Don’t be expecting much this week, survivors! This week is going to be one of those lazy ‘we’re getting on with it’ Mondoids. It’s Easter and there are eggs to be eaten! A few updates / bits of news though:

Multiplayer Code

As of late there have been increasing reports of unstable multiplayer, so we’re going to be looking into some multiplayer work, optimizations and changes that will hopefully improve the multiplayer experience of the game, decrease lag spikes and the such. There are some changes to the map loading stuff EasyP is trying out at the moment, and we’re hoping we’ll be able to stop the lag spikes on players joining the server. It’s a tough problem though, so its not clear if or when we’ll get this sorted.

Since we want to make sure we can provide the best multiplayer we can going forward to 1.0, we are starting to consider we’d be best off finding someone with the specific experience we need to work on the net code up to release, to free the rest of us to focus on the gameplay and bugs still remaining. We would be very interested to speak to any experienced C++ game developers out there with experience in online multiplayer game coding, preferably with some experience with Steamworks, and replicating physics systems reliably over a network. Java experience preferred but not completely necessary. If anyone out there has these skills and would like to be involved with Project Zomboid, then please get in touch with us via info@theindiestone.com! Sorry to our community folks who are usually first in line for consideration, but we have a very specific skill set we’re looking for here so may have to look further afield this time.

Build 32

Work continues apace on the crafting update to the game. A few issues to resolve with the new animation system that is holding that back from further development at the moment (models and the hundreds of anims needing reexporting, which is quite time consuming, while we nail a few lingering problems with the core system) but we’re still hoping that will be able to make an appearance in build 32.

Insomnia 54

So for the last few days, CaptainBinky went along to the Multiplay Insomnia Festival with friend of Indie Stone Sir Twiggy, where they did a talk on stage about Project Zomboid. As well as this we got an opportunity to show off the game on the floor thanks to the amazing Team 17. So just a big thank you to all the Team 17 peoples who made it possible <3! Unfortunately since the impromptu author of this Mondoid wasn’t actually there himself I have little more to say than that, and will get the post-show gossip myself tonight, but early reports indicate it was all very GOOD, so hurray!

That’s all folks, I guess!

The title image is courtesy of Ayatuki – Newsletter be here