There’s still a few items from the crafting revamp still to come in, and some optimization we hope to include, but overall we are pretty much feature complete. The path ahead is predominantly bug fixes, balancing and internal closed beta testing in preparation for an Unstable release.

There isn’t currently a date on the Unstable. This will depend heavily on how many serious bugs we still have to resolve and, once we are into this slightly larger closed testing group, what the feedback is like on things like the big changes to crafting – and how players feel when they are dropped into it for the first time.

Right now there’s elements of B42 that we know aren’t fun. There are also some showstoppers we are in the process of erasing. While the first Unstable beta clearly doesn’t need to be perfect, it does need to be fun, balanced as much as it could be, not have any broken aspects, and make a good first impression. Especially considering the amount of time it has taken.

It could be we drop the build on closed tester group laps and it goes down a storm, and has relatively few problems. It could be that elements of new systems are annoying or confusing, meaning that we have to go back to make things smoother and more intuitive.

While we desperately want this to be out, and keenly feel the community’s pain, we don’t want to put out a duff build and disappoint anyone after the long wait. So we’ll take the testers feedback seriously, and won’t be shy of investing time into addressing any of the big concerns they may have, or mega-bugs that they may report.

So, please take this as “It’s not going to be out imminently” – but also consider it as a clear roadsign pointing towards us kicking Unstable out of the door, and the light at the end of the tunnel getting brighter.

We’ll go into a bit more detail on some other aspects of 42 dev at the close of the blog, but first a few other items of information/housekeeping.

Single Player Unstable Beta

As many will be aware, the Unstable beta of Build 41 was released with MP disabled. During this time the multiplayer was being rewritten from the ground up to work with the new animation system, and also to improve multiplayer stability and general immersion into the improved animations and gameplay.

This time around, again, we plan on initially releasing the Build 42 Unstable with MP disabled. This is for several reasons, but it will primarily mean that we can address SP issues in the Unstable beta in more bite-sized chunks without drowning in bug and issue reports, and it will also clearly allow the MP team a little extra time to fix up and polish.

A lot of huge changes have been made to improve security of multiplayer, with changes such as server side inventory and countless other anti-cheat measures to make the game more server-authoritative to help secure servers from being sent any kind of spoofed commands that cause issues with cheaters and such.

In addition there have been many optimizations and improvements made to deal with lag, optimize zombie movement, prevent rubber banding and so on which will lead hopefully to a much more enjoyable MP experience. Here’s a quick video of some vehicle lag improvements that came in this week, for example.

This will likely all need more testing and issues closed out once the SP is more final, before it’s available for more public consumption in Unstable.

(Please bear in mind though, that we’re a highly moddable java game with at this time no third party anti-cheat software. If c++ compiled AAA games with anti-cheat are still struggling with cheaters, then we would all be naive to assume that cheating would not be an issue. Hopefully we have massively restricted the possible capabilities of cheaters in 42 now though now – seeing as the server is a lot more authoritative in controlling the world state. Our advice will always be to favour playing in a whitelisted community if you want to avoid cheaters or at least be able to permanently remove them from your game. We will however be exploring proper anti-cheat solutions in the longer term and hopefully most cheats will be limited to stuff like ESP, but even so we’ll continue to recommend whitelisted servers for a cheater free experience.)

There will, however, be strict requirements for modders to follow to allow them to do stuff they once took for granted. For example, creating an inventory item will have to be done in a way that’ll allow it to be created on the server.

The MP team are currently working on guidelines and documentation that will explain how modders can work within the updated framework and not upset the anti-cheat measures. Likewise, similar documents are being written for crafting and other new/updated areas of the game.

Finally, how long will an Unstable SP beta last until we drop MP in? Uncertain, but this stuff isn’t being written from scratch – and is already mostly functional. It’s a different situation to the one that saw the lengthy wait for MP integration for 41.

Modpocalypse

With such a huge update to the game, it is inevitable that almost every mod that exists will be invalidated in some capacity. With the new crafting systems, especially, it’s unlikely any mod will work out of the box.

However, what we do have is a new modding architecture which will help a lot in the transition, that’s heavily inspired by the way that a certain game that’s set on a World out on the Rim does it.

Essentially, Aiteron’s been working on heavily improving the mod system to allow for versioned mods to be included in a Workshop item.

B41 currently uses the root directory of the workshop files as the mod: it contains a media directory and all the rest that allows the mod to override files in the core zomboid data directory. B42, meanwhile, instead introduces a functionality where a build of the game will query the mod for a subdirectory which contains the most recent compatible version of the mod – and to then use those files.

For example, a subscribed mod could have a 42 directory, a 42.21 directory, a 43 directory and a 43.31 directory. If you run a version of the game that’s 42.1 it’d use the 42 directory, and load that version of the mod. If you then upgraded to 42.25 then it would start using the 42.21 directory, and so on.

Within this there’s also a ‘common’ directory that’s used by any version of the mod and can be used to store large files such as art or sounds, that modders clearly don’t want duplicated over 20 versions of their mod.

(Though this aspect will only truly come into play in versions beyond 41, as we can’t at this point realistically modify Build 41 to use the new mod system – and B41 mods will clearly remain loading directly out of the root directory as they currently do while ignoring the B42+ versioned directories.)

What this will all mean is that when modders update their mods to work with B42, they can leave the B41 files within the mod package and continue to work on B41 content as and when they desire. Simultaneously, however, they’ll be able to support the B42 beta without destroying that compatibility with B41 stable

From that point on they’ll then have much more intelligent versioning to allow for extra power to update their mods, in ways that won’t be destructive to older builds of the game. In addition to this, 42’s new mod load order functionality will make submods and modpacks a lot easier to create.

Finally because of these huge changes, and the likelihood that so few mods at all will work B42 on first release, we currently plan to automatically disable all mods on first load – and B42 will be unable to load any of the B41 mod files until a workshop item has been prepared using a 42 directory. This will be necessary in limiting the amount of bug reports we’d inevitably get from people loading up their B41 mod lists and completely breaking the game.

Internal Build Now

As indicated above, we’re pretty much feature complete with some crafting elements still on their way. There’s various issues lurking in the tester build that need investigation and sorting – this week some unexplained and endless explosions in deer/bunny populations, out of memory issues, and combat irregularities. There’s various things here that need sweeping up.

As we have mentioned in previous blogs, we felt the delay with the crafting overhaul was set to continue longer than anyone was comfortable with, and so decided to release the first beta without the entirety of the ‘nu-medieval post-apocalypse village’ crafting possibilities we intend in the longer term as with blacksmithing, pottery, smelting, weapon-related carpentry, carving etc. there’ll be plenty still to chew on.

The final ‘must have’ feature we have in production for 42 is a Building UI. We’ve never been a fan of the right click menu building system, and along with the sharp increase of new buildable tiles it became necessary to improve how building is carried out. For the expanded test pool and Unstable, then, the final addition will be in taking the current ‘furniture picking up’ icon on the icon strip to the left and turn it into a button to bring up a new panel with the furniture interactions and building choices rolled into it

From this we’ll have a nice categorized building UI the player can keep on-screen as a palette to pick buildable tiles from, which will allow you to browse the various categories and tiles you want to build in the world, click on them if you have the necessary building materials, and then place the ghost tile on the target tile. It’s pretty simple, and backstage a first implementation isn’t taking too long to get operational. In other news:

ANIMAL TRACKERS

As discussed last time, we weren’t happy with the pre-defined and permanent animal paths that deer and other animals would follow that were initially implemented. As such Prof recently added randomized animal paths that are tweakable in lua.

New paths are generated using the seed given when you create a world – they are static in the sense that they don’t self-modify after you started a game, but dynamic in the sense that you will never know what journeys deer will be taking in any fresh world. In future we’ll explore regenerating these paths if they are over-hunted. Here’s a quick vid of them in action.

SEW-SEW

While it’s not a complete tech tree at the moment, tailoring has got some attention and players should be able to grind the first levels from looted or farmed materials. These do not require a specific crafting station, but higher-level options that we’ll add during Unstable will.

[Please note: the crafting window is due another polish pass, and this video also shows a degree of debug/coder-speak wordage. Although performed on a table here, these recipes don’t demand it.]

UPS AND DOWNS

Partly due to current game imbalance, and partly because with the new crafting we didn’t want to replicate the vertically-placed-work-station ‘spam crafting’ that you can sometimes see in games like Minecraft, we spent an afternoon revising sheet rope climbing mechanics while waiting for a crafting blocker to clear.

