Ello’ all, and happy Bank Holiday for UK-ers and beyond.

RIVERSIDE RELEASE

The town of Riverside and the countryside around it was added to the IWBUMS public beta Build 38 last Thursday in 38.8, and we’re getting plenty of positive reports from the testers exploring its separated rich/poor districts, the Scenic Grove trailer park, the stone angels of its graveyards and the delights of the Knox Heights Country Club.

We’ve also added a lootable map, and have been adding foraging zoning etc to it since release. Here’s a section of it, but there’s plenty more besides.

We’ll be adding the map to the vehicles build imminently, tomorrow hopefully, which will probably help you in your exploration as it’s been constructed to favour drivers a little more than previous map expansions. Initial reports suggest people are digging the different building styles, and there’s still some more to come from Mash in terms of extra buildings and detail. It sounds like zombie numbers need to be topped up a little, though, so if the Country Club tennis courts feel like they need a bit more action then please let us know.

MEGATEST RESULTS

Last Wednesday we ran the IWBUMS Megatest II to try out Bitbaboon Steve’s new effort in the War Against Zombie Lag – and we’re very pleased to report a resounding success.

We opened up the server toward the end of the test and had 141 people playing off/on over the hour, and 87 at its peak – and the usual peril of ghosting zombies, unfair bites and general combat sludginess was hugely improved. Even better, things didn’t seem to degrade the more players got online.

If this summary from Svarog is anything to go by, life for our MP players should be vastly improved when 38 is released: “I’ve gotta say that it’s incredible how much better it is when it comes to zombies. There is almost no lag, combat is much, much more pleasant. I can even use knives as weapons. Awesome job.”

Our thanks to Steve for his eagle eyes and code skills – and also for his ongoing work as there’s still room for improvement. During the test he set up various headache testcases with groups of helpful players, and there’s still plenty of areas he feels he can ratchet MP performance tighter, before moving on to general PZ optimization to aid and abet both vehicles and the animation system that his colleague Mark is helping out with. Hurrah then!

NEXT

Current focus is to tidy up Build 38 and get it out of the door – with IWBUMS 38.9 fairly imminent with Riverside forage zoning, new spawnpoints, Yuri’s recent gamepad work and some work on legacy bugs from Connall.

[Incidentally Connall is now taking ownership of much of the ‘Small but Important Suggestions thread‘ so if there’s any minor thing that you think could make life that little bit more fun or realistic in the game then feel free to holler at him there. From 38.9 if you’re sleeping outside then rain will wake you up, for instance.]

Yuri, meanwhile, continues his work on the public vehicles test – and is currently adding brake lights, and a change in appearance of the physical headlights to accompany the light beams we already have in the game. He’ll most likely be turning to co-op issues later in the week, while we’ll also be internally testing his engine optimizations when they’re integrated into Build 38 so that we can pave the way for the release of the first iteration of vehicles in Build 39.

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 Mondoids 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.