Updates coming soon!

Hello fellow survivors!  I know it has been a while since my last post but I'm still alive and kicking.  I'll will be updating the list this weekend to include quite a few new games as well as another Tag that people are requesting.  Survival list just keeps getting bigger and bigger!   Lot of good hopefuls this year.   H1Z1 Starts early access on steam tomorrow.  I am looking forward to that.   Project Zomboid just keeps getting better and better and I'm currently having a blast with the latest build of that as well. I've also been enjoying The Long Dark, it is quite nice.   Look forward to updates soon! Hope everyone had some Happy Holidays!

Keep surviving out there!

Zargo

Project Zomboid Multiplayer!!! MP Test starting soon as possible.

You read the title correctly! Project Zomboid is hot on the multiplayer trail. Get ready to survive the zombie apocalypse with all your friends. Even that one friend that always steals all the good loot.  A lot of recent news is coming down the pipeline with multiplayer info,  check out the good stuff below.

Most Recent Blog (little talk about multiplayer including MP public test soon)
http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2014/01/lazy-look-at-these-photos-of-us-in-a-pub-mondoid/

Last Weeks Blog (lots of multiplayer talk and multiplayer videos.)
http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2014/01/the-third-act-twist/


More videos to Watch Part 1 of  8
http://youtu.be/xFPEfTF_wJo

Enjoy!

Project Zomboid Monday Status Update, 7 Days to Die Alpha 4 is ready.

Hello and well met!  Had a few minutes to spare and thought I would post a quick spot about two of my recent favorite games giving out even more updates.

Project Zomboid Monday status update is out and let's us know what is going on.  Seems like some good map working is in development and Items and loot are getting bug fixed and improved.  Check it out below.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2013/11/next-steps/


7 Days to Die is also releasing updates faster and faster recently. Their Alpha 4 update is already ready to go and I just posted about Alpha 3 not long ago.  This update adds some cool melee weapons and new recipes for the crafting system and also a good mix of bug fixes as well.   Check out the patch notes below or read my copy and paste.

http://7daystodie.com/alpha-4-is-available-for-consumption/



-copy and paste-

 7 Days to Die

Official Alpha 4 Release Notes

Added

• Added scrap metal recipes from candy tins, air filters, and hub caps
• Added new feature for preview position and rotation for placing blocks. Before placing a block a semi-transparent preview of the block is displayed and player can rotate it using LMB
• Added Femur bone club\crafting item
• Added Hunting Knife
• Added Bone Shiv
• Added recipe for bone shiv
• Added recipe for hunting knife
• Added femur to zombie & deer loot
• Added hunting knife to loot
• Added new block rotate sound set
• The“empty glass” can now also be filled with water at toilets

Changes

• Reduced polygon density on the barbed wire fence trap, candy tin landmine, hub cap landmine and air filter landmine for better performance and to keep people from reaching max vertices in a chunk
• When pressing the ALT key in 3rd person the camera can be moved freely around the player. Old state was: when shooting it was shot through the screen middle. New state: the crosshair is removed and shooting is done along the players view
• When the Z menu is opened, the full text search is auto selected and the old entered text is cleared
• Increased time that zombies play their roam sounds
• Increased block damage on explosions to allow better TNT chain reactions
• The turn speed of entities (like zombies or stag) is now dependent on their speed: the faster they move the faster they turn
• Increased colliders for inventory slots so that horizontally there is no space any more. Vertically there is still a small gap in the bag
• Spikes can now be placed only on a solid cube. So stacking of spikes isn’t possible

Bug Fixes

• Fixed problem that chunk could not be saved when building a column > 190 blocks
• Configure Controls: fixed bug that “left shift” and “right shift” were not selectable
• Fixed problem that when placing a bedroll/bed the other block was removed without a check. This could be abused for fast mining. Also set the orientation of a bed correctly
• Fixed problem that when running a server for a long time and the entity ids get greater than 16 bit, no player was able to connect to the server any more
• Added delay to food items so they don’t disappear until used

Known Issues

• Animals get knocked back quite far when hit
• When you light a pipebomb and don’t throw it, it will explode but the pipebomb is not “deleted”/removed from your inventory. If you die, all of them are dropped, including the one that exploded.
• Stability on Bridges are still a little weak in the middle
• Players can sometimes get stuck in small vertical spaces less than 2 blocks high like on top of a cinder block or trash pile
• Sometimes there are missing polygons in the world

7 Days to Die Alpha 3 Update, Project Zomboid Update, Minecraft 1.7.2

Hello fellow survivors! If you are following Watchsurvival on Facebook  (https://www.facebook.com/Watchsurvival )  you have probably seen this information. I wanted to let everyone know about a couple of recent fun updates.  First on the List 7 Days to Die has just released a new update after only 10 days or releasing the last update.   This game is coming along nicely.  Read about all the additions and changes below.

http://7daystodie.com/alpha-3-is-out-oh-my/


Project Zomboid has recently released their newest Monday blog which talks to us about their most recent updates and all the new wonderful things in store for zomboid, which keeps getting better and better. 

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2013/11/buildin-it-up/


Probably already old news to quite a few of you but Minecraft also released a new update that was quite awesome 1.7.2 The Update that Changed the World.  I'm making a note of this update because it has been a long time since I've picked up Minecraft and played it and I found this update worth checking the game out again. Others that have not played in a while might find this one worthy of your time.  The new biomes are a great addition to the game in my personal opinion and really help freshen up the seeds  and make the world more fun to explore again.

https://mojang.com/2013/10/minecraft-1-7-the-update-that-changed-the-world/


Keep surviving out there!
Z

Project Zomboid Updates

Hello! I've not talked about Project Zomboid in a while so I thought I would take some time and post about the newest updates going on.   The developers have been hard at work smoothing out the game and making things more fluid and easy to use while adding in new content.  The most recent update was about now getting the game on your steam account through desura! Official Steam release is not ready yet but will probably be ready to go very soon.   However for current Zomboid players you can now use desura to transfer to a steam key for the game.  There is also a short video on the new zoom features going into the game.  The update is below.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2013/09/steam-keys-available-to-all-customers/

Also in case some of you missed it.  I'm placing last weeks update on here cause it is pretty cool and includes some good news like more map updates coming soon.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2013/09/whats-steam-in-russian/

Keep surviving out there!

Project Zomboid: So close we can feel it Monday Status Update 7/1/2013

Hello again!  I've not updated about Project Zomboid in a little while so I thought I would post up the Project Zomboid Monday Update today.   Check it out below. 