Previously only drunk players had a chance of falling when climbing a sheet rope, in Build 42 now any player has a chance to fall when climbing a sheet rope to higher floors after an initial grace period has elapsed – the duration of which period, and the chance to fall, is determined by negative moodles, skills such as Strength, Fitness and Nimble, appropriate traits like Dextrous or Gymnast, and professions like Burglar.

Additionally characters will accumulate muscle strain if they climb ropes for enough time, and without resting. There’s a smaller chance of falling from a rope while descending, also, while all of this can be toggled off in Sandbox.

TOOLS UPDATE

In the background to the B42 work, Zac has been overhauling the AnimZed tool that made the success of B41 possible. This will be of great aid when it comes to final B42 polish, and all versions beyond this.

“The core of every good survivor character brain is a logic state network.” He explains. “The player’s character might be walking – and from that they could start running, stop entirely, climbFence, aim, sneak etc. All the animation frameworks for players and zeds need to be keyed into all available potential outcomes that the player or the game might dictate.”

“Our problem increasingly was that our characters’ brains were getting pretty complex. We are adding all sorts of new abilities in both 42 and beyond, and they’re getting bigger and bigger still.”

“Up until now we haven’t had a tool to visualise the network. We’ve been editing the structure manually, by editing xml files. This has led to pain. When trying to incorporate a new feature, or figure out why a character is doing the wrong thing, it’s always taken a lot of manually parsing reams of network circuitry, and it’s slowed integration down.”

“So, we have been building a proper logic network editor, named it AnimGraphZeditor, that should be a big boost in making more and more complex brains. The importance of having a robust logic network editor cannot be overstated for final polish of elements of 42, and everything that lies beyond it: essentially taking the abstract mass of logic conditionals, states, and transitions, and puts them up on the screen as circuit diagrams. From here we can identify problems and faulty circuits, and makes it much easier to implement new features and capabilities.”

While we are in this area, it should also be mentioned that it is still our plan to release AnimZed to the community – and this will most likely follow Build 42 release.

WEAPON TESTING

Finally a quick video compilation of recent in-game weapon testing – featuring all the old familiars, but also a whole bunch of the new items that you’ll be able to crack heads open with in the next version. (CONTAINS FLASHING LIGHTS)

A full round-up of everything confirmed for Build 42 can be found here. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something. We also live on Twitter/X right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.

Those who receive blogs and announcements by email: please note that we are changing provider. If you want to continue to receive our mails please sign up again here.

The post Tidy Up Time appeared first on Project Zomboid.

CRAFTING

Some of the things we’ve been doing this month on the crafting revamp includes:

• On-boarding three of our friends from TEA games to add some firepower to the crafting team and get it all out of the door. While they’ve been getting up to speed with the code they have also been documenting it all with its latest implementation, which in turn will become our guidance for modders upon release.
• Working on crafting station animation interactions. In Build 42 you won’t see direct physical movement of player and crafting station when you interact, for example a potters wheel won’t spin. Until we, potentially, one day include 3D models on the map furniture will remain as static sprites as they always have been.
  
  What we do need, however, are natural player movements towards the crafting stations – that will in turn open up their individual crafting menu accompanied by a familiar crafting SFX, and potentially an on/off state dependent on what sort of crafting station it with lights on and glowing etc. They also needed depth textures added to avoid clipping and such, which have now been implemented.

• Working out how best to separate out the new skills. We became concerned that we were introducing too many ‘portmanteau’ skills simply for the sake of keeping the skill list slimmed down. There’s still some folding together of craft skills when there’s clear similarities in tools and techniques, but overall it felt wrong to lump too much together.
  
  It won’t be necessary for players to dedicate time and effort into building out these skills for the mostpart, unless they are trying to make a civilization on a forest map and other survivalist circumstances.

• Making sure that there’s sandbox settings that cater for faster progression. Sandbox and settings now include settings for Skill XP multipliers for individual skills, so your speed up each different ladder can be directly adjusted.
• Addressing undesired and unfun gameplay loops. A common server admin complaint is that the map swiftly becomes barren of furniture and loot containers due to players chasing XP. As such, in B42 scrapping, dismantling and ripping items will no longer grant XP.
  
  We no longer want progression in a skill to involve destroying piles of items or trashing the map; and instead to concentrate on making things. XP for actions such as building structures and repairing clothing has been boosted to adjust for that, and the individual skill XP multipliers in the sandbox settings also offer more means to compensate. (This said, as things stand, XP for dismantling electrical items or wrecked vehicles remains.)
• Adding skills for wilderness play. Knapping and Carving have both been added. Knapping is used for fashioning stone blades from the pieces of flint you can find in the world, for making knives, spears, axes, scythes and other tools. Carving involves carving wood and bone for similar purposes.
  
  Some carving will also produce decorative items, especially at lower levels, with more artistic and aesthetic crafting recipes due to be added to help you level up without making the same sharp stick over and over again.

• Improving how recipes work and are learned. There are a great many new recipes in B42, and when you become a Level 10 Master Blacksmith it makes no sense that you may not know some of them within that field. As such many of them now come with an ‘Autolearn’ requirement – in which a skill level (or a combination of different skill levels) will automatically know them.
  
  Another, minor, thing we have added meanwhile is making sure that the recipe schematics that can be found alongside the weapons and armor in the randomly spawned survivalist safehouses are generally diagram-based so illiterate characters can also join in the fun.

BASEMENTING

There are two different sorts of subterranean lair in B42 – random ones that could occur in various set places, and permanent ones.

As far as the permanent ones go there’s a range of bunkers, tunnels and cave networks waiting to be discovered – as well as simply new lower floors to some of the map’s more known and recognisable locations.

What we hadn’t done yet for B42, however, is mark all the potential locations for the random basements and then to test them so they’ll all fire off in your game once we hit Unstable beta.

Here’s a map of one of our locations showing the basic spread of what you can expect. Apologies for spoilers, we thought it wouldn’t be too bad seeing as it was only one town. So anyway here’s Brandenburg.

And here’s a quick video showing some, admittedly posed for the camera, testing – in which the same location is shown to have a different basement on a different run.

The basements on show here aren’t dazzlingly exciting, but this will of course be the case for most of the ones you find. Part of this testing is also checking the rules that we have in place to match random basement size and orientation to the size of the house.

GRAPPLETECH

Grappletech is, for all intents of purpose, done. This is the update to PZ’s animation tech that allows two characters to directly interact – whether survivor on survivor, survivor on zed, or zed on survivor.

As discussed and shown before, the first use-case of this will be in fixing the jankiness in PZ that’s always surrounded the carrying, moving and disposing of bodies.

In a previous blog we also showed an unimplemented animation of the player throwing bodies through a window, as an example, of where we would take it next – and this has now been added into the system. This can be seen in the following video, alongside some old friends.

PLEASE NOTE: We are aware that after the window chuck the plummet of the corpse doesn’t look great yet. This will be addressed in future, and is separate to what we’re doing with GrappleTech.

PLEASE ALSO NOTE: The ‘effort’ noises the character makes while dragging corpses will be considerably toned down, or absent, in the release version. It’s a bit much here.

At present body dragging and window chucking is not in the internal test build, however it will be required at some point for the crafting revamp as this will allow for far more direct animations with irregularly-shaped crafting stations.

We had previously said it wouldn’t be a part of the Unstable beta, but now it’s done and playable feel it’s a potential – dependent on the progress made by the crafting team.

While we’re back at the K&B house by the way, check out how it looks during the day and the night now.

OTHER STUFF

• Newspapers have been finalled, and this week have been checked through for authenticity by a local American local news journalist. They will next be added to the game’s loot tables once relevant edits have been made.

• We weren’t entirely happy with the predictable way that deer were following our pre-defined paths through forests, and as such with zoning and biome work complete (as seen last month) a natural next step for this system would be to create multiple pathways for wildlife organically.
  
  Work on this is now underway alongside general polish of animal migration, and should make for a more engaging experience come Unstable.
• Over with the Sound Team (as well as providing noises and settings for new items, weapons and altitudes) we have tied their work more closely to the map tools.
  
