Hello all! Well the latest is that RJ has dropped his segment of Build 33 into internal testing, meaning that we’re now getting bug reports and relevant fixes coming in on the new FMOD sound system and ambient music, as well as herbalism and the randomised building ‘flavour’ stuff.

In fact, if you’re reading this at around 1730 Brit-time, you can watch Twiggy streaming it. If you turn up after the party, meanwhile, we’re sure there’ll be an archive.

In amongst it all we’ve been getting some really positive internal feedback on the build – whether it’s the way the new sound improves helicopters no end, or the terrifying way zombie footsteps and groans sound from when you’re cowering behind a closet door with no clear escape route.

Likewise, the new menu/difficulty system intended that allows players to set their experience’s difficulty a little more precisely without diving deep into Sandbox options (and also letting them jump ahead in the infection/narrative timeline if they so wish) has got some good ‘thumbs up’ too.

Over to RJ for his own thoughts:

“As all the above says my FMOD branch is currently in internal testing, alongside all the other stuff I’ve been putting into the game. It has a few bugs, right now only the 32 bit version is working, but I’m on the case!

It’s also clear that I need to tweak how zombies group a bit, and how they make their thumping sounds – which currently drowns out the ambient system that lets you hear the fridges hum, water drips, wood cracking inside houses and all that cool stuff.

Also in testing is the new ambient music that plays at night. It’ll get some more development, but basically at night if you hasn’t see a zombie for a while, and no music is playing, and you suddenly see a zed or a group of them then creepier ambient tracks will play. It’s really effective, and it’s what we’ll be building into the game when extra music comes in from Zach.

So yeah – I have tweaking and balancing to do but everything is getting good feedback. Hopefully when the other coder branches come into line we can start talking IWBUMS.”

Elsewhere, Build 33’s Creative Mode (a summary of the what’s and whys of which can be found in last week’s Mondoid) is getting some extra town planning love – a road tool that will allow roads to be orderly and easily placed in both the creations of the community and for our own team in the development of the Louisville suburbs. For this we needed a system that would allow for sections of the map to be temporarily overridden by template tiles without actually disturbing the terrain, which is the current focus of attention.

Finally, in community matters, if you missed our fascinating chat with ORMtnMan the creator of the popular (and awesome) Real Guns mod then you can find it here. We also wanted to shout out our love for the current run of Our Big Dumb Mouth PZ videos.

Oh and we know we flagged his stuff last week, but have you seen EvilMonk77’s most recent bit of fan art? Amazing! The West Point jackets are ace!

This week’s featured image from WieldyRelic76 over on Steam . The Centralised Block of Italicised text would also 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. Sometimes you’ll even get secret messages that have been sent out in error too. Sorry about that one.