Hello everyone. Quick and lazy Mondoid this week since we had video and release goodness last week. Sorry! We’re all hard at work trying to get build 30 up to scratch so it can be promoted from IWBUMS and rolled out to the masses. However there is some cool stuff to talk about.

IWBUMS – Build 30 hotfixes

EasyPickins and RJ have been busy fixing a whole host of issues that have been reported, and the build is shaping up quite nicely. There are still a few issues to iron out though but we hope to get the build ready to pump out to everyone soon!

Long Term 1.0 Goals

We’re starting to plan out our final march toward 1.0, which we’re hoping will be within the late first quarter of 2015, possibly creeping into Q2. However that’s not an ETA because you know what dark alleyways ETAs lead us down! But we’re going to start focusing on getting the bigger features in there, and bug fixes and some more modest additions, post 31 we need to try and focus our efforts on these bigger goals.

Here is a list of our priorities over the next few months, after we get build 31 and it’s Kill You Before The End Game evilness we detailed a while back, in the likely guestimate at when they will likely drop into the builds:

Stealth Gameplay – Creeping behind fences, peeking and shooting around corners, and all that good stuff. Will shake up the looting game significantly.
TV + Radio – Keep your character from the brink by watching kids shows on the telly, keep them informed by listening to the news on the radio, or maybe even learn a few cooking and crafting tips?
Vehicles – Finally make the long trip between West  Point and Muldraugh in comfort, mow down zombies en route. Siphon gas, and make sure you have a mechanic within your group!
NPCs – Finally. Yes they are being worked on. They are always being worked on. We know. We know!
UI Overhaul – The old UI has served us well, but we have many ideas to vastly improve the PZ game experience, as well as making joypad specific UIs to give joypad players and split-screeners a more comfortable and fluid gaming experience. We’re in talks with a certain company who made a phenomenal UI for another game, and are excited to think what they will be able to bring to ours.

…and of course the map completion, but it’s not clear at this stage if this will appear in stages throughout other things, or we’ll put it in all at once, so I struggle to figure out where to put it in the list above.

This may mean a slight reduction in frequency of builds after build 31, or it may mean that these builds are more bug fixy in nature and have more modest gameplay additions, along with intermittent huge game changing features. It’s all for the greater good though so we hope people understand we need to focus our efforts.

There are obviously many other things we want to do with the game, and as we’ve said before no one should panic that 1.0 means the end. As long as PZ makes enough money to keep the devs stocked up in fish pies (i.e. makes enough money to pay for development) we’ll try and keep the train going as long as possible.

…and while we’re at it…

T-T-T-Turbo

To help us in our efforts in marching toward the 1.0 line, we decided we may need some additional help. So why don’t y’all welcome TurboTuTone to the PZ dev team? I know we have! As his first tentative steps into the behemoth that is the PZ codebase, and tackling integrating Will’s extensive TV and Radio channels into the game. Hurrah! Welcome Turbo! <3

This week’s blog post image was sent in by Hunting Nate, aged 7 (not really aged 7 and we took it off the Steam community screenshots, he didn’t send it in, but whatever)

And once again, we remind you to keep your eyes locked onto the TIS twitter for build updates and testing news, and if you can’t then why not subscribe to our newsletter so that our lovely friend and sys-admin saviour Kirrus can shoot PZ info bullets directly into your inbox?