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2013/07/so-close-we-can-feel-it-but-you-can-play-anyway/

--copy and paste--

Hello Zomboiders,
Since Rezzed, we’ve been tirelessly trying to get the latest build up to Desura release quality. Regulars to our forum will be aware we’ve started doing a short run of test builds (with the file strategically uploaded to the servers for short periods to minimize on the crazy bandwidth bills we had the last time, and mirrors created soon after)
It’s so close it aches, and after a long long day of trying to finally nail the reoccurring and endlessly frustrating ‘teleporting crops’ bug and finally think we might have got it. Then just as we start finally writing the Mondoid, we find out that the recently repaired carpentry stairs may still have a few issues. Such is game dev, I guess. Then it turned out the farming was still an issue. Some days it all slots into place, and others bugs repeatedly beat you across the head a bit and don’t go down without a fight.
Anyway, since these are both vital things people have been waiting for since the last stable version, we’d rather wait until we got it in there. And as it’s 8:30pm it looks like we’re running out of time for today. That doesn’t mean we’ll stop work, and are looking to fix these two issues as we speak. And as soon as we nail these two issues, we’ll post the next version on the forums. We’ll likely be working for a good few hours yet, but didn’t want to delay the Mondoid any more and keep people in the dark. That’s not to say it’ll be tonight, it all depends on if we nail these pesky things.
To anyone who the news of forum test versions is news, please be VERY careful to read the warning at the top of the forum post. It’s VITAL to back up your saved worlds, since the 8b -> 9 conversion process is one way, and there are some rare issues that stop saves from converting properly. If this happens to you and you don’t back up your world, then it’s gone. Forever. If you back up, you can copy your backups back in and load up on the Desura build until we get these sorted.
If you’re not comfortable with copying files, then be very careful not to attempt to load any world from the previous version if testing. We can’t be held responsible for any loss of your game data.
If you do have issues, and could post a zip of your original save (the original backups, not the converted ones) on the forum so we can bugfix, it will allow us to iron out any remaining conversion issues to make sure everyone who has a world on build 8 will be able to carry it onto build 9 without problems.
So with all that in mind, please look at the following thread for the latest versions:
Full version 3 build: http://www.theindiestone.com/community/viewtopic.php?p=206404#p206404
Hotfix for build 4: http://www.theindiestone.com/community/viewtopic.php?p=206522#p206522
So to sum up, remaining issues stopping a Desura build are:
- Farm plots teleporting around the map due to unknown streaming / saving issue.
- Carpentry stairs sometimes resulting in character floating through air.
- A few bugs with the world conversion system.
We’ll release a new forum build when bugs A and B are resolved. And a Desura one soon after once the last one is.
Then, hopefully, NPC dev will begin again in earnest and will have near full-time dev time from half the coding team until it’s in the game. That all said, we’ve been working on it in bits and pieces while waiting for tester feedback and such, and progress is good. Hopefully we can start to make some big headway as soon as the next Desura build hits.
Thanks again!
Indie Stone

Project Zomboid Mondoid: The Joys of 008 5/20/2013

The latest Project Zomboid Monday update is here. This one includes a look at memory performance increases to ensure more proper compatibility Also get to see information about a certain feature coming soon that is really cool.  Check it out below.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2013/05/the-joys-of-008/

---cut and paste---

Hey survivors!
We’re just putting the 008 build through some vigorous last minute testing, and expect it to be at some point today. It’s a biggie, for more reasons than you’ll realise. We’re hoping, a few minor bug fix updates aside, this will be the one that ultimately ends up going onto Desura proper. A few points about what to expect from it.

Memory Usage
We’ve made some massive, massive improvements to this. On 32bit systems with on-board graphics cards, where before we were seeing memory bloat to 2 gig and crash the game, you can now expect to use a maximum of about 800 meg. This will make it a close call for 1 gig systems (though we’ve had success at the game running then even so) but we still have ideas to bring this down further, and will be able to update the version quite quickly with more compacted character sprites and further memory optimizations. Computers with graphic cards with dedicated memory can expect to see the game running in 4-600 meg maximum, depending on what’s going on.
We think we can get the game to run in about 600 meg even in the worse case scenario machines, possibly further, which will hopefully leave no one out in the cold with 008.

Other annoyances
Things like the alarms resetting on load have been sorted out at last. No more loading your game and drawing the attention of every zombie in Muldraugh to your safehouse. There are numerous other vital fixes that we hope will please people. You can read about those here.

Hurray!
But that’s not all. We’ve had something in the pipe for a long long long long long time which we were dying to get into the first test build, but sadly slipped for more pressing matters. It’s been rather agonizing not to be able to share, but it’s finally going in. So here’s a ‘Lemmy and Binky explain badly’ video about it, which features a special guest star!
It occurs to us post-recording that weapons have been significantly rebalanced with the help of the test group since 007 to make horde killing more difficult, and axes in particular have taken a nerf, so it makes us feel a little better about our AWFULNESS at playing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KQ4iNKi_xAc 


 
FAQ
Q: Wait, so I can play online?
No. This is only split-screen, local support at the moment.
Q: Is this an XBox version?
No. It’s PC/Mac/Linux. We’re just using the XBox button prompts.
Q: So why were you working on this when you could have been…
As we stated in the video, this has been an ongoing thing for many months, and all in all has had much less time spent on it than anyone could possibly imagine. The main body of work was getting rid of all the single player specific code, and that all happened as streaming was being implemented. This is the first stepping stone to online, but we’re still a way off.
We’ve literally spent about 4-5 hours on this in the past 2 weeks, and that time was spent largely sorting out button prompts, scaling the UI, and allowing multiple online inventories to be possible. We’ve been sitting on this for a long time and there have been frequent inter-team pleadings to show it off over the past month or two. If it annoys you that we’ve spent any time on this during the past few weeks, even 4-5 hours, please consider that we are massive geeks and stuff like this is what we do for fun to relax after a hard day of work.
Also, after 008 the evidence this existed would have been abundantly obvious from the Lua files, and last thing we’d want is for people to discover it was in progress before we could announce it and make a big deal about it. Especially since people would likely assume the Lua clues pointed to online play, and then be disappointed when we did reveal.
Also consider that multiplayer, in some form, is far and away the #1 requested feature, so if you aren’t interested yourself, it is important for a lot of your fellow Zomboiders.
Q: I don’t care about local multiplayer – why didn’t you make it online?
Online is a million times more complicated, dealing with lag and server/client architecture and all the rest of it. This was relatively straightforward to add, and was the quickest way we could provide multiplayer functionality and start getting the game ready for online. Besides, there aren’t enough ‘sat in front of TV’ split-screen games out there, and we’re proud to have it in the game.
Q: Xbox pads? Really?
The game will support any joypad (with dual stick controls) but may require some tinkering in the initial version until we figure out how to support all pads out of the box. It was our (perhaps ill-informed) understanding from our own experiences with joypads that many PC games tend to use Xbox button graphics as a standard, but we’ll look to providing alternates for Logitech / PS3 pads etc. XBox pads are awesome though.
Q: NPCS!?
We haven’t forgotten, and they are on their way. Our goal is to get Kate and Baldspot back for Rezzed, and the Sandbox NPCs shouldn’t be too far behind them.
And in case you missed it, we blogged earlier today about appearing at Rezzed in Birmingham this year. So make sure to read that if you’re interested in stopping by.
That’s all for this week, and we’ll do our utmost to get you your 008 goodness today. If not today then very very soon afterward.

