It’s that very special time of the year. The Indie Stone is getting ready to leave a small glass of bleach out for Santa, and half a rotten carrot for Rudolf, before wrapping up tight in the safe knowledge that by morning jolly St. Nick will have left a shiny new axe beneath the tree.

As such, it’s a brief Mondoid – which we hope you’ll forgive what with impending yule-tide.
In terms of builds then the IWBUMS public beta is nearing completion, with Romain and EasyP’s bug fixes continuing to roll in. We will be making this fully public and releasing it on the primary Steam  roll-out early in the New Year, just to make sure that we can cram in as many fixes as possible and also to ensure that we have all hands on-deck in case of unforeseen hang-ups.

In terms of actual cool dev factoids [in amongst the stealth, NPC, map and general game amelioration work that we've got going on] then perhaps TurboTuTone’s latest project is worth touching on.
Turbo is the guy who first brought seasonal change and wilderness growth to Project Zomboid, first through his Erosion mod and then with EasyPickins and Mash through its Build 30 integration. He’s now working with Will in getting the multiple radio and tv channels that have been written into the game, and ready for you to listen to every morning and afternoon as the world around our disaster zone falls to pieces.

In true Turbo fashion, however, he’s bringing a slightly more complex (and brilliant) system into the game – intent on providing the game with the foundations for fiddling with bandwidth to pick up survivor transmissions, discover military radios for access to scrambled transmissions and sending dialogue out into the world (solo and over a server) at set days/times/moments in your game. A primary part of this will also be the integration of his awesome ApCom Walkie Talkie mod that lets MP players talk to each other over the map.

We’ll get into the nitty-gritty of the system once it’s all in and working, not least because there’s currently some debate as to how we’ll deal with radio and tv channels (whether it should be done in quasi-real time, or whether players will be able to access all shows/news at whatever time of AM or PM that they turn on their discovered broadcast system. We really want to get stuff into an internal build and see how it plays.

With which in mind, TurboTuTone presents the new second cousin to PZ creation tools WorldZed and TileZed… WordZed! Click for full size.

 
http://projectzomboid.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1a201a3eda7d96f5b3a5b9ec6b8e6bee.png

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/e2d496805fa1ffcf2cf285082ae81fee.png
 
WordZed provides a simple system for dialogue (and potential localizations) that are correctly categorized, fed into the system and turned it into data that can be fed into Project Zomboid’s framework. We currently have an early version of the tool up and running, and in the New Year Turbo and Will are going to play around with it – and discuss what can be expanded and tweaked, and of course make sure it can handle the thousands and thousands of words that have already been written for it! Then work will begin on getting this stuff in-game!

And with that, we wish you a Merry Christmas – and if you don’t celebrate Christmas then we wish you an enjoyable slightly improved television schedule! And also many thanks to Connall for making the forums feel all Xmassy with his Community Secret Santa!

Join our newsletter if you want these words blasted straight into your inbox, along with notifications for all the game updates beta or release!

 
It’s that very special time of the year. The Indie Stone is getting ready to leave a small glass of bleach out for Santa, and half a rotten carrot for Rudolf, before wrapping up tight in the safe knowledge that by morning jolly St. Nick will have left a shiny new axe beneath the tree.

As such, it’s a brief Mondoid – which we hope you’ll forgive what with impending yule-tide.
In terms of builds then the IWBUMS public beta is nearing completion, with Romain and EasyP’s bug fixes continuing to roll in. We will be making this fully public and releasing it on the primary Steam  roll-out early in the New Year, just to make sure that we can cram in as many fixes as possible and also to ensure that we have all hands on-deck in case of unforeseen hang-ups.

In terms of actual cool dev factoids [in amongst the stealth, NPC, map and general game amelioration work that we've got going on] then perhaps TurboTuTone’s latest project is worth touching on.
Turbo is the guy who first brought seasonal change and wilderness growth to Project Zomboid, first through his Erosion mod and then with EasyPickins and Mash through its Build 30 integration. He’s now working with Will in getting the multiple radio and tv channels that have been written into the game, and ready for you to listen to every morning and afternoon as the world around our disaster zone falls to pieces.

