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Project Zomboid News

Howard Ze(n)d



For our last blog we released the new unstable beta version of Build 41 – which was 41.69 (nice). Today we are releasing 41.71, which follows last Thursday’s 41.70.

You can subscribe to the Unstable beta branch and download 41.71 by right-clicking PZ in your Steam library, and selecting Properties. Now go to the Betas tab and select the "unstable" branch from the dropdown menu.



These have generally been iterative patches, polishing the unstable beta up to a standard that we hope to be ready for a wider stable release next week.

This week’s primary task has been our Sound Team and coder brains fixing out some nasty total sound cut-outs that had been cropping up on busy servers.

Another primary thing we’ve been adding patch-by-patch is our new approach to action music. Instead of switching between tracks mid-combat, the music is reactive and can increase and decrease in intensity during combat and other dramatic moments. The familiar tune can cross-fade into a high action version, essentially.

So far we’ve been getting a very positive reaction from players on the beta. With 41.71 we will have ten out of the fourteen action tracks working in this way, so let us know what you think!

Otherwise in these patches we’ve been fixing lots of different longstanding niggles with the game, so have a peek at the changelists – and jump in if you fancy on the unstable beta to let us know whether you think the build is ready for wider public consumption.

Finally, if you notice that the Unstable beta is misbehaving with your favourite mods, then please let your favourite mod authors know – though please also be patient with them as they all exist in the real world with real lives/jobs/families/pets/TV shows to watch.

Finally finally+ a reminder that we will be removing some legacy builds from the Steam betas once the latest unstable beta goes stable. If you are playing on an older Build 41 beta, then please return to the mainline if at all possible.

[h3]NEXT[/h3]
Meanwhile, new stuff continues to build for future updates to Build 41. The MP team continue their long-term work on having all items operate server-side to prevent item-spawn cheating, while also providing improvements to 41’s more iterative patches.

At the moment there’s also MP work in the can on stuff like vehicle radios now receiving radio stations, VOIP and radio chat messages in bubble text over the car. Likewise improvements have been made to your client predicting where your friends are falling/dying which is resulting in resulting in far less corpse placement weirdness.

Work is also currently going into the smoothness of vehicles being controlled by other folks on the server – especially when they are moving at high speed.

On the TIS side, meanwhile, EP has been integrating a new feature into the in-game map system that will be of great interest to admins and server owners: the ability to see where individual players are on Build 41’s in-game map.

Server operators will also have the option of allowing members of safehouses or factions be able to see each other on their own map, if that suits their playstyle more than the usual default of having absolute no idea where your friends are.



While it’s still not imminent, Aiteron is also integrating new animations into his fishing system that are starting to look really cool. This is super WIP and will get a lot of polish, but this is what it looked like this morning.

Please note that in the vid the character is following the cursor: the cursor doesn’t represent fish placement. Gameplay hasn’t been fully tied to the anims yet.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We are also looking for feedback and local knowledge from PZ players from Kentucky (and nearby surrounding regions) who enjoy fishing themselves.

If this means you, then please check out the questions on this Google form. Massive thanks to those who previously emailed and have already given us some direction also!

 
[h3]NEW HIRE[/h3]
Avid TIS followers will know that for a while we have been on the hunt for an Animation Engine Specialist to join the Project Zomboid team, and we are delighted to welcome one Howard Smith to our ranks. Howard is a big PZ fan, and also has big brains that have previously worked on the likes of Call of Duty, Halo and (wait for it) Left 4 Dead.

Truth be told, in the big push for MP our work on our animations tech stalled somewhat – and there’s still many, many aspects of PZ combat and movement that we want to streamline and improve, and likewise many complex systems we’d dearly love to integrate in the future. Howard has a tasklist a mile long covering areas in which our animator has been logjammed recently, and as such will be something of a busy boy.

Something else, meanwhile, that this gets us back on track with is work towards a release of our internal AnimZed animation tools to the community. This won’t be an imminent thing, but part of Howard’s work while getting bedded down in our code will be in building documentation and making some improvements both for us and the modding community.

[h3]MORE NEW HIRE?[/h3]
Following the success of Build 41, we also find ourselves in a position where we can hunt down other experienced Games Programmers to join the Project Zomboid team.

We are looking for coders willing and able to refresh some of our older systems, polish the existing ones and then to delve further into the features that will be part of the Knox Event’s exciting future.

