Hello, one and all. Monday means many things to many people – but to us it means it’s time to unveil Build 31’s intentions for locking and unlocking doors in Project Zomboid!

Here at The Indie Stone we’re all about adding a little bit of door glamour to the start of your week. First though…

Finalizing Build 30

The amazing, lovely and slightly beautiful EasyP has been throwing in fix after fix for Build 30, with 30.16 being thrown into public IWBUMS testing only this morning. Once we’re sure it’s firing in all areas, it will be rolled out in the main branch. We’ll then check over the remaining issues to see whether we still need a few more updates, or whether we’re at a point to ‘call time’ on Build 30 and move our full attention onto the next. It’s at this point that we’ll also be able to update the Desura build.

Ooh. Shut that door.

Listen carefully, and you’ll hear the tip-tap of gallic footsteps. That’s right everyone, it’s PZ coder Romain ‘RJ’ Dron with the reveal of his first Build 31 feature. Here’s the run-down on what’s new:

“You will now spawn with the key of your own house on a key ring. Your key ring can be considered a new container type in your inventory, although only keys can be kept in there. As you loot and explore you’ll find the keys of other houses that have been left for safekeeping in their drawers and cupboards. Sometimes they’ll be on the bodies of the zombies that spawn in those houses too.”

“With a key you can lock and unlock doors all doors that correspond to it, and to check what it will open you can mouse over the key on your inventory key ring and the corresponding doors will highlight on-screen. You can also lock and unlock doors on houses from the inside without owning a key, just as you could in real-life.”

“But wait, that’s not all. When you destroy a door, if you have the right key, you can pick up the door knob and rebuild a new door with it – and your key will match!”

“And finally, I’ve also introduced padlocks! You can add a padlock onto your hand-made crates to secure them. They’ll be automatically unlocked if you have the key, but in MP others won’t be able to get inside them. Although, of course, if they have a crowbar that’s a different matter.”

And here’s a video, so you can see how it all works with your own peepers.

Also of note

Stealth work, NPC work and whatnot continues in the background (as ever) while PZ’s upcoming – and somewhat goliath – map update is another primary and ongoing occupation for the team. TurboTuTone’s WordZed application has also had a lot of work put into it, and he and Will hope to use it to create an initial in-game ‘test’ radio station over the week ahead.

Cool stuff from elsewhere

Last week we spotlit Xeonyx’s absolutely amazing New Denver map, and this week we’d like to give a quick Mondoid to two other cool PZ fan projects.

The first is the return of Thuztor’s Vacation Island that we’d strongly recommend that the community keeps its eyes on.

The second is a super-cool PZ card game that a nice chap called Andrew is creating in Tabletop Simulator. Given that the creation of a card game, of sorts, has been integral in the continuing development of our NPC system – this is proving a really interesting project for us.

Jerry’s Final Thought

It’s been a shitty seven days in the real world, as we’re sure that everyone is painfully aware. The Project Zomboid community is an amazing one: people of different nationalities, people of different cultures and people of different faiths – all bound together through our weird little game. It’s great, and the way it should be.

It’s also a game with a strong French lean in terms of development, and a passionate group of French supporters who’ve been with us since the very start. With this in mind we’d like to extend our support and sympathies to our French audience at this difficult time. No matter what our differences are, bloodshed should never be the answer.

Do you ever forget it’s Monday, and accidentally make Mondoid a Tuesdoid by checking too late? Maybe you fall even further into Wednesdoid or Thursdoid? Well, never again! With the PZ newsletter all future updates and blogs are sent straight to your email inbox. Mondoid will forever be in its rightful timeslot.

