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Project Zomboid
Asid:
BagZ of fun
Thu, 27 July 2023
Let’s have a dig into what’s happening in everyone’s favourite apocalypse. (Although other apocalypses are available.
First off a quick check-in with three of the four main pillars of Build 42 – the pillars in question being crafting system revamp, MP improvement, the depth/performance/lighting tech upgrade, and finally animals – which will have to wait till next time as RJ is only very recently back from his summer hols.
Turbo has been finalizing his machine and crafting station systems for a check-in next week, after we decided on some ways to maximise their utility for both our own devs and modders and give them as broad and solid a foundation as we can. The results are exciting and the design process for machines and the numerous crafting stations continues to expand these systems over the new tech tree and across existing devices over the entire PZ map. (Stuff like gas stations, wells, water pumps etc will also eventually be tied to the new system – but maybe not in the initial release.)
Next up: tech upgrade. Lots of stuff going on in codeland for this – but the topline additions have been improvements to the new visibility polygon, and continued work on the tile depth addition that will remove annoying character/wall clipping and ultimately make proper addition of lying and sitting down in all four directions feasible for mainline addition. (As well as the rendering optimizations it will entail obv.)
Alongside this the continued whackamole of things broken by the foundational changes made by the engine upgrades – stuff like (to grab a few random examples) doors not shaking when thumped, muzzleflash not showing, railings not being cutaway properly, rendering of zeds on hidden floors not working and many/varied other important stuff.
Finally, we now have four coders and two MP-devoted testers beavering away on our multiplayer – two coders devoted to the ongoing mission to bring all player inventory operations server-side, and another two knuckling down on general MP bugs and required polish. Over the past two weeks the guys have also been hooking up ‘new for 42’ systems, like the revamped fishing, to the netcode – and looking ahead to properly wiring up the animals too.
SOUNDSCAPE IMPROVEMENTS
Last week our Formosa UK’s primary PZ-dedicated chaps, Michael and Matteo, took the opportunity to do a full new mixing session for the game while they were both on the same island – said island being Great Britain.
A proportion of this was done with MP in mind, and especially gunshots, but seeing as multiplayer is currently broken/WIP in our dev build they instead hooked up an in-game barbecue to a long sequence of gunshots and worked around it like that. (Enterprising chaps, these two.)
We’re still waiting on some improved occlusion settings for indoor/outdoor, and the like, and some tweaks to player related sounds – but otherwise the following has been tweaked and added.
Read on: https://steamcommunity.com/games/108600/announcements/detail/3642900408842962014
Asid:
The Connection Is Made
Thu, 17 August 2023
Hey everyone. Jumping straight in with an update on the new and improved crafting system this time around if that’s okay with y’all.
As we’ve talked about in previous Thursdoids, a large part of the crafting overhaul revolves around creating a unified, powerful and expansive system for machines, crafting stations and appliances. This covers all the different things you find around the world, and those crafted by yourself and your friends.
A primary piece of this puzzle has been in the creation of dev systems and methodology that allow for the hugely swifter implementation of far more varied/interesting crafting and devices – which in turn is a big thing for modders, and for the nu-medieval post apocalyptic society gameplay we will now cater for.
This has also been built, however, with a framework that will allow for a wide variety of other gameplay aspects – some of which will be a part of the initial 42 release, while others will be drip-fed into future 42 builds, and more still in the mainline builds beyond that. (The underlying systems will be available for modders from the word go, however.)
One of the advantages that the crafting revamp brings with it is the opportunity to provide engineering and electronics gameplay with a ton more depth. This system revolves around the concept of components.
An example of this would be a ‘power input’ component, which provides electrical power to a machine from an external wire. Another would be a crafting component, which would undertake a crafting recipe that can make use of any liquid or item within a machine’s resource component, that can store items, liquid or power. Importantly, every component also has an associated UI that’s been designed for player interaction.
This will mean as our library (and the community’s library) of components grows, we can quickly put them together to create all sorts of in-game machines and appliances. It’s also relatively easy to slap a UI skin on to each component (perhaps something already existing from the game, perhaps something new) to make them appear in the most appropriate way.
Components will also be moddable, so modders will be able to add new components that could then be used as parts of a machine’s in-game functionality and UI.
The end goal is to open this up to the player in-game, having these components as items obtainable through disassembly.
A burglar alarm for example will be comprised of a speaker component, as well as a battery input component and a motion sensor component. A player could feasibly go around collecting the components, removing the motion sensors and installing them around their base, wiring each of them up to lights to act as an early warning system.
