there), and then manually made changes don't persist. Half of the screen is enormous on 50" 4k TV by the way. 
That same month I made a mod which changes the math behind how it is drawn. It allows players to chose in percentage how much of the screen space said menus should take on their screen. This includes both vertical and horisontal space as well as positioning. Players can choose to have inventory on the left and loot on the right with plenty of open space in between to finally see their character or keep both menus together on the left. The change to the math behing calculating sizes works well for any common resolution including Steam Deck and split screen players. Chosen layout persists between restarts.

Here is the vanilla part of code behind it in ISPlayerDataObject.lua:
--some code else local ww = w local hh = h self.x1left = x; self.x1 = x; self.y1top = y; self.y1 = self.y1top + (hh/2); self.w1 = (ww / 2); self.h1 = (hh / 2); self.x2 = self.x1 + self.w1; self.y2 = self.y1; self.w2 = (ww / 2); self.h2 = (hh / 2); end --some code
Here is the change I made to it:
--some code else local x = getPlayerScreenLeft(playerID) local y = getPlayerScreenTop(playerID) local w = getPlayerScreenWidth(playerID) local h = getPlayerScreenHeight(playerID) local ms = CGUI.Options.ms --loot menu position (boolean) local mw = CGUI.Options.mw --inventory + loot width (%) local mh = CGUI.Options.mh --inventory height (%) local lmh = CGUI.Options.lmh --loot height (%) self.x1left = x; self.y1top = y; self.x1 = x; self.w1 = (w * mw / 2); self.h1 = (h * mh); self.y1 = h - self.h1; if ms then self.x2 = self.x1 + w - self.w1; else self.x2 = self.x1 + self.w1; end self.w2 = self.w1; self.h2 = (h * lmh); self.y2 = h - self.h2; end --some code
Here are the screenshots at Steam Deck resolution plus settings used:


Having mods is great, but when it comes to multiplayer one have to somehow reach to unknown person behind the server and make them add one more mod which is usually not possible.
I would be so happy to see something like this implemented.

Thank you, I love your game.

2 things i never thought i would read, "potential vast underground complexes" & not just 7 stories, but as many as 32 stories...above ground.
basements always seemed like a dream, like something we would discover in the Community Workshop
 
now it makes me wonder about tunneling, and the hazards that can happen from that (gas, collapse, getting all the dirt out)
 
i wanna push a zombie off a 32 story building and time how long it takes to hit ground, in the name of science and curiosity
 

The Indie Stone are pleased to announce another crowd-sourced Spiffo plushie through our friends over at Makeship – this time raising money for a cause that’s dear to all our hearts.
 
First off, let’s meet the raccoon himself.
 
INTRODUCING… STEADFAST SPIFFO!
They came for him… they still come… but he will NEVER yield.
 
He is: Steadfast Spiffo.
 
Spiffo is BACK, with maxed out levels of adorability. With his roomy camping backpack filled with useful survival supplies, sturdy axe, and many utility belts, he’s prepared for anything… and for a limited time, can be added to inventories as YOUR companion in the apocalypse!
Face down the odds. Fight the fight. Survive against the horde – all accompanied by a plushably grizzled hug-raccoon!
 
Interested in putting down money for Steadfast Spiffo? Then visit the crowdfunding page over on Makeship!
 
We’ve timed it so (hopefully) orders will be ready to make for amazing Christmas presents.
 
FUNDRAISING
All money raised by the Indie Stone from Steadfast Spiffo will go to the Queensland Cancer Council, an Australian cancer charity that brought help and solace to a good friend of ours during very difficult times.
 

 
Vicki Ann Woods was the partner of Zac Congo, one of the principal architects of the animation system that made Build 41 (and PZ) the success it is today. Even during a long illness, her love and moral support became a part of what the game has now become.
 
Sometimes (not always, but sometimes) we get people asking how they can further support Project Zomboid. They say that they paid some money long ago, but have so many hours of gameplay that they want to add a little more. We always tell them not to be daft, and just tell some friends or leave a nice review.
 
Well, for the next 21 days we have a different answer: please buy this Spiffo!
 
Buying this Spiffo helps support people like Vicki, and like Zac, during their times of greatest need – and to aid research that will help all of us and our families worldwide.
 
Thank you x
 
(And here’s that link again if you need it)

Hey all, hope this finds you well.
Lots of work on the technical side of the four main pillars of 42 these past two weeks – all of which relatively dry, so let’s run through that briefly before checking out some of the other items rolling in.
 
Right now the foundational code to our in-depth crafting systems revamp are being brought into a position where the MP team can better get their hooks into it, while in our optimization/lighting/height channel we’ve been continuing to polish out cutaway issues, errors thrown and the way our isoregions system handles its newfound 32 potential storeys.
For our MP upgrade, meanwhile, work continues on getting the machinations of player inventories (building, recipes etc) over onto the server – while also improving the implementation of our (pretty much fully cooked at this point) new fishing minigames and systems. Domestic animals, meanwhile, are in bug fix mode – with additional attention being given to their pathfinding and around animal escapes.
 
While all this is ongoing other team members are beavering away raising the quality of the game in smaller-scale ways, so let’s look at a few of those fun nuggets now.
 
CURRENT AFFAIRZ
One way to give our towns and city more personality is to provide more written literature for you to loot and peruse – whether it’s a fully readable lore item, or simply an interestingly named (if non-readable) book found in a house you loot that might deepen your understanding of the life of the zombie you just bludgeoned downstairs.
 
 
Build 42 will feature a range of newspapers, each with a final three or four issues to pick up and read in a separate ‘written content UI’. They will contain news articles about the initial build-up to the Knox Event articles, everyday life articles, and even a few breadcrumbs as to what’s really been going in.
 
This will also include smaller scale publications: like ‘town news’ pamphlets for the smaller settlements that don’t quite warrant a full-scale newspaper. 
 
Beyond this we’ve also had a lovely man called Stuart taking all our teeny-tiny map logos and up-rezzing them into more suitable forms for both in-game and irl usage. Their first use within the game are ‘local business’ fliers that are also readable via the same ‘printed media’ UI.
 

 
Clearly there’s not much zed content that can be made from these, but their gameplay role is to mark up interesting locations (and sources of potentially helpful loot) on the in-game map – a function that we feel will be especially handy for new players.
 
We feel that finding a flier that’s a membership advertisement for, say, the West Maple Country Club and revealing it on the player’s map will give an interesting reason for new players to leave town and explore – and likewise a job advert for McCoy logging and a corresponding map reveal might flag a decent place to potentially find an axe.
 
There’s SO MUCH stuff on the PZ map, and we wanted a way to direct people to some of the locations we’re most proud of. Especially those lost in the vastness of Louisville.
 
PERSONAL READING
We also really want you to feel interested in the deceased people whose homes you are raiding, and perhaps even saddened by their demise. From this we’ve also added a LOT more texture to the names of some of the books, comics and magazines they’ve been reading – and indeed the photographs they’ve been tenderly keeping in an upstairs drawer.
 
The hope is that when the spawn tags on these 1500 different interestingly titled books/mags (non-readable) combine with the way we guide our RNG looted spawns work then neat little stories will form in your head about the sorts of folks that lived here up until recently – and perhaps who you just left dead on the kitchen floor.
 
Perhaps they were reading a book called “Long Term Illness Management” by Laura Paloma, which shines a light on the medication in the bathroom.
 
Perhaps their love of military history ties in with the guns, or maybe it’s satisfying to know the zombie in the garden used to read trashy thrillers.
 
Likewise finding photographs that aren’t simply called “photograph” in a cupboard won’t do much to you, but instead seeing “Photograph of a Smiling Family” or “Photograph of a Wedding Car Arriving at a Church” will hopefully do you some emotional damage. We’ve got about five hundred of these, and they’re already bringing some amazing (doomed) colour to the average loot run.
 
We’ve also got six new TV channels, a new radio station, and 75 new VHSs ready to mix into the game (all written by Pat_Bren, who’s also the architect of all the above alongside coder Blair Algol) so really feel that B42 will broaden the narrative possibilities of the game significantly – while also neatly tying into the gameplay in many instances.
Some other changes that are tied into the above:
 
The books, magazines and comic books that now have individual titles, will also be persistent. Instead of disappearing after being read, there will be a cooldown period that dictates how much time must pass before the character’s moodles can benefit from re-reading said item. In conjunction with this revision of literature items, we’ve gone over the mechanics of the Illiterate traits. Illiterate characters are unable to read literature items, but in some cases, such as Comic Books, Catalogues, Photos, and “certain magazines”, they will be able to enjoy looking at the item instead of reading it. In build 42 Illiterate characters will also be unable to read or write player generated notes using sheets of paper or notebooks, write notes on maps (although they can still put symbols on them), read the text on the annotated map items, or understand the nutritional information on packaged food. We’ve done a common sense implementation of needing light to read. If there is insufficient light in a character’s square, and they don’t have an active light source, they will be unable to read (or “look at” for illiterate characters) printed matter, unable to read nutritional information on packaged food, and unable to open maps.  
MEN WITH VEN
Part of the above has been in ensuring that the right newspapers and pamphlets spawn in their appropriate towns, and as such we’ve mixed in a new municipal region system that tells the game’s systems exactly what area of the map each location in the game is located within.
 
