Welcome to the first ever Matryoshka Mondoid! This week we’ll be addressing the questions of our Russian-speaking audience, as collated and collected by the wonderful LeoIvanov.

One of the best things about PZ is the fact that we have so many players from so many different countries and cultures, so we’d like to make this a fairly regular occurrence – with the second half of the Russian APZDTISA appearing next week, and if people are keen on the idea then we’ll have our French community submit their questions next month. Then whatever other nationalities want to chip in, and maybe even those boring old English-speakers with their dull old ‘and’s and ‘the’s.

First off, however, let’s get the latest on Build 31 which is currently in IWBUMS Public Testing! Over to our French Correspondent Romain ‘RJ’ Dron. And be sure to read beyond it for some clues as to what you should expect to appear in Build 32!

Build 31:

“As I’m sure many will be aware – Build 31 has in public testing on our IWBUMS branch for a week now. While fixing bugs we’ve also added a few new things like the ability to clean up blood, some new food types and most importantly: frogs you can forage. In coming days there will most likely be some other new items that go in before 31 is final – some of which will have no real purpose, and some that will be lying in wait for the upcoming crafting overhaul in Build 32.”

“There’s also clearly still some balancing to do when it comes to the new trait system. I’ve also, after a lot of chat with EnigmaGrey, thought of some interesting ways to improve PZ’s zombie horde experience without needing weeks of coding and testing. I’m not sure if it’ll make it into Build 31 as it nears the stable branch, but plan to experiment a little and give it a try!”

Интервью Энди Hodgetts!

Q. Are there any plans to integrate a map with an ability to create your own marks on it with pencils and pens ? Also, will we be able to use crutches? Usually it’s really hard to move about with a broken leg without them. (Albert Sudakov)

AH: Some sort of player crafted map is something we’ve been thinking about pretty much since the start of development. We have a lot of ideas how maps such as these would have uses beyond just personal navigation and map markers. I hope we’re able to implement this to some extent, but it’s not part of our *essential* feature list for 1.0. And yes, crutches are kind of necessary from a story perspective if you recall the original Kate & Bob story, so yeah we’d definitely like to have this sort of stuff.

Q. Will there be a way to protect yourself from scratches or bites, for example – tape a journal to our wrists, or wear several clothes at once? Will we see winter clothing? (Fedor Ushanov)

AH: There will be many more clothing options in the final game, which will have their own stats. So motorcycle leathers will protect you from scratches far more effectively than a cotton t-shirt, for example. And yes, some clothing will be better for a winter climate than summer, rain protection, etc. Whether we get as in-depth as ‘crafting an item to yourself’ as in your journal taped to wrists example, that remains to be seen. In principle there’s no reason why we can’t have craftable clothing in the same way as we have craftable everything else. But it’s unlikely we’d be able to represent all these craftable varieties (should we implement them) visually on the character.

Q. Are you ever going to integrate the ability to swim – either on boats or handmade rafts? (Nikita Suldin)

AH: At the moment, we envisioned using the river north of West Point as a natural barrier to the quarantine zone, so allowing the player to swim or pilot boats would mean we’d need a physical wall of some description on the other bank. That said, as we continue to expand the map and more smaller streams / lakes / etc are added, we will need to revisit the current utterly impassable water tiles since it makes no sense that it wouldn’t be possible to cross, say, a single tile of water. It’ll need some thought to exactly the best way to handle it but in principle, swimming (or at least wading) through shallower water would be nice. When vehicles go in the game, the distinction between a car and a boat is not that great so, again, this maaaaaay be something we’ll consider. But at this stage, I wouldn’t want to promise it – just give our assurances that we’ll consider it.

Интервью Роберта Джонсона!

Q. Are you planning to create a way to keep us warm? I know that you can warm yourself already with campfires and clothes, I meant a fully functional system that’ll keep a room or house warm. (Fedor Ushanov)

RJ: I don’t see why not. We already have the moodle for being cold/hot, and winter is a huge part of the survival as you can’t farm or forage. You need to stock your food up by then, so I don’t see why at some point we wouldn’t want to stock up on logs to burn and keep buildings warm as well.

Q. Will there be any electro generators added into the game? Will we be able to use car battery to charge electricity? Also, will you be able to craft handmade carts to carry huge loads of wood logs? (Vladik, just Vladik)

RJ: Generators are planned for build 32 (aka “the great crafting overhaul”). It’ll be a quite easy system at first, more complex stuff with electricity may come in the future. For now my idea is that you put the generator inside a building to provide power for that building, but that generator will need repairs, will need petrol to work and will make a ton of noise! As for the carts, well the problem there is the animation and a proper system to push/pull things in the world, hence why I did the basic crafting of “log stacks” for now. Pushing stuff is planned though! Remember the good old wheelie bin?

Q. It’s already known that people are able to consume alcohol in this game, as well as an ability to treat your wounds and wellbeing with various medical pills and preparations. Are there plans to include the “bad side” of everything mentioned above? What I mean is something like an addiction. Spasibo! (Mihail Volikov)

RJ: I’d love to add some kind of addiction system. The idea reminds me a lot of Fallout! But again, I think it’d be a lot of micro-management for the player. It’s hard to simulate an addiction in a game I think, what would you do it? Shaking hands meaning you can’t craft or fight? The player simply refuses to do stuff? This is one of those things that we’ll have to think about a lot, and talk about even more. I don’t think we have enough medicine right now to create addictions anyway. I’ll have to start researching morphine…

Q. Will we be able to create proper window frames for our handmade houses? For example – create them like current doors – tear apart the existing windows with screwdriver and carry certain details over. (Igor Moor)

RJ: Well we’ll be introducing a lot of specific crafting with Build 32, but crafting glass windows might be a bit too much. Then again, perhaps you could find some windows already in-place, and move them onto your own window frame? That’s a potential.

Q. Will we ever see traps implemented? Land mines, bear traps… (Pavel Kotov)

RJ: That’s also planned for Build 32! We still need to think about them, but yes: pipe bombs, remote controlled traps, wolf/ear traps [Editor’s note: the team think the weird Frenchman means ‘Bear trap’ with this phrase] and spike traps have all been mentioned internally.

Q. Can we expect an engineering skill added in the future? A skill that, for example, at 5th level will let us create a generator or something of a kind that can be powered by diesel or alcohol? Engineering is a very wide and interesting topic and I’d be very interested to see how Project Zomboid could include their take on it. (Sergey Svetlov)

RJ: That’s also planned for Build 32! Along with other specific crafting, welding for example, and some more complex crafting that’ll require multiple skills – woodwork, engineering, electrics etc. I can’t really give examples right now as I’m still on build 31, but don’t worry we’re on the case!

And Finally

Today is the four year anniversary of the day Lemmy and Binky uploaded the first ever video of Project Zomboid, with (futile as it transpired) hope of acquiring some kind of funding to develop the game.

Then they brought the idea to all you lovely people, and the rest is history. Thanks again everyone for giving us the chance to work on the game!

Today’s featured image from Nyan Kitty. Want to get emailed lovely Mondoid goodness every Mondoid? Enquire within about our newsletter!