--end cut and paste--

Project Zomboid Mondoid Monday status update. 5/13/2013

Project Zomboid new Monday status update is up.   We get info about recent bugs being fixed and about the map's processing which will allow for fast speeds when vehicles are included. Check it out below.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2013/05/bug-squashing/

--copy and paste--

13th May – 2013
Hey everyone, sorry for the late and also rather barebones Mondoid this week, but it’s been a busy day at Indie Stone towers and given everyone’s eagerness for this build to get fixed up, we’re sure everyone would prefer we were hard at work than agonizing over the contents of this weeks Mondoid!
We’re still hard at work trying to figure out some strange memory issues on some 32bit systems causing the memory usage of OpenGL to 2gig and crashing the game, which is at this stage largely the cause of all remaining incompatibility issues.
Since build 7 is largely considered, relatively speaking, the most stable and fun build we’ve had in a long time (despite some issues with containers which does cause a lot of people problems) we would rather not put out updates immediately that risk upsetting this until we’ve solved this last remaining issue.
On the plus side, it’s lead to some significant memory optimizations to try and minimize the issue, but at the same time the memory bloat is happening on a subset of systems deep in the openGL dll outside the debugging eyes of the dev team, so it’s been a tricky one.
We’ve not been idle in other areas. A ton of bugs have been fixed, and if sorting this last problem out does end up dragging on much longer, we will put out another release with bug fixes from our frozen code after we’re satisfied it’s stable. We’d rather have this issue sorted first though, but just so you know if it drags on we won’t let it lose us momentum.
So we’re not leaving you totally without anything beyond ‘just trying to get it done’, here is a stress test of the streaming system (an old version of the map) to determine how fast vehicles could feasibly go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tuT2x-zue-8

Which hopefully shows how prepared we are to add vehicles into the game when the time comes. Not until after RC3 though, but this gets us excited!
There are some other things we’re dying to share, but want to hold off a little more before we do that until they are ready. Let’s just say that there is a lot to be excited about in the next month or two for us and Zomboid fans alike.
So stay tuned!

Project Zomboid Test build 7 screenshots

Posted a quick 12 screenshots album for Project Zomboids latest public build.  Check it out at the link below. 

http://imgur.com/a/tUbuY#0

Watchsurvival Project Zomboid Internal Test Screenshots Part 3

Hello everyone. Decided to take some more pictures from the newest test release of Project Zomboid. Check them out below. Opens in new window. 

<All images are from internal test build of the game in progress. Things may be changed or bugs may be spotted before the official release of the update.>

1
http://i.imgur.com/8x6WB78.jpg
2
http://i.imgur.com/DNipbdP.jpg
3
http://i.imgur.com/7A8R7Vk.jpg
4
http://i.imgur.com/00nxZjA.jpg
5
http://i.imgur.com/djevo4o.jpg
6
http://i.imgur.com/wJeCrd6.png
7
http://i.imgur.com/EST7H4Z.png
8
http://i.imgur.com/GXxzJGO.jpg
9
http://i.imgur.com/wovCSrb.png
10.
http://i.imgur.com/26DUv2x.jpg
11.
http://i.imgur.com/VukoCmi.jpg
12.
http://i.imgur.com/JeivLQn.jpg
13.
http://i.imgur.com/vtPsChp.jpg

Part 2:  http://watchsurvival.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/project-zomboid-internal-test-build_16.html
Part 1: http://watchsurvival.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/project-zomboid-internal-test-build.html

Project Zomboid Monday Status Update Streams of Blood

Hello everyone and welcome to another Project Zomboid Monday.  We are getting closer to a public release of the new Project Zomboid Update. As such though a little more testing must be done and a few more bugs must be taken care of.  Read all the information in the Monday Status update below.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/streams-of-blood/

--copy and paste--

Streams of Blood

Another week of testing in the can. As anyone who’s followed all the video action this week will know, it feels really close to that inevitable point where we say ‘oh what the hell’ and release. But not today, I’m afraid.
Before we start a link dump of the many hours of RC3 footage, we will discuss all of the current issues in the build, only one of which completely forbid a release. Little of this Mondoid will likely be news for forum regulars, I’m afraid, but this is for everyone else. Hopefully the streams and videos are doing more than a Mondoid ever could, anyway.
Excluding more trivial stuff, we still have a few more serious problems to resolve.

• Save bug – For some unknown reason, the testers saves are getting corrupted very regularly. They will go to reload a world and their world data will be garbage. This will likely be something massively trivial, one byte of data getting saved but not read, or read but not saved, somewhere buried deep within the Zomboid code. This is the one show-stopper that means we refuse to release, since the danger of people losing hours of game-play (remember that loading and saving happens all the time as you walk around the streamed world) or worse a zombie fortress they have spent 30 lives building.
  While many people may say this doesn’t matter and they would still like a build, for every one of them there is a new customer who gets angry that our game destroyed their save. This is the one and only bug that means we’d completely refuse to release anything.The status of this is ‘ongoing’. It seems to be very common within our testers but whenever testing with a debugger attached, where we may be able to figure out what exactly is to blame (as I say, probably something really simple) it always seems to work perfectly, as if to taunt us. As soon as it’s reproduced, it may take minutes to solve. There is simply no way to remotely estimate it (but no, we’re not talking SIX MONTHS or anything, don’t worry!)
• The second biggest issue (well, undoubtedly the biggest issue for those affected, but one where a release may actually aid us in solving) is problems running the game on some (not all) low end integrated Intel graphics. This is serious because obviously people with these cards have paid money to buy the game, and we can’t leave them out to dry. As much as it may be frustrating to those, it would be handy to get more data on this problem, so we would consider a forum release before this is fixed to help us trap it. We have made some limited progress, getting testers to the main menu and in some cases into a slightly graphically glitched game, but this one is also ongoing. It should be made clear though that this is a bug, not a performance bar raising issue. We’re doing nothing that shouldn’t be possible on these cards, so there’s no reason to worry about the long-term compatibility of your game if you are affected.
• A third issue, which in all likelihood is related to the save bug above, is the ‘Langolier effect’, as its become known. Anyone who’s seen streams may have spied this a few times, where either the entire world becomes disjointed like an earthquake fault line, or more often you have areas of psychedelic void. It’s possible this is an independent issue but our suspicions are it will be solved the moment we fix issue #1.
• More a cosmetic thing, but still seriously damaging to the atmosphere (even if many find it entertaining) is the moonwalking zombies. Seems that when zombies are reused (a memory / garbage collection saving tactic) after being killed off, they cease to be able turn to face the direction they are moving, leading to humorous but massively wrong looking results.

