Happy Place

We have just released a new update to our public IWBUMS beta channel (details of how to access found here) with some cool new stuff. The build is 35.21, and the primary items it contains run as follows:

ROSEWOOD AND MARCH POINT DEVELOPMENTS

Rosewood now has a player spawn option, meaning that you can check out the prison, courthouse and the like without a hike. The military residential area of March Point meanwhile, placed between Muld and Rosewood, can currently only be reached on foot. (This might change depending on the feedback we get from this test build.) As a part of this update there are various fixes to the map in the previous version, more applicable loot to be found in new buildings like the fire station, expanded foraging zones and also an updated ‘zombie spawn’ map that looks a little like this. Bottom right you’ll see the existing Muld zombie spawn, then to the lift is March Ridge and up at the top is Rosewood. The brighter the white, the heavier the zed presence. We especially need feedback on difficulty in terms of the heightened zombie numbers for these areas, and of course any and all map bugs to be reported in the PZ bug tracker. We are aware that Rosewood has been spelt ‘Roosewood’ in the spawn selection screen. This will be addressed in an upcoming build, and has resulted in a Frenchman apologising profusely through the medium of Skype emoticon.

VOIP NOW IN-GAME

This feature allows you to talk to your co-op friends and survivors you meet on MP servers. It’s not a general overall PZ chat channel, but instead allows survivors to communicate when they’re in ‘audible’ distance from each other on the map itself. We’re hoping that it will add some great new dynamics to the game when played with friends, and enemies. To enable this venture into the options menu, then choose whether you want the system to broadcast when it automatically hears your dulcet tones – or through the press of a button (default: alt). Our thanks to General Arcade for all their amazing work on this. We’d like feedback on levels, the default distance from which players hear each other (though server admins have control over this) and general usability/bugs. In future we will look into the VOIP system allowing you to broadcast your voice through Turbo’s in-game radios, and maybe record as well. Something else we’d like to do is have lower speech volumes when players are on different floors in the same building and, although it’s quite a way down an already hefty priority list, one day have a more sophisticated sound propagation model to deal with indoor-to-outdoor sound levels and large obstacles/walls that block hearing. For now though, it’ll be as-is with finetuning – although General Arcade are currently working on giving Admins the ability to talk between themselves, which will be added into a future 35 Build.

COMMUNITY RADIO/TV TRANSLATION IN-GAME

Community Translations of all 4500 lines of current radio and TV content are now in-game for Russian, Turkish, German, Spanish, French and Polish (which we forgot to mention last week – sorry Geras!).

FACTIONS JOINABLE

As of the latest beta build MP Factions are now a part of the game. Press Escape to access the user panel, add a tag of up to four letters, choose a colour and