Feb 6, 2017
Project Zomboid - nasKo


Hey all, hope you’re well. Updates from various departments in zombie land this fair Mondoid.


BUILD 37 IWBUMS BETA

We released a bugfix update last week to Build 37’s Muld/Rosewood etc lootable maps, and also their marking and annotation system. There’s another ‘fix build’ on the brew, and any and all feedback is welcome. Specifically, the new ‘oven dial’ UI has been built for multiple uses across the game’s many devices – so feedback on its general usability would be greatly appreciated.

Next up, although we’ll give full details once it’s in the can, RJ is going to work on expanding this system so that it benefits MP safehouses with annotated maps that can be put on public display, and a plan we have about pre-annotated maps discovered on zed bodies that’ll be useful/fun in SP and co-op.

Details on how to access the IWBUMS beta – here. [We’ve removed password from the beta, as everyone’s quite used to unstable branches these days.]


ANIMS

One element that’s been a part of the perils of getting the animation build playable and into testing, is that the closer you get – the more issues in general gameplay become clear, and the more evident it is that they need fixing. The ‘not fun’ factor looms large. Primarily, in this instance, was cludgy indoor movement with a side salad of ‘rotate on-the-spot’ zeds and survivors looking pretty crap.

As such, while pulling everything together, there’s been a side-thread of work going on with Martin the Animator to see how we can improve things. It’s all to do with ‘root motion’ – in the new PZ anims the movement of characters has always been directly taken from the animation data itself, instead of being pumped into the character in the game logic.

Thing is, there was one important part of the system that it became increasingly clear that we needed: we only had support for movement in a straight line, and no support for characters to rotate within animations and for this rotation to translate into the rotation of characters in-game.

Up until now we still had to rotate characters/zeds in the game code and completely divorced from the animation. The most obvious consequence of this was that despite characters making realistic steps when walking, sneaking and so on (and in videos as you’ve seen, if the character is rotated while sneaking it works pretty well) rotating on the spot would still produce ‘slidey on the spot rotating’. This works okay in the current game, but looks a bit silly when the animations around it are much more realistic.

Without going into lots of technical details this was a much more complicated and confusing problem to solve than the positional root motion system [Mondoid writer aside, direct to camera: seriously there’s been all this chat about Quarteronions that’s pretty much incomprehensible to me], but after a meet-up with Martin last week we finally worked out the best way of how to approach it.

Now (well, almost now, there’s still one more bug to sort out that would have resulted in an in-game video today) we have support for rotations, it allows us to improve in various areas, as well as fix the issues mentioned above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXtK2xEh0XQ


In Summary:

a) Rotating on the spot. When the player rotates on the spot, we’ll be able to have them actually make steps to turn themselves without the aforementioned sliding in a circle with feet stationary.

b) A big issue with movement that we found it difficult to solve was that with deferred movement it’s important that the character’s movement mirrors the animation, and that characters don’t rotate super-fast to change direction. In-game this lead to a kind of inertia effect, with characters speeding up from stationary and having a finite turning speed, meant that indoor navigation got a lot more difficult.

Now, however, we’ll be able to have the character turn and step in any direction as part of their ‘starting to walk/run’ animation. Zeds and survivors, for example, can twist their torso while immediately stepping to the right, left, or making a turn through 180 degrees.

This should make movement a lot more responsive and immediate, and though this is clearly nothing to do with our game specifically this should give you an idea of the kind of rotational character locomotion we’re talking about.

c) There are a fair few animations, particularly in the ‘wall hugging’ advanced cover traversal system, that require this rotational movement to be able to function. This is a system that isn’t currently planned to be implemented in the anims test build release, but was a major technical barrier to it – and it feels good to have a system in-place that bypasses it.

d) In future a lot of stuff like zombie walks could now have rotational movement encoded into the animations, to make their movement much more realistic and non-linear. The same could apply to an injured character’s movement, drunken stumbles and other things. It opens up a lot of doors.


ITEMZED RELEASE



  Turbo has just released the full version of ItemZed. This is a development and modding tool that’s used to edit the contents of script modules (foodstuff items, weapons, recipes etc) and the distribution table that dictates where different in-game items can be found and looted on the map.

On top of the tool’s previous test release, there’s now options for the batch refactoring of large numbers of items and in-game objects and lua integration that allows the entire data set to be programmatically modified, and output to any sort of format – meaning that changes and new items can quickly and easily become part of user mods, and a part of the main game.

Here’s a vid Turbo’s made to explain it all a bit, turn on English subtitles for written descriptions.