Meanwhile the speaker component of the burglar alarm could be similarly wired up to a switch to allow people in the base to create a distraction sound to lure zombies away or into a trap.
These are just two potential gameplay moments plucked from the air, but good examples of a believable utility of scavenging components from real world items.
Putting aside all the new professions and skills coming to B42, this will finally provide engineering and electronic skills with a lot of cool utility – and make anyone with these skills a valuable asset to any survivor group.
This system will also be the bedrock for the crafting tree, providing functionality for the various profession workbenches, crafting stations and more primitive machines. For example, for the more medieval constructions, one form of power input available is rotational energy, allowing for mills and other contraptions to power machines and stations.
Ultimately our hope would be any machine or appliance on the map would simply be a combination of these components. Someone skilled enough would be able to remove them and put them together in any way they made sense: each component will have simple item, power, liquid or logic inputs and outputs.
Taking it a step further, it would also give us the option of making functional machines within the various industrial areas of the map – providing functional machines that could feasibly be utilized (perhaps even looted and taken back to base) and potentially making factory locations extremely high value targets for looting.
This will also, ultimately, add far more interesting gameplay to base construction and generator usage. We would have pipes and wires to facilitate the wiring and plumbing of machines and home systems together – rather than fudging water collector positions to make operable sinks, or just placing a generator next to a building and instantly powering it.
How far could this be pushed?
Well, in testing the system’s flexibility, Turbo grabbed some existing sprites from around the map to make sure the system was working okay for both our needs, and those of the modding community.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS VIDEO IS FROM A DEVELOPMENT TESTBED.
There’s no guarantee any of this will make it into B42, and likewise they are all built from random tiles that Turbs has nicked from our industrial sprite collection. This is all a part of testing the speed and simplicity of creating new machines – and from that underline how powerful the new system is.
Everything seen in this vid was put together with minimal specific code – and largely relied on existing components put together within the machines in the PZ script files along with new items and recipes.
We’ve got enough on our plate, so we likely won’t have a full suite of replaced ‘existing machines and appliances’ by the time 42 unstable rolls around but we believe that these new foundations for PZ’s crafting system will provide great opportunities both for our existing gameplay, and the gameplay we have planned for the years ahead.
This has certainly been the part of 42 that’s taken the longest to come together (not helped by dev illness and hospitalization in early development stages) but it’s also the stuff that we absolutely needed to nail to provide the huge boost in player and community creativity that we know it can provide. We’re at that point now, we feel, and look forward to showing off more applications in the near future.
HELLO PATRICK
A big Spiffo welcome to Patrick, an actual real American on the main dev team. Patrick is a software engineer who has been away working in academia on educational games for a fair while – but has his roots in more conventional gaming and has had his claws in various Tomb Raiders, Tony Hawk games, Ratchets, and Clanks over the years.
His primary mission is the implementation of ragdolls into the game – although initial work and experimentation is still very much exploratory.
We haven’t had an actual real American who remembers 1993 on the dev team for a while, so it also means he gets to answer a lot of questions about parking lots, drivethroughs and various other Americana. He is coping with this admirably.
FOLLOW THAT DEER
A quick check-in with our (still WIP) animal tracking system. This could probably look a little better in terms of visual variation when it comes to animal tracks and direction, but is shaping up to be pretty fun.
HOLSTERS AND WEBBING
In B42 not only will holsters be visible, but a new shoulder holster item has been added. Additionally we now have military webbing, which can be worn instead of a shoulder holster, and also occupies the spaces that fanny packs would occupy.
This webbing provides two additional hotbar slots, which we currently have set up for walkie talkies and knives, and also provide superior container option to fanny packs. Not only can these items be found as appropriate container loot, but also can be seen on both existing, and new, zombie outfit types.
CHARITY SPIFF – PLZ BUY
Just over a week left if you want to buy yourself a Steadfast Spiffo, and say ‘fuck cancer’ simultaneously.
A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. 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 you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here.
Asid:
Sky High
Thu, 21 September 2023
So… hmm, where were we?
Okay so, recent weeks have seen two mega-merges into our trunk internal testing build.
The first was latest from our MP team, to top up the central development branch with their latest from their ongoing server work to flag up any unexpected issues and to get a few gameplay systems back online in MP.
The second was the guts of the long-awaited crafting revamp from Turbo, which means that the functionality for all our primary crafting stations is now in – and it’s a matter of banging heads together and integrating everything we’ve had stacked up for it.
To this end we’re pleased to announce that we’ve hired yet another stalwart individual from the modding community to aid us in this quest.
We were thinking about the different modders who could give our crafting team a little extra grunt, we have so many amazing ones after all, but the offerings of Soul Filcher stood out as being produce of exactly the sort of brain we needed.
