Game Feed

Hallodoid

by nasKo

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/4460946/a79b7e1ce03d60a688b58f3d669526608e5ef13c.png Okay, so. Where We’re At We have a limited number of external testers running around the current B42, and their first impressions have been positive. Which has been a relief. There remains, however, much to do. In the coming weeks we will be getting more and more feedback on the more in-depth systems like animals and nu-crafting, and in turn addressing it. Tester Feedback Here’s some of the initial feedback we received, though please note that these were not yet from extended multi-week playthroughs. Darkness “I found I wasn’t running into zombies like I usually would randomly scattered throughout the place, until an alarm came and that was absolutely brutal. I didn’t think it’d draw so many. And the darkness is unforgiving too, I was scrambling for lampposts for their spotlight trying to fight off what was left chasing me until I was exhausted and finally able to rest.” “In regards to the darkness: I think it’s pe...

Heat of the Night

by nasKo

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/4460946/acdd3c364bbf680c10e8871849839fdb30521f7a.png Hi everyone, it’s been a good month of general work and polish on our closed build. Lots of general required mop and brush up, but as examples of what’s been going on here’s a few items: Making fishing clearer and easier to follow for new players – making the messaging clearer to the player when fish are present for example via the disturbances on the water, and making it more obvious when a fish has been caught. Fixing issues with body-dragging, for example bugs with phasing through walls on pick-up and drop. Improving animal pathfinding to make them act more realistically around walls and map structures, and continued general work on the unseen paths that animals will follow. Optimization work on the player’s view cone to help the game in busy areas. Map testing and fixing throughout new towns added to the game, and all the existing areas that have been given a glow up – which are primarily in Muldraugh. Adding m...

Tidy Up Time

by Higgs

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/4460946/6f7d1048847113d1eb9bdabc9fe866e14450fdda.png At the moment we are fixing and polishing our current internal build to get it ready for more formal internal closed testing amongst a slightly wider set of gameplay testers. 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 fir...

Cortman by Night

by Higgs

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/4460946/eb5a25c671ba5a323cf4becf271562d0ade71b49.png Hey all. Alongside continued crafting work it’s very much a time of mixing/polishing previously announced and described things in the internal test build. As such please forgive us if things are a little ‘bullet pointy’ and expanded info on things you’ve heard about before. It’s all stuff that needs doing. 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...

The Biomic Man

by nasKo

As discussed last time, in the interests of getting the 42 Unstable out of the door we are limiting the number of new craft disciplines that will be initially available and then dripfeeding others (alongside polish, balance etc) in updates to the beta. We have done a bit of a stocktake on what we have done, 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 BlacksmithingPotteryWeapon-related carpentry skills, such as carving handles and shafts for crafted weaponsSmall-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 wi...

Glowing Onez

by nasKo

How do, all.  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 ...

D'ya Like Them GrappleZ

by MadDan

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 ...

Zaumby Thursday

by nasKo

Hey all, here again for the March Thursdoid. Lots of stuff from lots of different areas of the game this time, we do hope you enjoy. STRIKE A POSE We’ve mentioned the fact that Build 42 will have a variety of readable materials that you can loot and inspect, but we hadn’t shown them off in-game as quite frankly they didn’t look great. They were crammed inside our existing Survival Guide UI, and it really wasn’t going to bat for us. We didn’t really want to create a load of individual images that wouldn’t be readily translatable into other languages either, and become a massive timesink for our art department who are already pumping out loads of vital stuff elsewhere. So, clever Aiteron got onto the case... So what is this? Well, it’s a secondary UI API system – and with it both ourselves and modders can create readable text UIs in easier and more flexible ways, and what’s more reuse templates for them too. Techie bit: currently, 4 Java elements have been added: Base, Text, Texture, Tex...

Leapdoid

by nasKo

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/4460946/a58ac8f6b03f02876a287fa86bc2da61425961fb.png Hey all, a good mix of things this ‘doid. Fun gameplay stuff, and a chunk of info we wanted to flag for modder-awareness and the more tech-minded amongst you. (Feel free to skip that bit to get to the more enticing gun stuff from Fenris that’s become its first application.) Onwards, then. HUNKER INNA BUNKER Permanent underground structures are being added to the internal build’s map for testing. As discussed before some basement locations will be randomised to add surprise flavour to your looting, but there’ll be plenty of ever-present locations that will likely be survivor favourites for taking over and making your own. Here’s a fun example, which also very clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of B42’s tech upgrade that governs the realistic spread of light. It really is very dark down there, and with that very claustrophobic and scary… Another aspect of the underground structures is sound, and now we’ve got mor...