In true Turbo fashion, however, he’s bringing a slightly more complex (and brilliant) system into the game – intent on providing the game with the foundations for fiddling with bandwidth to pick up survivor transmissions, discover military radios for access to scrambled transmissions and sending dialogue out into the world (solo and over a server) at set days/times/moments in your game. A primary part of this will also be the integration of his awesome ApCom Walkie Talkie mod that lets MP players talk to each other over the map.

We’ll get into the nitty-gritty of the system once it’s all in and working, not least because there’s currently some debate as to how we’ll deal with radio and tv channels (whether it should be done in quasi-real time, or whether players will be able to access all shows/news at whatever time of AM or PM that they turn on their discovered broadcast system. We really want to get stuff into an internal build and see how it plays.

With which in mind, TurboTuTone presents the new second cousin to PZ creation tools WorldZed and TileZed… WordZed! Click for full size.

 
http://projectzomboid.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1a201a3eda7d96f5b3a5b9ec6b8e6bee.png

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/e2d496805fa1ffcf2cf285082ae81fee.png
 
WordZed provides a simple system for dialogue (and potential localizations) that are correctly categorized, fed into the system and turned it into data that can be fed into Project Zomboid’s framework. We currently have an early version of the tool up and running, and in the New Year Turbo and Will are going to play around with it – and discuss what can be expanded and tweaked, and of course make sure it can handle the thousands and thousands of words that have already been written for it! Then work will begin on getting this stuff in-game!

And with that, we wish you a Merry Christmas – and if you don’t celebrate Christmas then we wish you an enjoyable slightly improved television schedule! And also many thanks to Connall for making the forums feel all Xmassy with his Community Secret Santa!

Join our newsletter if you want these words blasted straight into your inbox, along with notifications for all the game updates beta or release!

Hello brave survivors. First of all, a recap for those who aren’t up to speed with the wonders of Build 30.

*Gravel voice*
“Last time, on Project Zomboid…”
*Exciting music*

Fast cut #1: A pretty lady smokes a cigarillo and looks a bit suspicious.
Fast cut #2: Build 30 is currently undergoing public testing, and you can find out how to join here:
http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/4183-iwbums-the-i-will-backup-my-save-branch/

Fast cut #3: A man shouts at an older man about who his real father is.
Fast cut #4: Build 30 contains the integration of TurboTuTone’s Erosion mod, the new medical system and the reintroduction of split-screen co-op.
Fast cut #5: A car drives off a big ramp in slow motion and looks awesome.
Fast cut #6: Build 30.7 was released last Mondoid (see here: http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2014/12/we-said-wed-kill-you/) tested out some mechanics that would make the game tougher such as our Endurance Revamp and new zombie clumping behaviours – alongside a new shader to make our world look more realistic.
Fast cut #7: The suspicious pretty lady does an evil smile

*Project Zomboid theme tune plays*


We recognise that not everyone watches the forums avidly, so here’s a brief recap of new additions. For the full run-down please click through here: http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/11292-iwbums-build-30/?p=144013

It’s been a really interesting week on our forums as the debate over our new exhaustion system boiled hither and thither – with, we think, a positive result through balancing and making the old system available to everyone via the Sandbox custom options. For a lengthy missive on what we’re doing in terms of Survival mode difficulty then Lemmy’s post on the Steam forums is also a good place to start:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/108600/discussions/0/617321352375649325

The response was generally favourable, but the new exhaustion system hampered the gameplay of those who play the game with repeated melee swings without charging them up [the avoidance of which we will have to communicate better in future, beyond the Spiffo instruction screen]. As such, 30.8 tied endurance lost through swinging weapons to zombie damage instead – which was a necessary solution, even if it was somewhat at odds with realism. Along with 30.9 we also did a lot of general, running, stabbing and stamina regeneration balancing and are pretty happy with how it plays currently – and indeed the overall community response.

Amidst loads of bug fixing and zombie behaviour revamps, as part of RJ’s ‘Community Suggestion Coding Day’, we also introduced pickling and canning to the game, so vegetables can be given 2-3 months of extra life through cooking them up inside a jar with water, vinegar and sugar. Because we’re big meanies, we also reduced food spawn rates in general though…


We’re now content locked on Build 30, and as such Build 30.10 will consist of balancing and bug fixing. We’re aiming for this week in terms of release, but ETAs etc etc. We hope that this will then become the public release that makes that big fancypants step out of the IWBUMS beta branch and into the public domain.

