Hey all – quick Thursdoid today due to the team absences mentioned last week, we’re back to a full quota for the next one. But, there’s still a few things to point out.

We want to put the current weather beta into the wider IWBUMS public beta as soon as we’ve nixed a few minor annoyances – treatment for some of which has already been administered backstage.

There’s an annoying shadow flicker lighting bug and some chatbox issues that we’ve addressed and need a quick internal test, but alongside general weather polish we also need to fix some unfair deaths from exposure/temperature, and while we’re at it stop indoor players getting wet when it rains.

The aforementioned Weather beta (Steam beta password: weathertestbranch) has just been updated, and we’ve collated the full changelist into a new thread as it’s pretty weighty.

The highlights of it are: weather (storms/fog/climate/temperature etc), the new chatbox, the system that converts items placed by mappers into in-game objects, the rethought soundbank system, an improved car battery charge system, in-game sandbox options for MP admins, the ability to dismantle car wrecks in exchange for metal, more readable fonts and players damaged by vehicles in MP.

There’s also a lot of balance stuff, and loads of bug fixes from EasyPickins – so please check out the full list if you fancy.

Elsewhere there’s been discussion about how we’ll be implementing ‘survival-esque’ modifications to vehicles, with Martin conjuring up some really cool mock-ups that we’ll show when we’re closer to getting them implemented. Meanwhile, in anims-land, the guys at TEA are working on the best ways to link their data-driven state system more neatly into the game, and considering ways to make the most of shaders (perhaps in using depth buffers, which would also see the end of clipping issues with walls/cars etc) given the hard decision we made last week to reduce support for the lowest end hardware that can’t support them and are below our stated required tech specs.

Thanks all! A more in-depth ‘where we’re at’ next week hopefully, alongside an IWBUMS release.

This week’s pyre from Romenic. 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.