Happy December Thursdoid, and a big hello to all the new survivors who’ve jumped on board in recent weeks. This week we’ll be doing a quick check-in with the various different departments who are at work on Build 42 and providing a little freeze-frame of exactly what’s being worked on.
First though, we would be remiss if we didn’t inform all fans of raccoons, soft toys and ‘both of these things’ that: the Makeship campaign for the Spiffo plush has been EXTENDED for a full extra week due to everyone getting all excited about it.
If you are interested in sliding under a closing door then reaching back for your fluffy Spiffo, like Indiana Jones, then final orders can be made here:
https://shop.makeship.com/3FHlgG8
Okay, so let’s go round the Zomboid houses. Starting with… the sound team?
SOUND DEPARTMENT
Formosa (formerly Noiseworks) have a lot of different things on the brew – work on new music and music systems, all the new actions and items for B42 (switchblade, firecracker etc) and clearly all the animal stuff which they’ll be starting on in due course.
Something else they are starting work on, however, are ‘acted’ character noises – pants and puffs recorded by real life actors to add a little more depth and feeling to the game, not to mention a greater feeling of ‘real’ when you are standing next to a character who has exerted themselves or is being injured in MP.
This will likely be an option you can turn off if you find it intrusive, but the Sound team believe they will provide an extra layer of immersion for Knox Event survivors. The sorts of things they’ll be recording will be: effort noises for window and fence climbs, sleeping noises, pain noises when bitten or scratched, vomiting, sneezing coughing etc.
ANIMS DEPARTMENT
As those who read this blog might recall, we’ve been screaming out for a big brain to come in and lend their clever thoughts to some of the movement bugs and issues in our anims system for a while. Previous attempts to find a Chosen One didn’t work out, and as such since the 41 release we’ve had a significant blocker in terms of improving our animation system and our animation tools.
There has been significant rejoicing, then, that our friends at Ever Curious Entertainment have lent us their own big brain Steve North – who has been deep in AnimZed of late, and should be providing a range of changes and improvements that will help out our animator Martin no end.
In terms of a player-facing end result, this means that in B42 hopefully there’ll be better blends between anims to tighten everything up and make things look smoother. It could also, potentially, improve the responsiveness of controls and give gameplay a slightly tighter feeling. We’ll see how it goes when the fixes go in.
FIRE DEPARTMENT
Work on integration of the previously in-dev fire system continues, this week with the introduction of new mechanics like burnable oily surfaces and development of fire spread in save games and MP code.
We are also experimenting with visuals in that a more pixelated fire looks better in-game, and also will be having a VFX artist joining us for a time in January to further improve its appearance in our isometric illustrate-y looking world. It’s already looking a smidge better though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE_OsmMyxfI
MAPPING DEPARTMENT
Lots of fun new locations appearing from Xeonyx and Ayrton in the map channel, including this little doozy…
Over to RJ, resident of a country doomed to failure in a World Cup football match this coming Saturday.
“Right now I’m prepping my stuff so it can be put in front of our testers. I’m trying to improve the ‘meta’ part of the system that governs them when you’re not in their direct presence – primarily how the feeding trough and water troughs are managed while you’re away. That’s my main focus at the moment – but also need to add some polish to the genetics when animals breed, and I’ll be moving onto animal sickness soon also.”
Now onto Turbo, a resident of a country who will most likely be getting spanked by Argentina at the moment this blog goes live at some point this evening.
“I’m getting stuff ready so that other team members can jump into the more stable parts of my craft branch and help expand it, and plug stuff in. First, though, I’m going back over my crafting stations, and doing some refactoring – in essence adding a lot more automation to the way the system works in the code.“
“It should be worth the extra thought that’s going into it though, at the bare minimum you should be able to create a new station purely through scripting alone. If a certain station requires it then custom logic or a custom UI panel or element can easily be added – it should be as great for modders as much as ourselves.“
BLAIR ALGOL DEPARTMENT
If you are/were aware of Blair as a prolific PZ modder, it will come as no surprise that on the team he is a WHIRLWIND of cool ideas and always has multiple gameplay tweaks and features on the go – and has struck up an amazing combo team with our ‘Loot Placement Artiste’ Baph.
Here’s some fun stuff that’s recently gone in for testing from the world of KEYS:
- Zombies will now only have a key, or a key ring with a key in it, for suitable buildings that they spawn in or near to. Prison Guards can have Prison keys, inmates cannot. Employees of a business can have a key for it, customers cannot.
- More keys will spawn in buildings, not just for the building, but also possibly for nearby vehicles. Sometimes those nearby vehicles may also have a key for that building in the glovebox.
- When a vehicle spawns a key (in its glovebox, on a zombie, or on the ground) it has a chance of being accompanied by a key for a nearby building as well.
- It’s ensured that only cop zombies get the cop car keys – although Survivor zombies could have anything.
- Building keys may well come pre-named according to the sort of building or business they unlock.
- We are doing more fun stuff with Key Rings in general, watch out rabbits!
So in essence: it will be possible for your survivor to find a locked building, find a key for it in the glovebox of a vehicle parked nearby, and then find a key for that vehicle inside that building. The keys may also be on a Lucky Rabbit’s Foot Keyring.
A Lucky Rabbit’s Foot Keyring may, or may not, have a minimal boost to your Luck. We will never truly let on.
Also: new options to let you mix in your runners with your shambles
OTHER DEPARTMENT
Clearly this isn’t everything – we’ve also got optimizations, basements and other fun stuff lined up for 42 but there’s not a huge amount of news on these beyond ‘it’s all coming along’. Hopefully we’ll have a few more updates on these in our next pre-Xmasdoid.
Fanks all love yus x
This week’s good use of 41 fire from BoinXaysa. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The 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 you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.
Now, the Block of Italicized Text demands: go and buy Dwarf Fortress on Steam! The original, best and most brilliant simulation there is – and ever shall be.
Its development, and developers, bay12games, are LEGENDARY and built the road that Project Zomboid travels on each and every day. Now DF is finally on Steam, and we implore you all to join in the fun!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/