We are also sorry to say report that our watermelons might be alcoholic (see http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/tracker/issue-1138-alcoholic-watermelons-309), and as such will have to be booze-nerfed.


This week has seen some exciting map work getting underway, as Binky and RingoD began unifying the layout of the new city-approach residential zone with the main map file – more of which [alongside Mash’s cool additions elsewhere] will be covered in a later Mondoid.

Initial work on Build 31 is also on course – alongside Lemmy’s ever-present NPC development and all the other must-haves we require before we break out of Early Access. The focus of the next build will be on stealth – that sneak key is about to get a lot more obvious/relevant – and we already have a build in which it’s possible to hug close to walls and nervously look around corners to provide a view-cone glimpse of what horrors could be shambling nearby. It’s all animated, but still looks a little rough as we haven’t implemented transition anims yet – hopefully we can chuck a video your way when it’s all in though.

Finally, new boy TurboTuTone has brought a really interesting (and complex) design for radio transmissions and broadcasts to the table – which will allow for writer Will’s work to spin out in many interesting new ways. That will be their focus in the run-up to Xmas. Oh, and RJ says there’ll be jam-making in a future build too. Which we’d imagine is something of a survival game first?

Also NEO Scavenger is out today and is awesome and may well appeal to anyone who likes our game. http://store.steampowered.com/app/248860/ Check it out here!


This week’s featured screenshot taken by Wick over on Steam.

And once again, we remind you to keep your eyes locked onto the TIS twitter for build updates and testing news, and if you can’t then why not subscribe to our newsletter so that you can have all the PZ goings on sent straight to your email?

Hello brave survivors. First of all, a recap for those who aren’t up to speed with the wonders of Build 30.

*Gravel voice*
“Last time, on Project Zomboid…”
*Exciting music*

Fast cut #1: A pretty lady smokes a cigarillo and looks a bit suspicious.
Fast cut #2: Build 30 is currently undergoing public testing, and you can find out how to join here:
http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/4183-iwbums-the-i-will-backup-my-save-branch/

Fast cut #3: A man shouts at an older man about who his real father is.
Fast cut #4: Build 30 contains the integration of TurboTuTone’s Erosion mod, the new medical system and the reintroduction of split-screen co-op.
Fast cut #5: A car drives off a big ramp in slow motion and looks awesome.
Fast cut #6: Build 30.7 was released last Mondoid (see here: http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2014/12/we-said-wed-kill-you/) tested out some mechanics that would make the game tougher such as our Endurance Revamp and new zombie clumping behaviours – alongside a new shader to make our world look more realistic.
Fast cut #7: The suspicious pretty lady does an evil smile

*Project Zomboid theme tune plays*


We recognise that not everyone watches the forums avidly, so here’s a brief recap of new additions. For the full run-down please click through here: http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/11292-iwbums-build-30/?p=144013

It’s been a really interesting week on our forums as the debate over our new exhaustion system boiled hither and thither – with, we think, a positive result through balancing and making the old system available to everyone via the Sandbox custom options. For a lengthy missive on what we’re doing in terms of Survival mode difficulty then Lemmy’s post on the Steam forums is also a good place to start:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/108600/discussions/0/617321352375649325

The response was generally favourable, but the new exhaustion system hampered the gameplay of those who play the game with repeated melee swings without charging them up [the avoidance of which we will have to communicate better in future, beyond the Spiffo instruction screen]. As such, 30.8 tied endurance lost through swinging weapons to zombie damage instead – which was a necessary solution, even if it was somewhat at odds with realism. Along with 30.9 we also did a lot of general, running, stabbing and stamina regeneration balancing and are pretty happy with how it plays currently – and indeed the overall community response.