We’re also using this for some new vehicles owned by local businesses, that only ever spawn in their hometown and associated region.
 
It’s generally not a known gameplay function, but for many builds now we’ve had ‘profession’ vehicles on the map that are owned by carpenters, metalworkers and electricians – all of whom *do* leave tools in their vehicle overnight.
 
We’ve never flagged this up, however, which has been a missed opportunity – as for players searching for particular items these are very much mobile treasure boxes. Therefore Martin has created a variety of new vehicles for different businesses to better communicate what sort of special loot might be found inside.
 
We have vehicles for different utilities, nationwide businesses and local businesses – many will only spawn in one town, and some are unique in that only one instance of that vehicle will spawn in the world.
 
We know that PZ players love collecting vehicles, especially in multiplayer servers, so this should spice up the hunt for the vehicle collectors. This regional system, and unique vehicle system, is set up to be easily used by mods also.
 
GASP. WHEEZE. PANT.
Regular readers will know that we recently had our very own recording sessions in a studio with microphones, actors and everything.
 
We had various missions to accomplish with this – a primary one being to obtain recordings of a male survivor and a female survivor huffing, puffing, getting hurt, climbing over things, sneezing, coughing and even shouting “hey!”.
The first fruits of these can be heard below and (while subtle when added to the mix and heard in isolation from the way the game sounds currently) we believe that they’ll add a lot to your overall experience once they land in 42.

(PLEASE NOTE: This is a work in progress. Volume and balance levels are initial ones and will change, likewise some recordings sound better than others and we haven’t cherry-picked the ones that work best yet. We think that the exertion noises during heavy combat could certainly do with a boost.)
 
 
 
 
 
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. Project Zomboid strongly discourages the unlawful dissemination of classified military intelligence
 

Happy March survivors, let’s check in with some of the departments we didn’t visit in the blogapalooza of two weeks ago.
FISHING
Over to Aiteron for the latest on his fishing additions.
 
“This week I’ve mainly been working on a unique random seed that procedurally determines where groups of fish will be located in PZ’s waterways, the radius of the different zones, and the base number of fish that could be found within them.”
 
“You’ll see this through splashes of water, which will depend on the groups of fish. So, the more fish in the fish group area, the more splashes on the water’s surface of the water. As such finding the best place for you to fish will be a big part of the system’s revamp. Each groups will react to the noise by the noise that goes on in the world too. So, if there’s a loud noise then the fishing circles will stop being active for a certain amount of time.”
 
“If you craft some chum, meanwhile, you’ll also be able to attract a group of fish – for a limited amount of time. In the following video you’ll be able to see groups of fish (red circles) and a chum area (green circle)”
 

“The team at Formosa have also been working with me to create new SFX for the fishing revamp, and I am very pleased with the results so far! We are also working on different sounds for different ‘reeling in’ speeds.
 
 
MAP EXPANSION
We are at a key point in the map expansion in that the work of our various mappers has been merged together, and our test team are roaming its wilds to provide playability and design feedback. They are patrolling its highways and by-ways, and feeding back on anything that seems amiss on a broader scale.
 
We’re not at the point at which we can do full-on testing (there’s still a lot to do, to be polished, and have signs erected and whatnot) but we are at the point where we can go on a fun road trip.
 
SOUND STUFF
Formosa are up to quite a lot at the moment. A big part of their work is in improvements to the music escalation system, which we’ll go into detail about next time, but suffice to say that action music won’t carry on for as long as it does post-zed-escape in B42.
 
We are also in the final stages of organising a recording session in which we’ll be having some real life actors (in Hollywood! In America!) to puff, pant and make ‘I am hurt’ noises that’ll make our survivors feel that little bit more real.
 
New SFX have also, meanwhile, been delivered for pigs, piglets, chickens, breaking furniture, the emergency broadcast, cork pops and much else besides.
 
A lot of chickens have also been attacked with hammers.
 
 
 
(We will improve visuals on this sort of attack too, so you’re not whacking air)
SURVIVAL FUN
The Blair Algol furnace has also been burning bright recently, alongside his farming revamp work that we’ve discussed in former blogs. So here’s a general show of the new camping items that’ll be found in places like the game’s different camp supply shops come B42.
 
 
 
 
Seen here are matchboxes, insect repellent, tackle boxes, New duffel bags, compasses, magnesium strikers and a fire-starting block. New Literature Titles and Names, so it’s not all generic non-titled books. (These will still act as consumables rather than items for now, however) New Food, drink, snack names and a new eating animation. New police duffle bag An example of how to use the compass Campsite scene showing an array of new survival gear items for the casual camper and general survivalist New tent function, which no longer requires RMB and now places and gets picked up like a normal decor/furniture object New tent storage feature associated with the above change LOVELY LITTLE ANIMALS
LOVELY LITTLE DEAD ANIMAL
:’(
FINALLY
Just to underline, we’re still not at a point at which a 42 unstable release is (at all) imminent. There’s still loads to do with our primary advancements to engine, online multiplayer, crafting and whatnot.

We see people thinking it’s about to land in comments sometimes, so if you see that too then please direct them here. Thanks everyone.
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. Today’s fish is trout a la creme. Enjoy your meal.

Hey all, let’s chime in with some of the feverish work being done in the musty basements and damp holes in the ground of the Knox Event. First off, some scribbles from the engine room
B42 ENGINE
To catch up and recap, the main highlights of engine improvements for build 42 are as follows:
 
Basements and underground things! A flexible per chunk 32 height that can be different in each chunk, allowing parts of the map to be at 32 level height, where others in theory go from -31 to ground floor. New lighting propagation system that has light bounce off walls and leak through windows, doors and other spaces more realistically – allowing for more natural ambient light effects and getting rid of those room based lighting issues. The ability to have negative coordinates on x and y, thus opening up map expansion directions in the three previously missing directions. New chunk based rendering using a depth map to vastly optimise drawing of the game.  
It’s this last item that we’re going to discuss today.
 
How 2D games have historically worked is like a deck of cards being dealt: each image is placed on top of the other to construct the scene. 
This is terribly inefficient, especially in terms of an isometric game like us with a crap-ton of tiles, tile overlays and so on. The rigid order that the sprites are dealt (so closer ones obscure further away ones,  leaving the closest one on top) means that your GPU is unable to optimize how it’s all drawn.
 
Not only this, but every time you deal a card on top of another card (a zombie in front of a wall for example) then that wall is forever ruined by the zombie’s pixels: the only option is to draw the entire thing again, tile by tile, for the next frame.
 
Can I shock you? In the past, people have complained about PZ’s fps.
 
A common thing we hear is: ‘“Well, my PC runs Skyrim/Witcher 3 just fine” but sadly this generally overlooks the fact that GPUs are built and optimized for 3d rendering. A game with this much detail that doesn’t utilize 3D rendering has actually got a tougher time ahead of it than Skyrim or Witcher in terms of making your GPU happy.
 
We also, on top of this, have extremely expensive scene construction CPU time too. End result: a really big bag of nightmares.
 
Now, in a 3D game you have a depth buffer. This is an offscreen rendering of the scene that tells it all how far from 0->1 each pixel is:
 

 
This is really handy, since the deck of cards goes out of the window. You’re no longer having to draw everything from the furthermost thing to the closest.
 
With a depth buffer you can choose whatever order you want: draw all brick walls first, then all characters hairs, then all grass, then all… you get the idea.
 
Outside transparency, which causes issues, you can draw anything in whatever order is most convenient and most optimized for the GPU. Not only this, but you don’t have to put together the 3D scene polygon by polygon every frame: you have a cached mesh probably already on your GPU memory sat waiting for the next frame, and even if the character turns or moves that mesh is still valid to use.
 
Zomboid? Not so much. We have to draw every individual godforsaken goddamned tile: every bit of lighting, every bit of grass, completely from scratch, every frame, every time. And when you zoom out? Wuh-woh shaggy. You’re now asking for trouble.
 
