Hey all – a few quick things while we continue to tidy up the public Build 40 that was released two weeks ago, and TEA do their animations things backstage for Build 41.

IWBUMS BETA PATCH

We currently have the next 40 patch in beta, and we just released 40.35. We think this now covers most of the primary irritations in the current version: muffled local text chat, some run issues, some issues with MP savegame conversion, wonky door construction and indestructible stairs.

On Tuesday we also released 40.34, which also covered issues with car alarms, building, chatbox integration, errant zombie attractant car honks and forced car-re-entry on MP reloads.

Once this is released to public we’ll hopefully pretty much there with 40 now, although Turbo is still working on improving his shaders for internal lights, headlights and flashlights – and Bitbaboon Steve is joining us again tomorrow to double-check there aren’t any easy-win performance hang-ups he can resolve.

WATER IMPROVEMENT

General Arcade’s Yuri is currently working on the improved presentation of water for Build 41, and while still experimental it currently looks like this.

Now, a few things to mention:

This is still a WIP, and it’s a fair criticism to say it looks ‘too good’ (if such a thing were possible) when compared to the static hand-drawn land tiles. However, from this we intend to tweak the specular, colour and reflection for balance, and indeed perhaps add a subtle effect to the land itself. Yuri still needs to optimize this system, and in the videos the character is invisible due to the ongoing merging of animations into other dev branches. The endpoint of this water presentation revamp will also be to specify water zones through the PZ map tools that specify water flow direction, instead of only taking wind direction into account for the animation. In this way we can have the river in Riverside very clearly being a flowing river, and standing ponds and lakes looking far more settled.

GAMEPAD REVAMP TEST BUILD

We currently have General Arcade’s Stas working on a new controllers build, and we’re now at a point at which we need to hear feedback from PZ survivors who like to play with a pad, and/or in split-screen, about how it’s playing.

If this is you (and you’d like to be rewarded with an extra freshly minted PZ Steam code for a friend, enemy or loved one) then we have a new test beta for you to try out – and ten questions to answer from your experience of a few hours of play on the build.

To learn more about the Controllers test build, the free PZ Steam codes for active participants, and to find out how to access the beta then click here.

Please note however that currently only PC players can run the build, and also that the joypad back-end system, configuration and bindings have been completely rewritten from the ground up. In the process some aspects of the controls and default bindings have been changed in the rewriting process – if you have any issues with the default bindings and behaviours of the controls we’d like to hear about it.