Amidst loads of bug fixing and zombie behaviour revamps, as part of RJ’s ‘Community Suggestion Coding Day’, we also introduced pickling and canning to the game, so vegetables can be given 2-3 months of extra life through cooking them up inside a jar with water, vinegar and sugar. Because we’re big meanies, we also reduced food spawn rates in general though…


We’re now content locked on Build 30, and as such Build 30.10 will consist of balancing and bug fixing. We’re aiming for this week in terms of release, but ETAs etc etc. We hope that this will then become the public release that makes that big fancypants step out of the IWBUMS beta branch and into the public domain.

We are also sorry to say report that our watermelons might be alcoholic (see http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/tracker/issue-1138-alcoholic-watermelons-309), and as such will have to be booze-nerfed.


This week has seen some exciting map work getting underway, as Binky and RingoD began unifying the layout of the new city-approach residential zone with the main map file – more of which [alongside Mash’s cool additions elsewhere] will be covered in a later Mondoid.

Initial work on Build 31 is also on course – alongside Lemmy’s ever-present NPC development and all the other must-haves we require before we break out of Early Access. The focus of the next build will be on stealth – that sneak key is about to get a lot more obvious/relevant – and we already have a build in which it’s possible to hug close to walls and nervously look around corners to provide a view-cone glimpse of what horrors could be shambling nearby. It’s all animated, but still looks a little rough as we haven’t implemented transition anims yet – hopefully we can chuck a video your way when it’s all in though.

Finally, new boy TurboTuTone has brought a really interesting (and complex) design for radio transmissions and broadcasts to the table – which will allow for writer Will’s work to spin out in many interesting new ways. That will be their focus in the run-up to Xmas. Oh, and RJ says there’ll be jam-making in a future build too. Which we’d imagine is something of a survival game first?

Also NEO Scavenger is out today and is awesome and may well appeal to anyone who likes our game. http://store.steampowered.com/app/248860/ Check it out here!


This week’s featured screenshot taken by Wick over on Steam.

And once again, we remind you to keep your eyes locked onto the TIS twitter for build updates and testing news, and if you can’t then why not subscribe to our newsletter so that you can have all the PZ goings on sent straight to your email?

Hello all. Since we’re all busy with trying to get 30 out the door, we’ll just list off a few of the more recent changes we’ve made in IWBUMS 30.7 which should be released around the time of this Mondoid (perhaps a bit after) – We’ve made the decision to bump up the ‘Kill You Before The End Game’ tweaks into build 30 instead of build 31, since a lot of the sandbox options marched us closer to that goal as it was.

Here are a few of the changes we’ve made in IWBUMS .7. Remember they are in IWBUMs for a reason, so since some of these changes are pretty significant, if you have a problem with any of the features please feel free to discuss on the forums as feedback is what we’re after.


Endurance has been a bit annoying for a long time. While trying to simulate the player getting out of breath, instead it just acted as an arbitrary and occasional timer forcing the player to back up for 10 seconds before resuming combat, and did little to add to the fun of the game. As such we’ve redesigned endurance to model general physical exertion over the course of a day. It will increase as you run around, fight, chop down trees and all that other back breaking toil, but will increase at a much slower rate.

However once you’re exerted it will, instead of requiring 10 seconds of stand-still time, affect you for a much more prolonged period of time and require hours of rest, or sleep, to recuperate. The idea being that your endurance now becomes a day long commodity that you don’t want to spend frivolously, and to cap the amount of zombie fighting during a day you can expect to be able to engage in at low fitness skill levels. This is still being balanced so feedback on IWBUMs will be much appreciated.


We’ve made some changes to the shaders on the game to make for a more moody atmosphere, more realistic saturation and moody contrast. We’ve tweaked light and dark levels and made various changes to make PZ look a bit more moody and atmospheric. Okay, perhaps we were slightly inspired by This War Of Mine, but we’ve tried to be subtle in our inspiration. There may be some who don’t like it, but we ask that you give it a fair chance (it took RJ playing for a while before he decided he preferred it to how it was).

Either way, for this IWBUMs we’ve left not choice in the matter, replacing the shaders on to the new shaders. But in future we’ll look to add different settings for those who prefer the previous more cartoony colouring, and perhaps add a few more visual styles (black and white, vignette etc) since they are really trivial and quick to add. The reason we tweaked this is we felt it was a cheap and quick way we could boost the visuals in the game, make the scene (2D tiles and 3D characters) gel together better, make the world more realistic visually, as well as perhaps reduce the amount of ‘urgh cartoony 2D game’ first impressions that have been one of the biggest barriers to attracting people to the game compared to 3D titles within the same genre.


