A lot of stuff in a WIP state at the moment, so not too many big flashy shiny things in the blog this time round. Hopefully enough to whet your whistle though.

In terms of work on the four central pillars of 42, the next big thing happening will be the next merge-in of the crafting revamp to the central trunk build. This will primarily be the crafting station code, which has had a bit of rewiring – and now will also allow for benches/machines etc to (optionally) have ‘parts’ items that degrade on use and can be viewed/added/removed via a maintenance tab.

Meanwhile, RJ is working on integrating his deer tracking with the foraging/search mode integrated into Build 41, while in our tech upgrade ‘optimization / lighting / more depth & height’ branch we continue to play a bit of whack-a-mole with issues that have arisen with such foundational changes. So, this week, as an example that’s been stuff like: savefile thumbnail creation being borked, zombies spawning on water, the tops of tall tiles showing through the floor above etc.

Finally, in the realms of MP and the continuing mission to bring inventories etc. server-side the gang have been working on getting trapping and nu-fishing working with the new systems, and solving various issues that occur with new object creation also.

FARMZ

Let’s pop quickly back into the revamped farming, which this week has had some ease-of-use controls added in to make things less of a click-through-UI nightmare and bring a touch of extra Stardewwy-ness.

This video shows various elements of fun stuff – but primarily that by taking a farming tool into your primary, pressing RMB and aiming, and then pressing ‘E’ will have you go about the farming action. Likewise with sowing seeds, and harvesting.

CAVEAT: Please note that these controls aren’t final, and also that there’s a fair amount of animation polish required to make it all look super-smooth.

Also, here’s a quick timelapse of them plants a growin’.

OTHER STUFF

• As previously mentioned, alongside readable newspapers and newsletters, players will now be able to pick up flyers that advertises places of interest on the Knox Event map – and then also reveal that location on the player’s own personal map. This week we’ve really been knuckling down on this, as we’ve realized it’s a great tool to direct new players towards buildings favoured by many in the community for their safehouses. Anyone able to name the following locations from the real estate advertising?

• As well as expanding the current map, we’re also giving existing areas of the map a loving glow-up. Take this amazing improvement from Ayrton as an awesome example.

• Clearly any new build will also be coming with new clothing, hats and whatnot. Martin’s also pumping out loads of new fun stuff for you to loot, wear, and also for those tricksy zombies to wear too.

Finally, we spotted this out on the wires. How good does this make our lore look and sound?! Maybe AI doesn’t provide a terrifying nightmarish future after all! (Or if it does, it at least it will make the chaos look and sound really good on YouTube!)

This week’s survivalist from Ser0. 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. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here.