OTHER STUFF
  • General Arcade continue their work on getting map-streaming, physics and MP sync ready for EP’s vehicles. New recruit Eugene is also getting used to the codebase by mixing in Discord compatibility with game chat as an extension of our old IRC plugin, given our increasing love for the service.
  • The inestimable RingoD has updated his comprehensive guide to creating user maps in WorldZed and TileZed, with an updated Section 3 detailing exactly how to make individual buildings. The Steam version can found here. We’re delighted to see that there’s a bunch of people already using these, and creating cool stuff.


Featured image from Arsenic Legacy. The 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 now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can be found here.
Feb 6, 2017
Project Zomboid - nasKo


Hey all, hope you’re well. Updates from various departments in zombie land this fair Mondoid.


BUILD 37 IWBUMS BETA

We released a bugfix update last week to Build 37’s Muld/Rosewood etc lootable maps, and also their marking and annotation system. There’s another ‘fix build’ on the brew, and any and all feedback is welcome. Specifically, the new ‘oven dial’ UI has been built for multiple uses across the game’s many devices – so feedback on its general usability would be greatly appreciated.

Next up, although we’ll give full details once it’s in the can, RJ is going to work on expanding this system so that it benefits MP safehouses with annotated maps that can be put on public display, and a plan we have about pre-annotated maps discovered on zed bodies that’ll be useful/fun in SP and co-op.

Details on how to access the IWBUMS beta – here. [We’ve removed password from the beta, as everyone’s quite used to unstable branches these days.]


ANIMS

One element that’s been a part of the perils of getting the animation build playable and into testing, is that the closer you get – the more issues in general gameplay become clear, and the more evident it is that they need fixing. The ‘not fun’ factor looms large. Primarily, in this instance, was cludgy indoor movement with a side salad of ‘rotate on-the-spot’ zeds and survivors looking pretty crap.

As such, while pulling everything together, there’s been a side-thread of work going on with Martin the Animator to see how we can improve things. It’s all to do with ‘root motion’ – in the new PZ anims the movement of characters has always been directly taken from the animation data itself, instead of being pumped into the character in the game logic.

Thing is, there was one important part of the system that it became increasingly clear that we needed: we only had support for movement in a straight line, and no support for characters to rotate within animations and for this rotation to translate into the rotation of characters in-game.

Up until now we still had to rotate characters/zeds in the game code and completely divorced from the animation. The most obvious consequence of this was that despite characters making realistic steps when walking, sneaking and so on (and in videos as you’ve seen, if the character is rotated while sneaking it works pretty well) rotating on the spot would still produce ‘slidey on the spot rotating’. This works okay in the current game, but looks a bit silly when the animations around it are much more realistic.

Without going into lots of technical details this was a much more complicated and confusing problem to solve than the positional root motion system [Mondoid writer aside, direct to camera: seriously there’s been all this chat about Quarteronions that’s pretty much incomprehensible to me], but after a meet-up with Martin last week we finally worked out the best way of how to approach it.

Now (well, almost now, there’s still one more bug to sort out that would have resulted in an in-game video today) we have support for rotations, it allows us to improve in various areas, as well as fix the issues mentioned above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXtK2xEh0XQ


In Summary:

a) Rotating on the spot. When the player rotates on the spot, we’ll be able to have them actually make steps to turn themselves without the aforementioned sliding in a circle with feet stationary.

b) A big issue with movement that we found it difficult to solve was that with deferred movement it’s important that the character’s movement mirrors the animation, and that characters don’t rotate super-fast to change direction. In-game this lead to a kind of inertia effect, with characters speeding up from stationary and having a finite turning speed, meant that indoor navigation got a lot more difficult.

Now, however, we’ll be able to have the character turn and step in any direction as part of their ‘starting to walk/run’ animation. Zeds and survivors, for example, can twist their torso while immediately stepping to the right, left, or making a turn through 180 degrees.

This should make movement a lot more responsive and immediate, and though this is clearly nothing to do with our game specifically this should give you an idea of the kind of rotational character locomotion we’re talking about.

c) There are a fair few animations, particularly in the ‘wall hugging’ advanced cover traversal system, that require this rotational movement to be able to function. This is a system that isn’t currently planned to be implemented in the anims test build release, but was a major technical barrier to it – and it feels good to have a system in-place that bypasses it.

d) In future a lot of stuff like zombie walks could now have rotational movement encoded into the animations, to make their movement much more realistic and non-linear. The same could apply to an injured character’s movement, drunken stumbles and other things. It opens up a lot of doors.