This is a quite substantial change. Now zombies will clump together in ways you’ve never seen before. Instead of single zombies dotted about (though this will still happen to an extent) zombies will constantly be attracted to each other’s groans and movements, which means you’re much more likely to run into a pack of 5-6 zombies over 5-6 zombies dotted around the area. But unlike the old system of spawning the zombies in groups (which was never convincing) the new zombie clumping happens organically and naturally.


Another thing we’ve not quite got the options working for and might need a little adjusting to, we’d like to give the auto zoom a quick trial. Never fear, in future we’ll add options to disable or override this, but feel it important to joypad controls since at present zooming in and out is pretty cumbersome on joypad. The idea being that when you’re in interiors of buildings, the camera will zoom to maximum zoom. When outside, or when running, it will zoom out to provide the player a better view of their surrounding.

Also when in combat the camera will zoom in to provide the player the ability to see what’s happening. This will all require more tweaking, so feedback would be much appreciated. We’ll get options to switch this on and off in hopefully before the next IWBUMs release, and certainly before 30 goes out on the main branch.


The problem with farming has been that, once you’ve got the necessary kit, it becomes pretty easy to be able to be self sufficient with food. On the other hand the amount of upkeep required for the crops means the player spends a lot of time dealing with them. As such we’ve made two changes to the farming system. First we’ve significantly increased the amount of time it takes to grow crops. Crops are now, as they should, a longer term solution and pushed much further into the late game as to when a player can expect to be able to live off grown vegetables.

Secondly, we’ve decreased the amount of maintenance the crops require, so a player still has time to do other stuff while their crops are growing. We hope these changes will mean that farming will remain an important feature of the game, but will not eat up all the player’s time and turn the game into a farming simulator, as well as mean farming won’t provide a player with food as early in the game.


We also thought we’d give you a little preview at the kind of building density you can look forward as you approach Louisville. We’re still in the outskirts, and haven’t even got to the city itself, but already the area is starting to get pretty dense.



For the full IWBUMs 30.7 changelist, look here

This week’s blurry title PUPPPPPPYYYYY image is provided by Lemmy who is getting a new Whippet on Saturday! Weeee! Cally will be joined by little baby Chief. <3

And once again, we remind you to keep your eyes locked onto the TIS twitter for build updates and testing news, and if you can’t then why not subscribe to our newsletter so that you can have all the PZ goings on sent straight to your email?

Hello all. Since we’re all busy with trying to get 30 out the door, we’ll just list off a few of the more recent changes we’ve made in IWBUMS 30.7 which should be released around the time of this Mondoid (perhaps a bit after) – We’ve made the decision to bump up the ‘Kill You Before The End Game’ tweaks into build 30 instead of build 31, since a lot of the sandbox options marched us closer to that goal as it was.

Here are a few of the changes we’ve made in IWBUMS .7. Remember they are in IWBUMs for a reason, so since some of these changes are pretty significant, if you have a problem with any of the features please feel free to discuss on the forums as feedback is what we’re after.


Endurance has been a bit annoying for a long time. While trying to simulate the player getting out of breath, instead it just acted as an arbitrary and occasional timer forcing the player to back up for 10 seconds before resuming combat, and did little to add to the fun of the game. As such we’ve redesigned endurance to model general physical exertion over the course of a day. It will increase as you run around, fight, chop down trees and all that other back breaking toil, but will increase at a much slower rate.

However once you’re exerted it will, instead of requiring 10 seconds of stand-still time, affect you for a much more prolonged period of time and require hours of rest, or sleep, to recuperate. The idea being that your endurance now becomes a day long commodity that you don’t want to spend frivolously, and to cap the amount of zombie fighting during a day you can expect to be able to engage in at low fitness skill levels. This is still being balanced so feedback on IWBUMs will be much appreciated.