Interested applicants should check our jobs page, but we should underline that we currently don’t have any entry-level positions available. You will need to have a fair amount of experience we are afraid.

[h3]TILL NEXT TIME[/h3]
That’s all the major news for this blog, but tomorrow we will have a surprise treat for denizens of the PZ subreddit. Pat_Bren has tracked down and interviewed a community hero, which has finally allowed us to say…



This week’s arboreal scene from a S1ngle Man. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.

41.69 Unstable - Niiice



Heya everyone, so today we’re pushing the 41.69 patch out into the Unstable beta, which you can subscribe to by right-clicking PZ in your Steam library, selecting Properties, now go to the Betas tab and select the "unstable" branch from the dropdown menu.




This is a the first release of a wide-ranging version that touches many parts of the codebase – including some fairly foundational stuff to improve the smooth running of MP, some handy new hooks for modders and many and various different fixes and improvements.

The full and unexpurgated changelist is pretty vast, but a quick topline run-through of its contents will now follow:

  • In MP: improvements to car physics, admin improvements, anti-cheat fixes, better handling of dead bodies, PvP and safehouse fixes, fixed grass growing through safehouse floors and much much more.
  • VHS fix – an end to the peril of one-time-use video tapes on servers.
  • A raft of Steamdeck compatibility improvements.




  • New items, new forage finds, updated 3D models, new hair types and more.
  • Scarecrows and Lab Skeleton ‘mannequins’ that can be kitted out in player clothes.




  • Quality of life features: renamed Skill books, better item placing, movable minimap and many and various other things.
  • 3D items now shown as textures rather than models. As such they now slide around less when the player moves, and have far less of a performance impact when all piled up.
  • New/improved tag system for modders, and other general mod-side improvements.
  • Added ambiance noise for different areas on the map tied to particular buildings and items, such as a little bit of mall muzak.


[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

  • Relevant ‘power down’ noises for the above-mentioned sounds to flag the power/water cutting out.


[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

  • New sounds for arcade machines, gas pumping, vehicle headlights and car window opening (both via handle and electric windows). Also BBQ noises, campfire sounds, fireplaces and more zed trip/thump stuff.
  • Improved treatment of inside/outside sounds depending on whether doors and windows are open or closed.
  • Loads of UI and controller improvements that are universally handy, but have primarily been put in for (you lucky!) Steamdeck users. 41.68 works okay with the new handheld device, but 41.69 should provide some vast improvements.
  • Lots of general balance, including a spotlight on foods and recipes.
  • A shitload of general fixes.


We would be hugely grateful if players could move over to 41.69 and report any oddness or hiccups, and likewise to inform the creators of any mods that have been broken.
 
We have done our best to bypass disruption, but in such a wide-ranging patch there will always be mod toes that the code has unavoidably trodden upon.
 
(Creators of radio/TV-related mods should especially pay attention to the MP VHS fix, as it may cause some issues.)

[h2]OTHER STUFF[/h2]
Elsewhere work continues on Build 42 and 43 content continues, with RJ still focusing on farm animals, and also the introduction of some basic AI versions of wild beasts also. Please consider these WIP!



Also coming to you today with a WIP tag (as we are working on far better player directional ‘strain and lean’ animations rather than a repeated ‘pull animation’) is a video from Aiteron showing his current work on the fishing update.
 
A lot of work these past few weeks has also been into making it work online, and our testers have been having some impromptu fishing competitions already.
 
Here, also, you can see:
 
  • Water splashes (visuals WIP) to show placement of groups of fish, ultimately we plan to move to a more constant surface disturbance to show the positions of fish at any given time, as well as use the current splashes instead when the fish is struggling on the line.
  • Lines and hooks that can be changed on the fishing rod that have an impact on your fishing.
  • A fishing net you can catch items in, and a new ‘generic trash’ item that can also become snared up in your tackle and provide you with a random item (not always a shoe!)


[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

In the land of MP meanwhile the Strike Force are currently working on vehicle smoothness, and rare strange physics during and after vehicle collisions. They also have some imminent plans for better hit-fall position prediction, which should make corpse placement much closer to how it looks in SP.

We are also partway through a longer term process of making the inventory system completely server side (or rather authenticated server side) to avoid any kind of item spawning cheats. This is something we really need to do to close up the potential for item hacks on MP servers.

It will not likely appear for a while, most like coming in a major build rather than an iterative patch as it is a major piece of work and will also come with the potential for mod breakage for mods that spawn items directly on the client.