We’re really happy to have Soul officially on the team, and while his initial introductory task has been some tidy-up work and minor improvements on our many and varied different traits he should be diving into the new crafting stations with the others in the weeks ahead.
SKY HIGH
The engine upgrade is now in a phase of finding all the edge case issues where something doesn’t render correctly due to the new caching rendering method.
Alongside this, very excitingly, the map team are working on larger buildings and basements to be slotted into the game map.
EP tested out the first building to use the increased floor limits, a literal 32 floor skyscraper which looks super impressive to see in-game. This, as yet unnamed, skyscraper also allowed us to get a fun new animation into the mix as well…
PLEASE NOTE: Impact with pavement is WIP. There’ll be far more crunchy SFX, far less blending issues with the character standing back up, and also more blood obviously. Screaming too.
Read on: https://steamcommunity.com/games/108600/announcements/detail/3726222076182924753
Asid:
One Door OpenZ
Thu, November 23, 2023
Yip yip, hello. Let’s dive in.
SWING BOTH WAYS
Another exciting addition to the build 42 tech upgrade branch has just dropped.
The tech upgrade branch is what contains our optimizations, improved view cone, basement/skyscraper technology and now… an immersive improvement that we’ve wanted for a long time, that could potentially lead to many cool additional gameplay opportunities that weren’t possible before.
Read on: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/108600/view/3874846483723616146
Asid:
Leapdoid
Thu, 29 February 2024
Hey all, a good mix of things this ‘doid.
Fun gameplay stuff, and a chunk of info we wanted to flag for modder-awareness and the more tech-minded amongst you. (Feel free to skip that bit to get to the more enticing gun stuff from Fenris that’s become its first application.)
Onwards, then.
HUNKER INNA BUNKER
Permanent underground structures are being added to the internal build’s map for testing.
As discussed before some basement locations will be randomised to add surprise flavour to your looting, but there’ll be plenty of ever-present locations that will likely be survivor favourites for taking over and making your own.
Here’s a fun example, which also very clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of B42’s tech upgrade that governs the realistic spread of light. It really is very dark down there, and with that very claustrophobic and scary…
Another aspect of the underground structures is sound, and now we’ve got more and more of these in the test build our sound team will be working to cut out wildlife sounds, add muffle, echo, drips and such. Likewise, meanwhile, another focus is adjusting the noise of ‘street level’ activity when you climb higher in buildings.
It’s also worth mentioning that in 42, or at least certainly its unstable release, you will not be able to tunnel or break down the external walls of underground structures. This is something it would be healthy for the engine to be able to do (although we’d never have Minecraft-style insta-tunnels in vanilla, clearly) but is probably a can of worms best opened later down the line.
CRAFTING
In amongst the feverish connecting of code wires from others on the crafting team, Turbo has been working on the new interface that will allow for hand-crafting items on in-game surfaces.
We’ve got something ready to go into the internal build, but in its current WIP form still needs some polish – and probably isn’t quite ready to show off before its rough edges have been smoothed out.
In essence though, this work has been to cater for crafting items that aren’t as straightforward as ripping clothing to make bandages or opening a can of beans (which will always be feasible just in your hands) but don’t necessarily need a specialized workstation either.
Activities like preparing a sandwich or making a nailed baseball bat logically require a handy surface to perform the work. The way it’s being implemented – any logical surface will do (tables, counters etc) but this sort of crafting will no longer be possible while standing in the middle of the street with zombies approaching.
In terms of changes in player habits and behaviour going from 41 to 42, this will probably be the one that’s felt most keenly. There’s a lot of muscle memory we’ll be scrubbing out here, after all. However we are doing our utmost to keep it logical, and to keep it real.
The current challenge has been to devise an interface that accomplishes all the tasks necessary: providing a handy way of browsing or looking up the recipes, allowing for crafting of multiple objects, allowing the use of tools to modify the quality or success chances of the crafting, and giving access to all the functionality provided in the crafting update.
We’re not there yet on this surface level, but functionally on the code level it’s all there and working and ready to be integrated into the game. Next steps will be to make the UI as clean and convenient as can be, improving and iterating as we go, as it’s such a core aspect of 42.
(Just to reiterate, however, simple crafts like ripping bandages and so on will still be craftable in the way they are in 41: right clicking the item and clicking the relevant right click menu option. This is still the most immediate and convenient way for a player to do these split second crafts in the midst of action.)
Meanwhile, of course, the results of all this new crafting continue to get pumped through from the art department, prepped and laid into the code. Here’s a few that popped through recently.
Read on....
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