We’ve made some changes to the shaders on the game to make for a more moody atmosphere, more realistic saturation and moody contrast. We’ve tweaked light and dark levels and made various changes to make PZ look a bit more moody and atmospheric. Okay, perhaps we were slightly inspired by This War Of Mine, but we’ve tried to be subtle in our inspiration. There may be some who don’t like it, but we ask that you give it a fair chance (it took RJ playing for a while before he decided he preferred it to how it was).

Either way, for this IWBUMs we’ve left not choice in the matter, replacing the shaders on to the new shaders. But in future we’ll look to add different settings for those who prefer the previous more cartoony colouring, and perhaps add a few more visual styles (black and white, vignette etc) since they are really trivial and quick to add. The reason we tweaked this is we felt it was a cheap and quick way we could boost the visuals in the game, make the scene (2D tiles and 3D characters) gel together better, make the world more realistic visually, as well as perhaps reduce the amount of ‘urgh cartoony 2D game’ first impressions that have been one of the biggest barriers to attracting people to the game compared to 3D titles within the same genre.


This is a quite substantial change. Now zombies will clump together in ways you’ve never seen before. Instead of single zombies dotted about (though this will still happen to an extent) zombies will constantly be attracted to each other’s groans and movements, which means you’re much more likely to run into a pack of 5-6 zombies over 5-6 zombies dotted around the area. But unlike the old system of spawning the zombies in groups (which was never convincing) the new zombie clumping happens organically and naturally.


Another thing we’ve not quite got the options working for and might need a little adjusting to, we’d like to give the auto zoom a quick trial. Never fear, in future we’ll add options to disable or override this, but feel it important to joypad controls since at present zooming in and out is pretty cumbersome on joypad. The idea being that when you’re in interiors of buildings, the camera will zoom to maximum zoom. When outside, or when running, it will zoom out to provide the player a better view of their surrounding.

Also when in combat the camera will zoom in to provide the player the ability to see what’s happening. This will all require more tweaking, so feedback would be much appreciated. We’ll get options to switch this on and off in hopefully before the next IWBUMs release, and certainly before 30 goes out on the main branch.


The problem with farming has been that, once you’ve got the necessary kit, it becomes pretty easy to be able to be self sufficient with food. On the other hand the amount of upkeep required for the crops means the player spends a lot of time dealing with them. As such we’ve made two changes to the farming system. First we’ve significantly increased the amount of time it takes to grow crops. Crops are now, as they should, a longer term solution and pushed much further into the late game as to when a player can expect to be able to live off grown vegetables.

Secondly, we’ve decreased the amount of maintenance the crops require, so a player still has time to do other stuff while their crops are growing. We hope these changes will mean that farming will remain an important feature of the game, but will not eat up all the player’s time and turn the game into a farming simulator, as well as mean farming won’t provide a player with food as early in the game.


We also thought we’d give you a little preview at the kind of building density you can look forward as you approach Louisville. We’re still in the outskirts, and haven’t even got to the city itself, but already the area is starting to get pretty dense.



For the full IWBUMs 30.7 changelist, look here

This week’s blurry title PUPPPPPPYYYYY image is provided by Lemmy who is getting a new Whippet on Saturday! Weeee! Cally will be joined by little baby Chief. <3

And once again, we remind you to keep your eyes locked onto the TIS twitter for build updates and testing news, and if you can’t then why not subscribe to our newsletter so that you can have all the PZ goings on sent straight to your email?

Hello everyone. Quick and lazy Mondoid this week since we had video and release goodness last week. Sorry! We’re all hard at work trying to get build 30 up to scratch so it can be promoted from IWBUMS and rolled out to the masses. However there is some cool stuff to talk about.
 

EasyPickins and RJ have been busy fixing a whole host of issues that have been reported, and the build is shaping up quite nicely. There are still a few issues to iron out though but we hope to get the build ready to pump out to everyone soon!
 

We’re starting to plan out our final march toward 1.0, which we’re hoping will be within the late first quarter of 2015, possibly creeping into Q2. However that’s not an ETA because you know what dark alleyways ETAs lead us down! But we’re going to start focusing on getting the bigger features in there, and bug fixes and some more modest additions, post 31 we need to try and focus our efforts on these bigger goals.