  They will now have the freedom to create building-specific roomtones and oneshots, where as before hey could only generalise between 7-8 roomtones parameter values. So now we could have anything up to 260 different ambiances and reverb settings, which will make for more immersive experiences in key atypical buildings like movie theatres, large churches, more cavernous areas etc.
• We are also currently testing the glow-up of Muldraugh, specifically at night-time, and it’s looking pretty awesome to tell the truth. We hope that survivors are going to be tempted out of their bases during moonlit hours a bit more than usual to see it.

A full round-up of everything confirmed for Build 42 can be found here. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here. Happy birthday to Andrei Knorr. 16 today!

The post Cortman by Night appeared first on Project Zomboid.

We have done a bit of a stocktake on what we have done in terms of the updated crafting system, and are aiming to have the following finished off for a first release.

(The contents may settle and change, of course, but we feel this is still a fair assessment.)

• Metal smelting and Blacksmithing
• Pottery
• Weapon-related carpentry skills, such as carving handles and shafts for crafted weapons
• Small-scale bone carving to create sewing needles, fish hooks, cutlery and materials for some fun armor types.
• The essentials when it comes to agricultural production: flour, oil, thread, twine etc.
• Weapon crafting performed on in-game surfaces that don’t necessarily require a particular workstation

Not all of these will come with 100% precise animations at first, and direct character interaction with the larger crafting workstations is reliant on the ‘GrappleTech’ we showed previously with dragged corpses and will therefore be mixed in later down the line.

Craft disciplines we will be bringing in during Unstable will include Brewing, Glassmaking and Butchery. Bowyery meanwhile (which clearly will require far more animation, tech, combat and design work) will be at the back of the queue, and is most likely to appear in a later version.

We also believe that, seeing as we have a good art pipeline running, we can relatively easily introduce a wide range of decorative craftable building items to the mix for Unstable – which will likely be of interest to MP and RP players who want to make their bases a little more personalised.

When we put all this out to the public beta we intend to do so alongside a comprehensive modding guide (as we will also for the MP changes) as the refresh here will be fundamental, and new to all.

In pursuit of this, and to generally expedite the process and aid in polish/fixes, we have also reached out to our friends at TEA Games who are providing some extra manpower.

Finally, a quick look at the current status of the UI that appears when you choose to craft on a surface – a table, a worktop, an exposed tree stump if you’re in a forest and such.

(This will become more refined, clearly, and crafting options will also be available as text rather than icons if you prefer it as such.)

BIOMES / FORAGING

One aspect of 42 is that we no longer have a rigid black border, and instead have generated wilderness at the map’s edges.

As a part of this we also needed ways to ‘zone’ these areas, meaning to automatically mark them as a particular area so that the game knows, for example, which sounds to play and which foraging area to allocate.

Having foraging being mapper-defined, and a laborious job to mark up, has always been an issue. It’s a big annoyance for players who like to stray from the beaten path only to discover they’re no longer in a foraging zone.

Here, for example is an overview of some of the 41 map’s current zoning. To the east is a large swathe of unzoned (and therefore unforageable) land – while the zone squares of dark green forest and light green woodland is lumpy, boxy and unnatural.

Now in B42 then ProfMobius, he of Minecraft origin, has put together a biome system for the inner map as well as the generated map that now runs beyond our usual boundaries. By extension, this also means that foraging will be both fixed throughout the map.

Another big part of this is that it will also be more interesting as you walk through more varied patterns of land-types that are far more clearly visually representative of what they are in real world terms.

So here’s what the above looks like with more detailed, automatically created, biomes. Note the more interesting interplay of woodland and deep forest in, for example, the central south area.

Within these biomes the Prof controls the spawning of specific trees over others. In the screenshots below you can see different kinds of forest environment like a River Birch forest, clusters of more pH resistant trees, deep forest, and even semi urban areas.

There are nine biomes in all: deep forest, organic forest, birch forest, pine forest, farm maintained forest, pH resistant forest, and three more which are mixes of the above.

Their generation is guided by geographical features such as rivers, roads, neighbouring farms and large bodies of water. The end result is a lot of much-needed variety for all of your off-road adventures.

We are now working to make life for the modders and mappers easier with this, in terms of biome generation and clean/invisible transitions between the vanilla map and the community’s additions, but otherwise all the above is now in the internal test build.

LIGHTING

In the past few weeks we’ve done more work on in-game lights in terms of balance, purpose and mechanics.

There’s still a fair amount to do, this project will likely continue to be updated through the Unstable beta, but we are closer and closer to the atmosphere we first envisioned when we introduced 42’s new light propagation system.

That includes items like streetlights with an orange hue as (in the 90s, most used sodium), plain neon appearing white, halogen lighting being slightly yellow and incandescent and such. Mix in the coloured lighting that we mentioned last time, and all of a sudden you have a far more interesting lighting-scape to encounter on night-time forays before the power finally goes out.

Another part of this has been to make light overlays and adjust values for each light emissive object: things like signs, crafting station and fridges. This paves the way for a lot of cool lighting scenarios, as seen below in some WIP screenshots.

GLOW UP(DATE)

Last time round we showed you some map work that was taking place in familiar locations, like Muldraugh.

The response was largely positive, but some folk correctly worried that they were perhaps a little too ornate and fancy for Muld – which in itself we have always represented as a very ‘normal’ slice of Americana where normal people lead normal lives, and face the normal everyday challenges of life.

Muld, our first town and first love, will always be front and centre for the tone of PZ and as such we decided to take things in a slightly different direction after feedback.

Public buildings like the school (latest version now seen below) have been made to look a little more realistic for a town like Muldraugh, and Cortman’s is a little less fancy. Other locations, however, like the revamped police station will remain as seen last month.

Everything remains super-improved, please do not worry on that account, but we have toned down the ‘newness’ and the ‘poshness’ of what was shown in Muld.

All buildings seen last time will be used elsewhere on the map also, so will still be available to hold out inside but in a different and more appropriate geographic location.

Here’s another glow-up spot, meanwhile, that went through recently.

OTHER STUFF

• Nick from TEA is working on edge-case moments of unfairness and mis-targeting that occur during hectic moments in combat and can result in frustrations. It is our hope that (alongside 42’s general improvement and polish to player movement via bugs fixed in the animation system) we can have some pain points removed before we hit Unstable.
  
• Among many and varied other things both big and small, the MP team have been working on smoothening the movement and direction of zeds that are chasing your fellow survivors. While perhaps not something you generally notice in the heat of the moment, as the following video shows it should bring a less-jaggedy feel to general MP zombie pathing.

A full round-up of everything confirmed for Build 42 can be found here. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here

The post The Biomic Man appeared first on Project Zomboid.

CRAFTING CONSOLIDATION

At this point the main element of the Build 42 update that’s been holding stuff back has been the substantial crafting overhaul that’s been underway.

When we set out with B42 our main ambition has been to fill out the crafting potential of the game to vastly expand the end game by providing players the ability to build a community and replace a lot of the items that currently require looting to obtain to give players the ability to run servers and game worlds indefinitely without needing to respawn loot.

We’ve made good progress towards this end but the more time has gone on we’ve realized that aiming to achieve these goals are holding back Build 42’s entrance to an Unstable beta release. While it’s definitely achievable, and will be realized in time, stubbornly holding things back until we get there it only going to delay people getting a hold on all the other cool stuff in the Build that they’ve been waiting for.

As such we’ve decided it would be a better approach to polish up what we have, and continue the process of bug fixing and polishing the build to the point it would be able to go into the Unstable branch. Then for us to fill out the gaps in the crafting overhaul during Unstable, or perhaps with some smaller releases while Build 43 is under full development.

Though we haven’t worked out exactly what will be in the first iteration, there’ll still be a lot of new crafting for people to sink their teeth into, from stuff like the blacksmithing, pottery, woodworking, food preservation, extra fluid and workstation mechanics, new crafting system and much more. Certain crafting tech trees we’d hoped to be in the initial 42 Unstable release will be pushed back though, to avoid any more unnecessary delays.

People would much rather see the build out and get to play with all it has to offer, rather than be upset about the things never made it into the first Unstable release as originally planned. In the meantime, while there’s a ton to play with, initially the crafting overhaul may not quite live up to the potential we set out for until we fill it out later down the line.

We’ve only made the decision this week, while active development of the other major features has been rolling on. As such the build is still very unstable, unbalanced and buggy: it’ll definitely take some time to focus on fixing and polishing it up to a releasable state, and to fill in any gaps we feel we need to make the build feel whole.

