Project Zomboid News

The first few days in Project Zomboid are crucial. Typically your priorities are weapons, a car, canned food, and maybe the almighty sledgehammer. But wait. While it might make sense to go hunting for supplies, if you want to survive the winter and beyond, there is a very specific thing that you need to do in the initial weeks - stay inside and watch the TV. Every six hours, Life And Living will provide you with vital experience points for carpentry, fishing, and myriad other skills. It's easy XP, but sitting there can also become a bit tedious. Expansive and gorgeous, a fantastic new Project Zomboid mod is the ideal solution.

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Surprise new Project Zomboid update makes guns and combat way better in build 42

Project Zomboid maps have been revolutionized by an amazing new build 42 feature

Gigantic Project Zomboid update might make build 42 easier to survive

If you want to get a gun in Project Zomboid, you're going to have to work hard and take risks. Personally, I favor the army surplus store in Fallas Lake. The town is relatively small and the quantity of guns and bullets can be high. Nevertheless, you still need a sledgehammer to get into the armory. Same goes for the Louisville checkpoint and most of the police stations in Knox Country. It's a lot of investment and return isn't guaranteed. Proving that The Indie Stone's survival game has the edge on The Long Dark, DayZ, and Rust, another new Project Zomboid update for the unstable build 42 is already here, and it makes big improvements to how we find and use guns.

Read the rest of the story...

RELATED LINKS:

Project Zomboid maps have been revolutionized by an amazing new build 42 feature

Gigantic Project Zomboid update might make build 42 easier to survive

Gigantic new Project Zomboid mod totally transforms the entire game

- Building and Vehicle keys, when properly spawned, will have data regarding their origin coordinates recorded in the item data.
- As a Debug or Admin tool, items that have their origin coordinates recorded can be right-clicked on in the inventory interface to get an option to teleport to that item's point of origin.
    - Note #1: This will only work for keys spawned after this update; pre-existing keys will not provide that functionality.
    - Note #2: This will teleport the character to the square a vehicle initially spawned in. If the vehicle has been moved, it will not be at the teleport destination.
    - This is a debug tool for checking exactly what keys unlock but could have other debug/admin utilities for stuff like annotated maps, fliers, quest items, etc.

- Added isThumpable = false to several buildMenu entities that shouldn't have collision.
- Added moveables properties for several buildMenu entities that are missing moveable properties.
- Added proper model for Wooden Spade.
- Added new Music Fest flyer.
- UI improvements when creating animal designation zones
    - Fixed calculation of which square is under the mouse pointer.
    - Highlight the square under the mouse pointer.
    - Render the zone being created in red if the zone size is invalid.
    - Cancel creating a zone after releasing the mouse button when the zone size is invalid.
    - Fixed panel getting too tall to close with many animals in a zone. Changed the Livestock Zone UI to display a scrolling list of animals. 
- VRAM usage optimisation.
- Added Concrete tag to all proper buckets and made it so recipes use the tag instead of specific bucket items.
- Added MayDegradeLight to several recipes that use a Mason's Trowel.

- Updated loot distribution. 
    - Increased gun spawns in gun stores and police storage to make them feel more rewarding to loot.
    - Spiced up prison storage loot. The storage room now acts as a repository for riot control's armor and shotguns. [Shotguns cannot properly spawn yet, mappers will put in steel/military lockers later.]
    - Added PrisonLaundry to the prison's laundry room. Washers and dryers should spawn uniforms.
    - Added the Locksmith, Florist, and Craft Supply vehicles.
    - Set up the Fire Department garage. FireStorageMechanics, as well as PiliceStorageMechanics and police garages, have a decent chance to spawn a red lightbar.
    - Fleshing Tools now have a chance of spawning with other tools in GigaMart; however, as with any other loot spawning, they will not always spawn in GigaMart.
    - Added the Fleshing Tool to several loot distros/contexts.
    - Adjustments were made to force butchery containers to spawn in many grocery store and kitchen contexts; previously they could spawn but not always, now the loot spawning code will try to always ensure that at least 1 butchering container spawns in relevant contexts.
    - Seafood delivery vans can sometimes spawn a Fleshing Tool in their cargo compartment.

- Added blacksmithing vans and stepvans. 
    - They will spawn metal welder loot until the loot distributions are updated to have them spawn blacksmithing items. 
- Torches (drainable that can be activated) are now consistent with any day length.
    - Also adjusted some of the light strength for some torches (penlight being way smaller than regular torch for ex.)
    - Duration of the battery depends on light strength, the Torch will be around 24h, Lighter only 1h, smaller light strength will mean longer battery duration.
- Updated Charcoal Burning Pile to accept any item with the DigGrave tag, not just Base.Shovel. Added MayDegradeLight tag so there's a small chance of damaging the tool used.