So for B42 we decided to implement a depth buffer! 
 
This was a bold proposition since we have no 3D (outside the characters and items, of course). Our ‘3D’ is otherwise a faked perspective drawn by the artists drawing the tile: it’s an illusion.
 
However, with some perseverance, we managed to generate a serviceable depth map of our usual faked isometric tiles:
 

Note here that when you look carefully at the floors and walls in this, they are not completely smooth. Each tile is still just ‘a certain distance away’ and it all behaves just as it does now: a deck of cards being dealt every frame, where one thing is either below or on top of another. However we no longer have to draw them back to front.
 
We’ve all seen this faked isometric drawn into the tiles cause weird visual glitches too many times to count, where the illusion of the 2d tiled world just breaks in ugly ways.
 
 
So we went a step further and calculated the fake 3dness for floors and walls, thereby making the depth map peachy smooth:
 

 
So where does that leave us?
 
We’re dealing the self-same deck of cards we always have been (these are still faked 2d isometric tiles and always will be) however we can now say ‘the left hand bit of this card is actually further back than the right hand side of this card’ and objects placed on them will represent this as if they had actual 3d depth. 
 
For walls and floors, at least, from this fixed perspective we suddenly service them with the GPU as if they are 3D objects: which means that not only do we get rid of the issues with the fixed tile ordering, but we can say ‘this specific part of this tile is further back or further forward than the rest of it’. So we can choose to put that part of the tile in front of / behind the character differently to other parts of the same tile. 
 
This will make a big difference to immersion on its own, but then we went a step further. With the new depth map, we opened up access to that amazing optimization trick we mentioned before.
 
On the dev branch for this work, we can now just draw a chunk like this tile by tile on one single occasion.
 

 
All those hundreds of draw calls as the cards get slammed down from the deck now only need to happen once as we ‘construct’ the chunk and it becomes its very own ‘tile’.
 
Within this we bake the depth information into the depth buffer. So, despite this just being a single picture, we already have all the information hidden behind it that’s required to correctly place any player, zombie or placed inventory item anywhere on this chunk (even inside the building, or partially obscured by any part of it) – and this can be done AFTER drawing the chunk itself too. We can effectively slide things behind stuff we’ve already drawn intelligently.
 
The only times we will ever need to update this chunk and redraw those tiles is if the lighting from time of day changes, or if a naughty zombie dies on it or a player picks up an item, drops one, opens a door or otherwise.
 
(And oh yes, zombie bodies and dropped inventory items will be cached on the chunk too! With depth! So in terms of performance this current resource-hog will be near enough completely free)
 
So now for every frame the chunk above, the charming apartment balconies, becomes the equivalent of a single current tile. One single draw that’s not that much slower than drawing that one single tile in the current build, in which we have 8x8x4 gridsquares getting drawn, potentially with 4-5 tiles on each. All for near the price on CPU and GPU of a single tile draw. 
 
The work needed to draw each tile on that chunk only needs to occur every so often when it’s updated in a way that invalidates the depth or changes the tiles visually, or when it first becomes visible. And if anything invalidates that chunk that it requires drawing in full, it’s only that chunk that needs redrawing, and only once. It’ll hardly be noticed by your CPU and GPU.
 
On top of this we have that depth buffer still for every tile drawn, and beyond that the walls and floor tiles have additional faked smooth depth applied to them.
 

 
That’s where the magic happens: weirdly not only is the above long-haired hippy character drawn AFTER the fence tiles are, but the fence and the gravel floor that’s visible behind it are just part of the same single image and are not separated whatsoever. Due to the magic of the new system we happened to have the extra depth information and were able to throw away pixels of them being drawn seeing as there was something ‘closer’. 
 
As a cumulative effect of all the above: this is how we accomplished 4k res, max zoom, 300-500 fps, with over 1000 when zoomed in in this video we posted a long while back when we were prototyping all this.
 
 
(Though please note we expect, in practice, it won’t be this high: the lack of zombies and various other factors make it not completely representative of the full game – but it’s still a good indicator of how vast this optimization will be.)
 
Next Steps
So the big issue here is that walls and floors are the easy part.
 
It’s relatively simpler to calculate how ‘deep’ a particular pixel of a wall should be, use a shader to put that depth in, and get smooth continuous depth that the player won’t clip through like it’s a 2D billboard facing the screen. Anything more complex than a flat wall or floor though is a problem.
 
EP, however, has recently been experimenting with some stuff that’s pretty cool.
 
We must make a big disclaimer there that this is very much, as stated, experimenting, and we can’t say for certain what is shown here will be in b42 as shown.
 
He made us promise we made that clear before we speak of it at all, but it’ll give you an idea of what we’re trying to do and the cool ideas he’s been playing with on his travels.
 
So he’s been working on a cool editor for creating simple 3d shapes, positioning them on the tiles, and baking out the depth texture for use when rendering.
 
 
 
 
None of the 3d shapes will end up in the game world while playing, but the resultant extra depth texture (seen in the bottom left) can be used with the depth map system to make the characters interact with it as if those 3d shapes were there.
 
As you can see, here the character intersects with the (remember, completely 2D) tile as if it were a 3d object itself, with full gradual depth.
 

 
And yes, this is the main thing that’s been holding us back from sitting in chairs, lying in beds etc. Modders have done great things providing this in the capacity that’s feasible in the current engine, but are still limited from sitting properly in chairs that obscure the character or face in different directions. We want a proper solution that’ll work 100% when it comes to the main game.
 
Finally, another caveat.
 
There’s no way in hell we’d ever be able to do this for every tile in the game, especially the more complicated ones or ones that were drawn (by hand) by the artists that may not actually follow strict laws of isometric in actuality.
 
While this tech can be used for some nice stuff in future its primary and only feasible short to medium term use is as described above.
Before we start seeing the inevitable “omg PZ will be able to rotate camera RTX mode when??” this is still a complete MASSIVE gulf from anything resembling true 3D.
 
Trust us: we’ve already ummed and ahhed and experimented with all this tech for a long while now to firmly to know where our limits are and put our boot down on those kinda thoughts.
 
But this does mean that we should be able to deal with all the main simpler structural tiles that make up the main geometry of the maps, and will provide a much more solid feeling world despite it looking very much the same as it always has – however, with the new lighting propagation system it shall look that bit better of course!
 
We now return to your scheduled programming.
 
FARMING
Next, over to the redoubtable Blair Algol for the latest on agricultural matters.
 
“The current state of the farming rework is that the current dev phase of new plants, vegetables, herbs, houseplants and associated changes to farming mechanics, are nearly finished. I’m now on fine tuning and polish.”
 
“The sticky matter in the fine tuning and polish, however, is that my mission has not only been in a more realistic and better balanced farming experience – but also to provide a more folksy, relaxing and productive-feeling gameplay loop that fully utilizes the new animation capabilities of modern Zomboid. So this is actually the part where I need to roll up my sleeves and do the heavy lifting.”
 
“I had been waiting for Aiteron’s splendid fishing rework to get into a state where it was possible to build off it, so that both the interface, and interactions would be as consistent as possible; as well as with the RJ’s animal rework, and Eris’ foraging interface. We’re really trying to make the systems and experiences in PZ more consistent as a whole.”
 
“But the goal is that farming should serve as a fun, peaceful minigame, albeit with challenges as we are making a survival game, but that can be an oasis of calm in the chaos and death of the PZ apocalypse. One fun little feature that I’m adding in that regard is using Ladybugs (EUROPEAN TRANSLATION: ‘Mister Ladybirds’) as pest control.”
 
“I should point out that, in testing, even with the longer growing seasons, and new pests/maintenance, the majority of plants would still survive until harvest without any major issues. Yields, however, might vary.”
 
To summarize the changes to farming, we have already implemented the following:
 
Crops now take a realistic amount of time to grow before they can be harvested; this can be adjusted to suit the player or server in the sandbox options. Crops also feature realistic growing seasons, where there’s optimal months to plant your crops, as well as ones where they are doomed to failure; this can be disabled in the sandbox options. Attempting to grow anything other than houseplants indoors will also be doomed to failure; this also can be disabled in the sandbox options, and, when the new lighting systems are implemented, then a realistic greenhouse system could be explored, but don’t take that as a guarantee. Slugs and snails are new garden pests, that can be dealt with using commercial slug and snail killer, or by learning how to make a slug trap out of an empty beer or pop can and some beer. Rosemary plants, and chickens, also serve as means to control slug infestations. Plants will also benefit from regular weedings. We have herbs, which have shorter growing seasons, and can be repeatedly harvested, and you can also propagate new herb patches with fresh herbs. You can use potatoes, onions and garlic as seeds to plant new patches of vegetables. I have added contextual actions using the combat stance in combination with the action key. When you have a hoe equipped, and are in the stance, you can use the action key to dig a furrow. Likewise, if you have seeds in your hand, are in the stance, and are facing a furrow you can use the action key to plant seeds. Likewise for watering plots. I plan on expanding this contextual action to include stuff like chopping down trees when an axe is equipped; removing barricade planks when a crowbar is equipped; etc. as well, for consistency.  
There’s other cool, fun stuff that’s either being worked on, or being planned, but we don’t want to spoil everything.
 