Here is a list of our priorities over the next few months, after we get build 31 and it’s Kill You Before The End Game evilness we detailed a while back, in the likely guestimate at when they will likely drop into the builds:

Stealth Gameplay – Creeping behind fences, peeking and shooting around corners, and all that good stuff. Will shake up the looting game significantly.

TV + Radio – Keep your character from the brink by watching kids shows on the telly, keep them informed by listening to the news on the radio, or maybe even learn a few cooking and crafting tips?

Vehicles – Finally make the long trip between West  Point and Muldraugh in comfort, mow down zombies en route. Siphon gas, and make sure you have a mechanic within your group!

NPCs – Finally. Yes they are being worked on. They are always being worked on. We know. We know!

UI Overhaul – The old UI has served us well, but we have many ideas to vastly improve the PZ game experience, as well as making joypad specific UIs to give joypad players and split-screeners a more comfortable and fluid gaming experience. We’re in talks with a certain company who made a phenomenal UI for another game, and are excited to think what they will be able to bring to ours.

…and of course the map completion, but it’s not clear at this stage if this will appear in stages throughout other things, or we’ll put it in all at once, so I struggle to figure out where to put it in the list above.

This may mean a slight reduction in frequency of builds after build 31, or it may mean that these builds are more bug fixy in nature and have more modest gameplay additions, along with intermittent huge game changing features. It’s all for the greater good though so we hope people understand we need to focus our efforts.

There are obviously many other things we want to do with the game, and as we’ve said before no one should panic that 1.0 means the end. As long as PZ makes enough money to keep the devs stocked up in fish pies (i.e. makes enough money to pay for development) we’ll try and keep the train going as long as possible.
…and while we’re at it…
 

To help us in our efforts in marching toward the 1.0 line, we decided we may need some additional help. So why don’t y’all welcome TurboTuTone to the PZ dev team? I know we have! As his first tentative steps into the behemoth that is the PZ codebase, and tackling integrating Will’s extensive TV and Radio channels into the game. Hurrah! Welcome Turbo! <3

This week’s blog post image was sent in by Hunting Nate, aged 7 (not really aged 7 and we took it off the Steam community screenshots, he didn’t send it in, but whatever).

And once again, we remind you to keep your eyes locked onto the TIS twitter for build updates and testing news, and if you can’t then why not subscribe to our newsletter so that our lovely friend and sys-admin saviour Kirrus can shoot PZ info bullets directly into your inbox?

Hello everyone. Quick and lazy Mondoid this week since we had video and release goodness last week. Sorry! We’re all hard at work trying to get build 30 up to scratch so it can be promoted from IWBUMS and rolled out to the masses. However there is some cool stuff to talk about.
 

EasyPickins and RJ have been busy fixing a whole host of issues that have been reported, and the build is shaping up quite nicely. There are still a few issues to iron out though but we hope to get the build ready to pump out to everyone soon!
 

We’re starting to plan out our final march toward 1.0, which we’re hoping will be within the late first quarter of 2015, possibly creeping into Q2. However that’s not an ETA because you know what dark alleyways ETAs lead us down! But we’re going to start focusing on getting the bigger features in there, and bug fixes and some more modest additions, post 31 we need to try and focus our efforts on these bigger goals.

Here is a list of our priorities over the next few months, after we get build 31 and it’s Kill You Before The End Game evilness we detailed a while back, in the likely guestimate at when they will likely drop into the builds:

Stealth Gameplay – Creeping behind fences, peeking and shooting around corners, and all that good stuff. Will shake up the looting game significantly.

TV + Radio – Keep your character from the brink by watching kids shows on the telly, keep them informed by listening to the news on the radio, or maybe even learn a few cooking and crafting tips?

Vehicles – Finally make the long trip between West  Point and Muldraugh in comfort, mow down zombies en route. Siphon gas, and make sure you have a mechanic within your group!

NPCs – Finally. Yes they are being worked on. They are always being worked on. We know. We know!

UI Overhaul – The old UI has served us well, but we have many ideas to vastly improve the PZ game experience, as well as making joypad specific UIs to give joypad players and split-screeners a more comfortable and fluid gaming experience. We’re in talks with a certain company who made a phenomenal UI for another game, and are excited to think what they will be able to bring to ours.