- Fixed character body overtwists while aiming and rotating. 
   - Character's upper torso no longer gets frozen as it twists around, due to missing valid animation.
   - Default aim animation requires condition { weapon == '' }
     - However, before the character has equipped anything, they have weapon = nullPtr.
   - Updated StringUtils.equalsIgnoreCase to return TRUE if both strings are either null or empty.
     - So these all return TRUE.
       - equalsIgnoreCase("", "")
       - equalsIgnoreCase("", null)
       - equalsIgnoreCase(null, "")
       - equalsIgnoreCase(null, null)
   - Character no longer overtwists when unarmed or holding a 1handed melee weapon.
   - Unarmed and 1handed aim anims have a maxTwist of 45 degrees to prevent over-twisting the spine.
   - 2handed and projectile weapons still allow a 70-degree max-twist.
   - Maximum twist now dictated by parent AnimLayer.
   - Sub-layers can only twist up to this limit.
   - ie. aim maxTwist = 45 degrees cannot be overridden by the turning sub-state's maxTwist = 70 degrees. 
- Fixed character animation freezing when cancelling exercise.
- Fixed texture compression not working on Windows OS.
- Fixed issues with vehicles on Mac.
- Fixed characters spawning in Muldraugh with the Doctor or Nurse profession being trapped in a wall when they spawn in Cortmans.
- Fixed negative-world-coordinate issues with vehicle collision and interaction.
- Fixed being able to open Doors from afar.
- Removed mode:use from several recipes.
- Fixed several packing recipes allowing for mixed items.
- Fixed Create Brain Tan recipe duplicating Bowls.
- Fixed duplication of bowls when moving food from a pot.
- Fixed a reference to an armor item instead of the recipe that creates it in one of the metalworking recipe magazines. 
- Fixed issue where recipe input items missing module declaration (such as 'Base.') would be counted incorrectly for crafting requirements.
- Fixed several missing recipe names.
- Fixed bucket models missing in animations.
- Fixed wall blood splats rendering on cutaway areas of walls.
- Fixed wall blood splats rendering too bright on dark squares.
- Fixed B no longer closing crafting menu.
- Fix isExclusive flag not working for right-click context menu crafting.
- Fixed missing blocks placement property for several new crafting-related tiles so that players can't build additional tiles on top of them.
- Fixed errors with new vehicle textures, including locksmith vans using only one of two textures, florist stepvans incorrectly using masonry stepvan textures and a missing texture for one masonry stepvan.
- Eggs will lose their fertilized status when too cold (inside a fridge).
- Fixed Context Menu for Open/Close doors from triggering then canceling the WalkTo action.
- Fixed "Possible Items" tab not resetting after closing the menu.
- Fixed an error with teleporting while having the vehicle animal trailer UI opened.
- Fixed being able to build shelves inside one another.
- Fixed being able to place shelves in the wrong orientation.
- Fixed smelting recipes not consuming certain items, like pans.
- Fixed broken behavior when climbing over combined north-west fence corner tiles.
- Fixed the Residential colorblind pattern not being applied on some buildings.
- Fixed error with the sandbox setting for "percentage of weapons attached to zombies"-code.
- Fixed not being able to attach a large stone axe to the back hotbar slot.
- Fixed flax seed packets requiring/giving the wrong kind of flax.
- "Put in" foraging context menu option now uses InventoryContainer.isItemAllowed for validation.
- Fixed exception in ISRemovePatch when attempting to give the player a patch back.
- Fixed some typos with item names.
- Fixed some typos and errors in existing flyers.
- Fixed lamp context menu not setting playerObj and playerInv, causing errors.
- Fixed removing a gas mask filter not setting the filter's current uses correctly and not setting the NoFilter variable if it's a mask that gets replaced by a different item ID.
- Added PlayerData null safety check to ISVehicleDashboard.onExitVehicle.

I have this problem whenever I start a new game on Project Zomboid. I call it the death spiral. I spawn into a house but the loot containers don't have any useful weapons. So, I walk outside to go searching, and inevitably attract the attention of some zombies. This means I can't stop to search other buildings, so I have to keep walking... which attracts more zombies, which means I have even less time to search, and so on. If only there was some way to guarantee the presence of certain objects and resources. We're not quite there yet, but the new Project Zomboid update for unstable build 42 offers some small control over the randomized maps.

Read the rest of the story...

RELATED LINKS:

Gigantic Project Zomboid update might make build 42 easier to survive

Gigantic new Project Zomboid mod totally transforms the entire game

Project Zomboid is scarier, nastier, and better than any other survival game