As such the Unstable build is not imminent, but with this readjustment of our plans the pile of stuff that needs to be done before release has gotten a lot shorter. How quickly we’ll get the build shipshape remains to be seen, it will take some time to settle, but we’ll likely have a much better picture by the next time the blog rolls around.

MULD GLOW-UP

As you already know the map is getting a significant lick of paint – with new towns, bigger buildings in cities and underground locations.

With all the improvement, and the new tiles going toward this improvement, then our existing towns were starting to look a little threadbare. Until now, of course.

As you can see, Ayrton has been heading back into our familiar locations and giving them all a fresh lick of paint. The difference is quite marked, and we’re hopeful that you’ll all enjoy what we’ve done with the place once 42 goes Unstable.

LIGHTING GLOW-UP

42’s lighting system is a big improvement from 41’s, with enclosed rooms without light sources actually appearing dark and general light propagation being a lot more realistic.

Something we have recently improved on, in this area, however are the individual lights within each room: on lamps, signs, crafting stations, electrical appliances and such.

Here what we’re doing is adding a sprite as an overlay on top of light sources to give them a ”on” status. After tinkering with 42’s new light parameters we have been able to produce more consistent colour temperatures across our various different light sources types whether coloured, shaded, halogen or otherwise – all while still providing for more radical scenarios like coloured light bulbs.

To demonstrate, here are some example of interior lighting which show how objects that light up (lamps, neon signs, etc) can affect a scene, and how we have blended it with a standard room’s spread of light.

PAPERS PLEASE

Work continues with unconid and werlias in providing assets built with PZ models and 3D items to help us expand on our lore and your immersion into the Knox Event.

The focus is currently on newspapers, but will expand out into flyers once the numbers of back-dated editions you’d reasonably expect to be found on a particular date in 1993 have been fleshed out. So here’s one of our recent examples.

Swiftly followed by the sort of place you’d most likely find one of the most recent (and final) daily editions…

As another part of us bedding down in the lore, meanwhile, we are also making sure that characters in broadcasts, flyers and newspapers who have an evident place of work (or place of demise) have their zombified forms spawn at the relevant location on the map.

This is something of a side project for a few of our coders, but will hopefully pay dividends for when players are exploring new locations and getting to know the locals.

While in this area we are also improving the way in which the world generates loot and zed encounters that mesh better with the overall timeline. Bandit zeds and survivalist zeds, and their safehouses, when first encountered will give a far better indication of the current world state and the number of days since society breakdown.

MP TEAM UPDATE

Over in the MP department, the team have been concocting a few things to make the lives of players and server operators a little easier. To whit:

• The ability for servers to have customisable login and server connection screens, with an image of the server’s own choosing and an additional smaller server icon.
• Improved anti-cheat settings. These could formerly prove problematic but now they have been improved/tightened, and through Server Options you can turn each one on and off individually, and also configure actions when cheats are detected – whether its banning, kicking, logging or ignoring.
• Added an interface for viewing the capabilities of different roles like Admin, Moderator, and User. This interface also allows you to add custom roles, and from that customize the user capabilities for these new roles.
• A new ‘War Manager’ feature intended to help server admins govern conflict between rival groups on the map. Everything about this is customisable, especially timers and countdowns, but essentially during a waged (and accepted) war then safehouse protection is turned off for all parties involved. This comes after a war has been declared and has been accepted, with refused declarations steadily taking away (admin-defined) points that will ultimately leave you unprotected if you stave off war declarations for too long.

This is all clearly on top of many, many other smaller and wide-ranging improvements.

FUN LOOTIN’

Finally, small details we know, but the Art Department have also been pumping out more items to give a little more personality to the zeds you slay – and to the homes they once lived in.

This month’s target has been novelty key-rings and interesting bags/containers. All relatively simple for us to mix into your looting, but hopefully with some payoff as you find interesting items in each home you pillage, and each pocket you rifle through.

This month’s non-buried corpses in the cemetery from Fritz. A full round-up of everything confirmed for Build 42 can be found here. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here

The post Glowing Onez appeared first on Project Zomboid.

Welcome to the second entry in our on-going investigation of Project Zomboid’s roleplaying scene!

This time, we’re taking a wander around the strange Pandemonium server, an area cut off and forgotten by the rest of the world, surrounded by impenetrable fog and filled with otherworldly monsters and phenomena (which exist as custom-made tiles, placed by the moderators for special events), along with the usual hordes of the infected.

Rather than typical “seasons” of events, Pandemonium uses “Books” with different rule sets and lore. My journey through the server took place in Book 3, and Book 4 began on May 10th.

Many systems, including combat, use a dice system, and the system has seven skills: Charm, Brutal, Resolve, Sharp, Deft, Wit, and Luck, all of which come into play throughout the game.

The biggest settlement is Alton, and two of major groups are the Red Brigade (a Communist group led by Imran Al-Hakim) and the Barrel Dogs Motorcycle Club (led by Skitzo).

But it’s a smaller group that I first make acquaintance with, as I am mysteriously teleported into Camden County by means unknown to science…

Pandemonium

When I join Pandemonium, I’m outside, in a small town, with blue grass everywhere. Luckily, there are two friendly women nearby to fill me in on where – and when – I am. I’m in a town called Alton in Camden County, New Jersey, in the year 2005.

My two new friends, Sofia and Vero, lead me into their house nearby. Sofia asks me to take my shoes off as I enter. I do so, even though my Oxford brogues are famously kept in pristine condition. They offer me a beer to drink and chair to sit in, and I eagerly accept both.

They tell me of the strange monsters in the world – giant “teeth worms”, beings posing as people, others that are full of acid – and portals in the area, through which all these monstrosities arrived. Two men, Jimmy and Damon, enter. They seem friendly, and the nearby radio crackles into life.

There’s trouble at a lake near a place called Ingles. I smell a story, and volunteer to join the excursion. They give me a knife and a baseball bat and we all head to the lake in a minivan and a car. It’s a long drive, interrupted by an attack on a horde of the infected, their skin lit with strange blue glows (re-textures of PZ’s vanilla zombies).

We finally reach the lake and prepare for battle. I’m excited for the story of a lifetime, the magnum opus that will win me a Pulitzer… but then I am told that the combat could take 3 hours due to Pandemonium’s systems. I would do almost anything for a story, but I draw the line at staying up past my bedtime. So I reluctantly leave, my dreams shattered.

Thankfully, when I return the next day, I have a guide, Voices in the Wind, who has set up a demonstration fight for me between two characters, Quinn and Amber, over someone called Prudence. Firstly, they use text commands to roll dice to see who will take the first turn. They continue to “roll dice” for attacks and defence, and the insults fly fast. Quinn fires a nailgun at Amber, but then a busted Sheriff’s cruiser arrives, driven by a scarred man called Skitzo, who tells them to end the fight.

My guide brings me to another base, where I learn of other groups like Montgomery and Babylon, along with the Barrel Dogs and the Red Brigade, who are constantly in conflict. But first, we head to interview Malice, the head of Montgomery, and I find a story which is interesting in another, spookier way.

Malice brings me to a room where a white plastic chair sits behind two sets of prison bars. This is where they kept a creature they captured, a nine-foot-tall “gobbler” with a mouth in its stomach. The scope of my story expands into another dimension as Malice tells me how an entity named “Erebus” took over the gobbler’s mind, a being who seems to be a shadow god controlling all the events in Camden. The gobbler made the room freeze, hypnotised a group member who “hasn’t been the same since”, and then snapped its own neck.

(Like a lot of roleplaying, I have to use my imagination, and assume this scenario was a mixture of custom tiles, and the dice system to figure out the storyline.)

My guide brings me to Alton Med, headed by an ex-cop called Emile. Emile, along with their second-in-command Callahan, tells me all about the hospital, which seems large and professionally run.

The lead doctor, Felicia Marsch, tells me they treat a wide range of injuries, are neutral in group politics, and that monsters are to blame for most casualties. Unfortunately, I can’t interview monsters to hear their side of the story, but the hospital does have an externally linked bulletin board with all the knowledge the group has on the creatures, a very interesting and unique source.

I have no idea if the pictured monsters on the board actually exist in the map, but this puts me into the mindset of the server, the bounds of reality and myth breaking down.

My guide then brings me to the base of the Red Brigade, which is currently being attacked by the Barrel Dogs biker group. Due to being in God mode, I get an interesting “behind the scenes” look at how the events occur.