(We’ll make sure to keep it unstable a good period to give mod authors a chance to fix when it rolls around, and will provide some method for modders to legitimately spawn items recognized by the server when needed.)


This week’s stand-off from Viиicius. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here
Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.

Project Zomboid NPCs will have complex, dynamic stories

Now that everyone is settling into Project Zomboid's lively multiplayer modes, developer The Indie Stone has its sights set on another transformational addition to the lo-fi zombie survival game. The NPC system, which the studio revealed earlier this year, is shaping up to be a complex narrative engine that generates detailed individual stories for each character - and you'll be able to become part of any one of them.


The Indie Stone discusses the NPC system in a blog posted this week. When they arrive, Project Zomboid's NPCs won't simply be holed up in various houses or fortresses, they'll be in the process of working toward their own goals, and they'll be able to relate their stories to you around the campfire.


The post is an interesting peek into how games are made. Each NPC in Project Zomboid - once they arrive in update 43 - will start with a set of circumstances that determines the opening of their story. From there, the NPC system will send them out into the world, where the system will track where they are and what happens to them. A family might set out to reach the Louisville hospital when they discover one member has fallen mysteriously ill, but have to leave their vehicle when they encounter a military roadblock on the way.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

Project Zomboid now supports 100-player servers, sort of

Project Zomboid multiplayer - what you need to know

Project Zomboid: how to barricade windows and doors

Lone Survivor



Hello! The last couple of weeks has had an unusually high number of absentees, by coincidental combinations of gaming conference attendees, long-planned family visits, and even an unforeseen emergency hospital stay (that turned out fine, don’t worry) meaning we’ve been running on a somewhat diminished team of late, but that should be sorted out by next week and we’ll be running at full steam again! – so unfortunately, there aren’t any sexy vids or pics to show off. However, still we have some super interesting stuff to talk about! However, it’ll likely take the form of ‘lotsa text’ so prepare yourself for that!
 
[h2]41.69[/h2]
First, 41.69 (nice) build is still in progress, we’re testing a bunch of changes at the moment and are eager to get it out there, but are still weighing up the cost of disrupting the MP servers with the benefit of the goodies within, and making the call on when we’ll push to unstable and start the release process. We’ll let you know when we know more.

Here’s the changelist of 41.69 thus far!
 
https://pastebin.com/ZhRhKVZi


[h2]NPC Narratives[/h2]
For the blog, we figured a good way to give people something real tasty to sink their teeth into regardless of the lack of fancy vids or pics, would be to show off the text results of our future Narrative NPC system that we discussed a few weeks back planned for Build 43.
 
As we detailed in our first NPC ‘meta’ system explanation, we have a powerful narrative event system that can be used to add context-driven ‘storylets’ together into a somewhat convincing narrative for NPCs when they are away from the streamed-in world. These would define the goals of the NPCs, as well as evolve their situation so that when the player runs into them they have a convincing backstory, or events can transpire to affect those groups when they are not around for the player to witness. They will also drive events with npcs while the player IS present, leading to interesting generated story events for the player to interact with.
 
These events set flags on characters, move their virtual presence along road networks and between houses of which all the rooms on the entire map are accessible even when the tiles themselves have not been streamed in. We can add extra data and tags that change the NPCs states and allow them to experience simplified narrative events that will branch and trigger randomly, and each of these events can have numerous outcomes of which we can attach a line of dialogue recounting the event later, so the characters will be able to sit around a campfire and let the rest know their story, or group members can recount the events of an eventful trip the player wasn’t part of, or what transpired at the safehouse while the player was away.
 
Context-sensitive text scripting is used to modify these lines of dialogue to fit the situation. For example, a tag for a character’s name in the dialogue can be substituted with ‘my mother-in-law, X’ or ‘my nephew, Y’ tracking the relationship between the two characters, or even between the character being spoken about and a third character (‘X’s brother, Y’). Other things such as a town location can be substituted where necessary, and there can be variant lines that are picked based on the characters, their flags, or other environmental conditions. Or just raw RNG, to mix things up a bit.
 
Pat_Bren has been busy coming up with a whole metric ton of varied events and mini-narratives, and Lemmy has been integrating these into the event system. There’s a lot more to add yet, but it's starting to yield some cool results.
 