ITEMZED RELEASE



  Turbo has just released the full version of ItemZed. This is a development and modding tool that’s used to edit the contents of script modules (foodstuff items, weapons, recipes etc) and the distribution table that dictates where different in-game items can be found and looted on the map.

On top of the tool’s previous test release, there’s now options for the batch refactoring of large numbers of items and in-game objects and lua integration that allows the entire data set to be programmatically modified, and output to any sort of format – meaning that changes and new items can quickly and easily become part of user mods, and a part of the main game.

Here’s a vid Turbo’s made to explain it all a bit, turn on English subtitles for written descriptions.


OTHER STUFF
  • General Arcade continue their work on getting map-streaming, physics and MP sync ready for EP’s vehicles. New recruit Eugene is also getting used to the codebase by mixing in Discord compatibility with game chat as an extension of our old IRC plugin, given our increasing love for the service.
  • The inestimable RingoD has updated his comprehensive guide to creating user maps in WorldZed and TileZed, with an updated Section 3 detailing exactly how to make individual buildings. The Steam version can found here. We’re delighted to see that there’s a bunch of people already using these, and creating cool stuff.


Featured image from Arsenic Legacy. The 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 now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can be found here.
Jan 30, 2017
Project Zomboid - nasKo


 
Greetings citizen. Here’s all the latest from the latest isometric dips into undead anarchy…


BUILD 37 PUBLIC BETA

In keeping with this year’s focus on getting regular builds out rather than sitting on ever-growing changelists, today we’re releasing what’s currently in the can for Build 37 out into an IWBUMS public beta. You can find out how to join in and test here.

Edited highlights run as follows:
  • Lootable Map Items. Maps of urban locations within the Knox Event Exclusion Zone can be found in relevant towns, in particular spawning in gas stations. Current maps you can find cover Muldraugh, West Point, Rosewood and March Ridge.



  • Using the new map UI you can zoom with the mouse wheel, add your own notes and a bunch of provided symbols in four different colours – if you have the relevant coloured pens. Annotated maps can be shared with friends and faction members in MP. Last week’s vid here.
  • Improved ovens and microwaves. You now have access to a new oven/microwave settings UI upon which you can change the temperature, and use the timer dial. Ovens will ‘ding’ when the time is up, microwaves will turn off. Metal in microwaves can cause fire.



  • Some food will become less edible when microwaved, increasing character sadness. Eating food hot/cold will have relevant impact on character happiness/sadness.
  • Smaller stuff: ‘Always run’ toggle added to Key Bindings Screen. ‘Version info’ button added to menu screen.
  • Bug fixes: Rosewood player spawns resetting spawn region remedied. Evolved recipe cooked food additions bug fixed, weapon reload in normal/hard reloading difficulties fixed.
ANIMERTRONICS

Renewed work on the SP anims release continues, intermingled with a successful and fun day last week melding minds with Animator Martin so that he could get to work on an issue that we felt could vastly improve the capabilities of our reanimated zeds.

Right now, in every build of the game, zombies can only move backwards and forwards. This is fine, but severely limits what’s possible in the long run. Proper turning animations have never been possible (survivors and zeds slide in a circle unless they’re moving), and likewise zombies stumbling in a realistic way and being able to move from side-to-side as well as their traditional PZ bee-line.

As of last week, then, we managed to work out a way to implement rotational root motion and Martin could return to his animator’s den and get to work on the visual side of it all. In more technical terms we’ve now opened up the opportunity to have deferred rotation within anims, which in turn means that animations will be able to drive a character’s rotation just as much as movement.

Behind the scenes Martin has been working on a bunch of the other features/visuals that the animations system will open up to us, and this expansion will give him even more options from refinements and improvements (extra wall-hugging stealth stuff fr’instance) while we continue to get the SP anims branch into operation for testing back at TIS Towers.


TOOLS N’ TUTORIALS

To accompany the exciting new set of mapmakers that seem to be springing up on the forum, and clearly the old hands too, this week EasyPickins released the latest versions of the PZ map-making tools – alongside a full tileset updated with stuff from Build 35’s March Ridge and Rosewood. As such, aspiring map-makers can find the latest versions of TileZed and WorldZed here.

RingoD has also compiled and collated a comprehensive guide to map modding using TileZed on our forums – taking you from initial dabblings all the way to uploading onto Steam Workshop. It has also been hosted on Steam, while Paul will also generally be tidying up the relevant sections on our forums in the coming week.