I wander around the base and see invincible (and to every non-admin, invisible) admins placing custom (static) tiles of flames and destruction all around, simulating an attack. Walls get replaced with burned ones, objects get replaced with ashes, and so on.

It makes me appreciate how much work goes into setting up all these scenes, which must all be done by hand. It doesn’t look good for the Brigade, and I log off for the night.

When I return the next day, my guide has set up an interview with Skitzo, the head of the Barrel Dogs, in the bar in their base. Skitzo tells me the Dogs took over when the cops hit the road, soon after the monsters appeared. They hand out food, run a communal kitchen, and make sure everyone’s armed.

We then talk of the raid of the Red Brigade base the night before. Skitzo is convincing in portraying the Brigade as villains, as they killed a member of the Dogs, and two civilians. The Brigade’s leader Al-Hakim was killed the night before, after being betrayed by a soldier who shot him in the leg and ran away. A large amount of ammo and guns were taken, and is now laid out on tables in the base.

Skitzo spins a good yarn, but I need to hear the other side of the story. My guide and I head to the ruins of the Red Brigade base, where we meet Ambrose Matthews, an older man with a gas mask, and a survivor of the raid the night before. He denies that the Brigade’s leader was betrayed, but says he was killed by a pipe bomb to stop him being tortured to death, an oft-used tactic of the Dogs, which went unmentioned by Skitzo. Ambrose also denies Skitzo’s story about the people killed by the brigade; he says the “civilians” had bragged about murdering people, and that their killing was justified.

But Ambrose is a broken man after the raid. He denounces Al-Hakim as a terrorist, though he blames the Barrel Dogs for the existence of their group in the first place. The Barrel Dogs rule with cruelty and an iron fist, and take pride in their destruction, according to Ambrose, but he takes off his mask and says he’s “out” of the Red Brigade.

After all the destruction and chaos I’ve seen here, I can no longer maintain my objectivity. I urge him to try help people, and not to give up hope. Ambrose says he has to lay low, but he will start doing supply drops until he clears his name.

Ambrose leaves, and I wander around the still-smouldering ruins of the Brigade’s base. My time in the world of Pandemonium is at an end. Despite the monsters and the portals, the strangest and most frightening dilemma of all is the eternal one: why can’t people simply get along?

Why must some people be cruel and violent, while others scramble to defend themselves, in an ever widening circle of violence? Perhaps the question is one without an answer, but it’s one we must keep asking regardless, and hope for better days ahead.

This has been Pat_Bren, reporting from Pandemonium.

Thanks to the moderators of Pandemonium for assisting me in my adventures and answering all my questions! If you’re interested in joining the server, you can find out how on their website.

The post RPZ #2: Pandemonium appeared first on Project Zomboid.

SCREENSHOTS

Have you built or seen any cool PZ bases? Found any cool sights in Knox? Let us know via Twitter, or post your screenshot on our forum, the official Discord, Steam, or Reddit!

TheKitty’s verdant Garden of the Dead…

Parapz’s impressive modded base at Rosewood fire station…

Azin’s very impressive rustic set-up…

VIDEOS/STREAMS

Have you seen any cool PZ vids? Written a musical ode to the Dog Goblin? Found any cool streamers we don’t know about? Let us know via our forums, Twitter, the official Discord or Reddit!

Alex Phillips builds a forest base among the ruins of a custom map…

Spoodle attempts to clear the prison of its occupants…

Rainbow Swoop’s Eurobeat remix of some Zomboid music is a banger…

ART

Made a cool drawing of your favourite Knox survivor? Crafted a Spiffo from metal plates and bits of chewing gum? Let us know via our forums, Twitter, or Reddit!

Karamzinova’s stylish survivor…

Nut_By420’s sturdy Spiffo keychain…

Salt_t’s girlfriend’s picture of salt_t’s axe-wielding survivor…

Kyootberry’s forlorn character Salem Moreau…

AND FINALLY…

Grover correctly figured out the secret to survival is a room for your duckies…

Spiffo would like to thank everyone in the community for their wonderful creations, and remind you to keep in touch with us on our forums, Steam, Discord, Twitter, and Reddit!

The post COTD #18: Bangers, Keys, n’ Ducks… appeared first on Project Zomboid.

The map is based on the real life Kentucky town of the same name, and can be found west of West Point. Taylorsville takes up sixteen cells, and is filled with dozens of new and interesting locales to loot, fight, and accidentally burn to death in!

The town fits in well with our base map, and features mansions, farms, factories, and a densely detailed “downtown” area similar to West Point, with a courthouse, a bank, and restaurants, along with a factory, a video store, and more.

Erika has really captured the “feel” of both the towns on our base map, and that of a real life small American town.

We put on our best white suit and most charming Southern accent and found Erika sitting cosy in a large mansion on the outskirts of Taylorsville, where they were kind enough to answer a few questions about themselves and their map!

Erika

Who are you in real life? Tell us a little about yourself.

“I’m a database developer from Stockholm, Sweden. I love gaming, architecture and animals!”

How did you first discover Project Zomboid? Why do you like it?

“A friend suggested the game to me, and I fell in love with it instantly. My favorite game genres are survival horror and simulation, and Project Zomboid feels like a perfect combination of both.”

How did you get into mapping for PZ? Have you made maps or mods for other games before?

“I love to explore all the cool locations in Zomboid, and after a while I wanted to try to make some of my own. I had a lot of fun while making my first map (Louisville Quarantine Zone), so I have continued to make more maps since then. I also previously made a few mods for The Sims 3, but that was a long time ago.” [PAT_BREN EDITOR’S NOTE: The Indie Stone also had some humble beginnings in Sims 3 modding, a long time ago. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”]

Tell us about Taylorsville. What sort of locations can players expect to find? What sort of player will most enjoy the map?

“The town is not very big, but it has a lot of different locations to explore. The main street has a courthouse, and stores filled with almost everything you need to survive. The map also has multiple warehouses scattered around. I think this map is well-balanced for most playstyles, since it has both a busy main street with a lot of zombies. but also some quieter areas in the outer parts of the town.”

How long did your map take to make, in total? What was the most difficult part?

“The map took me almost a year to complete. I’m not sure how many hours I’ve spent on it, but it’s definitely a lot! The most difficult part about mapping is to not get burnt out. My advice is, when you get stuck on something, leave it for a while and do something else, then come back to it later.”

What areas of the map would make a good base? Are there any locations the player shouldn’t go to without being prepared?

“Taylorsville has many areas that make good bases, but my favorite is the warehouse surrounded by fences next to the library. I also like the pawn shop and the motel outside of the town. The main street requires a bit of preparation; it’s easy to get trapped in one of the buildings if you’re not careful.”

Taylorsville is based on a real Kentucky town. Why did you choose that town? How accurate is it to real life? Did you have to make any changes to the real layout?

“I love the architecture that a lot of the smaller American towns have, with the historical main streets and houses. When I saw pictures of Taylorsville, I loved it, and decided to make it my next map project. I tried to make it as accurate as possible but some buildings and locations had to be sized down or removed to avoid the map being too crowded. All the houses have exteriors and interiors that are inspired by real-life homes in Kentucky which I think makes them feel more unique and fun to loot.”

How have players responded to the map? Have any fun player stories taken place on your map?

“I love to watch streams and Youtube videos of people playing the map! It’s really fun to see how everyone plays the game differently and how they explore the map. A lot of people like the amount of detail in the map, which makes me happy, as it’s something I spent a lot of time on.”

Is there anyone else in the PZ community (or beyond) you would like to give a shout-out to? Which maps (or mods) by other users do you enjoy or find interesting?

“I would like to thank Daddy Dirkie dirk, I learned a lot about mapping from his Youtube videos. I would also like to thank Gabester for inviting me to the Unofficial PZ Mapping discord. Everyone there has been really friendly and helpful and inspires me a lot.”

“My favorite mod is Common Sense by Braven, it adds a lot of useful things to the game. It’s really hard to pick a favorite map mod, there are so many good maps available, but I think the Louisville Shipping Port and LV International Airport maps by Simon_MD are really good.”

What’s next in your mapping plans? What’s the dream?

“I currently have multiple map projects that I’m working on, but have not had much time for mapping lately. Hopefully I will finish one of them soon!”

Thanks to Erika for taking the time to answer all our questions! You can subscribe to the Taylorsville map on the Steam workshop.

