SirenZ

Hey all. Here’s the current goings-on over in Zomboid Towers.

CURRENT VEHICLES BETA:

We’ve just released Vehicles Build 37 – and it’s got quite a long changelist given as a case of the judders held back last Thursday’s release. You can see the full version details, and find details on how to join the beta, in this thread. Vehicles are easily the biggest technology upgrade that PZ has had since its inception – and Build 37 builds on work already complete by including the MP lag work we mentioned last week directed by our Technical Director friend BitBaboon Steve, but now also has had a lot of improvements to our map/chunk streaming both online and off, and a big change in how our game handle’s Java’s jolt-inducing ‘garbage collection’. To this end aspects of it remain fairly experimental, in that they work nicely behind closed doors but require wider testing – which is where you guys and your bug/performance/gameplay reports come in. We’ve also made some changes to how the frame compensation is handled, and have fixed issues with the framerate smoothing which resulted in time slowing down during gameplay, which led to occasional uneven gameplay and treacley movement in a few recent builds. Instead the game may occasionally hitch for a frame, whereas before it might drag the framerate and game speed down for a second or more. This far more mild hitch is something we can tackle later on, in general the smoothness of gameplay should more than make up for it. Beyond this other highlights of the build follow, some which we mentioned last week – others have been added to the version as the week goes on.

• Mash’s map expansion that fills in many of the gaps between our major towns and zombie troublespots – which will hopefully allow for vehicle exploration and more out-of-town hideaways and safehouses. Here’s that map showing the general areas you’ll be able to find new stuff.]

• Item and bag loss bug tracked down and patched, that will come as a welcome relief to our testers. This comes alongside a multitude of fixes to the various vehicle parts, errors in the UI screens for the various new vehicles, issues that arose when a co-op friend was in your vehicle and switching seats or trying to sound the horn and bugs that arose when zeds attack your car.

• For testing and MP admin purposes – an admin can now spawn keys, gas and repair cars. [In a quick side community requested side-project Tim also allowed for day length in sandbox to allow all hours up to 24.]

• New switch-seat keybind (Z) to allow you to move around inside the car easier (and choose which door to exit from if there’s a horde pawing at your wing mirror), a ‘V’ keybind to hide/show the radial menu and other interface improvements/fixes.

• Increased spawn chances for tire pumps, barbed wire, sandbags and milk. XP tweaks for the Mechanic Skill. Nerfed tire pressure impact on speed. Fixed up interactions when you’re looting piles of crates – which previously could be a pita – and some player-requested improvements to the composting system. Lots of other tweaks and fixes,

Next week’s build should have some new vehicle sound effects – the new ones in Build 37 are better that what we have before. These will be alongside further optimizations to world streaming, tile-rendering and loaded vehicle textures that we already have in the can, but didn’t want to mix into an already change-heavy beta version. (We realise the code-y aspect of this news isn’t particularly sexy, but hope you’ll