Hmm, Upgradez

by nasKo

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/4460946/cfe1b25a7e5c49bc62802bb62b5d7f3c91a50797.png It’s been a really big week for us, as we merged the second-to-last element of Build 42 into the main codebase across the rest of the team – which is the long awaited tech upgrade which brings a whole host of improvements to the engine. It’s currently being tested and the feedback has been super positive so far. This said, it’s also brought over lots of small bugs, visual glitches, and issues with new depth map clipping items incorrectly. Nothing over-dramatic, but enough stuff to keep testers and coders alike fully occupied. This is where a lot of our brains have been at recently, so we thought we’d give you an update on the engine as it now stands while testers run around kicking its tires – alongside some videos they have made along the way. Likewise, we also have some examples of some of its new capabilities that we will be able to explore in future – perhaps during the Unstable beta, perhaps beyond. So, a run-...

Zleigh Ride

by nasKo

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/4460946/471f9d0e9b404d8e0fd517b79c92eb6fc7c3324f.jpg Happy winter religious festival if you celebrate it, or if you have it in a month’s time, or just if you think it’s nice because you get a few days off while your neighbours drown in eggnog! Here’s the December news round.  CRAFTING TEAM UPDATE With the last Thurzdoid some people arrived at the mistaken impression that in normal b42 play, the iron ore deposits would exist on the map and be the primary source of metal for crafting. While we’re not ruling this out in the long term, and it’ll certainly be the only source of metal to be found within the wilderness map (more on this later), the primary logical source of metal would always initially be found within the now abandoned civilized world itself.  {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/4460946/836e4e317b4860311911113b51ecfb50df95221b.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/4460946/bd626ce8d85a9ad48a13bc678220e51a060b5e7d.png For several builds now, players have been able to dismantle various metal...

Project Zomboid shows off exciting upgrades for long-awaited build 42

by editor@pcgamesn.com

Project Zomboid is perhaps one of the most aptly named games I can think of. The beloved zombie survival sandbox game has been a labor of love for developer The Indie Stone since 2011, and celebrates ten years on Steam this month while still maintaining its early access status. Yet, it's clearly found success; with an impressive 94% 'very positive' Steam rating across more than 190,000 reviews in that time, the ambitious game has certainly found a loving audience, and now we've just been given a big update on what Project Zomboid build 42 looks like. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Project Zomboid build 42 will allow spooky basements and sewers Project Zomboid Build 42 will make the map a lot bigger Project Zomboid update 41.73 lets you store gas in bottles

One Door OpenZ

by nasKo

Yip yip, hello. Let’s dive in. SWING BOTH WAYS Another exciting addition to the build 42 tech upgrade branch has just dropped. The tech upgrade branch is what contains our optimizations, improved view cone, basement/skyscraper technology and now… an immersive improvement that we’ve wanted for a long time, that could potentially lead to many cool additional gameplay opportunities that weren’t possible before.  That’s right, kids, doors have now entered the third dimension. Where before doors would just flip instantly on the tile the moment they are opened or closed, now they are animated and use the tech branch’s depth buffer. This is obviously a huge improvement for immersion, but could potentially lead to cool new mechanics in future (note, certainly not b42’s initial release) like opening doors at different speeds, doors being left slightly open, peeking, bashing open, one-way fire doors and such. While easy to overlook, our doors are pretty much unchanged since the 0.1.5d days yet a...

Cellar Door-doid

by nasKo

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/4460946/47bda1b1ce7fdf2396e4aedf6e394e40745a7ccf.png Evening all, here we all are again. Let’s take a stroll through the development Event zone. Crafting Overhaul Recap Now the vast infrastructure overhaul of the crafting systems has been merged and opened up to the rest of the gang, we’ve had a crack team of coders working solidly on implementing the various new post-apocalyptic profession tech trees, workstations and recipes that will provide for a vast amount of options for crafting and building in B42. As a summary for anyone who isn’t up to date on our overall goals, the crafting overhaul is intended to provide the following things to Zomboid: Give Zomboid a more feature rich end-game. At present, long time players of the game often find they run out of objectives once they get a well-stocked and secure safehouse. We want to provide many more objectives a settled survivor can undertake to improve their safehouse, or indeed a community of players. More things to ...

Sky High

by nasKo

So… hmm, where were we? Okay so, recent weeks have seen two mega-merges into our trunk internal testing build. The first was latest from our MP team, to top up the central development branch with their latest from their ongoing server work to flag up any unexpected issues and to get a few gameplay systems back online in MP. The second was the guts of the long-awaited crafting revamp from Turbo, which means that the functionality for all our primary crafting stations is now in – and it’s a matter of banging heads together and integrating everything we’ve had stacked up for it. To this end we’re pleased to announce that we’ve hired yet another stalwart individual from the modding community to aid us in this quest. We were thinking about the different modders who could give our crafting team a little extra grunt, we have so many amazing ones after all, but the offerings of Soul Filcher stood out as being produce of exactly the sort of brain we needed. We’re really happy to have Soul offic...