The post MOD SPOTLIGHT: TAYLORSVILLE appeared first on Project Zomboid.

LIFE’S A DRAG

Something that, clearly, was fundamental to Build 41 was the new animations system – and thus far for Build 42 we haven’t mentioned any improvements to this.

Importantly, it should be underlined that his work isn’t in the internal test build yet (and is certainly unconfirmed as a part of 42 when it first enters an Unstable beta) but we’re far enough along now with work done in this area that we’re comfortable to talk about ‘Zac’s GrappleTech’.

Right now in Build 41 all the animations work perfectly fine in their ‘solo’ states. This is when one player character, or one zombie, is doing its thing individually and not interacting with others around it.

Where problems can arise, however, is when that human/zed interacts with another human/zed. Bites, pulldowns and shoves happen ‘to the air’ around their target rather than the character model itself.

This generally works fine enough but can also lead to feelings of graphical non-interaction, game events not being explained to the player efficiently enough, and the whiff of stun-lock.

How to remedy this then?  

An extension to 41’s anims system, GrappleTech allows us to join two characters in a more personal and combined state.

Essentially on a code level, in vaguely technical terms, we have a ‘Grappler’ and the ‘Grappled’ that combine and synchronize their animations together until the grapple is broken.

What’s more, because this is an extension of the Animation system the Grappled state isn’t just a single, fixed animation, nor just a non-interactive cutscene. Rather, all the interactivity inherent in the Animation State system remains.

In short: the ‘Grappler’ character initiates a grapple – perhaps with an attack or pull-down of some sort –  and the ‘Grappled’ code decides whether the Grapple is to be accepted or rejected.

The grapple system also takes into account whatever variables we desire when making that decision: tiredness, clumsiness, or injuries on either side that could cause the grapple to fail.

As a prototype, and most its likely first application in B42 once the Unstable beta is underway, we made the player able to pick up and drag a corpse.

As you can see here, Zac has leveraged the logic in the Animation State system, and has been able to wire up Martin’s animation variants for picking up a body from the front and back, and then dragging it.

This is fairly rudimentary currently (clearly it would look better with some physics-bobble on the zombie legs as they are dragged around, and we don’t have SFX yet) but what we do have running to prove out the system are a raft of player effects: an impact on player stamina, the exhaustion from dragging the heavy corpse, and the trail of blood that’ll sometimes drag out behind also.

Super-importantly this whole system also lets Animator Martin, and of course modders, animate two characters interacting in their animation software – and then to see that interaction replicated directly in-game. Formerly ‘interlinking’ character actions would have to be animated separately, which was trickier to say the least.

An instance of this can be seen below – which also serves as an example of how we can also tie the Grapple state to other useful gameplay activities: like dumping the corpse out of windows all in one animation sweep. Every stage of the Grappled state is as interactive as any regular state.

We don’t usually show animations that aren’t in-game yet (this is in Zac’s test build, but very rough around the edges still) but again, this is a great example of how both character models can now be worked on at once for both Martin and our modding community inside their animation software.

Ultimately, the possibilities are exciting and open-ended for this.

While perhaps not for 42, in which we mainly plan to use GrappleTech during the beta period to polish existing rough spots of character interaction in the current game, this is the gateway to all sorts of potential gameplay.

The key word here is ‘potential’ (potential!) but this does mean that one day we’ll be able to consider stuff like zombies grabbing players and dragging them through windows, dragged zeds being dumped into pits and graves, animal attacks and tramples, or even (maybe? who knows) mountable steeds one day.

It would certainly be extremely helpful for that thing that hilarious meme reviews always demand too, but that aint gonna happen

WEAPONS ABC

In the current Build 41 there are 161 weapons or items that can be used as weapons, and as of right now in our Build 42 build there are 345 with still a few more to feed in.

The vast majority of these extra weapons are player-crafted, but this number also covers tools that can be used offensively and weapons that have broken but can still cause damage. Things like baseball bat handles, guitar necks and snapped blades. 

Although we always planned a thorough, procedural system for weapon crafting we didn’t originally realise how easy it would be to keep on feeding them through the art pipeline.

In many cases, such as producing interesting variations of the same base item, we could pump through a lot of high quality content in fairly short order. What’s more, as we worked our way through the different approaches to constructing a weapon, we could also find lots of fun and easy ways that we could expand.

• Blacksmithed weapons will generally be the most durable and high quality, but also require the most infrastructure and skill to produce.
• Weapons fabricated in a welding shop will be cruder and lower quality, but still durable.
• Weapons made out of different kinds of sticks and broken pieces of metal or bones, will generally have a much shorter lifespan.
• In terms of more improvised/compound post-apocalyptic weapons, like adding a modification to a baseball bat, for most cases you’ll be making a trade-off between durability and the ability to inflict more short-term damage.
• For the most part in each “family” of crafted weapons there will be options for all the different sorts of weapon that PZ provides: blunt, small blunt, axes, spears and short blade. That said: long blade is an exception. We’re trying to keep swords special, high-tier and high-value – partly because they arguably fit the post-apocalypse less neatly and need to feel different, and partly because we’ve already seen the success of this approach with the katana.
• Spears have been rethought, and many of the spears that you may be used to in B41 have been removed. However, there are also many new spears – and many different ways to make a spear compared to what’s out there currently.

With this wide variety of weapons to craft in the game, it’s our hope that the player will be able to cobble together offensive weapons using the materials they find as they explore the world and to “make up weapons as they go along”. This said, clearly the selection and quality of them will vary widely according to skill.

LEGACY MEDIA

In general with the Build 42 items we tried to have more cool, fun and collectible items. It’s an easy way to get more personality into the game, to keep your looting more varied, and to give you a better feeling of the deceased.

One example of this is that we are updating and adding more ‘recipe magazines’ so that they feel more individual, and less like they all belong to some perfect collection that everyone within the Knox Event seems to possess. We want things to feel more funky and chaotic, like real-life.

This is also, clearly, a way we can make sure we can have rare high-value loot that doesn’t cause players to feel bottlenecked in the way that sledgehammers and generator manuals do in 41.

Although we’ve mainly been talking weapons this month, as you can see there’s also recipe magazines for armour and hollow books that’ll let you hide things inside them. Our artists, meanwhile, have made them all interesting to look at and (you’d imagine) to read and collect.

Also seen here are some examples of recipe clippings and schematics; these will have an appropriate-by-context random recipe on them when your player finds them.

One of the ways we’re trying to make the random survivalist safehouses you may encounter in the world more exciting, for example, is by having the possibility for some of the weapon or other gear schematics to spawn alongside the usual loot you’d find.

LIQUID LUNCH

Last time we mentioned the fluid rework was for hair dyes, at which point it was only those products that had had been converted as they provided a useful and visible test case for mixing and swirling together.

Just a brief update, here, then to say that we have them all converted now and working through the gameplay details of each. The system now caters for: water, gasoline, bleach, alcohol, beverages and milk from the new animals. Here you can see different coloured liquids, in separate bowls.

This week we mixed in the effects of drinking alcoholic beverages and poisons, so characters can get drunk, sick or die. Drunkenness also now comes with visual effects, and delays on character controls depending on the amount of laughing juice you’ve imbibed.

In more boring matters, we’ve also added in systems like rain filling open items left outside, and made rain barrels work with B42 systems also.

ANIMAL CRAFT

Let’s take a quick tour around what RJ’s cooking for animal crafting.

On the right you see the butcher hook: here you slaughter the animal, remove leather/feather, blood, organs, meat and bones. Every animal will have a weight of meat, blood, bones, feathers and the like that depends on the its size and weight at the moment of its unfortunate demise.

Here too you can see the beginnings of the leathering process. On the left of this screen there’s a softening beam, where you can remove excess flesh from a hide – and also get to choose whether you scrape off the fur too. (You can keep the fancy holstein pattern on your leather if you fancy it.)

After that, nearby, is the tanning bucket where you soak the leather in a brain tan or bark tan. After that, the leather goes off to the drying rack you can see on the top of the screen. Leave the leather here for a nice long time, and then you’re good.

Also visible: a churning bucket, to create delicious butter from milk and a calf skeleton, just for fun.

OPERATION: PACKAGING

Granular and non-sexy item, this one, but we hope you’ll agree still one that’ll have a big impact on looting and safehouse storage. We have two longstanding issues to deal with here: messy item hoarding in player bases, and extremely long lists of recipes.