While we’re on the subject we also wanted to flag up PZ community member Blackbeard06 and his extremely in-depth video guide to how to make a PZ map. It’s worth noting that the Workshop channel on the PZ Discord has become quite active of late, and if you’re thinking of making your own Zomboid mods or dipping your toe into map-making it’s definitely a great and useful place to hang out.

Featured image from Joe. 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 now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can be found here. Also of interest: Atoxwarrior’s cinematic Spiffo shenanigans.
Jan 30, 2017
Project Zomboid - nasKo


 
Greetings citizen. Here’s all the latest from the latest isometric dips into undead anarchy…


BUILD 37 PUBLIC BETA

In keeping with this year’s focus on getting regular builds out rather than sitting on ever-growing changelists, today we’re releasing what’s currently in the can for Build 37 out into an IWBUMS public beta. You can find out how to join in and test here.

Edited highlights run as follows:
  • Lootable Map Items. Maps of urban locations within the Knox Event Exclusion Zone can be found in relevant towns, in particular spawning in gas stations. Current maps you can find cover Muldraugh, West Point, Rosewood and March Ridge.



  • Using the new map UI you can zoom with the mouse wheel, add your own notes and a bunch of provided symbols in four different colours – if you have the relevant coloured pens. Annotated maps can be shared with friends and faction members in MP. Last week’s vid here.
  • Improved ovens and microwaves. You now have access to a new oven/microwave settings UI upon which you can change the temperature, and use the timer dial. Ovens will ‘ding’ when the time is up, microwaves will turn off. Metal in microwaves can cause fire.



  • Some food will become less edible when microwaved, increasing character sadness. Eating food hot/cold will have relevant impact on character happiness/sadness.
  • Smaller stuff: ‘Always run’ toggle added to Key Bindings Screen. ‘Version info’ button added to menu screen.
  • Bug fixes: Rosewood player spawns resetting spawn region remedied. Evolved recipe cooked food additions bug fixed, weapon reload in normal/hard reloading difficulties fixed.
ANIMERTRONICS

Renewed work on the SP anims release continues, intermingled with a successful and fun day last week melding minds with Animator Martin so that he could get to work on an issue that we felt could vastly improve the capabilities of our reanimated zeds.

Right now, in every build of the game, zombies can only move backwards and forwards. This is fine, but severely limits what’s possible in the long run. Proper turning animations have never been possible (survivors and zeds slide in a circle unless they’re moving), and likewise zombies stumbling in a realistic way and being able to move from side-to-side as well as their traditional PZ bee-line.

As of last week, then, we managed to work out a way to implement rotational root motion and Martin could return to his animator’s den and get to work on the visual side of it all. In more technical terms we’ve now opened up the opportunity to have deferred rotation within anims, which in turn means that animations will be able to drive a character’s rotation just as much as movement.

Behind the scenes Martin has been working on a bunch of the other features/visuals that the animations system will open up to us, and this expansion will give him even more options from refinements and improvements (extra wall-hugging stealth stuff fr’instance) while we continue to get the SP anims branch into operation for testing back at TIS Towers.


TOOLS N’ TUTORIALS

To accompany the exciting new set of mapmakers that seem to be springing up on the forum, and clearly the old hands too, this week EasyPickins released the latest versions of the PZ map-making tools – alongside a full tileset updated with stuff from Build 35’s March Ridge and Rosewood. As such, aspiring map-makers can find the latest versions of TileZed and WorldZed here.

RingoD has also compiled and collated a comprehensive guide to map modding using TileZed on our forums – taking you from initial dabblings all the way to uploading onto Steam Workshop. It has also been hosted on Steam, while Paul will also generally be tidying up the relevant sections on our forums in the coming week.

While we’re on the subject we also wanted to flag up PZ community member Blackbeard06 and his extremely in-depth video guide to how to make a PZ map. It’s worth noting that the Workshop channel on the PZ Discord has become quite active of late, and if you’re thinking of making your own Zomboid mods or dipping your toe into map-making it’s definitely a great and useful place to hang out.

Featured image from Joe. 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 now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can be found here. Also of interest: Atoxwarrior’s cinematic Spiffo shenanigans.
Jan 23, 2017
Project Zomboid - nasKo


Howdy survivor. Hope your apocalyptic nightmare scenario is going well. Here’s some news from the land of zeds…


IN-GAME MAPS

For many PZ players the alt-tab to Blindcoder’s map has become something of a ritual, but for a long time we’ve needed a way for players to get their bearings in-game. Using the power of Turbo’s CartoZed tool we now have the power to create top-down maps, which means that we can now also feed them to our resident artist Mash to create lootable in-game items like this. [Still somewhat work in progress – town slogan to change!]