Here’s a few narrative outputs. Full disclosure: some massaging of the results has taken place here, it’s somewhat curated as the system is still capable of some very odd results and the pool is not yet large enough to avoid ‘arrow to the knee’ situations, if we just threw in the first 10 results it’d probably not be so impressive at this stage, so we’ve picked ones with the least overlap — though you’ll likely notice a few repeated statements (in most cases this also demonstrates the variants or alternate paths we have there to mix it up) – our goal is, ultimately, with progressive builds, to widen the library of narrative events and lines to the point where each story feels completely unique (easier to do without voiced dialogue, but we apologise profusely to our translators). 
 
Please be aware these are still work in progress, and we still need to do some work to make these flow as naturally as possible as if recounted later to another character — rather than as a straight log of events that can seem a bit terse and unnatural, so none of the text is remotely final and we still need to figure out a good balance of information that would feel natural to share to a third party potentially weeks later…

(It’s very important to note that, at present, these narratives are limited mainly to the meta, and while we talk about how they will impact characters the player witnesses, there is still a lot of work to do in that department. This is all very super work-in-progress, and while a metric ton of work has been done across the NPC codebase, it's still a big job to piece it all together to work as one.)

I knew the electricity would be cut off.
We stocked up and ate the fresh food first, then we lived on cans.
We already had a generator and we used it for a while, until it caught fire…
The flames spread quickly.
Juan got the extinguisher, but it wasn’t enough.
The smoke got to Keith, but we were able to drag him out of there.
The whole house was on fire, and we lost everything.
I thought the Murphys might help us out, but they wouldn’t let us inside, they said it was too dangerous…
We were so desperate, we moved into a nearby house.
We pushed a bookcase in front of the back door.
Broke apart a table and used the pieces to secure the windows…
Then we just held out there as long as we could…



There were four of us. We were holding up in West Point. It was crazy!
My brother-in-law, Jason, just abandoned us, left us to fend for ourselves. We never saw him again.
We tried to find a store that was safe. We had to go out and look for anything we could get our hands on…
But those things were everywhere. We couldn’t get anything… There were too many of those things!
We had nothing, food had run out.
Then a couple of days later, someone started banging on one of the windows. We had no idea who it was!
It was Jim, a neighbor of ours, wanting to come inside.
But what if he was sick? We couldn’t risk it.
I hope he made it…


Those things broke through the barricades and poured inside.
I did the best I could, but there were just too many!
We panicked and ran…lost Lang and Dillon, I don’t know if they got away, or…
I think they got away. They’ve got to have, right?


Just before the shit hit the fan, my sister Annie got sick.
We tried to take her to the hospital… but the highway was blocked with traffic.
By that time we realised it was too late, the car was blocked in, there was no way out.
We had to abandon the car and make our way on foot.
Annie was real bad, her fever was getting worse. Bryan, her husband, had to carry her.
There was nothing I could do for her… I did what I could, but it just wasn’t enough.
We didn’t know. We had no idea what would happen!
When she turned, she bit Bryan on the back of the neck.
We left them both out there, God help us. We left them both walking around out there!


I tried to get home to my family. When I got home they’d already bugged out, they left a note saying they’d gone up to Riverside to my inlaws.
Why didn’t they wait?
I know I’ve got to get over there, before…


There was little I could do for him.. I did the best I could, but we didn’t have enough supplies.
He knew what was going to happen.
He asked me for pills and locked himself in the bathroom
We buried him out back… that is, after we…


Just before the shit hit the fan, Joe got sick.
We tried to take him to the hospital, but the streets were clogged with traffic, so we came back.
Joe said he didn’t want to become like those things…
He asked me for a rope and barricaded himself in, but he still came back…
The barricades weren’t strong enough.
He escaped and bit Sergei.
I had to put him down too.
I’ll never be able to forgive myself.
It’s like a nightmare…


Alanna, my wife, had a fever that morning, but she hadn’t been bitten.
In less than an hour she kept getting worse until she turned and tried to bite me.
I had to… oh God… Her body’s still there…
I tried to get to my brother Jack’s house.
Those things started chasing me but I stole a car and got away…
I had to keep on the move to get away from the infected.
Then I hit someone with my car. There was no time to brake…
The man wasn’t badly injured, thank God.
He introduced himself as Kevin Jones, a plumber from Rosewood.
He was alone, I think he’d lost someone.
When we finally reached Jack’s house, he and his wife Carol were okay, thank God.
They couldn’t believe we weren’t infected.
That was the worst day of my life. At least, up till then…



Let’s pick one of them and break down how it works:
Just before the shit hit the fan, my sister Annie got sick.