So for the first issue, there’s a simple solution: we now allow players to pack items into boxes that are more efficient to store, both for players and for save files.

The second requires something a little more complicated: the recipe system allowing for dynamic result items so that a single recipe can handle packing or unpacking for several different item types. In 41 each recipe could only have a fixed item as the result: for example when opening canned food we needed one recipe for each canned food type. With the changes we’re making we can have a single “open canned food” recipe for everything, and the recipe will create the proper result item.

SMALL STUFF

• The map team’s quest to polish up Louisville, and beyond, continues with an emphasis on rooftops and higher floors.

• In general, we’re trying to add more variety to existing items in the world – as well as adding new ones. A good example is that you’ll be able to find different kinds of generators, all with different characteristics. This has been set up to be as easy as possible for modders to also add new varieties of generators, requiring only simple item scripts, a tile and some modder ingenuity for whatever cool new features they dream up.

This week’s walk in the dark from Stomno. A full round-up of everything confirmed for Build 42 can be found here. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here

The post D’ya Like Them GrappleZ appeared first on Project Zomboid.

PZ has a large and enthusiastic multiplayer roleplaying community with servers ranging from hardcore military simulations, to the most anarchic and chaotic dance party simulators – and sometimes both at the same time.

Many of these servers have dozens of players at any time, and sometimes up to a hundred: all chatting, dancing, rolling fake dice to simulate combat, and generating an endless stream of fun and interesting stories.

Over the coming months we’ll be exploring each of the five most popular English-language servers: Wasteland, Pandemonium, Project Apocalypse, Project Zomboid Roleplay, and Serious Survival. Each offers a unique and interesting take on Zomboid gameplay, and has its own lore, Discord server, and internal rules and mechanics to learn and play around with.

Expect chaos, strange events, hard-hitting journalism, and a whole host of interesting and insane characters, all created from the vivid imaginations of Zomboid players themselves!

Seeing as we decided to do this exploration of our RP community when we saw this interesting Reddit post, a heatmap for where players go on the Wasteland server, we decided the first steps of our intrepid reporter Pat_Bren (me) into roleplaying-land should be on that self-same location.

This mission, which I had no choice but accept, would also mean that I could feed back a variety of RP requirements and requests from these servers to the teams at TIS and MP coders Vertex Break – the results of which will no doubt one day appear in a future dev blog.

If you want to get into RP the first steps for most, if not all, servers are to apply on the Discord, and to learn the lore – which is different to our base game. Wasteland is set in 2001, two years after a zombie outbreak devastated humanity. The US used nuclear weapons destroying some areas, and turning others into dangerous “Dark Zones”, one of which was the Knox area.

Now, I don my reporter’s fedora and head into Knox to learn the story of the Wasteland…

Wasteland RP

It’s dark when I meet Chip, a trader, and my guide through the Wasteland, at the eastern entry to Knox. He provides me with a helmet, a pen, a notepad, and most importantly of all, body armour marked “PRESS”. Your correspondent’s first stop is a donor area, filled with vehicles and statues.

Chip explains Knox was abandoned until a few months ago. Now, there are about twenty diverse factions in Knox, led by individuals, councils, or the entire community, and only a couple are antagonistic.

One of the groups maintains a transport system between towns. Another is run by the “Empress of Florida”, based on an old American treaty. Another of the groups – Bastion – is comprised of heavily armed mercenaries, piquing my interest. As we speak in the donor area, a mysterious fog rolls in.

The currency is “gold guilders”, though its value fluctuates, and shop prices are generally high. Around 400 active survivors live in the area. Many survivors specialise, though a few try to be self-sufficient, and there are skill caps so they can’t max out their skills.

The first town we go to, and the main hub of the Wasteland, is Hope. At the bus stop I find a flyer for a band called “Invasive Species”. It’s nice to see some culture around, although I do wonder if rock concerts will attract the attention of the walking dead.

Then, I commit a MAJOR RP faux pas: I call another survivor by their name without being told it (it appears on the screen, but you have to roleplay being “introduced” to someone).

With the help of Chip, I am spared a premature ejection from the Wasteland, and we wander towards the community centre, which has a donation box for books and items, a gym, library, and meeting rooms.

Chip tells me there’s talk of setting up a Hope council of shop owners and interested parties, to “keep it safe” and govern the area. As of now, there are no set laws, and everyone takes care of their own affairs, or hires mercs like Bastion to do it for them.

I take note of the mention of “shop owners” running the town. Sounds like an oligarchy in the making – and I will die (or log off) before I let it happen!

A bearded, dark haired man with a hat enters the community centre. I grip my pen, ready to strike, but he says hello and introduces himself as Beau Brooks.

Brooks tell me he has a ranch, and is trying to raise crops. He lost his parents, and hasn’t seen his two brothers since the world ended. Beau likes Hope as it’s peaceful, especially compared to Texas where he’s from. (I should have asked him how he got here from Texas, but didn’t know how far RP etiquette would allow for backstory fact-checking.)

Beau leaves Chip and I with a friendly wave and we head to the now-abandoned camp of a group of refugees called Exodus, where a large scale player event recently took place.

In my investigations of admin-run RP server events for players, the phrase “herding cats” often arises, but this event has clearly gone well. Players were split between the Exodus camp, which is based around an old warehouse, and the bunker of a man named Cornelius Grant, which is now also abandoned following a coup against Grant. During the event, both groups teamed up to fix the bridge to Louisville, and the events team gave people quests and tasks to do using a job board throughout.

Chip brings me to Grant’s bunker, impressive though sterile, and without any inhabitants after the coup, now seems like a true “liminal space”. Silent and eerie, a single red tree somehow surviving in the “park” underground.

We speak of religion. A figure named the Empress of Florida has recently left the Wasteland, due to commitments to other parts of her empire (ie. has left the server due to real life commitments).

Chip explains the Empress was a quasi-religious figure who abhorred violence and wanted to unite all factions, and was widely supported. Chip tells me of another religion, based on the Sacred Shark scriptures, based around super-intelligent sharks in the Ohio river. Of course I don’t believe in it, but I take a stuffed shark with me as a good luck charm – because it surely can’t hurt.

I feel like Bastion, the mercenary group, is the key to the future of the Wasteland, and that I’ll get to the heart of the story if I understand their motives. Why don’t they take over? How do they feel about the proposed town council?

We head back to the centre of Hope, where two young women stand in front of a table of frozen cabbages. They are trading with a well-armed and armoured looking man, and he’s clearly not only here for the cabbages.

He’s the leader of Bastion: Captain Laroux. Just the man a newshound like me needs to speak to. I imagine nervously adjusting my press jacket and make my approach.

I learn he dislikes his group being called mercenaries (so I make sure to keep calling them that), and he speaks in corporate babble about being “experts in personal protection and security services.” Their main job is guarding stores.

One of the nearby traders, Cassie Grant, daughter of the overthrown and ambiguously-deceased bunker owner Cornelius, tells us that a Bastion soldier stole her gun, though according to Laroux, Cassie was caught sneaking into their camp, trying to rescue someone.

I nod, and scribble things down like a real journalist. It’s very interesting to see multiple intertwining ambiguous story threads. Even a highly-skilled and experienced reporter like myself has trouble figuring out the truth.

Laroux consents to a tour of his base and drives me there in his modded Range Rover. He tells me he was raised in New Orleans, and was with the 75th regiment of the US army before the outbreak.

The base is large and impressive, with multiple vehicles and storage tanks, including one that’s branded with Jameson whiskey, though unfortunately it contains only fuel. There’s a medical facility, a bar, a farm, a large tent for guests, and even an in-construction sauna. Eat your heart out Captain Tom. [That one’s for British readers]

We head to the bar, where other Bastion members are hanging around. One plays a nice guitar tune while we speak. Laroux tells me that relations between Bastion and the FarGo caravan company soured recently.

A girl named Ruby was kidnapped by the sisters of a man she killed when he tried to rob a gun store. Eve, the owner of FarGo, then demanded they go save Ruby. Bastion was able to track down the kidnappers, but a hostage situation developed.

Against the advice of Bastion, who were ready to assault the kidnappers, Eve gave herself up for Ruby. BUT one of Eve’s guards started shooting: in the chaos Eve and Ruby were wounded, alongside all four hostage takers who were badly injured but managed to escape.