These maps won’t track your position, but you will be able to get you bearings and make markings on them. After all, what’s a map if you can’t mark safehouses, the homes you’ve looted and whatever other vital survival locations on it? Using this initial March Ridge template map RJ has been implementing mouse zoom, the ability to mark notes and also a ‘symbol stamping’ system that will let you annotate the maps that you find with skulls, house images, crosses etc. You can even choose your own text and icon colours. Please note that the following video is a work-in-progress!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPt_59M-tok

Importantly, too, the work has been done to make sure that these are transferable between co-op and MP players. This is a fully moddable system too, and the .png files could be expanded to faction leaflets, community maps and various other world-building materials.

Right now the system is in place, but it’ll take a little while for maps of each major town area to be produced – West Point and Muldraugh are sizeably bigger than the March Ridge test case after all. At first, meanwhile, we will only be concentrating on urban areas and avoiding any areas that are still in-flux or could potentially change in the main game.


IN OTHER NEWS
  • Turbo’s development and modding tool ItemZed has just been released in beta form for community testing. It lets you easily play around with loot locations, item attributes, recipe contents, spawn rates and all that jazz. For further information please go here.
  • Work at the anims coalface continues, as mentioned last week we’re turning our focus back to getting an SP build out in a Steam beta branch.
  • We have General Arcade on the case with improving PZ’s netcode and map streaming to pave the way for EasyPickins’ vehicles work, again as discussed last week, but now also have an extra body from the Russian Mothership in the form of Eugene for the next few months. He’ll be working on engine and quality of life stuff and we’re super-excited to have him with us for the next little while.
  • Our apologies for the delay of the recent build releases on GOG. The new versions are with the GOG guys, and should be going live very soon, if not already.


COMMUNITY MAPPAGE

A quick shout out to Z3759xy on our forums who has had to step away from some, quite frankly, incredible PZ map-making projects due to the amount of spare time he has on his hands – and we dearly hope that someone else picks up his .tbx baton, or performs a team-up operation. Some really great stuff in here!

Featured image from Mashie. The 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 now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can be found herehttp://i.imgur.com/IA2mHQT.jpg
Jan 23, 2017
Project Zomboid - nasKo


Howdy survivor. Hope your apocalyptic nightmare scenario is going well. Here’s some news from the land of zeds…


IN-GAME MAPS

For many PZ players the alt-tab to Blindcoder’s map has become something of a ritual, but for a long time we’ve needed a way for players to get their bearings in-game. Using the power of Turbo’s CartoZed tool we now have the power to create top-down maps, which means that we can now also feed them to our resident artist Mash to create lootable in-game items like this. [Still somewhat work in progress – town slogan to change!]



These maps won’t track your position, but you will be able to get you bearings and make markings on them. After all, what’s a map if you can’t mark safehouses, the homes you’ve looted and whatever other vital survival locations on it? Using this initial March Ridge template map RJ has been implementing mouse zoom, the ability to mark notes and also a ‘symbol stamping’ system that will let you annotate the maps that you find with skulls, house images, crosses etc. You can even choose your own text and icon colours. Please note that the following video is a work-in-progress!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPt_59M-tok

Importantly, too, the work has been done to make sure that these are transferable between co-op and MP players. This is a fully moddable system too, and the .png files could be expanded to faction leaflets, community maps and various other world-building materials.

Right now the system is in place, but it’ll take a little while for maps of each major town area to be produced – West Point and Muldraugh are sizeably bigger than the March Ridge test case after all. At first, meanwhile, we will only be concentrating on urban areas and avoiding any areas that are still in-flux or could potentially change in the main game.


IN OTHER NEWS
  • Turbo’s development and modding tool ItemZed has just been released in beta form for community testing. It lets you easily play around with loot locations, item attributes, recipe contents, spawn rates and all that jazz. For further information please go here.
  • Work at the anims coalface continues, as mentioned last week we’re turning our focus back to getting an SP build out in a Steam beta branch.
  • We have General Arcade on the case with improving PZ’s netcode and map streaming to pave the way for EasyPickins’ vehicles work, again as discussed last week, but now also have an extra body from the Russian Mothership in the form of Eugene for the next few months. He’ll be working on engine and quality of life stuff and we’re super-excited to have him with us for the next little while.
  • Our apologies for the delay of the recent build releases on GOG. The new versions are with the GOG guys, and should be going live very soon, if not already.


