Greetings survivors. It’s been an exciting week watching testers ease into General Arcade’s fantastic ‘Easy PZ’ co-op set-up, and we’re now pleased to announced that the OnlineTest build into the main IWBUMS Public Test Build. There are still kinks to be ironed out, but overall we’re really pleased that such a complex bit of work appears to be operating well on the many and varied internet connections of our users.

If you want to engage with IWBUMS public testing procedures then visit this post. The full IWBUMS release notes and feedback thread, meanwhile, can be found here.

Even better, the GA guys are game for doing some more work on our MP contingent while we crack on with the main game features. A preliminary poke around VOIP integration is next on the list, but we won’t talk of it again until it’s close – as this will again be long and difficult job for our Russian code buddies.

Elsewhere TurboTuTone has released his direct-to-game radio and TV localization software, and the full modding tool known as WordZed will be released in coming days. We’d like to ask all our community translators to have a look, have a play around and come back to us with comments and questions.

Once Turbo has finished with WordZed he’ll then be returning to main-game activities, making our somewhat digital radio system feel more ‘analogue’ so secret transmissions (whether scripted or player-made) can be discovered more easily, improving the impact particular shows or transmissions have on character boredom, letting the player learn recipes from recorded VCR tapes and all that kinda fun stuff.

We also had a really productive Metalwork meeting last week with RJ (who is ill today, with ailments you don’t want to hear about at all) and hammered out improvements and changes that are again more in-line with community feedback.

Multiple versions of makeshift forges, wall and barrier recipes that involve building frames to build-upon (and crossover with the carpentry skill), tools that aren’t up to the same standards as looted equipment and more were on the menu. We’ll go into more detail with that when it’s in and working in-game, as it’s a subject that’s had a lot of debate and we want to get it right.

Finally, it’s been a while since we did a main build release – players outside of our test builds haven’t been experienced the 2x visuals yet. Now co-op is in we’ll be directing attention towards getting Build 34 out of the door. That said, with Nutrition requiring polish and Metalwork still in progress it’s likely one will be left behind and kept for 35. We’ll have a chat with RJ once he’s off his sick-bed and work out what’s best.

That’s about it for today, fingers crossed we’ll have some anim fun for you to have a look at next Mondoid. Laters!

This week’s featured image by the amazing base of Opt_0 over on Steam. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Okay thanks bye! Oh, and community GoT spoiler chat goes… here!