A balmy/sweaty Thursdoid to you all. We’ve got what will be our next IWBUMS beta running backstage, but it’s a little too rough around the edges to put out properly just yet. Internal testing has flagged a few errors created by the new chatbox, some invulnerable zombies in MP and car spawns running pretty low – all of which would be pretty annoying for people even if they did know they were in the unstable version.

If you are interested in checking out some of Turbo’s work on a simulated climate, storms, fog and temperature having a greater impact on the player though – the weather test beta is still open, and contains the backbone of what’ll be going into the wider community testing in the coming week(s). On top of tidying this up, then, this is what else is going on.

RJ has been improving the life of our MP admins – tightening up some longstanding issues with admin commands, improving the Admin UI system (for example with a new screen that lets the user spawn items more easily, selecting from a menu system of categories and filters) and also fixing up some MP glitches with duplicating logs and the like. Our thanks to Ricky from the Good Old Dayz for his help and advice in this. [We will also have Bitbaboon Steve looking into MP Network optimization in coming weeks, once he’s finished up his work on our new internal build system.]

Martin the Animator is now working directly with the four guys over at The Eccentric Ape who’re working on the new animation system – in particular with Zac in terms of identifying issues with the new AnimZed tool and suggesting improvements and systems that’ll make his (and modder) life easier. Meanwhile the rest of TEA are looking at issues like models not rendering correctly and Grant’s work on the state system. Martin, meanwhile, is using AnimZed to eliminate some foot sliding that’s crept in during anim code work and making player travel distance match feet movement within the animation – which itself will anchor a stable ‘anim speed’ for the whole project.

Over at General Arcade, as mentioned, Stas is buttoning up a few chatbox issues as well as implementing a few suggestions that’ve come in from internal testers so that it follows wider gaming convention and the ‘muscle memory’ of everyone’s fingertips. Yuri, meanwhile, is following on his work on reflective windows and bodywork on vehicles (vid here if you haven’t seen it) with some general vehicle tidy-up: adding missing SFX from collisions, adding skid noises, improving some weirdness around getting in/out of some vehicles and also improving VOIP ranges.

Our very own EasyPickins has been reworking how sounds work under the hood – currently modders can’t override sounds in our FMOD soundbanks, while when players find certain sounds are too loud or annoying (heartbeat, zombie alert, flies, level up noise etc) it’s tricky to raise/lower them independently. As such, from the next build all details about all the game sounds will go into media/scripts/sounds.txt – and stuff like parameters like min/max distance of them being heard will be found there too, while an in-game UI will let users change the volume of any sound they feel is too oppressive. EP has also been finishing off his work that makes items placed by mappers (campfires, BBQs etc) usable in-game.

In the background to all this, Mash continues her mapping work on our version of Louisville – a task so big that it won’t be for many versions to come. She will, however, occasionally allow an image or two to escape from her travails.

Two final items of note!

RingoD has put a quick modder’s guide on how to reskin the current PZ vehicles on the forum.

The PZ Wiki is getting some serious renovation under the awesome guidance of Vaileasys, which is needed now more than ever given the recent boost in player numbers that the vehicles release has brought about. He can’t do it alone though! If you fancy yourself as a wiki-editing maestro, then please check out the details here.

This week’s zed-filled chink the defences from Starman. 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. Let us know how your visit to Spiffo’s panned out Lazy Joe.