FISHING
A visual update from the Aiteron keep net!
 


 
NEW ITEM STUFF
Back to the Blair hothouse!
 
“One of the other things I’ve been doing for Build 42 is adding a slew of new items – both functional and decorative – along with addressing inconsistencies and missing functionality with existing items.”
 
“One of the issues we’re attempting to address is ‘Bottleneck Items’. These are items such as Generator Magazines, Sledgehammers, Lighters/Matches etc. that, when a player has difficulty finding them, can make them feel like they’re soft-locked out of parts of the game. While we don’t want to remove the challenge of finding these items, we want to ensure that there are adequate opportunities for a player to find these items, even if they may involve some dangerous excursions.”
 
“In addition to ensuring that these items spawn in varied appropriate circumstances as loot, including in vehicles, we are ensuring that special circumstances such as the randomized stories and annotated map stash houses can spawn these items, and appropriate items will also be able to be foraged. As an aside, the loot tables themselves are in the process of being scrupulously revised and glowed-up, and should provide more fun and depth for the looting aspects of the game.”
 
“We made a couple of tools to collect data and feedback regarding this. I had already made LootLog, a tool similar to Aiteron’s LootZed, except that this one, when activated, logs all loot that spawns to the console.txt with details including the exact location where the loot spawns.”
 
“Fenris then took this concept to the next level, and now we are working with a tool that tracks and logs exactly how many items of each type spawn for each savegame; a permanent record showing exactly how many items spawn. Not only does this allow us to collect concrete data regarding item spawning, if you are worried that Sledgehammers, Generator Magazines, or Rubber Hoses aren’t spawning, you can check this record and see if they are.”
 
“In regards to Generator Magazines, with a high enough Electrical skill in Build 42, your character will be able connect and repair Generators without needing that magazine. We are also adding additional varieties of lighter and matches, as well as Lighter Fluid for refilling the classic lighters, and you will be able to use a vehicle lighter, open flame, or an appropriate stove to light cigarettes. There are also alternate means for players with the Smoker trait to feed their addiction to nicotine.”
 
“You can currently use many bottles other than the Gas Cans to hold fuel, which was one way we addressed that particular bottleneck (and yes, we are making sure that hoses for siphoning fuel are common), and we are also adding a new, larger, fuel container, alongside some other military-themed items.”
 
“We know that many players, especially roleplayers, like having themed items, and so some more themed bags, like the military duffelbag in build 41, are on the way. The new entrenching tool serves as a weapon and a shovel, and is folded when placed on the ground or attached to a belt. Several of the new knives such as the Switchblade and Butterfly Knife also have that feature.”
 
“The new canteen item can be attached to the belt, and will also showcase another new item feature that modders can make good use of: items with varying icons and models from their standard base ones. This allows us to add cosmetic variants without having to actually add new items, similar to how clothing works. I believe there are 4-6 variants of this style of canteen. All of this military loot spawns in appropriate circumstances, so if you want this new gear be prepared to have to go out and get it.”
 
“Another alternative Bottleneck Item is a P38 Can-Opener that you can keep on your Key Ring. Additionally, your character will be able to use a knife to open cans of food, although that will damage the knife and has the risk of injuring your hand. We also have fancy, expensive imported beer that requires a bottle opener, and the better wines, aside from Champagne of course, will need a corkscrew, or one of the better pocket knives to open.” 
 
“There are many other new items and features: you can use a Pickaxe to remove annoying stumps and boulders; we added various vanity/prestige items and collectibles; players worried about having enough Garbage Bags for water collectors (another Bottleneck Item) will be happy to be able to find a box of them; and we made garbage loot a lot more fun and gross.”
 
 
MODDING
Next a quick update for modders.
Something else we’re endeavouring to do for Build 42 is to use Tags for item interactions whenever possible. This should make it easy for modders to add new items that work smoothly with a lot of the fun new stuff, and older stuff as well.
 
As mentioned above, for both mods and our own usage, we now have it so that modified item icons and models are “persistent”; when changed they stay that way when after quitting and reloading and we have made sure to have straightforward function names for ease of use.
 
We added some new events for mods to use, including: – OnZombieCreate and – LoadChunk
 
OnZombieCreate will allow modders to directly access zombies when they first spawn. Currently for many mods, using the LoadGridSquare event is the only feasible way to accomplish some goals. However, this often has an annoying impact on performance. What LoadChunk does is allow mods to access the chunks of the world map, which are a 10 x 10 grid of map squares, after they stream in. Afterwards, if the mod needs to access a square in that chunk, it can use code such as chunk:getGridSquare(x,y,z) to access said square. Practically speaking this means that the mod can use ~1% of the previous event calls to accomplish the same goals, for many of the purposes in which LoadGridSquare is utilized.
 
We have also moved around the order of operations when sandbox options are loaded and the loot tables are parsed, to make it easier for mods that use sandbox options to set loot spawn values.
ANIMALS
Finally, a quick video built from clips from the ongoing animals testing.
Tara for now, chucks.
 
 
This week’s hellscape from Stonmo. 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 gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here. Apologies for the lack of blog last week, the blog writer had a fever and for much of Thursday was hallucinating that he was stuck in a Mexican hotel and GOG kept on phoning the switchboard to demand that we change the Knox Event lore.

Why do you want to limit what other players do? 
 

kinda hope the new Crowbar stays blue.
 
lol, it's Tradition

wow, i thought FOR SURE Kirrus was part of TIS for the past 8 or 9 years.
 
Congrats, Kirrus
 

wow, i thought FOR SURE Kirrus was part of TIS for the past 8 or 9 years.
 
Congrats, Kirrus
 

Evening all.
 
NOW
We released 41.77 into the stable beta last week, which fixed up linux servers and also improved client to server connections by preferring a direct connection to the server.
 
It was mission successful in most regards, but a minority of users still had issues connecting – which we have been addressing over the past few days via hotfixes in the Unstable beta.
 
If you were one of the frustrated souls impacted by this, then let us know if you are still suffering on Unstable (hopefully not) on this thread on the Steam Board.
 
Our current plan is to get these final people back on board the connection train, then move onto releasing the final 41 patch into the freshly vacated Unstable beta next week.
 
We’ve now locked coder submissions to this patch (necessary fixes aside) and the final changelist looks like this.
 
LATER
We’ve blogged a bunch of stuff that we’re working towards getting into 42 now, but this week we thought it also worth mentioning that work has re-begun on the fire revamp.
 
The fire revamp is something that got a lot of coverage in ‘doids around two years ago, so it probably predates the knowledge of a fair few readers who have come on board in more recent times during B41’s MP launch and consequent hi-jinks.
Work on revamped fire had to be put to one side in favour of bolstering the Multiplayer code team, and ever since then it has been sitting on a dusty shelf and getting a little stale.
 
The tldr of it when last we left it runs as follows:
A realistic spread of fire, with combustible materials that make sense. A system that takes into account temperature, material types, weight, volume, surface area, heating energy, cooling energy etc A set-up on both a solo map and an MP network that means that the game can ‘remember’ what is going on in terms of a spreading fire when players leave the area. Fire spread that uses the direction and speed of the wind, with in-game rain helping with fires being put out. Improved effects and visuals.  
So what now? Well a nice chap called Denis is brushing off the unfinished work – and has brought it all up to date with the codebase two years later. This task is now complete, and this video shows a quick summary of where we got to.
 
 
So where does this leave us? Well it doesn’t make it a confirmed 42 feature, we are already going to be packing a LOT in, but it does make its inclusion more likely.
 
We want to improve the visuals still (we are still not happy with whether it fits the game scene), and we want Denis to take his time getting to grips with the codebase and what can be done with the system still. Likewise we’ll be working on new anims for zeds and players who have caught fire, and the sound team will be providing all manner of sizzle noises.
 
So this is basically us waving a flag at you to say that we hadn’t forgotten all this cool shit, and it’s back off the shelf and receiving some active love and attention for later on down the line.
 