…and of course the map completion, but it’s not clear at this stage if this will appear in stages throughout other things, or we’ll put it in all at once, so I struggle to figure out where to put it in the list above.

This may mean a slight reduction in frequency of builds after build 31, or it may mean that these builds are more bug fixy in nature and have more modest gameplay additions, along with intermittent huge game changing features. It’s all for the greater good though so we hope people understand we need to focus our efforts.

There are obviously many other things we want to do with the game, and as we’ve said before no one should panic that 1.0 means the end. As long as PZ makes enough money to keep the devs stocked up in fish pies (i.e. makes enough money to pay for development) we’ll try and keep the train going as long as possible.
…and while we’re at it…
 

To help us in our efforts in marching toward the 1.0 line, we decided we may need some additional help. So why don’t y’all welcome TurboTuTone to the PZ dev team? I know we have! As his first tentative steps into the behemoth that is the PZ codebase, and tackling integrating Will’s extensive TV and Radio channels into the game. Hurrah! Welcome Turbo! <3

This week’s blog post image was sent in by Hunting Nate, aged 7 (not really aged 7 and we took it off the Steam community screenshots, he didn’t send it in, but whatever).

And once again, we remind you to keep your eyes locked onto the TIS twitter for build updates and testing news, and if you can’t then why not subscribe to our newsletter so that our lovely friend and sys-admin saviour Kirrus can shoot PZ info bullets directly into your inbox?

Hello, a short and sweet Mondoid this week – primarily due to the awesome contained within.
 
First off, you know Build 30? That awesome one with all the Medical advances, the Erosion integration and the cool split-screen bizness? Well it looks like this in a surprisingly well-produced, and consistently French, video as produced and directed by Romain – and aided and abetted by EP! [It’s all pretty cool, but make sure you check out the winterscape timelapse at 3:37]
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsyuG7Wd7L4
 
Second off, do you fancy playing the build itself? Only we’ve just released it on our IWBUMS branch. You can read details on how to access it here, and report the bugs you find in our bug tracker here, and to read more about build 30 here is the complete changelist. This hasn’t been in internal testing too long (there WILL be weirdness that lies within) but we really need wider feedback on how the split-screen and improved controller support is working – and on any issues Erosion starts throwing at you as your game progresses.
 
Finally, what with yule-tide fast approaching the wonderful Connall is organising a Project Zomboid Community Secret Santa program that we heartily endorse. Check out his thread on the forums here, and get involved!
 
Finally, finally – we wish all our American players a healthy and happy Thanksgiving. (We’ve seen it in the films, and it looks great!)
 
That’s about it for this week. Keep your eyes locked onto the TIS twitter for build updates and testing news, and if you can’t then why not subscribe to our newsletter so that anything and everything exciting can be hand-delivered by an electric postman?

Hello, a short and sweet Mondoid this week – primarily due to the awesome contained within.
 
First off, you know Build 30? That awesome one with all the Medical advances, the Erosion integration and the cool split-screen bizness? Well it looks like this in a surprisingly well-produced, and consistently French, video as produced and directed by Romain – and aided and abetted by EP! [It’s all pretty cool, but make sure you check out the winterscape timelapse at 3:37]
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsyuG7Wd7L4
 
Second off, do you fancy playing the build itself? Only we’ve just released it on our IWBUMS branch. You can read details on how to access it here, and report the bugs you find in our bug tracker here, and to read more about build 30 here is the complete changelist. This hasn’t been in internal testing too long (there WILL be weirdness that lies within) but we really need wider feedback on how the split-screen and improved controller support is working – and on any issues Erosion starts throwing at you as your game progresses.
 
Finally, what with yule-tide fast approaching the wonderful Connall is organising a Project Zomboid Community Secret Santa program that we heartily endorse. Check out his thread on the forums here, and get involved!
 
Finally, finally – we wish all our American players a healthy and happy Thanksgiving. (We’ve seen it in the films, and it looks great!)
 
That’s about it for this week. Keep your eyes locked onto the TIS twitter for build updates and testing news, and if you can’t then why not subscribe to our newsletter so that anything and everything exciting can be hand-delivered by an electric postman?