We tried to take her to the hospital… but the highway was blocked with traffic.

By that time we realised it was too late, the car was blocked in, there was no way out. We had to abandon the car and make our way on foot.

Annie was real bad, her fever was getting worse. Bryan, her husband, had to carry her.

There was nothing I could do for her… I did what I could, but it just wasn’t enough.

We didn’t know. We had no idea what would happen!

When she turned, she bit Bryan on the back of the neck.

We left them both out there, God help us. We left them both walking around out there!

As is probably clear, this is all too self-consistent to be completely random. This isn’t just a bunch of random disconnected events triggering one after another, but rather a mini-narrative that is comprised of several related events, each of which has various ways they can pan out and also conditions that can lead to them triggering in the first place, leading to a whole host of other outcomes that will affect the group in different ways.
 
To show this, you’ll see another branching version of this same narrative in the list of outputs above, starting with ‘Just before the shit hit the fan, Joe got sick’. Though it sharing the specific phrase ‘shit hit the fan’ text was a coincidence, it could have equally started with ‘Just before things got really bad’ or ‘Before all of this’.
 
Narratives have natural endpoints that can end that narrative, or instead, they potentially lead naturally into another if relevant. In other cases they can set flags on characters or groups that will lead to other events, or even other narratives, having a chance of triggering on them in the future. This is the way the narratives can ultimately serve as larger building blocks to make longer character stories that flow into each other convincingly.
 

So back to this demo narrative above:
 

“Just before the shit hit the fan, my sister Annie got sick.”

 

As detailed before, we generate the starting NPC groups from various families, with some other elements to mix things up. In the first event of this narrative, we pick an appropriate member of the household to ‘get sick’. This will set the first constant within this narrative that will be referenced and used throughout.
 

Then the second event in the narrative is thus…
 

“We tried to take her to the hospital… but the highway was blocked with traffic.”

 

This event will trigger the characters of the group (however it was generated) including the unfortunate Annie, to set a goal to travel to the Louisville hospital. Wherever they are in the world, a path will be generated along roads to that location. Even though the characters, nor a vehicle, are streamed into the world, and they exist virtually in the ‘meta’, we can randomly assign them an appropriate car and start them moving at approximately car speed along the roads en route to Louisville.
 

If the player were to cross paths with this virtual ‘radar blip’ of these characters, it would spawn in the car with them inside, moving in the correct direction at the appropriate speed, and the more direct vehicle controlling AI would take over with the same destination in mind.

This event can play out in various ways, hitting the military blockade, crashing the car, getting stuck amongst a group of zombies.
 

Getting stuck in traffic has various outcomes, including for example a car-jacking attempt, or the person being carried turning in the car. Some of these may lead to more generic events or narratives or may continue the main mini-narrative to a further conclusion.

Assuming all this carries on within the virtual meta world, they will make their way until they hit one of the traffic jam zones on the highway, which in this case causes it to trigger the next event in the narrative.
 

“By that time we realised it was too late, the car was blocked in, there was no way out. We had to abandon the car and make our way on foot.”

 

Alternatively, it could be they managed to drive back home or get through the jam and onto the next problem. But, in this case, the narrative branches to this outcome. We flag they have lost their car, and are now on foot. 
 

We set their goal to still be heading toward Louisville hospital, however, now they are flagged as on foot and the group’s ‘radar blip’ moves at a much slower rate along the road. If a player intersected with their journey, we’d spawn the characters all on foot, and the AI would take over from there with the same pathing goal.
 

Now they are on foot, this opens the door for other events linked to this narrative to fire that wouldn’t be possible within a vehicle. One such event that can randomly trigger is a worsening of the health condition of whomever was chosen to be the sick one, which is what happens next.
 

“Annie was real bad, her fever was getting worse. Bryan, her husband, had to carry her.”

 

True, at this time we don’t have any way to ‘make this real’ should the player happen upon this group, since we don’t have support for characters carrying others at the moment. We hope to add this, and should we do this, then when we spawn the characters in the flesh we would set them up as appropriate to the event – but regardless, at the moment these narratives in particular take place way too early for players to actually intersect with, so we can take a few liberties in these particular narratives anyway.
 

