Hello all, here’s a quick dev round-up from TIS headquarters.

IWBUMS BETA 41.30

We’ve currently got the next patch being tested on an internal branch, and with a fair wind it should be released early next week. It contains the following.

A fix that should resolve intel GPU crashes we’ve been seeing since the zoom branch was merged into IWBUMS

Zoom improvements that provide a clearer image on different levels of zoomed-in and zoomed-out, as well as various fixes to seams and lighting

Spiffo’s Secret Special Sauce. Some small but extremely meaningful changes and tweaks to general gameplay that we’re keeping quiet on. Primarily due to our love for the dramatic, and an undercurrent of sadism.

New and polished animations for: washing yourself, examining vehicles, adding/removing gas, installing and uninstalling parts/tires, multi-stage building and more.

A cursor to help in blood clean-up duties.

Cutaway improvements from Team Tanglewood, including a timer to stop cutaways and other visibility/hiding effects flickering.

Fixes for Last Stand, foraging, fishing lines always breaking, vehicle headlights, stuck zombies, swimming pools with shorelines and (finally) Fox got to the bottom of our famous too-boring sandwiches. And there was much rejoicing. Also: other stuff.

Improved body temperature stuff from Turbo.

We also intend to get some stealth polish/balance in, but that’s dependent on making sure that Spiffo’s Special Secret Sauce has been accurately deployed.

MP

For discussion and explanation of current 41 IWBUMS beta MP work please check out last week’s blog.

As discussed though, Bitbaboon Mark is currently prepping the code for the implementation of a true synchronized clock to make all our future MP endeavours go a lot more smoothly. Zac, meanwhile, is laying down his plans for decoupling the animation deferred movement so that it can work in reverse – where movement can also translate to appropriate animations, instead of animations driving movement.

Once this is done, no matter how a character moves due to client interpolation and approximation, we’ll hopefully have appropriate animations with minimal foot sliding to account for it. These tasks will then lead to us hooking the animations in wholesale, and we’ll be rolling full speed on the track to full MP compatibility.

If you want to play Build 41 SP and want to switch between it and 40’s MP functionalities, by the way, then SeskaRotan’s guide is extremely helpful.

FIRE

Here’s the latest from the Yuri fire department – as ever with the usual WIP warnings. This shows camp fires of different sizes with different amount of fuel, an improved molotov effect and some early examples of flaming zombies.

Please note a) we know we need to improve the appearance/physics of thrown objects, b) we know more body parts of the zeds need to be on fire, c) we intend to improve the burning tiles so they have edge blending – they look very square at the moment.

GOODBYE CONNALL

In more bittersweet news one of our devs, Connall, who anyone involved in community translations will know very well, has had a too-good-to-pass-up opportunity down in that there London and will be moving on to pastures new at the end of February.

He’s not publicly said where he’s heading, but we know and it’s cool as all hell – and while we’re sad to see him go, we’re extremely proud that someone who has been an integral part of the Zomboid story, from literally being a young lad to having a manly goatee, has gone on to do such cool things. We were there for his first legal drink, and now he’s heading off to the big city to seek his fortune!

In his own words on twitter (https://twitter.com/ConnallTheCoble/status/1227604245832179712):

“Hey, I will be leaving TIS at theend of February. I’ll still be around in the community and also in the translators section of Discord for the time being. Don’t worry, I’m leaving on great terms, It’s just I have an opportunity in London I can’t ignore.

I am immensely grateful for my time working for The Indie Stone. It’s been a blast and I owe those folks so much. I been a part of this community for just under 10 years now, I got Project Zomboid when I was 15 and I’m almost 24 now!

I have been a player, community member, wiki contributor, wiki administrator, forum moderator, administrator, website developer, tracker developer and programmer. I have met and been hosted by community members in their homes!”

Having good localization and community translations are really what keeps Zomboid a popular game the world over, it’s an often overlooked and undervalued part of game development.

We want to thank everyone in the community for their efforts, as well as of course Connall for organizing and facilitating all our translators getting all those lovely foreign words into our little game! And of course all the other ways he’s contributed over the years.

On the up side, as Connall says, he’ll still be around. No one is ever really gone (unless they get a bite, of course) and he’ll still be around to help and be a part of the community when his new life allows. We wish him all the luck down on that there London gravy train! <3

Today’s featured image is probably one of the best we’ve ever had. What an amazing screenshot Tughril! 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!