Only the first (and, out of vanity, possibly the last) bugs are stopping us from considering a release, but obviously we could not consider a Desura release until the second is fixed too. Desura members with intel cards may not be too happy to find Desura auto-updating them to oblivion. We should point out if we do do a forum release prior to Desura, damned if we’re falling into the same trap as before. We’ll get the intel stuff sorted, and get on Desura as soon as possible. It’s not fair how long those lovely people have had to wait for an auto-updatable version.
So that’s the situation. We’re so close we can smell it, but there’s that one last hill to climb. We’re overjoyed at how the videos and streams have been recieved, and moreso were even surprised ourselves how much it’s come together since testing began. It also only goes to show we made the right move holding it in testing as we did, as comparing the 24th build with the 1st would be quite eye opening (maybe we can do that for fun post release?)
So when? We know some rumours were circulating that it could have been today. Well sadly there’s no way we could comply with that, as much as we’d loved to have. Next week’s Mondoid? It’s possible. NOTE: It’s possible, not yes. It could be the week after. But yep, we’re really down to talking about these kinds of time-frames now. This is super exciting for us, and the last couple of weeks have been wonderful after a very long year. To see people’s reactions to the new builds has reminded us why we’re doing this and what all the work is for. It’s a happy time.
So now the update is out the way, let’s get onto the video link dump! We would recommend giving all these lovely peoples a subscribe, a follow, or whatever the equivalent is for twitch as they are all wonderfully nice and entertaining to watch. A word of warning though: There is a LOT of footage here, so firstly you’re guaranteed to see a lot of moonwalking zombies, or pieces of the universe mysteriously vanishing. You’ll also see a lot of Zomboid RC3 content laid bare. You may want to save it all as a surprise, or you may want to watch every minute of it. It’s your call.
Youtube
RingoD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB7Op5iFUng
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wmWJbp1xLw
Mathas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTzyOlJQ4M8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwYdWCYpoJI
Ecky:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4D_IPUm1fo
Twitch
MiddleAgedBob:
http://www.twitch.tv/middleagedbob
Ecky:
http://www.twitch.tv/eckyman
dThunder:
http://www.twitch.tv/audthunder
nasKo:
http://www.twitch.tv/nasko_zomboid
There are probably other streamers or Youtubers we’ve forgotten, not because they weren’t wonderful but because, erm, there’s been a fair few of them. Apologies if so: let us know and we’ll add them to the list.
Oh, and if videos are a bit too revealing for your tastes, there’s also a nice cache of screenshots over at Watch Survival.

Watchsurvival Present's Project Zomboid Running through hordes.

Hey everyone! I posted a quick video to display what it is like trying to run through hordes in the latest test release version of Project Zomboid.  I did this because in previous builds you could run right through them and not get a scratch on you.  As you can see in this video the difficulty in the newest to be released version is being ramped up a lot and things are a lot more risky now.  Enjoy the vid. 

Project Zomboid Internal Test Build Screenshots Part 2

Hello and well met survival fans!  I've taken some time to put up some more screenshots from the internal test build of Project Zomboid.  Enjoy! 
 
<Note to Everyone: Please keep in mind the following screenshots are from an Internal Test Build for testing purposes only and changes may be made before the official release of the update. Bugs may be spotted.>

1 http://i.imgur.com/rkpAMpr.jpg 

2 http://i.imgur.com/4oglVrE.jpg 

3 http://i.imgur.com/xdYNJPz.jpg 

4 http://i.imgur.com/wjyCcjH.jpg 

5 http://i.imgur.com/NsbhT6b.jpg 

6 http://i.imgur.com/LHcJn1n.jpg 

7 http://i.imgur.com/7h703ZP.jpg 

8 http://i.imgur.com/r3tKt6p.jpg 

9 http://i.imgur.com/7V332Uv.jpg 

10 http://i.imgur.com/D5LadZA.jpg 

11 http://i.imgur.com/BH4mrGe.jpg 

12 http://i.imgur.com/mdZ1suy.jpg

13 http://i.imgur.com/zKwATci.jpg

14 http://i.imgur.com/5AFBweZ.png

Project Zomboid Internal Test Build Screenshots from Watchsurvival.

Hello and well met survival fans. The Indiestone developers have taken the gloves off and gave permission for internal testers to share screenshots and videos from the internal test build.  I thought everyone may enjoy these screenshots in HD. Exclusively from watchsurvival.blogspot.com Enjoy!

<Note to Everyone: Please keep in mind the following screenshots are from an Internal Test Build for testing purposes only and changes may be made before the official release of the update. Bugs may be spotted.>

http://i.imgur.com/FhKPynN.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/aPK9QDi.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/KiXkanw.jpg 

http://i.imgur.com/uRXcMHQ.jpg 

http://i.imgur.com/rWOS8tX.jpg 

http://i.imgur.com/Zr92rfs.jpg 

http://i.imgur.com/qd29wmw.jpg 

http://i.imgur.com/WzXY2FX.jpg 

http://i.imgur.com/uBxHkAj.jpg 

http://i.imgur.com/hoqBrNd.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/FKsTHqj.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/3XN0DdX.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/axmEDCs.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/ZP4xOD3.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/SKxJiwH.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/bPe0UMb.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/LqFQ8yh.jpg

Link to part 2 of screenshots: 

http://watchsurvival.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/project-zomboid-internal-test-build_16.html

Project Zomboid Monday Update: The blood. The Sweat. The testing.

The Indiestone gang is keeping us updated on all the new testing the latest version of Project Zomboid is going through.  Read all about it below.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/the-blood-the-sweat-the-testing/

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The Blood. The Sweat. The Testing.

The game has been in testing for a little over a week now, and we’ve already had 5 versions and multiple hotfixes, eliminating a whole slew of map bugs, crashes, and making huge strides in optimization and reducing the memory used by the game.
While we still have a bit to go, we’re feeling really confident with the progress. The game isn’t at the stage we can call it truly playable, but each build sees testers being able to play for longer and longer – before a game ending issue strikes. As every bug reveals itself and is quashed, the testers get deeper and deeper into the game. As such, we’re super-excited to see where the game will be in a week or two.
Although we’ll release when the game is playable and fun, we’ re also going to be intent on trapping as many of the ‘game ending’ problems that plague the 0.2.0 versions as possible before the build is set loose. It’s no fun surviving for 3 months to have your game ended by a bug. The build’s getting there though, and we feel confident and comfortable to talk about the release being in a matter of ‘weeks’. (Still no promises on exactly how many weeks at this time!)
As everyone knows, the music will make a return in RC3. The looping bug that caused music’s removal has finally been taken care of, and its wonderful to be able to run around hearing Zach’s awesome music completely uninterrupted. Mash is continuing extending the map up until the last moment, so we can make sure the game world is as big as humanly possible, Binky is continuing creating animations that will further the game’s immersion and polish, Romain and Lemmy are killing off the remaining bugs and adding those features that slipped through the net while the game was unplayable.
We’ve also got some intense backroom fiddling from EasyPickins going on – who is continuing to refine the map creation tools that we’ll be releasing to the mod community post-launch, while Stormy is also back on board updating his reloading system for our lua-enabled mod system.
Latest from Romain is that he’s working on a new character info page which will list the character’s professions and traits (with tooltip descriptions, etc) which is important to see now since many of what were skills in 0.2.0 have now been moved to being dynamic traits that are gained and lost due to the player’s actions through the game – for example becoming overweight through eating too much and not having enough exercise. (Please note that the following image is a mock-up, but what ends up in the game won’t be a million miles away.)