WELCOME KIRRUS!
The team would like to officially welcome Kirrus to the TIS locker-room! Kirrus has been a long-term contributor, helper and ‘cool head in troubled times’ throughout the history of Project Zomboid – but has never been officially on the team.
 
He’s now a full time member of the gang, and our new Sys Admin. Big Spiffo hug incoming!
This week’s office space from Sr.Cannoli. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games dev and want to work with us, especially if you’re an Animations Engineer as Christ alive that would be handy? Details here.

Hello everyone.
NEXT
The situation with Linux server instability remains ongoing, with the MP team working on another update to the Unstable beta – and an internal test of their work tonight.
 
The good news from the Unstable release of 41.76 was that overall network and connection speeds were improved, and will be beneficial to all online players once fully released, but the far more pressing issue was that residual errors in our zombienet library carried over server instability. Getting this, finally, sorted is currently the team’s number one priority.
 
This issue doesn’t impact all our players, but we recognise how frustrating it must be for those who play regularly on Linux servers – and above all those who operate them. We can only apologise for the continued outage and ongoing work, and recognise that patience has been running understandably thin.
 
In our travels fixing the issues, the networking has been changed so as to more directly communicate between server and client. The server now has 2 ports to connect to. The game port (16261 by default) is used to handle Steam queries. The additional port (16262 by default) is used to handle the direct connection, and thus circumnavigate the data travelling through the steam network which was impacting latency and throughput significantly. These ports can be configured through the server options.
 
We’re aware this may cause a bit of disruption when we first release this to stable. However, the positive impact this will have on server performance, reducing lag and improving syncing of the game is too great to ignore, and should be just an additional port for server operators to be aware of and shouldn’t affect the vast majority of players connecting. The non-Steam version, meanwhile, will just work as usual.
 
THEN
Most of the non-MP team are now fully on B42 development, but we do have a few brave soldiers working on the final 41 patch that’s currently backlogged behind the aforementioned MP fixes.
 
The intention of this patch is to be as non-disruptive as possible, and to leave 41 in the best possible condition during the next period of extensive Build 42 development.
 
As such it’s primarily fix-based and polish, but there are also some expanded sandbox options. You can see the topline of new changes in the screenshot below.
 
 
You can thankfully also view the full current changelist by following this hotlink.
This build will go into the unstable beta once MP servers are fully patched up and stable.
 
42
We’ve got a couple of videos from RJ this week to show his current work on domestic animals. They are fairly self-explanatory when you watch them, but PLEASE NOTE everything you see is heavily WIP.
 
RJ is working in something of a development debug sandbox here, and as such everything will have rough edges – and likewise some player actions will have more appropriate animations, animal sizes will be improved, sound effects, further polished UI etc. etc.
 
 
 
Finally, just to give you the shivers, here’s a sample of the Sound Team’s latest work on sprinter screams. Don’t have nightmares.
 
 
This week’s book club from Kawri. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games dev and want to work with us, especially if you’re an Animations Engineer as Christ alive that would be handy? Details here.
 

Not sure if it was already suggested, I didn't find.
 
Adding mod one by one in a server is tedious and it is easy to forget some. Also when you need to add new one the list don't reorganize and with some time it turns a mess. Is it possible to add a button "ADD ALL" in Workshop/Mods page while creating a server? It will help a lot!!
Thanks!

That's fine, 30K others do, and give more valuable criticisms while they're at it.

It felt like the day would never come, but we’re really happy and proud to announce that Build 41 has been released to stable!
 
If you’ve been out of the loop on the beta, a good place to start would be our new trailer to celebrate the release and show those new to Zomboid what’s in store for them:
 
 
This build marks a huge step for us, the graphics, gameplay, audio and netcode being significantly remastered and radically improved, Build 41 feels more a sequel than a patch update. As well as a huge map update, new mechanics and systems, its by far our biggest update yet.
 
Under normal circumstances, we may have done a little more polish and fixing before releasing to stable, but the truth is next to no one are playing Build 40 now, apart from those that didn’t know of the beta branch. It’s presence if anything has been damaging to Project Zomboid’s first impressions and we were only waiting for multiplayer to drop in a somewhat stable fashion to allow us to move on, as we feel strongly that Build 41 even with the remaining bugs and issues that need weeding out, casts a far superior first impression for new players.
 
Build 40 will forever live on in a branch, access the beta branch “legacy40 – Classic Zomboid” at any point to continue playing, or if your specs aren’t capable of running build 41 comfortably.
 
So what’s new in this build?
 
Massive animation and character overhaul, more immersive animations and smoother gameplay and combat, highly customizable character that shows clothing and equipment in the world. Visibly ripped and damaged clothing. Visible Backpacks and Bags. In-game map system to allow the player to chart their exploration and find their way around the huge map. New animations and new movement systems. Sneaking, sprinting, jogging, racking, reloading, climbing, fence-jumping, collapsing and much much more. New multiplayer built from the ground up for smooth, immersive and low latency player and zombie movement. New combat, new weapons, new difficulty balance. New tutorial teaching you the very basics of the new movement and combat. New character creation – many, many different new clothing options both on spawn and discoverable in the world as loot or on zombies. New city to explore, the gargantuan Louisville, as well as many improvements across the entire map, including new buildings, decoration, and curved roads for easier driving. New zombie behaviour: feasting on recent corpses, lolling against walls, falling over fences etc. Blood and dirt system that progressively bloodies bodies and clothing of survivors and zombies New injury system – movement and combat visibly hampered when injured. Lacerations now possible, an injury state that lies between bites and scratches. Improved gunplay: green/red target outline while aiming, increased gun loot spawn. Randomized environmental storytelling elements. Death Scenes, zombies discovered in the situations in which people died. Prayer meetings, sports-viewing parties, survivor zeds wearing backpacks etc, vehicle crashes and blockades. Situational zombie type/clothing and inventories – cop zeds in police station, firemen zeds in burnt buildings, Chef zeds in restaurant kitchens, bride and groom zeds at a wedding ceremony in church etc. Clothing protection: different clothing provides different levels of protection from zombie attacks. New Sims-style cutaway vision system. Vehicle handling improvements, resizing and appearance tweaks. Updated, remastered and expanded Kentucky-themed soundtrack. Complete soundscape overhaul – All new sounds, building a more immersive and compelling sonic landscape. Items now have placeable 3D models in the world, for all your decorative needs. New Gameplay Styles
Apocalypse: Stealth focus. Short lifespan. Combat best avoided and picked selectively.
Survivor: Powerful combat. Longer Lifespan. A challenging playstyle based on PZ’s previous Survival mode of Build 40.
Builder: Construction, Exploration, and Farming focus. A more relaxed experience. New Challenges
Kingsmouth – A separate challenge map, Kingsmouth puts you on a paradise island vacation resort.
Studio – Try to survive as the Knox Infection hits the dream factory. Some of these zombies are not like the others. Entirely new foraging system. New inventory slots – belts and holsters now give quick equip slots. Weapons can be attached to the character’s back. New thermal / body temperature system. New Tailoring system for clothing repairs. New Fitness / Exercise system. New emote system – Hold Q to bring up the Radial Menu for Emotes. New water visuals – including visible flow direction. New puddle system during heavy rain. New fog visuals. New levelling system. New VHS, and CDs system. Broken glass and related injuries. 3D Store Mannequins – can be dressed however you like Working washing machines and driers Server-side saving: MP save system now in a server-side database. Offline SP-side, also means no more lost cars via irl power outages. New radial menu for reloading firearms. New game cursor New loot balance and loot balance system: houses and stores now have loot in the containers you would expect from real life – and not in a jumble. Isometric aiming cursor that shows where you’re aiming in iso space to aid in combat. A gigantic list of fixes and QoL improvements.  
 
Thank you
A huge thanks everyone for the wonderful experience we’ve had since releasing multiplayer, seeing such a wave of positivity has been wild and made this long journey for this build more than worth it! Seeing the player numbers dwarf our previous record has been crazy:
 

 
We’re over the moon over the success the multiplayer has seen and we vow to continue and expand on that.
 
We’re so proud of everyone on our team, we know we wouldn’t be here today if we didn’t have such dedicated devs working on all these features, often under intense external pressure, and the support team for helping us keep the sometimes chaotic wheels spinning. Every one of them is wonderful and deserving of all our thanks.
 
Finally, a huge specific thank you to General Arcade, in particular Yuri and Andrei who have put such amazing work into bringing a quality to Zomboid’s multiplayer we simply would never have (and indeed, hadn’t) achieved without them. They’ve put huge amounts of work into this, and we’re thankful to them for helping Zomboid multiplayer come to the vision we had for it.
 