Notice Bryan is referred to as ‘her husband’, which is automatically generated using Annie as the context character, and the code examining the closest relationship between these two characters. We could instead have an alternate line of dialogue using the speaking character (Annie’s sibling) as the context and it would instead read ‘my brother-in-law, Bryan’, finding the shortest link between the speaking character and Bryan was through Annie. We plan for this to be expanded in the future to automatically modify based on all manner of things, such as character opinion, and/or character’s traits (My idiot brother-in-law, Bryan, for example) though this may not be present in the first iterations of the system.
 
So now, we have flagged that the ‘ill person’ is being carried, and is being carried by Bryan. This opens up the potential for new events to be triggered, and indeed that is what happens. Poor Bryan.
 
Again, some choices, what they do with the zombie Annie and Bryan, there could be a third victim in attempting to put them down. These branches are, relatively, painless to write, and can be expanded on far into the future. It means we can have many small narrative threads, ones that last days, or ones that last months, that thread-in appropriate events to steer the story in believable directions, with written or designed outcomes that make sense and feel like a real story, in a manageable and expandable way.
 
The ‘quests’ that we have with our story generation will likely fit in line with this above narrative system. Is a character split from their loved ones, on their way to another town to find them? Maybe you can help? We’re hoping for a more organic structure of interaction and transaction with NPCs that emerges from this narrative system and leads to some really cool and believable stories being told with our NPCs.
 


Header Image pilfered from a previous blog out of laziness, sorry! You can find all our previous blogs here.
Block of italized text has nothing more to say today, bye bye!

Milky Milky



How do, all. Let’s visit a few different PZ departments to see what’s cooking.

[h3]41 PATCHING[/h3]
We are currently partway through the journey to the 41.69 patch. Planned patches to Build 41 are intended to be, generally, not feature-led and instead focus on balance, QOL, fixes and polish. The current contents of 41.69 includes:

  • New items and 3D models
  • New foraging discoveries.
  • Many improvements for controller and Steamdeck play
  • Many improvements to the MP experience in areas such as: the sometimes weird vehicle physics, the PvP safety system, the PvP cooldown timer, safehouse bugs, sleeping and radio/VHS sync.


There’s a lot more incoming next week, but we intend to keep this patch relatively short and sharp if we can – though of course will also need to be sure of MP stability before any release (even to unstable) as there’s still quite a lot of large adjustments to the MP code going into the pot.

[h3]FISHING AND LOCKPICKING[/h3]
Although it’s not clear where it will land in terms of a build release yet, this week Aiteron’s new fishing system had its first internal test. This was largely a bug-chasing exercise, especially in terms of MP, but the testers had fun.

There’s still a lot of work to be done, and we will need better and more appropriate anims to really sell how it works, but the current mission statement is to get it all working – so we can then add some polish.

We also need to bring the mechanics closer to realism, through exploring what is caught (and how) in Kentucky – and what different types of lines, hooks, lures, bait and catch options we should include to increase/decrease your chances of catching a particular sort of fish. Likewise, clearly stuff like your location, the weather, the time of day and your fishing skill will all come into play.

We won’t go into detail, as it’s still distant, but something else that’s in the design phase while Aiteron implements fishing is bringing elements of his lockpicking mod over into the main game – in a new and improved package to boot.

Locks will vary in type and challenge, and the tools required may differ. Through this, stashes with useful loot will be added to the map – hidden behind locked doors. This will also enable locked doors within houses, chests, locked gun cabinets etc.


[h3]MAP WORK[/h3]
The map team’s ongoing mission to improve the Knox Event map continues. Amidst other tasks focussing on the Many Years Later challenge map, converting and building new farms to fit in with our animal plans, and plotting for future expansion… here’s a few extra fun things that will be appearing in an exclusion zone near you.

  • New tiles to improve the appearance of existing locations.


  • Some older, and very distinguished, buildings for the richfolk of the area.



[h3]MUSIC[/h3]
On top of the gameplay improvements mentioned last time, the guys at Formosa UK (formerly Noiseworks) are working on a first draft of a rework of the action music.

Instead of switching between tracks mid-fight, the plan is to cross-fade between different intensity levels of the same track. The base intensity will be the regular track that you are used to, but then there will also be a high action version that has been beefed up a bit.

When the action subsides, or the number of zombies you’re fighting declines, the music will enter a low state and eventually fade out.

[h3]FARM ANIMALS[/h3]
Work on the introduction of farmed animals continues for their planned introduction in Build 42.