People may remember a long while back we implemented a new particle driven blood system, which hugely improved the gore of the game. Sadly the method we used required way too much memory once blood accumulated, as well as breaking in numerous circumstances and resulting in bright glow in the dark blood. It was labelled as unworkable and removed from the game. That all aside, the tiled blood on the floors looked really naff (mainly due to some tiling issues) so it needed to be fixed. Well, we came up with another method to improve blood and were really happy with the results. Behold!

As stated in the annotations, ignore the ridiculously over the top bleeding at the end of the video. We’re currently balancing that. Even so, we think everyone will be happy to see the levels of gore we had back in the days of 0.1.5d (and improved gore at that!), another thing we missed dearly in the 0.2.0 days.
Finally, we want to thank everyone who bought a copy of the game during the 3 days we were collecting for Chloe’s indiegogo. We raised $4,030, which was quite incredible. Thank you everyone!

Project Zomboid Monday Status update Testing Times

The Monday status update for Project Zomboid is out!  This confirms more about closed testing happening and what all is going down.  According to this post the zombies have increased in difficulty by quite a lot. Performance for most of the testers appears to have improved over the older versions as well.  Check it out below at the link or read the copy and paste.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/testing-times/

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Testing Times!

Yes, it’s true. As of 01:27 AM this past Friday morning the RC3 build (as discussed last week) entered closed testing. No, that’s not an April Fools gag. It’s a thing that actually happened. (Our April Fools jape comes toward the end of this blogpost and has been conveniently highlighted by the use of italics.)
So, yeah. We’ve got a small gang of hand-picked testers beavering away in Muldraugh and spotlighting everything that’s standing in the way of the revamped RC3 build being a fun and stable experience for everyone to gorge upon.
Early indications are looking good. Our main fear was that of performance – and thankfully we’re seeing better results than any 0.2.0 build ever had. Seeing as we haven’t implemented an option to turn off the shaders yet, this should hopefully trickle into a substantial performance boost for those who use low graphics settings.
That said, as expected, there are some clear issues we need to resolve. We’ve got a few crash bugs, music issues, a bunch of map niggles and a fair wedge of loot balancing to wade through. We’ll likely need to make some minor tweaks to the revised mouse-driven combat too – which doesn’t seem to be as immediately intuitive to established PZ players as we’d hoped.
Add into this the various new systems that were 90% completed but waiting for testing so we could balance and finalise them, and you can see that there’s still plenty for us to be getting our teeth into.
Work has been intense throughout the Easter weekend – we’ve had three internal test versions already and are due to release a fourth on this cherished Mondoid. It’s after the next couple that we should start to see more prolonged gameplay, and start balancing it up to a fun quota that’s acceptable in terms of widening the process to the whole community. It’s all terribly exciting.
We’re confident that the wait until release won’t be that long, but we’re certainly talking in the scope of weeks rather than days. The build needs to be enjoyable and as free of serious bugs as possible: after everyone’s long wait and the patchy nature of the 0.2.0 builds we need to be bang on the money.
So now, a bit of a video from internal test build number four. While we’re not quite at the stage where a full playthrough is possible, we’re celebrating going into closed testing by leaving all the bugs in the footage instead of editing them out or chopping together tiny videos. See if you can spot them all! We’ll look into a more in-depth gameplay video as soon as we can. (We see no reason why that won’t be possible next Mondoid.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=87XJ5vydsng

Now, some random, albeit random with a positive bias, quotes from a few members of the tester group. (Please note that surrounding these there were an awful lot of posts saying stuff like: “Exception: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError thrown from the UncaughtExceptionHandler in thread ‘Main’”).

“Zombies now have fast enough attack speed to make running through them a very bad idea!”

“I’m running the game on 1280*800 and I’m getting between 40-55 FPS with a lot of zombies on screen. So compared to RC 2.5, I’m getting about 5-15 more FPS with a lot going on.”

“There is no pausing or desktop popping on my Radeon 5700!”

“The warning and menu layout? Awesome.”

“The details (mailboxes, flowers .etc) Awesome!”

“It’s good to see shadows… it looks really different aesthetically. Also, I haven’t seen much of the map yet, but I’m digging what I’ve seen so far! It really looks like an American town with the flag poles and motel-like buildings… and grills in the backyards. Even graffiti. Loving it.”

“Performs 100000000% better than RC 2.5”

“Was just attacked by a small group of zombies while opening a window and MURDERED. Zombies are now finally a huge threat!”

“New night-time effects are incredible. And REALLY dark. (A good thing.)”

“The amount of zombies you have onscreen is pretty darn fun. It was great, trying to make my way out of the horde’s midst before nightfall while exploring the new homes. And look, washing machines! And kids’ rooms! (Why, I remember a suggestion on that just a few days ago…)”

“The extra strike on downed zombies looks and feels great. “

“Getting solid performance, it’s ridiculous! Possibly the best performance wise of any build so far, so gratz on the optimization! I’m getting around 60-75fps on general, full screen and res is 1920×1080 (my native). Then around 45-50 with a truckload of Zombies.”

“I got nom-nom’d by a zombie while moving some bandages from one bag to the other. Zombies feel really dangerous now – tough enough to cause the end of the world.”

So it’s time for our exciting April Fools joke! Wait for it…
We should let people know that due to the performance issues with lots of zombies, we’ve decided to offload some of the complex computational work for the zombies pathfinding onto the cloud, but as a by-product of that it means PZ will have to be connected to the internet at all times during gameplay. Hope you don’t mind.
So, did you fall for our April Fools joke? Do let us know in the comments. (As a further April Fools joke we’ve neglected to mention that comments are disabled. You’ll probably have to head to the forum.)
More as it happens Zomboidateers.

