Hokay, so holiday season is fast approaching so the IWBUMS beta patch we put out today is going to be the last of 2019 – barring the unexpected or the hotfix in nature.

The details of 41.24 can be found here, and amongst other things it contains two combat changes/improvements that we’d like some feedback on.

The first is that we’ve addressed those moments when you swing and a melee weapon passes through a zombie’s head, when it looks like it clearly should have connected. Previously when a zombie was coming at you, but was out of range, you’d play the “miss” anim: a long anim with a big swing and it would feel like you were missing. Now, if a lunging zed is out of range then the hit will more clearly connect. This will hopefully make the combat feel a little more punchy and connective.

The second is that we’ve tried to make zombie whack-a-mole a little fairer by forbidding any zeds you’re standing on (standing on quite precisely) to get back up to take a bite while you’re attacking their friends. This isn’t quite as all-powerful a change as it initially sounds (we think) but we could still do with some feedback on how it changes combat and whether we ought to nerf it a little.

Also in 41.24: zombie alert turn animations, the ability to shoot out window panes, better zeds vs. vehicles pathfinding, QOL improvements for taking dirt/gravel/sand, some trait changes and fixes to issues that were preventing ‘feeding zed’ scenes spawning in various locations.

NEXT PATCH

We’ll be powering down for Christmas tomorrow, though generally our more fervent coders tend to carry on checking stuff in whenever they feel the need to avoid festive cheer. As such, we’ll likely have the next IWBUMS patch going out to you early in the first working week of Jan – which starts on Jan 6th.

Already in the pot for this are improvements to the cutaway system from new ChrisW acolyte coder Fox, new clutter sprites to bring life to interiors, and some improvements to the thermo system that we wanted to test thoroughly backstage rather than plop them into a live test public test build before running away draped in tinsel.

The new improved character resolutions provided by our zoom improvements (also an optimization that we hope will get remaining potato PCs aboard the anims train) should also be cooked around this point, after which will come MP and MP testing – although still no firm dates on this we’re afraid.

We’re also at the point at which some of our workers are on foundation work for Build 42 both in terms of features and cool (non-Louisville) map content. It’s all looking hugely promising – and will hopefully make 2020 a year to remember for all Knox Event survivors past and present.

We’ll be back with our traditional Snowman Spiffo image and a few dev-nuggets next Thursday, as we long ago sold our soul to the devil at some point in terms of doing these blogs week-in week-out. Until then though, have a great Christmas if you’re celebrating – and a nice time doing whatever else you’re doing if you’re not.

This week’s image by Anikin. 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!