It’s the first day back in the office for the PZ team, with plenty of cool stuff on the horizon… but that doesn’t mean that Build 30 isn’t receiving some New Year love.

Today we released 30.13 in the IWBUMS branch [instructions on how to join here] to hopefully address some multiplayer issues that were reported over the Xmas break. It’s in IWBUMS rather than the main branch as we want to be sure it’s all fixed before widening the net, so if you’re a seasoned MP player or server host who’s run into stuttering recently then please give it a whirl and let us know how you get on.

Other fixes and tweaks include: scavenging balance, fixed spawn points, improved mushroom recipe usage (!), seasonal fishing, translations and improved controller support – in amongst some other good stuff.

Elsewhere tools are being picked up on map, stealth, radio transmissions, NPCs and more. Fr’instance as well as working on the new stealth system, Lemmy’s been working on the NPC behaviour system, converting the behaviour tree system to read text script files for the NPC behaviours instead of using code spat out by the editor.

This means a) future behaviours will be a lot quicker to add and more crucially b) the entire of the NPC’s behaviours will be 100% moddable when they are finally released. Everything from how they move, how they make decisions, will all be accessible to modders. We know it sounds cool but remember: NO ETA NOT DONE YET ETC.

The map team, meanwhile, are back at work on the more urban ‘suburbs’ area – while Will is about to have a first exploratory fiddle with WordZed, the awesome-sauce radio transmission tool created by TurboTuTone and discussed prior to Xmas.

Finally, we would really like to direct everyone’s attention to Xeonyx’s absolutely amazing New Denver map. Eleven months in the making, and made in tribute to friends who are sadly no longer with us, it’s an amazing piece of work that deserves the praise and love of the entire PZ community. Ever attentive and fantabulous, meanwhile, is Blindcoder who has already made it a part of his PZ Map Project.

Thank you Xeonyx, it’s an amazing feat and a wonderful tribute. The best Christmas present we could have asked for!

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