Project Zomboid Developer Confirms Closed Testing has began

Hello everyone! Just wanted to post a quick update to let everyone know that Closed Testing for the awesome update for Project Zomboid has been confirmed and is underway.  The Thread can be found below.  This should mean that a public release shouldn't be to far behind.

http://theindiestone.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=12247

Project Zomboid Monday Status Update RC3 Development Developments

The new monday post for Project Zomboid is up!  Closed testing is apparently starting very soon for the new update! This is wonderful news. We also learn that with Steam's new Early Access section that Zomboid may be heading to Steam more soon then you think!  Read the copy and paste below or click the official post.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2013/03/rc3-development-developments/

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RC3 DEVELOPMENT DEVELOPMENTS

Hello survivor. Let’s talk RC3 plans – as, as hinted last week, we’re going to shake things up a little.
In order to finalise work on NPCs and the NPC metagame we needed to bring the overall game back to working order – integrate the new map, look at balancing, knock out gameplay bugs and essentially get the game up and running before our little survivor chaps could sprint around their apocalyptic playground. As regular Mondoiders will be aware, that’s what our coders have been up to these past few weeks in the build-up to a closed test.
The natural course of development, then, is going to leave us with a build that (with some polish work, launcher fiddling and whatnot) would be fun without NPCs, packed with new features and (in all likelihood) far more stable than the 2.5 releases. Given the ongoing PZ drought, and the fact NPCs die out so soon in RC2.5 they are hardly a factor, it struck us that we’d be pretty daft not to release it after the closed test, and finally give everyone something to play.
This won’t have any effect on the date of the final metagame/NPC delivery (we’d like to underline this – if people want to wait for the full release the overall goalposts aren’t being moved) – but brings the benefits of, in the mean-time, us being able to get the modding community rolling again with the release of EasyPickins’ mod tools and launching our spangly new website sooner than hoped. We’d also be able to get the new build delivery system going – releasing regular bug fixes with the efforts of our two coders combined.

SO WHAT’LL BE IN IT?
A lot. The vast new map (covering pretty much all of Muldraugh, and more besides), the roots of the meta-game system that cover zombies and zombie migration, map streaming, farming, the new skill and trait system, carpentry, female characters, better character customisation, loads of new animations, new shaders, new lighting, sandbox options, the new front-end, the new UI, the backpack system, the modding system and all the bug fixes that 2.5 has been crying out for – for so long. Plus a bunch of stuff we’ve probably forgotten about.
(A clear omission would be the K&B tutorial – so we’d explain the situation and the current NPC status to non-Mondoiders via an on-load screen.)

SO WHAT’S THE CURRENT TEST BUILD STATUS?
We had a blood curdling zombie pathfinding issue that completely rendered zombies unable to work indoors (which we discussed last Mondoid) which was finally resolved last night after seven days of intense zombie/doorframe fury.
That delayed us, but now the things left on the Closed Test (without NPCs) ‘To Do’ list are: fix a memory problem that manifests in 32bit versions of the game, nix some small save bugs, update to the latest map version and make our release builder work with the new version of Java we’ve upgraded to. This work will, one would hope, be completed in the next day or two – after which Closed Testing will begin.
As mentioned previously, however, we’ll let everyone know the second the build is entering testing via our @theindiestone Twitter account.

SO CAN I BE IN THE CLOSED TEST?
Unfortunately the testing group is small and handpicked. You’re also really, genuinely, not going to be missing out on anything. We’re looking for game-breaking, system-crashing and 100% non-fun stuff. We’re very much intent on getting the game to a high quality bar before release in terms of show-stopping bugs, but once we open up the test to the wider Zomboid community the issues that everyone can help us with will be issues that crop up on your particular system, things that happen after lengthy survival times, getting people’s opinions on zombie counts etc.

SO HOW LONG WILL CLOSED TESTING LAST? 
Well, that’s the million dollar question. Another patchy release patently will not do for us or our players, so if the build needs to be kept in the oven till it’s ready – it’s going to be kept in the oven. There are also always unseen dangers in testing when it comes to game performance – this is where demons may lie and will be the danger when it comes to desktop game development. There are many different types of machine out there, and it’s hard to specify until the build has run on a bunch of them.
This said, we now finally have two coders able to bash through bugs, so we anticipate that any undiscovered issues with the game to be pretty fast to sort out. The best policy will probably be to get the game into testing first, see how things go down – and keep you informed via Mondoid blogs, @theindiestone and the forum. We’ll also, clearly, be able to supply a lot more screenshots, videos and whatnot once the process begins.
The same closed testing process will then later repeat once the NPC metagame overlay has been completed. (The work for which, let’s not forget, is already 80% done.)

SO, ALSO, I NOTICED THAT ‘STEAM EARLY ACCESS’ THING
That was the ‘announcement’ we alluded to last week, and we’ve had a preliminary chat with Valve about it all. One reason we’ve been historically cautious about going onto Steam was that there’s a certain level of quality, completeness and polish that’s needed to avoid risking a lot of bad feeling when appearing on the Steam store, as some notable releases of recent times have shown us.
While we would have been careful to make a clear point of PZ’s in-development state, one thing we’ve learnt is that no matter how clearly you label something in text, sometimes people miss this information. That’s all seems to have changed now with Steam Early Access. They are clearly advertised as ‘in-development’ within Steam itself, and therefore we would be a lot more comfortable going in there sooner than we originally planned.
All this said, it’s clearly not our priority – which is fundamentally to our current players and to our builds on Desura. Our entrance to Steam (early access or not) will only be when we’re in the groove of releasing regular updates and fixes, the game is bug-free, NPCs are running around and the meta-game is in place. Above all, we need to ensure our existing audience’s happiness moodle is showing before we go chasing around trying to widen it.
That’s all for now survivors. More as it happens.

Project Zomboid Monday Status update: Window Pains!

The weekly Monday blog for project zomboid has been posted.  We get some cool info in this one. We get to see information about the release of the update.  We get to see new animations for windows and see talk about the context button which is used to interact with the environment.  Pretty cool stuff.  Check out the full info below or read the copy and paste.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2013/03/window-pains/

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Window Pains

 

Roll up, roll up and welcome one and all to one of those conversational blog posts we sometimes do. This week we discuss test build machinations, windows and all manner of control malarky. So hold those horses, as chit-chat commences between Chris ‘Lemmy’ Simpson and Andy ‘Binky’ Hodgetts.
A: HELLO CHRIS
C: Hello Andy
A: So, what are we going to talk about?
C: Hang on, I’ll tip the Mondoid update mail-sack upside down and see what falls out.

Release Plans
A: Oh no! What’s that doing in there?
C: Yep, work continues on getting the game ready for testing. We’re tantalisingly close at this stage, but not quite there. We did, in fact, think that we’d be announcing the closed testing period on this Mondoid – but events conspired against us, mainly some zombie pathfinding building interior issues that made recording the video we’ve linked below so nightmarish. I know we’ve said this time and time again, but if this were Return of the Jedi we’d be at the point at which the Millennium Falcon is preparing to shoot the core of the revamped Death Star – with only the thrilling escape to follow.
We also have some plans on how to reduce the wait a little, which we’ll announce on the day the build goes into closed testing (so keep tabs on our @theindiestone twitter). It’s not what we’d want to do in an ideal world, but we owe it to those who already have the game and are in vital need of some stable build love. We’ll leave it at that for now, as we’ll have a lot firmer stuff to tell you once the build is ready for testing. In short though, we’re not talking super-imminent – but we are saying that we should be getting the update out to people at least a month earlier than we previously anticipated, perhaps even more than that..
A: How annoyingly mysterious. It’s also worth reminding people that the sooner we get the build out, the quicker our intended new development strategies can chime in. Development will be back in front of the curtain, as it were, and the waiting between updates will be far less painful and ice-agey.
C: There is something else brewing that’ll be of note for PZ players, but we’ve got to wait until there’s been a big announcement elsewhere before we can discuss it. So, watch this space I guess. We heard the announcement was today, so we’ll see.

