Zedlights

We released the Build 39 vehicles patch this time last week – release notes for which can be found here. This seems to have remedied the most pressing issues with Build 39 and (given that we also don’t want to add any major changes to the pot without enough testing) further tweaks and improvements will go into Build 40. All of Build 40’s bigger features are already complete, if untested, so we’re hoping to get it into IWBUMS public beta testing within the next few weeks and for it to be a fairly quickfire version. As such a lot of work in the coming week involves bringing work done while we were polishing the release candidate for Build 39 into the main 40 build – stirring each ingredient in one after the other. First off Yuri from General Arcade has done a lot of work on MP networking, vehicle clipping, floating cars, headlights, vehicle shadows and zombie reaction speeds – and then Stas’ new chatbox will also finally get its time in the sun. Finally Turbo’s work on the new climate system, improved rain/snow/fog and general ‘greater sense of season’ work will also be added to the mix. As we’ve discussed in previous dev blogs, Turbo’s final hurdle was finding ways to make the new precipitation and fog visible through windows – initially in pre-made buildings, and then with the trickier proposition of player-made structures. Telling the game not to conjure up internal fog in a constructed base was a big issue. As such, this week he has been finishing a system that can accurately detect player-made rooms and regions on each height layer – now the PZ engine can properly detect if an area is enclosed by walls, windows, door frames and fences. The system also checks whether said area is roofed, and then mask a feature like fog from that and all connected rooms. It practice it looks a little bit like this… https://youtu.be/c_n5J2BbtIo Having this functionality in the game will also make it far, far easier to prevent the occasional ‘zombie in my base!’ bugs that have been known to creep back into the game – and also be very handy for other independent zoning systems for farming improvements etc. While the above features are being added to Build 40 other team members are blitzing through our internal task system – verifying reported bugs, fixing up legacy issues and generally sorting out long-term kinks in the game that have sat in the system unaddressed for too long. The advent of the new animations system, and the dev changeover to it, will bring a lot of new work and issues so the more of these 300-ish minor tasks we can strike from the record the cleaner our plate will be. This sort of stuff deals with missing loot spawns, errant nutrition values, trait issues, places you can’t sleep but should be able to and other general irritations. In addition, meanwhile, we’re adding stuff to improve vehicles – like the ability to use metalwork skills to dismantle car wrecks and retrieve construction materials, and making it very unwise to drive your car while drunk. Once we’ve cleared out these tasks we can also add in some more community suggestions, start to polish