COMMUNITY MAPPAGE

A quick shout out to Z3759xy on our forums who has had to step away from some, quite frankly, incredible PZ map-making projects due to the amount of spare time he has on his hands – and we dearly hope that someone else picks up his .tbx baton, or performs a team-up operation. Some really great stuff in here!

Featured image from Mashie. The 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 now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can be found herehttp://i.imgur.com/IA2mHQT.jpg
Jan 16, 2017
Project Zomboid - nasKo


 

Hello! The zombie paperboy just threw the following chewed and bloodied missive onto your lawn. Read on, survivor!

BUILD 37: ORIGINS

Since the release of Build 36 ten days ago, RJ continues to tinker with ovens, microwaves, timers and analogue dials – now focusing on the sensibilities of microwaving metal (bad idea), cooking temperatures and the way cooked/microwaved food impacts on character happiness and contentment.

He’s also, with the help of our admin team and various different servers, collating info on the various long-term server MP bugs that have popped up since Build 36 and looking for fixes.

ANIMATIONS

The continuing quest to get the animations out the door continues. Next thing on the agenda is getting some completely solid uninterrupted gameplay with all the new anims that we can show you, and then release for you to play. We’re hoping to have something that’s solidly playable for a gameplay video soon, but no promises as to when – as we’ve been bitten by that so many times before.

When the build is ready it will be going into its own testing branch. It’s such a massive change that the inevitable initial teething troubles would disrupt the speedier public build schedule we intend to maintain this year.

Overall, you see, the wind is blowing back towards getting SP fully coordinated, up, running and out for testing. The recent pain in the bum behind much of the delay has been MP anims compatibility: since the animation drives a lot more of the game systems, making sure that everything is synced and smooth is tricky to say the least. Given the time it’s taken, however, it increasingly feels like we should get a settled build out there that’ll allow for feedback, and something solid to tie back into the tricksy MP.

In other anim related news we’re also talking to General Arcade to implement a new model loading system that will allow for modders to import practically any format of 3D model they want. This should make the ability to mod in weapons, animations and clothing much easier going forward.

This will be alongside the map downloading, streaming, chunk caching and game-object-processing work our lovely Russian friends will be doing to help us on our way to integrating EasyPickin’s fab work on the road to getting vehicles out of the garage online and off, as mentioned last week.

ITEMZED

Turbo is wrapping up work on his development and modding tool ItemZed that we discussed just before Christmas.  This will give the community the ability to play around with item attributes, recipe contents, individual values, loot locations and spawn rates – and all kinds of similar cool stuff.

He needs to finalise the best way to have the ‘read only’ content from the base game present in the tool, after which he plans to release it on the forum. After this he will giving CartoZed a quick tune-up to make it compatible with user maps, before moving back to the main game and finishing his existing work on various in-game devices (VHS, radios, CD players, better environmental noise for TVs etc)  for an upcoming build.

HEY GERMAN SURVIVORS

Just wanted to point out that a cool website called SurviveThis has cropped up on our radar via their PZ  blog English-to-Deutsch translations, and looksees at cool stuff like Blindcoder’s PZ map. Google Translate suggests it's a really good place to have bookmarked for your survival gaming and horror needs.


Featured image from Stranger. 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 now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can be found here. And, in keeping with the CBOIT’s increasingly lurid fascination with suspect shenanigans… rude link here]
Jan 16, 2017
Project Zomboid - nasKo


 

Hello! The zombie paperboy just threw the following chewed and bloodied missive onto your lawn. Read on, survivor!

BUILD 37: ORIGINS

Since the release of Build 36 ten days ago, RJ continues to tinker with ovens, microwaves, timers and analogue dials – now focusing on the sensibilities of microwaving metal (bad idea), cooking temperatures and the way cooked/microwaved food impacts on character happiness and contentment.

He’s also, with the help of our admin team and various different servers, collating info on the various long-term server MP bugs that have popped up since Build 36 and looking for fixes.

ANIMATIONS

The continuing quest to get the animations out the door continues. Next thing on the agenda is getting some completely solid uninterrupted gameplay with all the new anims that we can show you, and then release for you to play. We’re hoping to have something that’s solidly playable for a gameplay video soon, but no promises as to when – as we’ve been bitten by that so many times before.

