Penisham Cancelled

[nasKo]

Okay so we’ll be doing the April Fools at the end of the blog, and it’s the bit where we say that the Community Penisham Festival is cancelled this year due to Covid.
 

Penisham is NOT cancelled. It remains very dear to us.
 

So anyway – Friday was probably the biggest day so far in Build 41 MP development as it was a stress test with a full 32 player server. And, huzzah, it passed the test.
 

Our focus for the past few weeks has been server stability, and 32 players reported a smooth experience (for some the smoothest so far) with only two lag-waves. These edge case server wobbles were then addressed the next day: the MP Strike Force able to terminate them with extreme prejudice using data dredged from the server.
 

We also had a Wednesday Night Internal Test last night, with a more restrained 17 players, which also went well in terms of smoothness and stability. For this we had also managed to fix the bigger test’s most annoying bug – that of some dead zombies spawning replicas who would then go in for the kill.
 

So a big test passed BUT (sorry) now we have that apparently stable test bed there are still issues we need to go back and improve/fix before a public beta release can be considered.
 

Primary amongst these is a return to issues of zombie teleportation that we previously paused on when it became evident that first and foremost the server operations needed some TLC. There are also zombie clumps that visibly spawn at the edge of the screen, random skills/XP loss and various other irritations. All these, then, will be the MP Strike Force’s mission in the coming week.

Here’s the changelist that was being tested last night, what was being tested for the bigger group on Friday night was essentially last week’s changelist.
 

And here’s your highlights vid:

Here also is a fun (staged) vid our friend Mad Dan recorded.

TESTER TESTIMONIALS
 

---

“I’m in South America (Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil) and even though my internet isn’t good I could play real smoothly! I did have some issues when I was travelling by car and the map couldn’t load fast enough, but the fight mechanics are perfect now. It’s hard to handle with multiple zombies, in a good way, and pvp is realistic. It’s definitely better than b40, I couldn’t even take a step in West Point in that build with lots of zombies.”

---

“I think you should remind everyone that there’s still work to do, as there definitely is, but for the first time last night I could fight a group without a lag spike, and twice at that! Now that I’ve tried some co-op looting I just can’t go it alone anymore. It’s awesome.”

---

“The smoothest session in terms of driving. No stuttering. We saw it once which lasted a half second, maybe. Server didn’t hiccup even once. Everything was great, but clearly there are the telepor zeds which are a known thing so I won’t mention it again. And the chat with icons is awesome. Sims MP came true!”

---

“I only had a short time to test, but the main thing I saw out of place was that zeds walking around seemed to disappear? It happened a few times. I also had one topple over a fence with some weird desync issue. It kinda floated onward along the ground a bit, before snapping back to the fence, only to re-topple. Still, it’s a very smooth experience overall.”

---

OTHER STUFF
 

• Turbo has moved over to MP polish now that he’s fixed up his old work on isoregions (the code that stops fog and weather effects entering houses etc) which wasn’t playing nice and causing various bugs. His domain is the chatbox, which was once upon a time the domain of Stas all that time ago. He has already added some fun stuff, in amongst beginning work the various tester requests we’ve already received.
   

 

• Parallel to, and not stepping on the toes of, MP development we have Noiseworks getting new sounds ready and plugging them into our existing FMOD framework. This week they’ve been doing female zeds, primarily, while Michael has also been putting the guns into the game properly. Last week we showed a shotgun, so this week let’s see something with a little more pep.
   

 

• We regret to inform you that the Community Penisham Festival has been cancelled due to the ongoing Covid pandemic.
   
• If you’re a fan of the work of PZ ‘Cool Modder’ Nolan Ritchie, the creator of the Superb Survivors mod, then you might be interested to hear that he’s just released his own game on Steam. Freedom Physics is a physics sandbox – where you can create your own gravity-infused game levels with a full suite of tools and nifty gadgets. Give it a whirl, and if you’re interested in the man himself then check out our own mod blog about this talented chap..

 

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!

[HerioJohnX]

Think the MP can be release in 1month? Exciting!!!

[simplyjustred]

Hiya guys.
Just sayin' - you dev people are the best. One thing you should do more often, is keeping up with your subreddit (or get someone to do it for you). Some madlad managed to survive more than 10 in-game years.
Shocking, I know.
This it. Keep on rockin'

[Wolf_22]

That M16 sounds fantastic. Love seeing the everyday normal actions with the players, too (i.e. - sitting down, even cleaning! HA!). Great stuff!