That’s all for this update. See you all after the new year where we’ll talk about what comes next!

(copied from the blog post so it is in here)
 
Yes, you read that right! As many will know we’ve been aiming for a December release for the multiplayer. As Xmas approaches, we have been fighting each day to get a build we feel the community will enjoy and feels stable enough for players to enjoy the multiplayer.
This build contains:
16 player multiplayer, dedicated server and co-op MASSIVE map expansion, including Louisville to the north of Westpoint and Valley Station. Like silly huge. Check it out! In-game mapping system. Search mode and foraging system. However, we never quite reached the polish we’d have liked to have put it out on IWBUMS proper. There are many smaller to medium priority issues we are aware of but don’t feel justify holding the multiplayer back, but still mean we’re not comfortable officially calling this a full IWBUMS release.
It’s become clearer that having wider testing on the build would be invaluable, and in addition everyone including ourselves wants that satisfaction of something being out before the Xmas holidays after such a huge unending slog.
As such this is the decision we’ve made as a compromise to try and make everyone, including ourselves, happy, while still ring-fencing this build away from the more stable IWBUMs build.
This will also give mod authors a chance to adjust to the new build, too.
As such, we’ve released a public test build on a new opt in branch. Go to steam properties for the game, select the betas tab, and select b41multiplayer.
Along with that the dedicated server update is on the dedicated server branch b41multiplayer. Since IWBUMs beta has long been considered the defacto version due to the huge improvements, we felt the need to distinguish this further into its own steam build, to make clear it’s not to be considered to be a full first release.
Please be aware that while we’ve made great efforts to get this build as stable as possible, and are confident the majority of players will be able to have fun playing, there’s only so much we can do with an internal test team, many of which are volunteers.
There will undoubtedly be issues, possibly ones that could lead to player’s unfair deaths or loss of characters or their belongings.
If you are not comfortable with this, feel you’d get angry about this, and would write us stern letters about this beyond a friendly bug report, we strongly recommend you wait until January when most of these issues should have been resolved and the official IWBUMS beta will begin.
However, we know everyone has been patient in awaiting the release of MP after the six month delay, and we’re satisfied that the quality of the build is sufficient that those who have been waiting will be capable of having fun gameplay with each other, and at the same time we’ll be able to glean important bug reports about what is still requiring fixing that are very difficult to obtain from within a small internal test team. As long as understanding this is an opt in public test.
IMPORTANT
Public servers are NOT recommended. Whitelisted and co-op servers are strongly recommended for the best experience. There will likely be exploits and hack vulnerabilities that will probably make public servers a nightmarishly annoying place to be. We’ll look to address these in future builds.
The build will be hard locked to a maximum of 16 players. While short of the 32 we were aiming for, we feel from our internal tests that the server will be able to deal with this without too much strain while we improve stability for higher player counts. Our ambitions are much higher than 32, too.
It’s possible too that players may need to reduce zombie counts on MP servers, their numbers at specific sandbox settings often exceeding that on single player settings for reasons we’re not yet clear on. As a rule of thumb you should go a step below your usual prefered settings.
If you’ve run B40 co-op games on your machine, it may require deleting your old server saves to be able to host in B41. Delete everything in %UserProfile%\zomboid\saves\multiplayer\.
Also if people have difficulty connecting to servers, please try validating your local files in steam properties for the game. Because steam sometimes sucks and leaves old versions of files and this will cause mismatches with the server.
We request that anyone who shares news of this release to anyone please forward them to this blog post, so that we can properly contextualise the release and any potential issues that may crop up. Anyone streaming or making videos of the build, please state clearly that this is a public opt-in test rather than a full IWBUMS beta release.
We hope you all have fun! Have some Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!
 
https://projectzomboid.com/blog/news/2021/12/b41-mp-test-41-60-branch-released/
 
 

(copied from the blog post so it is in here)
 
Yes, you read that right! As many will know we’ve been aiming for a December release for the multiplayer. As Xmas approaches, we have been fighting each day to get a build we feel the community will enjoy and feels stable enough for players to enjoy the multiplayer.
This build contains:
16 player multiplayer, dedicated server and co-op MASSIVE map expansion, including Louisville to the north of Westpoint and Valley Station. Like silly huge. Check it out! In-game mapping system. Search mode and foraging system. However, we never quite reached the polish we’d have liked to have put it out on IWBUMS proper. There are many smaller to medium priority issues we are aware of but don’t feel justify holding the multiplayer back, but still mean we’re not comfortable officially calling this a full IWBUMS release.
It’s become clearer that having wider testing on the build would be invaluable, and in addition everyone including ourselves wants that satisfaction of something being out before the Xmas holidays after such a huge unending slog.
As such this is the decision we’ve made as a compromise to try and make everyone, including ourselves, happy, while still ring-fencing this build away from the more stable IWBUMs build.
This will also give mod authors a chance to adjust to the new build, too.
As such, we’ve released a public test build on a new opt in branch. Go to steam properties for the game, select the betas tab, and select b41multiplayer.
Along with that the dedicated server update is on the dedicated server branch b41multiplayer. Since IWBUMs beta has long been considered the defacto version due to the huge improvements, we felt the need to distinguish this further into its own steam build, to make clear it’s not to be considered to be a full first release.
Please be aware that while we’ve made great efforts to get this build as stable as possible, and are confident the majority of players will be able to have fun playing, there’s only so much we can do with an internal test team, many of which are volunteers.
There will undoubtedly be issues, possibly ones that could lead to player’s unfair deaths or loss of characters or their belongings.
If you are not comfortable with this, feel you’d get angry about this, and would write us stern letters about this beyond a friendly bug report, we strongly recommend you wait until January when most of these issues should have been resolved and the official IWBUMS beta will begin.
However, we know everyone has been patient in awaiting the release of MP after the six month delay, and we’re satisfied that the quality of the build is sufficient that those who have been waiting will be capable of having fun gameplay with each other, and at the same time we’ll be able to glean important bug reports about what is still requiring fixing that are very difficult to obtain from within a small internal test team. As long as understanding this is an opt in public test.
IMPORTANT
Public servers are NOT recommended. Whitelisted and co-op servers are strongly recommended for the best experience. There will likely be exploits and hack vulnerabilities that will probably make public servers a nightmarishly annoying place to be. We’ll look to address these in future builds.
The build will be hard locked to a maximum of 16 players. While short of the 32 we were aiming for, we feel from our internal tests that the server will be able to deal with this without too much strain while we improve stability for higher player counts. Our ambitions are much higher than 32, too.
It’s possible too that players may need to reduce zombie counts on MP servers, their numbers at specific sandbox settings often exceeding that on single player settings for reasons we’re not yet clear on. As a rule of thumb you should go a step below your usual prefered settings.
If you’ve run B40 co-op games on your machine, it may require deleting your old server saves to be able to host in B41. Delete everything in %UserProfile%\zomboid\saves\multiplayer\.
Also if people have difficulty connecting to servers, please try validating your local files in steam properties for the game. Because steam sometimes sucks and leaves old versions of files and this will cause mismatches with the server.
We request that anyone who shares news of this release to anyone please forward them to this blog post, so that we can properly contextualise the release and any potential issues that may crop up. Anyone streaming or making videos of the build, please state clearly that this is a public opt-in test rather than a full IWBUMS beta release.
We hope you all have fun! Have some Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!
 
https://projectzomboid.com/blog/news/2021/12/b41-mp-test-41-60-branch-released/
 
 

(copied from the blog post so it is in here)
 