When the build is ready it will be going into its own testing branch. It’s such a massive change that the inevitable initial teething troubles would disrupt the speedier public build schedule we intend to maintain this year.

Overall, you see, the wind is blowing back towards getting SP fully coordinated, up, running and out for testing. The recent pain in the bum behind much of the delay has been MP anims compatibility: since the animation drives a lot more of the game systems, making sure that everything is synced and smooth is tricky to say the least. Given the time it’s taken, however, it increasingly feels like we should get a settled build out there that’ll allow for feedback, and something solid to tie back into the tricksy MP.

In other anim related news we’re also talking to General Arcade to implement a new model loading system that will allow for modders to import practically any format of 3D model they want. This should make the ability to mod in weapons, animations and clothing much easier going forward.

This will be alongside the map downloading, streaming, chunk caching and game-object-processing work our lovely Russian friends will be doing to help us on our way to integrating EasyPickin’s fab work on the road to getting vehicles out of the garage online and off, as mentioned last week.

ITEMZED

Turbo is wrapping up work on his development and modding tool ItemZed that we discussed just before Christmas.  This will give the community the ability to play around with item attributes, recipe contents, individual values, loot locations and spawn rates – and all kinds of similar cool stuff.

He needs to finalise the best way to have the ‘read only’ content from the base game present in the tool, after which he plans to release it on the forum. After this he will giving CartoZed a quick tune-up to make it compatible with user maps, before moving back to the main game and finishing his existing work on various in-game devices (VHS, radios, CD players, better environmental noise for TVs etc)  for an upcoming build.

HEY GERMAN SURVIVORS

Just wanted to point out that a cool website called SurviveThis has cropped up on our radar via their PZ  blog English-to-Deutsch translations, and looksees at cool stuff like Blindcoder’s PZ map. Google Translate suggests it's a really good place to have bookmarked for your survival gaming and horror needs.


Featured image from Stranger. 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 now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can be found here. And, in keeping with the CBOIT’s increasingly lurid fascination with suspect shenanigans… rude link here]
Jan 9, 2017
Project Zomboid - nasKo


Hello! It’s Monday. It’s Project Zomboid. So it must be… Mondoiddddd.


Build 36 Released!

This year we intend to keep the build release process fairly free-flowing, as opposed to leaving improvements on the brew in IWBUMS public beta for longer than is necessary. With this in mind, then, last Thursday we publicly released a fast-fire Build 36 to follow on from Build 35’s release just before Christmas. This has now found a home on survivor hard drives everywhere.

The full changelist can be found here but the abbreviated highlights run as follows:
  • Survivor Trading UI. The initial MP iteration of a trading system that will later be expanded on in SP modes. Players can drag and drop items from their main inventory, and faction-owned surroundings, so they can barter with other players, make offers and finalise deals.

  • PZ builds now show changelogs on initial boot-up of new builds so survivors don’t have to hunt through Steam or the forums to find out what has changed.
  • Player can now move two-tile furniture like signs and paintings around, and also (with the correct tools) deconstruct larger objects into several smaller kit parts that can later be reconstructed. Movable item icons also improved in the UI to make system clearer.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRzFy4VYW8c

  • Small stuff: Electrician starts with radio recipes. New tooltips. Recipes now overwritable to make life easier for modders. ‘Invite Friends UI’ made prettier and more user-friendly. Expanded respawn/forage zones. Trapping nutrition adjusted. Plentiful bug fixes n’ balance.


GENERAL ARCADE

After their amazing work integrating VOIP with the PZ mainframe our friends at General Arcade have been digging deep into our codebase to find out ways they can help with the integration of various features destined for roll-out in the lead-up to PZ going 1.0. Namely, but not exclusively, vehicles.

The deep-dive is now complete, and GA are now gearing up to work on what they’ve discovered: initially map streaming improvements, net code optimization and an acceleration of the rate at which PZ (online or off) processes game objects.

It won’t be an overnight job, to say the least, but they’re improvements we can feed into the game build-by-build (improving the whole game’s performance as they go) to help us ease EasyPickins’ ace work on cars out of the dev garage and onto the road.


ANIMS AND COMBAT

It should be underlined that the new animations, combat, outfits, weaponry and all that pizazz hasn’t fallen down a deep, dark well. We’re still going with it, and coming back to the coalface fresh from the Xmas and New Year break is proving fruitful. As we have done before, we apologise for the delay – but hope to have fresh news for you in the Mondoids to come.

RJ’S KNOB

The first thing on the menu for the first IWBUMS beta release for Build 37 is a UI feature to improve the life of chef survivors – an operational UI dial that will initially be used for alarm timers on ovens, and for microwave settings.