Eve now blames Bastion for the mess. It all seems very complicated, and enjoyably dramatic. I muse that this might, one day, win me a Pulitzer.

We then speak of Bastion in general. Laroux won’t tell me the exact number of members, but claims there are no discipline problems. Trouble makers are reprimanded and taken off current contracts. They have a monopoly on security contracts, with no competition at all. I ask if they would consider submitting to the democratic will of a future Hope council and becoming a police force or army, but Laroux says no, he has no interest in politics.

I am growing tired of Laroux and his undemocratic powers. I ask him why Bastion doesn’t take over, and he says they’d lose all their contracts if they did so. Then, I hit him with a hidden ace up my sleeve, a critical hit, a “boom, headshot!”: during our drive to the base in his Range Rover, I perused a contract in his glove box. For each of their security jobs, they are paid a measly three boxes of ammo.

Laroux grumbles about looking through his papers, but doesn’t give an answer. I suggest that even if he has no interest in taking over, there’s greedy people everywhere will be looking to use his men and power for their own ends. But he makes clear that that would be the end of his group’s contracts. I find this shockingly naive.

Soon after, I am introduced to his second in command, Lt Aio Smith. She takes over the interview, and tells me of her military background in Africa. I try to imply that there’s a possibility of her taking over Bastion, but it doesn’t stick. Smith seems unfailingly loyal to the Captain, due to their shared history, and it strikes me as a little odd, soulless, almost cult-like.

As my time in the Wasteland draws to a close, Smith drives me back to Hope.

Now alone, I try to convince her that Bastion’s power could easily be used for evil, and that the Captain is naive. But she is uninterested. In a final, desperate bid to get her to break her blind loyalty to the Captain, I ask if she’s happy being known to history as “the world’s greatest second in command”?

But it doesn’t work. She counters that she wants to be remembered as the first woman in the 75th Rangers. A strong riposte which I am powerless against.

She drives off and I wander back into Hope, wondering what the future holds for the Wasteland and its inhabitants. Will the town council bring stability and order? Will it favour the interests of shop owners and the wealthy? Will Bastion find itself under threat, and strike?

Only time will tell, but my time here has been extremely interesting, and a wonderful introduction to the possibilities of roleplaying.

This has been Pat_Bren, reporting from the Wasteland.

Thanks to the moderators of Wasteland for assisting me in my adventures! If you’re interested in joining the server, you can find out how on their website.

The post RPZ #1: Wasteland appeared first on Project Zomboid.

In addition cyt, along with Shark, has created multiple intriguing standalone vehicle mods, including a huge Volvo bus, souped-up Mercedeses, a McLaren F1 (one of the world’s fastest production cars), an M113A2 Armored Personnel Carrier, and a Soviet BRDM-2 scout car. Cyt also worked with Shark, Chuck, and Jade on the Expanded Helicopter Events mod, previously featured on this very mod blog.

We followed the column of fumes and the rattles of diesel engines to a boarded-up mechanics shop, where we found Cyt tinkering away at their mods. We were able to convince them to take a break to answer some questions about themselves and their mod!

CYT

Who are you in real life? Tell us a little about yourself.

“I’m Mert, currently on the Aegean side of Asia Minor, and I go by “cyt” online. When I’m not working on 2D/3D arts, I mostly engage in wildlife/landscape and action photography. I’m the tenant of two cats who run the show at my house.”

How did you first discover Project Zomboid? Why do you like it?

“I discovered Project Zomboid on Desura, got my Steam copy sometime around the vehicle build, and started playing it. It’s a different game today compared to the Desura days, and it has everything that I would ask for in a sandbox game, allowing you to write your own apocalyptic story.”

Please give us a quick overview of all the vehicle mods you created. Do you have an interest in vehicles in real life?

“My main project for the last two years has been SCKCO. Working with Shark and receiving input from Zhenja1, we are producing all the types of cars you could see in Kentucky, ranging from countryside vehicles to luxurious Cadillacs. More than 70 unique cars and their variants are included in that pack. Realism is one of the key features of SCKCO; every car is period-correct, down to its trim packages. If it wasn’t on sale before 1993, we’re not adding it! Additionally, the mod adds animations and a few other bits of flavor, such as roller shutters and sliding truck doors.”

“Before SCKCO, we developed a few military vehicles with Shark, such as the XM93, BRDM, HEMTT, Interim Fast Attack Vehicle, and Chenowth Desert Patrol Vehicle. The experience we gained enabled us to work on the massive pack that SCKCO has become. Military Environment Addon includes military-related radio tiles and respective items, as well as vehicle frameworks that we use for our M113A2 APC and future military-related vehicles. Other mods, such as the McLaren F1, FJ75, International 4700, and Unimog (my favorite vehicle), are one-off mods that I’ve created for myself and released to the public.”

“I’m interested in any self-propelled vehicle, including aircraft and ships. The reason I’m mostly focused on cars is that we can’t find ways to implement other modes of transport into PZ without it being a poor experience for players.”

“As for real life interest in cars, I actually designed a livery for Saito Motorsports Group’s Mazda MX-5. SMG competes in the Mazda MX-5 Cup, which features 14 rounds across 7 different tracks. The 2024 competition is ongoing, and SMG are near the top of the leaderboard so far!“

How did you get into making vehicles for PZ? Have you made vehicles or models for other games before? Do you have any training in 3d modelling/coding etc.?

“I am fully self-taught in 2D/3D graphics, including vector graphics and VFX. My parents are computer addicts, and I still remember them trying to beat “Prince of Persia” and “DOOM”. My father also does technical drawings of water pumps/turbines using AutoCAD. All of this fueled my interest in the subject.”

“My creative journey in 2D/3D graphics started with SimCity 4. As a young “virtual” mayor, I wanted landmarks of my real-life city to exist in my Sim city. I grabbed Gmax and started modeling architecture I liked. Other than Zomboid, I’ve created liveries for Digital Combat Simulator and had a few plane/vehicle mod projects that weren’t released for public use. For Zomboid, I wanted my game to have some military vehicles, so those were my first mods.”

Tell us about your vehicles. How many have you made, in total? How long does it take to make each vehicle? What is the most difficult part?

“I don’t have an exact count, but it’s around 100 vehicles. Currently, I have 159 gigabytes(!) of mod-related files. It includes all source material for models, textures with masks, substance materials that I designed to speed up workflow, and all the logos I made with vector graphics. The hardest part was finishing the M113, which took a whole month to model, texture, rig with my custom bone structure for tracks, and animate it. For me, the most difficult part is always obtaining good quality source photographs of cars, with depth. Blueprints are always two-dimensional, so without good photographs, a vehicle model’s curves can’t be designed well.”

Which would be the best, and worst, of your modded vehicles to have in a real zombie apocalypse? Which would you most like to own in real life?

“In a real zombie apocalypse, the best vehicle would be the M113A2, which is a safe, all-weather/tracked tin can! The worst would be the McLaren F1. Getting your rare car scratched would be nerve-wracking for a car enthusiast, even in the apocalypse.”

You have collaborated with other modders on Expanded Helicopter Events and the Military Environment add-on. Tell us about these collaborations, and how they came about. Do you enjoy working with others? Is it easier or more difficult than working alone?

“It all started with my fighter pilot mod. Shark contacted me, and we started making mods together. I got into EHE with my UH-60 model, and we haven’t stopped since then. Working in collaboration brings new ideas to the table and expertise. When you have like-minded partners and your visions align, the product ends up being superb!”

Is there anyone in the PZ community (or beyond) you would like to give a shout-out to? Which mods or maps by other users do you enjoy or find interesting?

“Scavenger and his inspiring mods are a must, as are hehehemann’s repair overhaul, and AuD’s QoL mods like Cartography Modifier and sound effects for item actions.”

“Shoutout to Shark, Zhenja1 and Chuckleberry Finn, Chuck’s Game Night is a great addition to PZ’s multiplayer experience, bringing Monopoly and Uno to our favorite game.”

“And thanks to my friends Jedasd and the best virtual marksman of Ankara, Erdem.”

What’s next in your vehicle plans? What’s the dream?

“Nothing specific yet, but we have a long list of cars on Trello waiting to be done, along with another project or two!”

Thanks to cyt for taking the time to answer all of our questions! You can find all their mods here.

The post MOD SPOTLIGHT: CYT’S VEHICLES appeared first on Project Zomboid.