How do all, another fairly exciting week behind the scenes over here.

After the extensive amount of time TEA have had with our initial animations system – rebuilding and completing the framework (not to mention vastly improving it, making it more moddable, better optimized and with a better suite of tools to go with it) we’re locking in the gameplay that’s still absent, and polishing the look of it.

In our older anims videos what was seen had little capacity for game logic under the bonnet, and was essentially playing anims, sounds and bloodsplats at the appropriate time, without all the tie-ins to game systems that would control health, endurance, skills, stats, perks etc

As such, while TEA continue to work on rendering, optimization, animation states and general improvement and upkeep – the TIS side of things have split into the different areas of the game and are bringing everything up to scratch.

So, to start with here’s Zac spawning 550 or so zeds, and doing a walk-around to test some optimization stutter fixes, and the new dynamic state system that means they’re not all swaying alongside each other. Zeds here are passive, and won’t attack Zac until he attacks them first. Remember: We’ve not yet added costume rarity so please no more comments about the spiffo suits and jockeys! 😛

On the TIS side, then, EP has finished going through the entire game and creating the overall structure of states and transitions using the new TEA developed version of the animation system. He’s also cleaning house in terms of a lot of the old out-of-date sprite-based logic, and numerous other things to help pave the way for further anim integration.

Turbo and Connall have both been working through all the game’s systems, particularly those activities that have timed actions such as fishing, looting etc, to make sure they all work with the new system, and implement any new animations to use.

RJ is working with the combat system, and making sure that the combat system you’re familiar with from older videos works properly within the improved TEA animation framework.

While all this goes on Animator Martin is providing feedback, improving animations and creating new ones whenever changes, replacements or hole-fills are required – while the rest of the team provide direction and feedback too.

Hopefully we’ll be able to show more and more ‘expanded gameplay’ vids as the Thursdoids go on – but this week we don’t want to show stuff with obvious rough edges that we can polish relatively easily in the days ahead.

Elsewhere, meanwhile, Yuri and ChrisW are working on general engine improvements. So here are two examples of their work, although please remember that they are still highly WIP – and if you see any weirdness then we are aware of it. First off, here’s Yuri’s latest work on puddles that build up during rain.

And here’s another quick cheeky screen of ChrisW’s work with Sims-style cutaways, that should make interior exploration easier and clearer.

Finally General Arcade’s Stas is now reaching the ‘wash and brush up’ stage with his controller build, so if you want to jump in and give it a whirl and give us some final pointers / gameplay feedback then now is officially the best and most enjoyable time to do it. Update12 was released today, and beta joining details can be found here.

This week’s home renovation from Musaka. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. 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 blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.