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Sasha’s Sense of Snow


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Hey all, quickfire ‘what we’re up to’ blog today.

We had an impromptu Community Megatest last night. It was really useful in terms of spotlighting a few things we need to iron out before we can release Build 40: namely some potential lag caused by extreme weather that we’re digging into, a ‘joining server’ error that some experienced and the ‘dead zombie leaves a weird graphical glitch’ issue which, admittedly, we already knew about.

Internal testers have also flagged a few issues that *might* be an issue on Linux and Mac, so if you’re on those platforms and the new IWBUMS beta isn’t behaving then please let us know.

Our plan is to patch these issues up over the coming days and then have another Megatest next week.

As mentioned, we’ve just released IWBUMS beta version 40.21. Among other things this includes:

  • Skybox generation for vehicle reflective windows. To give a better indication of what the weather and climate systems are doing, car window reflections now take into account: the time of day, the Global illumination colour, fog, cloudiness, precipitation intensity, wind direction, wind speed and the temperature of the ambient air (as in winter the clouds are lower than the ground)

Please note that the overall effect of this might be toned down a little, and that a primary motivation for this is also as it being a first step towards reflective-looking water – seeing as bodies of water for a long time have been one of the ugliest things in the game. (This will be a Build 41 or 41+ thing though)

  • An ugly thing that we have addressed in the latest 40.21 IWBUMS, however, is more natural looking snow on the ground. Previously snow would appear in blocky tiles, but now Turbo has made it look far more natural when it gathers and melts away.

  • Other new stuff added in the new beta version: temperature now has an impact on the chances of starting a car in super-cold temperatures (especially on low quality engines), less fiddly chat/admin options and some tweaks to how MP usernames work.

As discussed last week, we’re biting the bullet in terms of Build 41 being the animation build – so that TEA aren’t playing endless catch-up with the main game. As well as preparations for the big switcheroo the guys at TEA have also been fixing issues like zombie outfits randomising and disappearing, renderer crashes and sorting out z-ordering issues so that bags are now drawn correctly.

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This week’s featured image from our tester Sasha, who’s awesome. 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 blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right hereOur Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. 

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12 hours ago, Kennethdio said:

Build 41: Animations

Build 42: NPCs?

 

Not quite - but literally every build ater weather, including animations, is on what we internally call our 'road to NPCs' roadmap which we'll talk about after animations and will be major. There may be quick inbetween builds though depending on circumstance.

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14 hours ago, Kennethdio said:

Build 41: Animations

Build 42: NPCs?

My prediction/s

After build 40-

B.41- Electricity/Powergrid overhaul.

B.41.2- Farming system overhaul.

B.41.3- Vehicle modifications? (Main B.41 focus?)

 

B.42- Animations

A couple of builds after anims will be improvements/add ons (map dev etc...) before NPC builds. Unless everything for anims is crammed into one build #.

B.45???- NPCs

Edited by Icy Motto
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26 minutes ago, Icy Motto said:

My prediction/s

After build 40-

B.41- Electricity/Powergrid overhaul.

B.41.2- Farming system overhaul.

B.41.3- Vehicle modifications? (Main B.41 focus?)

 

B.42- Animations

A couple of builds after anims will be improvements/add ons (map dev etc...) before NPC builds. Unless everything for anims is crammed into one build #.

B.45???- NPCs

It's already confirmed that Build 41 is animations. We get electricity, farming and vehicle mods after that.

Edited by Eggtooth
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2 hours ago, lemmy101 said:

 

Not quite - but literally every build ater weather, including animations, is on what we internally call our 'road to NPCs' roadmap which we'll talk about after animations and will be major. There may be quick inbetween builds though depending on circumstance.

I have a question. After you're done with animations and all above, will you consider switching from items being 2D sprites (when dropped to the ground) to 3D maybe? Do you plan for car windows to be see-through with ability to see character model? 

 

I guess enviroment could be entirely in 2D but items/characters/cars in 3D.

Edited by Eggtooth
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41 minutes ago, Eggtooth said:

I have a question. After you're done with animations and all above, will you consider switching from items being 2D sprites (when dropped to the ground) to 3D maybe? Do you plan for car windows to be see-through with ability to see character model? 

 

I guess enviroment could be entirely in 2D but items/characters/cars in 3D.

 

Fraid not - there's just too many items, massive amount of work, would be too costly in performance when people dump 1000s of items on the ground, and would cause issues for mods particularly stuff like Hydrocraft.

 

re: car windows - this is planned, they have interiors.

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1 hour ago, Eggtooth said:

It's already confirmed that Build 41 is animations. We get electricity, farming and vehicle mods after that.

Knowing TIS, my hopes aren't very high, we see a lot of "in-between" builds that of course are necessary for the bigger builds like Anims, but I'll take their word and I guess Build 41 is anims. But to me it would make more sense the way I assume builds will roll out

 

TLDR: I know about the small features, I read every blog. A big reminder and thing I always go by is, DON'T ever get too excited, anything can change, we've gone through this.

Edited by Icy Motto
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33 minutes ago, Icy Motto said:

Knowing TIS, my hopes aren't very high, we see a lot of "in-between" builds that of course are necessary for the bigger builds like Anims, but I'll take their word and I guess Build 41 is anims. But to me it would make more sense the way I assume builds will roll out.

 

The whole point of last Thursdoid is we're mixing the anim codebase into our main development branch after 40 in a 'shit or get off the pot' move, therefore beyond hotfixes for serious bugs it actually won't be possible for us to release a build without the anims any more than it'd be possible to get flour out of a cake.

 

It may take a long while to get out but we'll be 100% commited to anims being build 41 and 100% of the entire team's focus will be on them. To drag the analogy out there's no way you can ice an unbaked cake so will force the entire team to bake it up first, the entire game will be broken internally until the entire thing is playable with new anims, and before we can resume work on anything else that would otherwise be in an 'in-between build'.

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Mac user here.

 

Had three short startup games (no mods, IWBUMS, survival) and found the following:

1. In two of the three, trouble with my inventory windows. They chased my cursor around the screen if I got too close, and would not open for viewing. This was fixed after plugging/unplugging my mouse a few times.

 

2. In all three, my screen seemed to be overwritten by a static background. That is, my HUD, character, and zeds went offscreen, and instead I could see only the buildings and environment around me at the time of this freeze. Audio cues suggested that the game played on, including my ability to move and fight. Audio tracked with my character movement, but my visual remained frozen. Pressing escape to open the menu did pause the game, but the visual did not change (no menu appeared).

This bug appeared to occur when the global shader thingy changed to reflect time of day. Each game lasted less than a couple in-game hours, and would freeze on a slightly darker colour than before the freeze.

 

Additionally, I encountered no vehicles in my dashes around Muld and Riverside. Not sure if that's typical survival or a problem (but like, no cars, including many parking lots and home driveways).

 

Haven't been on for a while so I'm not sure when any of this would have started.

Edited by trombonaught
Branch and cars.
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