Windows
A: Windows? Is that a question? Ooh, right. Well. In my opinion, one big feature of the 0.2.0 builds was windows finally factoring into the game-play, the player and zombies alike being able to climb through them. Well, we say “climb”, but we really mean “walk through them a bit slower than normal”.
C: You’ve just stolen my line, you sod! I was then going to go on to say that apart from looking a bit naff, this had some worrying effects on the gameplay. Zombies being able to get through windows is great for ramping up the difficulty. But having ten potential escape routes from a building undermined a lot of the most terrifying moments in 0.1.5d where a horde was breaking down the one exit/entry point of the building. Players would instead, generally, just slip quickly out of a window to safety. Zombies at the windows didn’t provide enough additional danger to offset this – and wouldn’t unless we started cheating and spawning additional Z’s at every window.
However, as well as making the experience much more aesthetically pleasing, our new animations also bring back this terror in new ways.
A: Curse you. I should have stolen more from this not at all pre-arranged block of text written not over the weekend. But yes, it’s one of the more exciting things about our new-fangled ‘enshrinkulated 3D models turned into spritey whatsits’ we’re using now. It’s a lot quicker and simpler to add new animations, so we can add anims which add a lot of flavour to the scene and ramp up the drama which we otherwise may not have been able to justify given the time requirements. I’d like you to picture a scene, if you will…
Zombies have broken into your safehouse blocking your exit to the door! You run to the nearest window, your character visibly struggling to lift it open. It’s sticking in the frame and your panic levels are compounding the situation. The zombies stumble closer, almost within grabbing range, you panic and quickly throw yourself at the window smashing it, slashing open your arm in the process, before hoisting yourself onto the windowsill as zombies lunge at your back. You’re in pain but safe, and the arm which will now require bandaging is a small price to pay for avoiding being chewed on by the undead.
C: Yes, Andy. That all sounds very exciting. If only there was a better way to describe that scene for those who have difficulty visualising such things in their head, like HAVING A VIDEO:

C: Yes, I have the goods, I don’t need stupid letters and words to paint a scene! I win. Though I should apologise for the short length of the video. I’ve learnt an important lesson which is ‘Don’t work with children or animals… or zombies.’ That video must have taken literally about 100 takes and I was very close to a murderous rage by the time it was ‘in the can’. The zombies were being right awkward buggers. The amount of times I got to a window and there was a bloody zombie at the other side, or I’d notice a backdoor immediately next to me rendering the daring window smashing escape rather ridiculous. The various glitches and pathfinding issues I need to clamp down on for the closed test build limited the length of the video, sadly.
We should talk a little about some of the new design philosophies that feed into this system, particularly when it comes to the controls of the game. Hang on I think I had a title header lying around somewhere.

Gamifying the Controls
A: Don’t worry Chris, I’ve added it. One thing we’re conscious of when we’re designing is that it’s all too easy to bloat the control scheme. In the initial version of the game we relied on right-click popup menus for everything and, while we’re bringing that back so that the game can be played using just a mouse, we also want keyboard equivalents for these actions. What we don’t want, however, is a bazillion keys – so it’s important to streamline these controls and have context-sensitive actions. Not only will this make gameplay more fun and accessible without sacrificing any of the depth, but it will also lead the way to Steam Big Picture mode and more easily implementable joypad support.
C: Yep, it occurred to me when recording the video showing off your pretty shaders how much of a clart-on it was to equip the flashlight. Of course our game has a ton of inventory items, and it would be ridiculous to have a key for each one. But how do you use a flashlight in EVERY SINGLE GAME EVER MADE WITH A FLASHLIGHT? You press F. Of course you press F.
A: Imagine we implement maps in future. You have a map in your inventory. How will you get the map up? Our bets are on the M key. And so on.
C: Yep. We chatted away and as well as adding more common ‘FPS’ style keybindings that would do sensible oft used things quickly, we came up with the ‘SUPER CONTEXT BUTTON’ idea, which even though I do say so myself I think is bloody brilliant.
A: It’s also worth noting that while ‘F’ will equip a flashlight, that means *anything* which serves as a flashlight, prioritising the most sensible option first. So if your only means of illumination is a candle, that’s what will be equipped on pressing ‘F’. (Not that candles lights are implemented at this time)
C: Yep, Romain is currently working on a weapon selection system which we’ve been somewhat inspired by (ripped off) Half Life, involving categorizing weapons and using say 1 for all swinging weapons, 2 for all stabbing weapons, 3 for all firearms. But yes, let’s talk about the ‘SUPER CONTEXT BUTTON’.

Super Context Button
C: So yeah, basically we have the lovely ‘interact’ button that’s used in pretty much every FPS game ever, and is usually bound to E. Of course, Zomboid has a lot of ways to interact with the environment, so this only takes us so far and the mouse and context menus will always have its place, but for things like opening doors and other common actions you want to do quickly, it’s ideal.
We also came up with a way to get maximum mileage from that one key (read: one day, a joypad button too). Pressing it quickly will do one action, and holding it will do another. In the case of a window, for example, pressing the key will open or close the window. Holding it, will also climb through that window once it’s opened. Every action can still be done using the mouse, and the context menu (no more curtain/window woes!) But it doesn’t stop there as our interact key has another interesting function…
A: Indeed! Let’s remember that video we have all just watched. You ran to the window, pressed ‘E’ to open it but what happened? It wouldn’t open – it was jammed or locked. As a player you’re starting to panic just like the character and so you start frantically hammering the ‘E’ key (which is, as all elevators know, code for, “HURRY UP!”). Zomboid recognises this and promptly activates the “open this blasted window NOW using any means necessary” action. This will trigger smashing the window with a weapon or, if you have no suitable weapon, your own body.
C: Exactly, and even though there are no anims for it yet, you can imagine the same philosophy applied to locked doors (which will be making a return with a vengeance at some point post RC3) and a myriad other things as we further develop the game.. So we’ve basically got three distinct actions possible from a single key and we’re rather excited about how that will make Zomboid play much more immersive and exciting.
A: Well, I’m excited. Is there anything else we’ve forgotten to mention?