Small thing, yes, but also one that Turbo can use when we update the radio and walkie-talkie system to have more analogue station-tracking (handy for scanning airwaves in MP, and for plans for SP survivor radio) and also for setting some timed explosive devices.
 

OBEY GRAVITY MOD

Blindcoder, custodian of the ‘Recently Updated With Build 35’ PZ map and author of several mods integrated in to the PZ mainframe, has released a cool new mod that deals with the tricksy and much debated happenstance of Sky Forts.

The ‘Obey Gravity’ mod sees player-built structures fall down when supports are removed, and stops players being able to build floors more than three tiles away from supporting walls. Both ourselves and Ben would love to know what the wider PZ survivor populace thinks of his approach to sensible-shoes engineering.

Featured image from НЕКОКУН. The 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 now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can now be found here. And oh my GOODNESS GRACIOUS some graphical bugs are rude 
Jan 9, 2017
Project Zomboid - nasKo


Hello! It’s Monday. It’s Project Zomboid. So it must be… Mondoiddddd.


Build 36 Released!

This year we intend to keep the build release process fairly free-flowing, as opposed to leaving improvements on the brew in IWBUMS public beta for longer than is necessary. With this in mind, then, last Thursday we publicly released a fast-fire Build 36 to follow on from Build 35’s release just before Christmas. This has now found a home on survivor hard drives everywhere.

The full changelist can be found here but the abbreviated highlights run as follows:
  • Survivor Trading UI. The initial MP iteration of a trading system that will later be expanded on in SP modes. Players can drag and drop items from their main inventory, and faction-owned surroundings, so they can barter with other players, make offers and finalise deals.

  • PZ builds now show changelogs on initial boot-up of new builds so survivors don’t have to hunt through Steam or the forums to find out what has changed.
  • Player can now move two-tile furniture like signs and paintings around, and also (with the correct tools) deconstruct larger objects into several smaller kit parts that can later be reconstructed. Movable item icons also improved in the UI to make system clearer.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRzFy4VYW8c

  • Small stuff: Electrician starts with radio recipes. New tooltips. Recipes now overwritable to make life easier for modders. ‘Invite Friends UI’ made prettier and more user-friendly. Expanded respawn/forage zones. Trapping nutrition adjusted. Plentiful bug fixes n’ balance.


GENERAL ARCADE

After their amazing work integrating VOIP with the PZ mainframe our friends at General Arcade have been digging deep into our codebase to find out ways they can help with the integration of various features destined for roll-out in the lead-up to PZ going 1.0. Namely, but not exclusively, vehicles.

The deep-dive is now complete, and GA are now gearing up to work on what they’ve discovered: initially map streaming improvements, net code optimization and an acceleration of the rate at which PZ (online or off) processes game objects.

It won’t be an overnight job, to say the least, but they’re improvements we can feed into the game build-by-build (improving the whole game’s performance as they go) to help us ease EasyPickins’ ace work on cars out of the dev garage and onto the road.


ANIMS AND COMBAT

It should be underlined that the new animations, combat, outfits, weaponry and all that pizazz hasn’t fallen down a deep, dark well. We’re still going with it, and coming back to the coalface fresh from the Xmas and New Year break is proving fruitful. As we have done before, we apologise for the delay – but hope to have fresh news for you in the Mondoids to come.

RJ’S KNOB

The first thing on the menu for the first IWBUMS beta release for Build 37 is a UI feature to improve the life of chef survivors – an operational UI dial that will initially be used for alarm timers on ovens, and for microwave settings.

Small thing, yes, but also one that Turbo can use when we update the radio and walkie-talkie system to have more analogue station-tracking (handy for scanning airwaves in MP, and for plans for SP survivor radio) and also for setting some timed explosive devices.
 

OBEY GRAVITY MOD

Blindcoder, custodian of the ‘Recently Updated With Build 35’ PZ map and author of several mods integrated in to the PZ mainframe, has released a cool new mod that deals with the tricksy and much debated happenstance of Sky Forts.

The ‘Obey Gravity’ mod sees player-built structures fall down when supports are removed, and stops players being able to build floors more than three tiles away from supporting walls. Both ourselves and Ben would love to know what the wider PZ survivor populace thinks of his approach to sensible-shoes engineering.

Featured image from НЕКОКУН. The 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 now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can now be found here. And oh my GOODNESS GRACIOUS some graphical bugs are rude 
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