If you’ve been out of the loop on the beta, a good place to start would be our new trailer to celebrate the release and show those new to Zomboid what’s in store for them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPbsDmzZ3Oc
This build marks a huge step for us, the graphics, gameplay, audio and netcode being significantly remastered and radically improved, Build 41 feels more a sequel than a patch update. As well as a huge map update, new mechanics and systems, its by far our biggest update yet.
Under normal circumstances, we may have done a little more polish and fixing before releasing to stable, but the truth is next to no one are playing Build 40 now, apart from those that didn’t know of the beta branch. It’s presence if anything has been damaging to Project Zomboid’s first impressions and we were only waiting for multiplayer to drop in a somewhat stable fashion to allow us to move on, as we feel strongly that Build 41 even with the remaining bugs and issues that need weeding out, casts a far superior first impression for new players.
Build 40 will forever live on in a branch, access the beta branch “legacy40 – Classic Zomboid” at any point to continue playing, or if your specs aren’t capable of running build 41 comfortably.
So what’s new in this build?
- Massive animation and character overhaul, more immersive animations and smoother gameplay and combat, highly customizable character that shows clothing and equipment in the world. Visibly ripped and damaged clothing. Visible Backpacks and Bags.
- In-game map system to allow the player to chart their exploration and find their way around the huge map.
- New animations and new movement systems. Sneaking, sprinting, jogging, racking, reloading, climbing, fence-jumping, collapsing and much much more.
- New multiplayer built from the ground up for smooth, immersive and low latency player and zombie movement.
- New combat, new weapons, new difficulty balance.
- New tutorial teaching you the very basics of the new movement and combat.
- New character creation – many, many different new clothing options both on spawn and discoverable in the world as loot or on zombies.
- New city to explore, the gargantuan Louisville, as well as many improvements across the entire map, including new buildings, decoration, and curved roads for easier driving.
- New zombie behaviour: feasting on recent corpses, lolling against walls, falling over fences etc.
- Blood and dirt system that progressively bloodies bodies and clothing of survivors and zombies
- New injury system – movement and combat visibly hampered when injured. Lacerations now possible, an injury state that lies between bites and scratches.
- Improved gunplay: green/red target outline while aiming, increased gun loot spawn.
- Randomized environmental storytelling elements. Death Scenes, zombies discovered in the situations in which people died. Prayer meetings, sports-viewing parties, survivor zeds wearing backpacks etc, vehicle crashes and blockades.
- Situational zombie type/clothing and inventories – cop zeds in police station, firemen zeds in burnt buildings, Chef zeds in restaurant kitchens, bride and groom zeds at a wedding ceremony in church etc.
- Clothing protection: different clothing provides different levels of protection from zombie attacks.
- New Sims-style cutaway vision system.
- Vehicle handling improvements, resizing and appearance tweaks.
- Updated, remastered and expanded Kentucky-themed soundtrack.
- Complete soundscape overhaul – All new sounds, building a more immersive and compelling sonic landscape.
- Items now have placeable 3D models in the world, for all your decorative needs.
- New Gameplay Styles Apocalypse: Stealth focus. Short lifespan. Combat best avoided and picked selectively. Survivor: Powerful combat. Longer Lifespan. A challenging playstyle based on PZ’s previous Survival mode of Build 40. Builder: Construction, Exploration, and Farming focus. A more relaxed experience.
- New Challenges Kingsmouth – A separate challenge map, Kingsmouth puts you on a paradise island vacation resort. Studio – Try to survive as the Knox Infection hits the dream factory. Some of these zombies are not like the others.
- Entirely new foraging system.
- New inventory slots – belts and holsters now give quick equip slots. Weapons can be attached to the character’s back.
- New thermal / body temperature system.
- New Tailoring system for clothing repairs.
- New Fitness / Exercise system.
- New emote system – Hold Q to bring up the Radial Menu for Emotes.
- New water visuals – including visible flow direction.
- New puddle system during heavy rain.
- New fog visuals.
- New levelling system.
- New VHS, and CDs system.
- Broken glass and related injuries.
- 3D Store Mannequins – can be dressed however you like
- Working washing machines and driers
- Server-side saving: MP save system now in a server-side database. Offline SP-side, also means no more lost cars via irl power outages.
- New radial menu for reloading firearms.
- New game cursor
- New loot balance and loot balance system: houses and stores now have loot in the containers you would expect from real life – and not in a jumble.
- Isometric aiming cursor that shows where you’re aiming in iso space to aid in combat.
- A gigantic list of fixes and QoL improvements.
Thank you
A huge thanks everyone for the wonderful experience we’ve had since releasing multiplayer, seeing such a wave of positivity has been wild and made this long journey for this build more than worth it! Seeing the player numbers dwarf our previous record has been crazy:
We’re over the moon over the success the multiplayer has seen and we vow to continue and expand on that.
We’re so proud of everyone on our team, we know we wouldn’t be here today if we didn’t have such dedicated devs working on all these features, often under intense external pressure, and the support team for helping us keep the sometimes chaotic wheels spinning. Every one of them is wonderful and deserving of all our thanks.
Finally, a huge specific thank you to General Arcade, in particular Yuri and Andrei who have put such amazing work into bringing a quality to Zomboid’s multiplayer we simply would never have (and indeed, hadn’t) achieved without them. They’ve put huge amounts of work into this, and we’re thankful to them for helping Zomboid multiplayer come to the vision we had for it.
That’s all for this update. See you all after the new year where we’ll talk about what comes next!