Other things
C: Well, this page is nice isn’t it? http://www.rezzed.com/ *cough*
A: Also, we could make people look at how nice this is looking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO7Olguk8ys

Project Zomboid Monday Update 50 Shaders of Grey

Project Zomboid Monday Update is here! It was a pretty good read. We get to see information about the lighting system. We get to see how we can change our controls. We also get a little info about rooms and Idle Zombie animations.  Hopefully this update comes soon cause I'm definitely ready to play it. 

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2013/03/50-shaders-of-grey-groan/

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50 Shaders of Grey (Groan)

Hello survivors, Lemmy here!
Once again we have a week where the coders are buckling down getting all the features of the game working in preparation for a closed test of the game (without meta-game). As such we’re getting to the point now where it’s increasingly difficult to show ‘new stuff’, and until we get to finishing the meta-game that’s unlikely to change much. Though there may be little prezzies from Binky, Mash and Romain in the meantime.
So for a while, a big part of Mondoids will be more about what’s working again, what areas we’re getting close to finished in, moreso than what is new, just to give everyone an insight into what’s left to do. We will try and be as thorough as possible to give people plenty and hopefully it’ll be interesting and/or satisfy on some level. There is some new stuff to report too, however. A few highlights from this week include:
Lighting
Since streaming was implemented, as well as the new map and a necessary tileset reorganization when going to the new map, the lighting system was completely kaput and needed redeveloping to fit the new map format. Such was the intense effort to get the meta-game complete, this got put to the side for a long time, though had remained a niggling worry at how it would be implementable without costing a ton of CPU. This was not only losing the gameplay associated with lighting, but meaning despite the awesome new map, videos and screenshots have all been rather less pretty than they should and we could certainly never release with the lighting broken in the game.
Behold!

Finally we have our beloved lighting system back, this time improved to get rid of any glitches (including that infernal flicker effect plaguing the 0.2.0 builds) and improving the ‘fog of war’ effect inside buildings you’ve not been in . A nice addition to this is that now the distance you (and anyone else) is stood from a window, along with the light difference between you and what lies through the window, will stop visibility through, which not only means that running past buildings will often not reveal anything of the interior, but buildings with lights on will be lit up like a Christmas tree. While zombies already take light into consideration in the chance of spotting you, this will further magnify this effect, meaning lights on at night without barricaded windows is potentially very deadly, where wandering out with them off will be more or less safe (noise aside).
Rooms
Again, due to the streaming support, we had to rethink how buildings were defined since it was entirely possible for half a building to exist, sliced down the middle at the edge of the loaded area. This information is doubly important for the meta-game, since buildings way out of the spawn distance need to be in the game for the meta-game to work. Also, this is vital for making lightswitches work by calculating where the bulb should be What was once an automatic (but slow) process on game load, we’ve now had to move this to the map data to be loaded independently of the map.
EasyPickins has done wonderful work on the tools to deal with this for all future buildings made, but this has however meant any of the new map that was created before the tools were developed will need room definitions put into the map manually. This process is underway (and was done to a limited amount for meta-game development) but for looting to be completely working across the entire map this is a slow, rather mind-numbing task (sorry map modders! ). One thing this has made us realize is there’s a lot of flipping buildings!
Super-size me!
One of the most requested things to add was something taken out of 0.2.0 because of a limitation with the new lighting system. Double size mode is back!
It may have a few limitations though. Due to the way the lighting system works, there are potential issues with the high graphics settings on lower end machines using double sizing, as graphics cards will need to support ‘depth buffers’ on the offscreen bitmap that’s used to upscale the graphics. That’s technical jargon that means ‘might bugger up on low end cards trying to do high graphics mode and double size’, though it’s unclear how many low end cards that would have this issue would be capable of high graphics settings anyway. In fact this is a similar reason on 0.1.5d sometime cards struggle with the double size mode and bomb out when it’s clicked, and all solutions we’ve had to this are rather graphic card dependent sadly.
It should be perfectly fine to do low graphics mode with double size on any card that supported it in 0.1.5d at least, and we’ll try and make it as compatible as possible.
Zombies
We now have an idle animation! Hurrah! Zombies without any stimulus will generally just stand around, though there will always be the odd wanderer or ten. This makes the zombies much more authentic feeling. It was RingoD that first noticed (within the team, at least) that in previous versions you never ever came across a group of zombies just idling around, and how odd an omission this was for zombie fiction.
Furthermore, sometimes hordes of zombies will generally be stood around facing the same direction, the direction of the last thing that distracted them. Especially with the new strafing / sneaking mechanics, means stealthing it past a bunch of zombies is now a feasible (in fact very very much recommended) tactic. All it takes is one zombie to spot you, however, as their agitated noises will alert nearby zombies and start bringing more and more toward you. This results in the more natural staggered effect of more and more zombies peeling off a horde as they are alerted.
Done but not implemented yet are anims for zombies turning to spot you, which will hopefully make for even more tension and creepiness when trying to sneak past a massive horde and one’s head starts to turn and oh no!
We’ve also done major rebalancing to the zombie’s default senses, memory etc though this is still WIP and will likely go on until release. Our hope is this will make stealth a much more important to the game.
Shaders
Since an offscreen bitmap support is required for the double-size feature above, and because there is already a backlog of animations to get in, and because Binky was probably getting bleary eyed looking at Bob in his underpants day in day out, Binky has been experimenting in a bit of shaders programming for the high quality settings, meaning he can add saturation effects to let the sun radiantly shine and at nighttime bleach the colour out of the world and blue tint in a much more effective way. Even a bit of dawn and dusk tinting!
The hope is that it will make RC3 much more atmospheric on higher settings, as well as hopefully help us catch more eyes looking for pretty things when we’re sat on a certain store! The potential to expand this in future would open up a lot of opportunities for screen effects to improve the look of the game or give feedback to the player.
Again, we’d like to stress that any additional things like this are not impacting the release date at all and are worked on concurrently to getting the game ready, and are ways to try and maximise the quality and people’s enjoyment of the game for release (and make further amends for its delay ) while vital tasks are completed. We would cut any such extra feature should the other work be completed, or switch back onto vital things as they crop up.
So here is a video showing a bit off one of the map cells, which also shows off the new zombie behaviour / sight, shaders and of course remind us all what a legend Zach Beever is. Please consider everything WIP, particularly that all light sources have not yet been placed so a lot of the map is still pretty damn dark.

                                                                

(Please note the version of the game this is running on doesn’t have some of Romain’s latest work in, as well as some flirtation with the old inventory system at one point after accidentally shutting the new one down.)
Key-bindings
Yep, you can now edit the keys in the options panel! Yippee! Finally you can select any key combination you want, just like in a proper game!

This is stage one of a bigger overhaul that will be happening post RC3 where we plan to add macroable ‘actions’ that can either be dragged onto hotbars or associated with a key on the keyboard. In the meantime though this will hopefully make a lot of people’s lives easier.
That’s all folks!
Also, Darkwood looks pretty sweet!