Yes, you read that right! As many will know we’ve been aiming for a December release for the multiplayer. As Xmas approaches, we have been fighting each day to get a build we feel the community will enjoy and feels stable enough for players to enjoy the multiplayer.
This build contains:
16 player multiplayer, dedicated server and co-op MASSIVE map expansion, including Louisville to the north of Westpoint and Valley Station. Like silly huge. Check it out! In-game mapping system. Search mode and foraging system. However, we never quite reached the polish we’d have liked to have put it out on IWBUMS proper. There are many smaller to medium priority issues we are aware of but don’t feel justify holding the multiplayer back, but still mean we’re not comfortable officially calling this a full IWBUMS release.
It’s become clearer that having wider testing on the build would be invaluable, and in addition everyone including ourselves wants that satisfaction of something being out before the Xmas holidays after such a huge unending slog.
As such this is the decision we’ve made as a compromise to try and make everyone, including ourselves, happy, while still ring-fencing this build away from the more stable IWBUMs build.
This will also give mod authors a chance to adjust to the new build, too.
As such, we’ve released a public test build on a new opt in branch. Go to steam properties for the game, select the betas tab, and select b41multiplayer.
Along with that the dedicated server update is on the dedicated server branch b41multiplayer. Since IWBUMs beta has long been considered the defacto version due to the huge improvements, we felt the need to distinguish this further into its own steam build, to make clear it’s not to be considered to be a full first release.
Please be aware that while we’ve made great efforts to get this build as stable as possible, and are confident the majority of players will be able to have fun playing, there’s only so much we can do with an internal test team, many of which are volunteers.
There will undoubtedly be issues, possibly ones that could lead to player’s unfair deaths or loss of characters or their belongings.
If you are not comfortable with this, feel you’d get angry about this, and would write us stern letters about this beyond a friendly bug report, we strongly recommend you wait until January when most of these issues should have been resolved and the official IWBUMS beta will begin.
However, we know everyone has been patient in awaiting the release of MP after the six month delay, and we’re satisfied that the quality of the build is sufficient that those who have been waiting will be capable of having fun gameplay with each other, and at the same time we’ll be able to glean important bug reports about what is still requiring fixing that are very difficult to obtain from within a small internal test team. As long as understanding this is an opt in public test.
IMPORTANT
Public servers are NOT recommended. Whitelisted and co-op servers are strongly recommended for the best experience. There will likely be exploits and hack vulnerabilities that will probably make public servers a nightmarishly annoying place to be. We’ll look to address these in future builds.
The build will be hard locked to a maximum of 16 players. While short of the 32 we were aiming for, we feel from our internal tests that the server will be able to deal with this without too much strain while we improve stability for higher player counts. Our ambitions are much higher than 32, too.
It’s possible too that players may need to reduce zombie counts on MP servers, their numbers at specific sandbox settings often exceeding that on single player settings for reasons we’re not yet clear on. As a rule of thumb you should go a step below your usual prefered settings.
If you’ve run B40 co-op games on your machine, it may require deleting your old server saves to be able to host in B41. Delete everything in %UserProfile%\zomboid\saves\multiplayer\.
Also if people have difficulty connecting to servers, please try validating your local files in steam properties for the game. Because steam sometimes sucks and leaves old versions of files and this will cause mismatches with the server.
We request that anyone who shares news of this release to anyone please forward them to this blog post, so that we can properly contextualise the release and any potential issues that may crop up. Anyone streaming or making videos of the build, please state clearly that this is a public opt-in test rather than a full IWBUMS beta release.
We hope you all have fun! Have some Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!
 
https://projectzomboid.com/blog/news/2021/12/b41-mp-test-41-60-branch-released/
 
 

(copied from the blog post so it is in here)
 
Yes, you read that right! As many will know we’ve been aiming for a December release for the multiplayer. As Xmas approaches, we have been fighting each day to get a build we feel the community will enjoy and feels stable enough for players to enjoy the multiplayer.
This build contains:
16 player multiplayer, dedicated server and co-op MASSIVE map expansion, including Louisville to the north of Westpoint and Valley Station. Like silly huge. Check it out! In-game mapping system. Search mode and foraging system. However, we never quite reached the polish we’d have liked to have put it out on IWBUMS proper. There are many smaller to medium priority issues we are aware of but don’t feel justify holding the multiplayer back, but still mean we’re not comfortable officially calling this a full IWBUMS release.
It’s become clearer that having wider testing on the build would be invaluable, and in addition everyone including ourselves wants that satisfaction of something being out before the Xmas holidays after such a huge unending slog.
As such this is the decision we’ve made as a compromise to try and make everyone, including ourselves, happy, while still ring-fencing this build away from the more stable IWBUMs build.
This will also give mod authors a chance to adjust to the new build, too.
As such, we’ve released a public test build on a new opt in branch. Go to steam properties for the game, select the betas tab, and select b41multiplayer.
Along with that the dedicated server update is on the dedicated server branch b41multiplayer. Since IWBUMs beta has long been considered the defacto version due to the huge improvements, we felt the need to distinguish this further into its own steam build, to make clear it’s not to be considered to be a full first release.
Please be aware that while we’ve made great efforts to get this build as stable as possible, and are confident the majority of players will be able to have fun playing, there’s only so much we can do with an internal test team, many of which are volunteers.
There will undoubtedly be issues, possibly ones that could lead to player’s unfair deaths or loss of characters or their belongings.
If you are not comfortable with this, feel you’d get angry about this, and would write us stern letters about this beyond a friendly bug report, we strongly recommend you wait until January when most of these issues should have been resolved and the official IWBUMS beta will begin.
However, we know everyone has been patient in awaiting the release of MP after the six month delay, and we’re satisfied that the quality of the build is sufficient that those who have been waiting will be capable of having fun gameplay with each other, and at the same time we’ll be able to glean important bug reports about what is still requiring fixing that are very difficult to obtain from within a small internal test team. As long as understanding this is an opt in public test.
IMPORTANT
Public servers are NOT recommended. Whitelisted and co-op servers are strongly recommended for the best experience. There will likely be exploits and hack vulnerabilities that will probably make public servers a nightmarishly annoying place to be. We’ll look to address these in future builds.
The build will be hard locked to a maximum of 16 players. While short of the 32 we were aiming for, we feel from our internal tests that the server will be able to deal with this without too much strain while we improve stability for higher player counts. Our ambitions are much higher than 32, too.
It’s possible too that players may need to reduce zombie counts on MP servers, their numbers at specific sandbox settings often exceeding that on single player settings for reasons we’re not yet clear on. As a rule of thumb you should go a step below your usual prefered settings.
If you’ve run B40 co-op games on your machine, it may require deleting your old server saves to be able to host in B41. Delete everything in %UserProfile%\zomboid\saves\multiplayer\.
Also if people have difficulty connecting to servers, please try validating your local files in steam properties for the game. Because steam sometimes sucks and leaves old versions of files and this will cause mismatches with the server.
We request that anyone who shares news of this release to anyone please forward them to this blog post, so that we can properly contextualise the release and any potential issues that may crop up. Anyone streaming or making videos of the build, please state clearly that this is a public opt-in test rather than a full IWBUMS beta release.
We hope you all have fun! Have some Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!
 
https://projectzomboid.com/blog/news/2021/12/b41-mp-test-41-60-branch-released/
 
 

(copied from the blog post so it is in here)
 
Yes, you read that right! As many will know we’ve been aiming for a December release for the multiplayer. As Xmas approaches, we have been fighting each day to get a build we feel the community will enjoy and feels stable enough for players to enjoy the multiplayer.
This build contains:
16 player multiplayer, dedicated server and co-op MASSIVE map expansion, including Louisville to the north of Westpoint and Valley Station. Like silly huge. Check it out! In-game mapping system. Search mode and foraging system. However, we never quite reached the polish we’d have liked to have put it out on IWBUMS proper. There are many smaller to medium priority issues we are aware of but don’t feel justify holding the multiplayer back, but still mean we’re not comfortable officially calling this a full IWBUMS release.
It’s become clearer that having wider testing on the build would be invaluable, and in addition everyone including ourselves wants that satisfaction of something being out before the Xmas holidays after such a huge unending slog.
As such this is the decision we’ve made as a compromise to try and make everyone, including ourselves, happy, while still ring-fencing this build away from the more stable IWBUMs build.
This will also give mod authors a chance to adjust to the new build, too.
As such, we’ve released a public test build on a new opt in branch. Go to steam properties for the game, select the betas tab, and select b41multiplayer.
Along with that the dedicated server update is on the dedicated server branch b41multiplayer. Since IWBUMs beta has long been considered the defacto version due to the huge improvements, we felt the need to distinguish this further into its own steam build, to make clear it’s not to be considered to be a full first release.
Please be aware that while we’ve made great efforts to get this build as stable as possible, and are confident the majority of players will be able to have fun playing, there’s only so much we can do with an internal test team, many of which are volunteers.
There will undoubtedly be issues, possibly ones that could lead to player’s unfair deaths or loss of characters or their belongings.
If you are not comfortable with this, feel you’d get angry about this, and would write us stern letters about this beyond a friendly bug report, we strongly recommend you wait until January when most of these issues should have been resolved and the official IWBUMS beta will begin.
However, we know everyone has been patient in awaiting the release of MP after the six month delay, and we’re satisfied that the quality of the build is sufficient that those who have been waiting will be capable of having fun gameplay with each other, and at the same time we’ll be able to glean important bug reports about what is still requiring fixing that are very difficult to obtain from within a small internal test team. As long as understanding this is an opt in public test.
IMPORTANT
Public servers are NOT recommended. Whitelisted and co-op servers are strongly recommended for the best experience. There will likely be exploits and hack vulnerabilities that will probably make public servers a nightmarishly annoying place to be. We’ll look to address these in future builds.
The build will be hard locked to a maximum of 16 players. While short of the 32 we were aiming for, we feel from our internal tests that the server will be able to deal with this without too much strain while we improve stability for higher player counts. Our ambitions are much higher than 32, too.
It’s possible too that players may need to reduce zombie counts on MP servers, their numbers at specific sandbox settings often exceeding that on single player settings for reasons we’re not yet clear on. As a rule of thumb you should go a step below your usual prefered settings.
If you’ve run B40 co-op games on your machine, it may require deleting your old server saves to be able to host in B41. Delete everything in %UserProfile%\zomboid\saves\multiplayer\.
Also if people have difficulty connecting to servers, please try validating your local files in steam properties for the game. Because steam sometimes sucks and leaves old versions of files and this will cause mismatches with the server.
We request that anyone who shares news of this release to anyone please forward them to this blog post, so that we can properly contextualise the release and any potential issues that may crop up. Anyone streaming or making videos of the build, please state clearly that this is a public opt-in test rather than a full IWBUMS beta release.
We hope you all have fun! Have some Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!
 
