Hey all, quick run around the houses talking about who’s on what this week.

In anims-land for Build 41 Zac’s been looking at optimization, which we’ll be coming back to pretty routinely from this point – as we want to make sure everything is nice and smooth. Here he’s sorted out some locks in the render thread, and from the Before and After you can see a marked improvement in quality.

He’s also working on getting the shiny helmet / coats / leggings shader effect going for different clothing items, and also investigating with Mark as to why over the course of development with the animations system we’ve lost some of the earthy colours and harsher lighting that tended towards a slight over-saturation and bleached effect that doesn’t quite make the new character models fit the scene.

Animator Martin, meanwhile, is looking at all the different locations we’ve got on the map (and those still to come) and creating new outfits to discover in their cupboards and lockers – and likewise to find the local zeds dressed up in.

In other news:

Xeonyx, the creator of the much-loved New Denver / Slocan Lake map, is now working on Challenge Maps for the main game. These, including the Film Studio map we’ve discussed previously, will most likely be a part of Build 41. His current mission is a fictional map called Kingsmouth – a ‘paradise island’ vacation resort in the Caribbean. The map will feature vast hotels, seaside locales, a military installation and much more – but we’ll go quiet on it for now while Jamie gets on with his work. Here’s a quick screen from the map editor though.

Chris W continues his work on improving visuals within buildings – aiming for more Sims-style cutaways and the removal of the circle stencil we currently use. Here’s a quick before and after of the start of this work – the second image showing walls in the foreground cutting away to skirting height – with smooth transitions curving up to full height.

Before

After

Meanwhile:

Yuri is working on improvements to the way we render the ground surfaces, especially road textures that have been rained on, to complement his recent improvements to how water appears in-game. (This said, right now, he’s shackling a hilarious car physics demon that’s sprung up on an internal server.)

Stas just released an updated Controller Test beta for those helping out with our gamepad improvement scheme. If you are interested in getting a free PZ code for your troubles, then join our band of testers.

While BitbaboonMark does some TEA-side code repository movements and merging: RJ is doing some improvements to food crafting and prepping a (non-anims) forum test for his new loot table improvements, EP is doing some very exciting experimental work with a new player map system and Turbo is plotting his next move after the successful integration of his weather/shaders in Build 40. (Most likely picking up on his work on in-game devices, or maybe those seasonal sound effects we discussed before).

Community stuff:

We’d like to direct your attention to the new Hashima Island map by Woldren, a map based on an IRL location you might recognise as the place where James Bond shot a woman who had whiskey on her head in Skyfall. It’s pretty damn cool.

We’d also like to direct your attention to the Redboid server, which had a season refresh/reboot/restart yesterday and is a grand place to start your PZ MP adventures if you haven’t done so yet.

If you run a PZ server and would like a shout-out in a future blog, then please get in touch. And while you’re at it -please use these values in Bitbaboon Steve’s recent networking optimization options, as they certainly seem to be helping those currently using ’em.

ZombieUpdateMaxHighPriority=50

ZombieUpdateDelta=0.5

ZombieUpdateRadiusLowPriority=45.0

ZombieUpdateRadiusHighPriority=10.0

This week’s infested neighborhood from Dark Oracle. 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 MailingList 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.