All the following information and videos are SUPER WORK IN PROGRESS and will improve a bunch as we move forward. Please don’t worry/complain/laugh/faint/query/weep about ‘em. (Usual caveats apply basically!

Some bullet points on the current integration!
  • All animals are defined in lua definition tables, which will allow for maximum modding possibilities: it’s via these definitions that you can essentially adjust animal behaviour.
  • When in their pen farm animals will wander around, ‘emote’ by flapping wings or rootling for food on the ground, sit, rest, lie down etc.
  • Relevant animals can graze grass, which then regrows after an appropriate amount of time –  which can be defined in a new sandbox option.
  • Animals will eat from a trough, which is something you’ll either construct or loot from a farm.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2bIElZuo8k

  • Animals all have different growth stages – for example calves become cows/bulls, and grow in size. Their growth will be guided by various parameters – like their hunger, thirst, general health and the size of their enclosure.
  • Baby animals will stick by their mother’s side, and even take milk directly from the udder.
  • The bigger the animal size, the more meat it will produce when it is butchered.
  • There will be various breeds in-game – so you could have a “meat breed” (Angus) or a “milk” breed (Holstein) – and maybe even something in between like a Simmental.
  • Growth rates will be realistic, so a cow will take two full years to be at its full size, but this will be modifiable via sandbox options.
  • Cows will generate milk for a certain period after delivering a calf. The more you continue to milk the cow, the more milk you’ll get each day. Leaving a cow with a full udder, however, will cause issues and a decrease in lactation.
  • Sheep grow wool that you can retrieve with a shear, and also have a milking system if you enjoy sheep milk.


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

  • Hens can lay eggs. If a henhouse is present they’ll lay eggs in it, otherwise they’ll do it on the ground. They can be fertilized by a rooster, so if left for a time can hatch out chicks.
  • You will need to shut the door to the henhouse every night, and open it back up every morning, or will you risk visits from Mister Fox – and see the resulting bloodstains to boot.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ryDAW0luHQ

ANIMAL BREEDING
What’s currently being added to the above systems are some ways to encourage the breeding of animals – to improve your herd, and that of your friends and neighbours, as the apocalypse draws on.

It sounds complicated, but it’s actually quite easy for us to generate animals with a ‘full’ (for our purposes) genome – again all defined in lua definition tables for easy modding.

Each animal type will have a set of abstracted genes that each contain two ‘alleles’ inherited from parents, from “milk quantity”, to “life expectancy”, “strength”, “appearance” genes and a lot more in-between.

We’ve gone for a somewhat realistic, yet still gamified, genetics system to make it feel somewhat accurate. We want to have some of the interesting consequences of genetics, and also to have them present clear enough results for players to engage with in cross breeding projects.

When breeding animals, characters with appropriate skills will be able to inspect the animal and get an idea of its various health-related attributes (aka genes) – while others such as egg laying, fertility or milk production will be observed in the animal during its lifespan. Higher skills will also, most likely, make this more apparent/obvious to experienced breeders.

The gameplay loop of animal breeding will involve trying to pick the correct pairings/groupings of your animals to pass along the best genes into their offspring.

Over successive generations you will be able to improve your stock with better milk production, egg production etc – or help you to focus on producing animals with more meat for slaughter.

Finding new animals to breed to diversify and improve your stock’s gene pool will be a prime reason for farmer players to interact with other groups, or go hunting around the farms on the map. Likewise, this will zero in on the concept of a ‘prize bull’ that you might grow an emotional bond with, and really, really not want to get ill – or perhaps even get stolen in MP.

The science will be that each animal will carry two sets of alleles in their genome, one contributed randomly from each parent. You have dominant and recessive alleles, and this will mean that you definitely have to be careful about in-breeding, as base generated animals may have recessive gene timebombs in the forms of genetic illnesses of varying types, waiting to ruin your prize bull and your entire stock if you’ve inbred your animals too much.

We’re sure there’ll be mods that will allow players to observe the genes more directly, but in the base game we’re expecting a tad more ‘art than science’ approach and using informed guesses and examination and observation to improve your stock.

There’s plenty more to this system, but we’ll leave it there for now. All animals will use this genetic system, and we’re sure at some point we’ll look into expanding it into the plant system too, however that’s not a priority right now and almost certainly in the worlds beyond Build 42.

This week’s cool arcade base from Damien. A changelist of all our pre-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right hereOur Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.