Happy Steam Summer Sale week survivors. May all your money-off dreams come true.

CHRISW’S BUILDING TIER MAGIC

Okay, so first off we’ve just had some of ChrisW’s cool engine/visuals stuff drop into the IWBUMS public test in build 38.4. They look a little bit like this. [Vid supplied by the lovely Mark.exe]

Essentially the only levels that are hidden from the player are the ones of the building that you’re inside or directly outside – meaning that higher floors and rooftops around you become visible. ChrisW has also made the act of peeking through windows to see what’s inside a lot more immersive, as well as improving the engine so walls no longer stencil to transparent when you’re outside unless they’re blocking your view.

All this makes the map feel a lot more tangible and real, so feel free to take the IWBUMS beta for a spin – and please let us know of any bugs or issues that might crop up for you. One that’s immediately in the above video, for example, is that some overhang tiles appear as black upon approach.

After fixing bugs/issues that emerge, then next on ChrisW’ list are Sims style cutaways to make internal building navigation more pleasant and visually attractive.

SERVER COMMUNITY MEGATEST

Also just added to the IWBUMS public beta is an MP server option that Stas from General Arcade has been working on. This momentarily pauses all player activity when admins require server saving, instead of having it stretch out while players are out performing various in-game actions. Stas has also worked on shortening these save times – so this should all help lag, black boxes and the like. It’ll also need a stress test. So…

This Wednesday 28th June at 7pm GMT we will be running a test IWBUMS server with this new function (full details to appear in this thread) and anyone willing to jump on and play the game for an hour will get a free Project Zomboid code to give to a friend/enemy/close family relation. All we need is for you to be running around on the server for an hour or so, and it’ll probably be quite a fun escapade.

GENERAL IWBUMS

Also added in this beta is an SP custom map selection that’ll allow you to load up multiple community maps without having to create your own mod, and some new grave imagery too as the initial ones were too long and looked a little too neat.

Next up RJ is reworking how the current ‘nearby rotting corpses don’t make survival pleasant’ code operates, as its current implementation clearly needs some improvement.

OTHER STUFF

MarkR has created a tool called AnimZed, which is one of the mediums through which he’s simplifying the anim integration process both for us and, in future, the modding community. It looks a little bit like this. Ooh, and we’d also like to officially welcome Connall to the PZ codebase, who’ll be starting off by going back through the bug tracker and fixing up legacy irritations alongside various other nips and tucks.

VEHICLES

In today’s new vehicles build, as well as hopefully nixing the irritating flies bug that came in with the last version, Yuri has been fixing up MP syncing issues that saw lights apparently flicking on and off by themselves, and zombies running through closed doors to try to get to you.

This week the plan is for him to work on aspects of the physics that need improvement. For example: collision with zombies, the fact that driving into zombie crowds without acceleration seems to have more impact on them than doing so with your foot down, deceleration in general, braking distance and, of course, the famed tumbling/hovering StepVan of Doom.

This week’s lonely gas station clerk from Goonty Asatrigger. 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.