The Darkness

Hey everyone, lots to get through today soooo…

PUBLIC BUILD 40 PATCHED

We’ve just patched Build 40, which is now up to version 40.36. Primary improvements you’ll notice are:

• Local text chat now audible/legible from a distance, and no longer obscured.

• Weather period frequency throughout the whole year increased, and more heavy weather.

• Car alarms now attract zeds again.

• Chat now logged on server (format will be improved later)

• Less getting wet in inappropriate places

There’s a fair amount of other stuff too though, details on which can be found here on the forum.

NEXT 40 PATCH: BETTER NIGHTS

One of the biggest problems with Build 40 on release was that the new time of day, and time of year, shaders didn’t play very nicely with the lighting system. Flashlights, internal lighting and vehicle headlights all suddenly look very washed out. Players who venture out in the dark weren’t having as much fun as usual. As such, Turbo has been working on an improvement that we want to get into the current public version before he moves fully into Build 41. Vids of this can be seen below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m64s12l00yY We hope you agree that it looks far, far better – and more than a little scarier to boot. “In the above videos the ambient values have been changed along with the colours during dark periods (night/storms)” Turbo explains. “This fixes the headlights, flashlights etc and makes darkness look better in general.” “Also seen below is some improved and indoor lighting during dark times. In the initial Build 40 release my shader overlay coloring messed it all up – so now the shader coloring is disabled when you’re indoors. This did come with the problem that when you’re looking outside you wouldn’t see darkness or weather effects, however, so I’m now using the mask cut-out I created for rain to overlay an external colored texture too.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27jT7cTmbV0 “Before we patch I will probably adjust storms a bit too though, as currently they lose a bit too much of their storm tint.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP_WnlsiM9I

BUILD 41

We’re transitioning the PZ coders over to the work that TEA have done on animations for Build 41, but in the mean-time guys like Zac and Grant are continuing to improve tools and, in the case of Grant, do some optimization of the anims codebase. “I’m doing a lot of work on the new clothing tech at the moment” explains Zac. “Using AnimZed wearable bags like backpacks are now visible on the character, and characters can equip custom clothing meshes on top of the base rig.” “This allows outfits such as baggy jeans, coats, dresses, hoodies, jump-suits, and so on and parts of the base mesh can be now be masked out to prevent clipping and/or overdraw. When this gets to the modders then it’d be fairly simple to even do something like replace a character’s hand with a pirate’s hook or something.” “It’s all customized for each clothing item, using the paper-doll UI inside the new ClothingItem Editor. There’s also random tints for more variety in the clothing too.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F1Yqi9dTOA (please note: on the spot turning animations are not in the build yet but will be before release!)

WATER STUFF

Regular Thursdoiders will know that Yuri is currently working on the improved appearance of water for Build 41. Below you’ll find what it looks like currently, but here’s a note on