After a run of three pulsating, fascinating and audacious Mondoids one might imagine that PZ players are probably due one that essentially says ‘working on all that stuff we mentioned and doing a bunch of testing’. Maybe with an exclamation mark added at the end.

So yeah, we’re working on all that stuff we mentioned – and doing a bunch of testing!

The current changelist can be found in RJ’s new Build 31 thread on the forums. This isn’t the complete list – other features we’re working on may well drop in on completion. We’ll be in a better position to judge when we’ll put a lock on Build 31 content and push out to IWBUMS when we’re further through the testing process. We want to get the more obvious balancing stuff right, and given the large amount of character builds now available there’s a fair chunk to go through.

A quick summary of the build content, however, runs as follows:

Keys and Door tweaks

You spawn with a keyring and the key to your spawn-home. Keys for other houses can then be found while looting, or on homeowner zombie corpses – and locks can be removed and built into player-made doors. We’re also introducing key-based padlocks for hand-made cates and some combination code padlocks too.

The new Profession and Trait system

Check out our Mondoid on this for the full skinny, and RJ’s post for the exact skills and traits but it looks a little something like this:

Challenges

An updated area of the main menu, to act as home for Last Stand and any other cool modes we can dream up to provide fun skews on your usual survival. This is currently home for the rather extreme ‘A Really Bad CD DA’ scenario (C:DDA fans will probably be able to guess what this entails), but will soon be home to endless winters, fiery rain and all kinds of fun stuff.

Reanimation

The return of the feature that would see infected survivors turning upon death – letting you watch your zed as it stumbles around – quite possibly attacking other players if you’re in MP.

Other stuff

Ten levels to your skills instead of five. Much needed MP Admin features. All kinds of bug-fixes and whatnot.

That’s almost it for this week, but we didn’t want to let you go without a video. As we’ve discussed previously, TurboTuTone has been working on our television and radio system – and this week we’ve been trying to recreate (in a less hack-y way) how Kate’s bedside radio became less audible when Baldspot was downstairs – back in the days of the tech demo.

As you’ll be able to tell, the next video is somewhat WIP in terms of timings – but will give you a good idea about how the new system will work, and what’s within our [and modder] control through a privileged glimpse at the debug menu…

Finally, just when RJ was about to turn his attention to water purification in Project Zomboid the wondrous map maestro BlindCoder appeared with his Dirty Water and Salt Water mod, complete with textures from Thuztor! Check it out!

Today’s Die Hard-themed featured image from Steam user Mryx! Newsletter subscription link found here! Don’t come to us every Monday, let us come to you!