Thursday, Thursday one and all. We’re currently knuckling down on the Build 40 IWBUMS beta – as it’s pretty much feature complete at this stage, and are currently sweeping up as many issues as we can to package with the public release.

To this end, we’ve just released IWBUMS beta version 40.16. In amongst the longer changelist of bug fixes and polish this version contains the following.

Reflective windows on vehicles.

Player temperature rework including better time control and overall system improvements, and clothing insulation values. This also includes a moodle to show, in extreme cases, wind speed and wind chill factor.

Added ability to switch between Celsius and Fahrenheit

Improved weather effects to show snow, rain and clouds being better reflected by windspeed. This is also alongside improved blizzard and storm effects, and more ‘vertical’ appearing rain so it appears less snow-like.

Bug fixes including passengers no longer falling out of moving cars during short disconnects, the issue with not being able to refill propane torches, Q not attracting zeds, zeds appearing black on reloading, snow covering up fire tiles and upgraded door frames blocking player movement.

It works on Macs again now.

If you are one of our testers then please be aware of two issues while you’re playing.

This version might come packaged with an issue on some graphics cards due to a shader issue. We have a Radeon 390 on our internal testers, and it’s playing up a bit. Please let us know if you have any problems, so we know how widespread an issue it is. If you are impacted, then please try turning off the Steam Overlay and see if it helps. EP has also fixed an OLD bug that had zombies being immune to attacks while staggering backwards. This might create other bugs though, so please let us know if anything weird happens around smacking zeds around with melee weapons We’ve compiled some guidance as to how the new chat functions work, and you can find them here on the forum. Hopefully there’s not too much wrong with it, as that would make a Russian man cry. That said, some functions might not be 100% yet, and likewise chat history will come in the next version.

Still to do on Build 40 are tasks like adding admin control to the new weather and climate system – which we will then use in a Community IWBUMS Megatest to flush out remaining bugs and issues. We think the ability to accompany bans from servers with the sound of thunder might be quite fun, alongside the added RP value that a godlike control of the elements will bring. We also have a soundbank of seasonal effects that Turbo would still like to add in, if he has time before release.

Elsewhere we have plans for upcoming features in future builds crystallizing now (the power network, car upgrades, some thoughts on the farming revamp etc), and clearly have the guys at TEA working on the animation system too.

After we put out our guidance on how to get new vehicle mods into the game alongside the official vehicles then it’s been really gratifying to see them starting to appear in the Workshop. Please check out Filibuster Rhymes’ Used Cars, for example. Hopefully one car set of many to appear in the future.

This week’s soft drink capitalism from Slurp Burp. 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. And finally, vaileasys and the wiki have gotta know, where’s your favourite location in Project Zomboid?