Let’s break with recent Thursdoid tradition and talk about MP progress first this week.

Or, rather, just show this video as it probably does more to underline recent advances made in the pursuit of multiplayer release for the IWBUMS public beta than can be put into technical-sounding words.

Elsewhere work continues on the next update to the IWBUMS public build 41 beta.

This patch will likely be out next week, though might take longer to cook dependent on feedback on the new fitness system from internal testers. Here are a few of the patch contents currently being tested:

• Fitness. As described last week RJ’s fitness system – a way of training to boost physical XP, at the risk of overstraining and exercise fatigue getting in the way of combat skills, will be a part of public beta 41.44.
  
  This week has primarily been about balance for the system, but something cool that’s been added are variants on the animations for lower level characters who aren’t used to the exercise yet and as such can visible struggle with it.

• Work on the ‘downed zombie vs. approaching zombie’ dilemma. One of the final larger kinks in the Build 41 combat system has been the game not knowing whether your character should be caving in the head of a zombie on the floor or (more likely) concentrating on an upright zed with its arms outstretched approaching at speed. We think we’ve remedied this now, but will likely need your feedback on how it all feels when we release.
  
• Optimization. EP, our resident code superstar, has made improvements to a foundational element of PZ’s code (property containers / isoflagtype) which has given a boost to many, many wider systems within the game. In internal testing this has had a noticeable impact on built-up areas such as downtown West Point – where we’ve seen significant FPS rises. This will also be of great use in the far-flung future when Louisville becomes part of the game.
  
• The ability to emote while walking, as well as general improvements to looped/continuous emotes like surrender. (And the eradication of the emote wheel lock-up bug)

• A tidy-up of our water/drinking systems, and specifically how it’s all presented to the player.
  
• Fixed various issues with guns – primarily those that weren’t racking after each shot.

Turbo’s work on the fog system improvements we showed last week continues, and might be going into 41.45 – we will see how things fall.

This week’s indoor camping death scene from NightmareFrost. A changelist of all IWBUMS patches since the 41 beta was released can be found here. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. 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 you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too!