Hello survivor! It’s been a pleasant Bank Holiday Mondoid in sunny Blighty, if you ignore the rain and the fact that we’ve been sat inside coding zombies of course. We’ve got some cool Build 32 nuggets for you this week although sadly the new animation vid isn’t ready at the time of writing since, despite the eventual obliteration of last week’s bug, there’s now a lighting issue that keeps on plunging them into darkness.

Games development: yaaaay. We’ll stick it up when it’s ready and make a fuss still though, as we’re quietly confident that it’ll stir loins in safehouses the world over.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

As the Builds tot up towards 1.0 we’re going to be introducing more and more cool new bits and bobs to the PZ Challenge menu. These will provide new activities for long-term players and take place in interesting areas of the map that are a little off the beaten track. By the time of 1.0 they’ll also have a progression and unlock system attached to them for any fresh faced Project Zombateers who buy the game in the world beyond Early Access.

We currently have two new Challenges up and in the game, which will shortly be going into internal testing for ‘fun factor’ feedback. They’re both pretty nifty, and come from the keyboard of Romain ‘RJ’ Dron.

Winter is Coming

As Game of Thrones obsessives will know all too well, endless winters are rarely pleasant. This Challenge spawns the player in one of several isolated locations on the PZ map, armed only with the knowledge that in seven days’ time a winter will set in like no other before it. The undead hordes will be slowed slightly by the cold, but your challenge will be to survive as long as you possibly can as the temperature suddenly starts to fall.





Opening Hours

This challenge is us trying to get a real feeling of Dawn of the Dead into PZ. You are alone inside an empty mall with countless zombies building up at the doors and ambling around the parking lot, but you won’t be alone for long. At 9AM the Mall will be ready for business: doors will automatically open, and the hordes will enter. Can you survive until the doors close again at the end of the day? Shame the mall is open seven days a week really…





We also want to make a quick shout out to forum user BobHeckling, who was the guy who rebuilt our original map in the new map tools and allowed it to be used in the Bedford Falls mega-map. We really want to build a cool challenge in the old 0.1.5d/0.2.0 location so if you read this then please get in touch (!) as we’d like to make sure it’s done with your blessing.

RANDOM CHARACTER CREATOR

Build 32 will also see Blindcoder joining the illustrious ranks of those who’ve had a mod incorporated into Project Zomboid. [You hear that Stormy/RJ/Turbo? We called you: illustrious!]

His excellent Random Character Creator and Character Build Saver mod will become an official part of the game, and we will watch his uncanny ability to predict the next item on RJ’s ‘to do’ list with great interest. Thanks Benjamin!

IN OTHER NEWS

Turbo has been working on how portable radios will work in-game and also have the potential for player-customized frequency presets, all with an eye to having it mesh with the walkie-talkies when his ApCom mod is fully integrated, as well as in future when there’ll be military and survivor frequencies to tune into that’ll deepen the narrative.

Amidst his animation bug battling, and various other duties that lay on the path to his NPC nirvana, our Lemmy wrote an interesting blog about Valve’s recent ‘paid mod’ furore and what its implementation would’ve meant to his time as a modder, his career and PZ in general. It’s quite interesting and I’m not just saying that because I work with him.

That’s all for this week. See you next Monday!

This week’s featured image from Romain ‘RJ’ Dron, who emailed me the picture. Fancy receiving an email every Mondoid or whenever there’s an official or IWBUMS game update? Click right here, bucko.