https://projectzomboid.com/blog/news/2021/12/b41-mp-test-41-60-branch-released/
 
 

I am, and have been, in contact with their support trying to fix it.

we don't NEED more guns in this game. it has never been about having enough ammo to go out and kill everything.
why try to turn this into yet another shoot em up game with 20+ different types of firearm? we have more than enough of those out there to choose from already. this topic comes up over and over, and what it all boils down to is what the DEVS want in the game THEY are making.
 
only the stuff THEY want in the base game will get in, the stuff THEY feel fits in with the lore they follow. and making long wordy posts, arguing with Rath and Enigma, is just pointless.
 
if you feel the need to have more guns, check out the available mods, or make one of your own that has the stuff YOU want.
 
believe it or not, a lot of people see absolutely no need to have more guns than we currently have. many choose not to use a gun at all.

Yes: it is by design that if you do something rather dumb, like take on multiple zombies at once and put yourself in a position to get team-tagged by them, you’ll die.
 
Otherwise I already addressed the specific issue (in your old thread) of ping-ponging back and forth a few times in that process. It is ugly and a bit silly and I’d like it fixed, but that fix is just killing you faster.
 
We are simply not going back to the pre-animation days of fixed, telekinetic sprites basically operating on area of effect to arbitrarily slow the player. We will of course refine anims as we go in to the future and as the engine becomes more feature rich, but I think the answer to an awful lot of the gripes here is unlearning multiple years of habit rather than blaming the game for it. Things change and sometimes we, as humans, really don’t like that and actively fight it by imagining  whatever changed was better in the past, when it really wasn’t.
 
…
 
For everyone else, since some of you seem to think everyone is complaining about the same thing when they describe it as stunlock: pull down requires three zombies hitting you simultaneously to even function. Turn it off in sandbox if it really is that much a bother and go your merry way. Play survivor if you want something  more like build 40 rather than subject yourself to apocalypse.
 
 

Hey all, hope this finds you well.
 
Following on from the release of 41.54, and then its 41.55 patch last week, we are planning on a fairly imminent small 41.56 release to put to bed a few final issues with the sound mix – specifically the ‘cutting out’ issues that arise around busy moments when there’s a lot of zombies, rain and puddle footsteps.
 
This should be released early next week, and this is the fairly miniature current changelist,, after which we will be full steam ahead on a bigger and more features-led build.
 
Whether or not that will be the full Louisville release is still in the balance, we’ve got a few other smaller things brewing that are closer to being ready alongside further noises dropping into the mix. Alongside updates to various game systems we’ll have drinking sounds from different sources (glass bottle, plastic, cups etc), filling sounds for different containers and all the more individual weapon noises ready before the new map is – most likely.
 
Let’s get on with it though, as it’s an MP work update blog this time around – so here’s Yuri from the Strike Force checking in with some details on where they are all at.
MP WORK
“We’ve spent the past month focused on improving player combat with zombies and PVP.”
 
“A lot of things in the animation system have been fixed and polished in the way they work in MP. For example, during zed fights various glitches could occur due to the animation system having incorrect transitions, or not having states in then. This works fine in SP, but causes some issues when it comes to multiplayer.”
 
“A good example could be simply when a player attacks a zombie, and it leads a zed reaction that’s a hit or a fall. In SP, at this point, the zombie can’t receive a second hit, since it manages to finish the animation before the player can hit a second time.”
 
“In MP, this sort of situation can become possible – and, for example, getting secondary hit from another separate player at the moment of the fall suddenly leads to the teleportation of the zombie back to a standing position, and a second reaction to the blow.”
 
 
“Elsewhere we have seriously improved the synchronization of many visual things: so that’s necessary stuff like displaying player damage, bleeding characters, pools of blood on floors and blood stains on the walls etc. There’s also work been done on synchronising many and varied different player actions on different players’ screens.”
 
 
“The game is getting more and more smooth at the moment. We have really cut down on bugs related to teleportation and the desynchronization of player and zombie positions. Now things are increasingly polished on our smaller scale test server, we can move on to testing the servers with more testers, fake clients and MP clients with split-screens next month without fear that we’re seeing unfixed smaller issues exacerbated by the higher playercounts.”
 
“There’s clearly other issues we’ve been working on too – like making some car improvements in MP. We’ve had bugs like incorrect car wheel displays, and strange collisions with cars that aren’t moving that needed some work. There’s still various other issues with the car physics we would like to address during car collisions with other cars and with players.”
LOUISVILLE
Meanwhile, on a separate internal test beta, it’s been a super exciting time for our map team who have had a group of excitable recruits poring over their work and reporting all manner of blocked doorways, wonky rooftops and errant furniture throughout our new city extension.
 
Now, before we go any further another reminder that our version of Louisville is exactly that: it is not a direct recreation of the real thing in terms of locations or in size, but will have some familiar elements. Likewise skyscrapers are absent due to both our game’s height limit of eight storeys and gameplay sensibilities.
 
With all that said, by the scale of our current map it is huuuge and includes many and varied new locations and environments to explore and survive in. Going from house to house and building to building and checking everything in the main body of the city took a whole week with work divided between three people – and there was a lot of cooing and excitement going on as they did so.Here’s a quick teaser video of some of the locations that were visited:
 
 
Alongside the bugs being discovered and fixed there are many and various things that have to be done for Louisville before release – we need a new zombie heat map to spawn the zeds, we need new businesses and areas properly zoned, we need new loot distributions and as a little treat for ourselves we are also going to be making some new fun outfits and clothing items for the zombies and wardrobes of some of the new different sorts of buildings and districts you’ll come across.
 
One fly in the ointment will be that the existing lore, which we intend to stick with and develop in future, posits that Louisville is initially barred to survivors within the exclusion zone. We didn’t want to jam in a needless ‘not-developed-enough’ obstruction in front of such a hotly anticipated map expansion.As such, for the immediate future, our current thoughts are that we will instead be dropping in a few day’s worth of ‘parallel reality’ news reports that reflect an earlier infection surge in LV for those who spawn there, or who make the journey there from the existing map.
 
Those who enjoy the existing lore will also be able to explore various locations described within it too – and maybe even meet the zombies of some of the people you’ve watched or heard.
 
Finally in LV thoughts, the rest of the map is getting a lick of paint too – there’ll be a few new locations popping up, general prettiness improvements to wilderness and bodies of water and of course Ayrton’s lovely curves. Here’s a quick look at those in action.
 
FORAGING/SEARCHING

 
Finally this week, a quick update on the improvement to the currently rather static foraging mode we have in-game. For those not in the loop this is going to be a more active system that has you moving through areas in a sort of ‘search mode’ – that represents your character scouring and focussing on the floor then finding scavenged/foraged items and trash.
 
We have also now bound this system to help find newly super-small (since 41.54) placed 3D items like car keys, bullets and small items of food. It will also come into play indoors when searching for floorboard stashes flagged by loot maps, and various other future in-game instances.
 
This week we have also been experimenting with some visual effects that will highlight both when the mode is engaged, and how wide your search radius is dependent on your foraging level, light/weather conditions and your speed of movement.
 
Please take this video as a WIP! The system and the appearance of the circle is liable to be changed, receive polish etc.
 
 
We are also thinking about using various different applications of this ‘vision shader’ (variations of which can be seen in this earlier tech demo) to add new challenge/gameplay to traits, helmets and accessories that would have an impact on a character’s vision.
 
This week’s scenic zed nightmare from Yana. 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!