Let’s get something out of the way first then. Ugh. We feel so unclean doing what we’re about to do. SORRY. SORRY EVERYONE…

All the other games were posting Steam Awards links like that, so we did too. Don’t vote for us if you’d rather not, but if you do – well click on the above massive intrusive image and that would be swell.

So, back to business, we released some final-ish fixes for the current stable build yesterday – the changelist for which can be found here.

There may well be another smaller patch, early next week, with some other minor changes – namely a few small anti-cheat measures, a fix for some modded textures and a bit of metal walls weirdness that still needs addressing.

B42 FARMING

This week we’re going over to Blair, and his current mission on overhauling our Farming system. Now, priority number one is to get things more tactile and animation-led with farming: when you use a watering can we want it through a direct mouse-click and not a maze of sub-menus.

Away from this, however, we are also making the overall system more complex, varied and interesting. Elements of this already coded into the 42 mainframe include:

• Plants have growing seasons, and for most crops there are one or two optimal planting months. You’ll be able to read the best month to plant your crops on the back of seed packets, and if you plant at the wrong time of year you’ll get a reduced yield, and perhaps the risk of producing sickly plants.
• Appropriate plants, such as Potatoes, can be planted using the vegetable itself.
• You’ll be able to dry seed Corn and Peas to preserve them for planting next year.
• Plants can accumulate slugs and snails for the player to deal with – either using looted pest control, or perhaps using a folksy remedy. Nearby slug repellent plants such as Rosemary will help too.
• Rosemary is one of several herbs added as well. They tend to grow more quickly, and when harvested are knocked back a few growth stages –  and then can be harvested again later. The herbs you pick can also be used to propagate new herb patches while they’re still fresh, and can be dried as well.

• We are expanding the need to water your crops to houseplants. Potted indoor vegetation that players find in the world will now be living – similar, but not identical, to crops. They need to be watered, can fall victim to diseases, and will become visibly unwell before they die and become a dried husk. This also means that they will be another cool signifier of the days that have elapsed since the beginning of the Knox Event – since in time all the plants in homes, shops, the mall etc will wither and die.

Elsewhere, we’ve been seeing what animals look like without their clothes/skin on. We’re thinking that these look realistic but a little too fatty and should have a little more muscle on show – but it’s interesting nonetheless.

These past two weeks we’ve also made a lot of progress with getting the previously shelved fire system back on track, including the ability for the game to have liquid-looking Molotov fire FX on the ground. The actual visuals are going to be fine-tuned and improved soon, so we’d rather not share images of it, but rest assured it’s going to be pretty cool.

Finally, another quick bump for the Spiffo plush that Makeship are creating for us – which is something that the community has been asking for since forever.

If you want one you’ve got two weeks to put your order in.

In case you want to give it for Christmas then Mash has also created a certificate of gifting intent that will hopefully come in useful.

This week’s road-side (well, centre) picnic from Athena. A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. 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.