Okay, so.

Where We’re At

We have a limited number of external testers running around the current B42, and their first impressions have been positive. Which has been a relief.

There remains, however, much to do. In the coming weeks we will be getting more and more feedback on the more in-depth systems like animals and nu-crafting, and in turn addressing it.

TESTER FEEDBACK

Here’s some of the initial feedback we received, though please note that these were not yet from extended multi-week playthroughs.

Darkness

“I found I wasn’t running into zombies like I usually would randomly scattered throughout the place, until an alarm came and that was absolutely brutal. I didn’t think it’d draw so many. And the darkness is unforgiving too, I was scrambling for lampposts for their spotlight trying to fight off what was left chasing me until I was exhausted and finally able to rest.”

“In regards to the darkness: I think it’s perfect, I love the horror feeling of it. You really actually fully need a flashlight. You think: ‘Oh thank fuck I have some light’, rather than ‘Ugh, this barely lights anything’. There was a time flashlights barely had a reason to be in the game at all, so this is better.”

“I had a great moment with the darkness change – I got cocky and had a small horde chase me. I ran into a store with the plan of trying to lose them out the back. I opened and closed behind me a random door inside, to try lose them. I was accidentally now stood in pitch black. I scrambled for the glowing light switch as the door was now being slammed by the chasing horde, only to realise I’d run into the world’s tiniest bathroom.”

Related to darkness, and also because of the spooky season, today we also thought we would show off our new abandoned Sanatorium location – which is a fictionalised version of the real life Waverley Hills.

As with the irl version, it also comes with a ‘death tunnel’ which was once used to carry deceased patients out of the building.

Zeds

“The empty road, felt really rural. Like how I’d expect to drive down my road both currently and in an apocalypse. Then I was just on my way out of Rosewood now, and because it was foggy, I accidentally stumbled into the prison, driving. Holy shit. Outside is crazy, I cannot imagine inside. I barely got out the gate with my car. A true trailer ‘But I would never make it home’ moment.”

“Just started a new game in West Point with the aim of trying Louisville, and noticed the streets outside are very quiet with the occasional zeds dotted about and it gave off cool 28 Days Later vibes. Ran around building-to-building thinking ‘this is too easy, nothing is stopping me’, when after bashing 15 zeds heads in muscle strain kicked in. Felt like a cool way of setting atmosphere without being too easy, feels pretty balanced so far.”

“TRULY, the changes to the grouping are SO GOOD. Probably the most QoL change for me. It really makes the world feel more alive in a way. Instead of having zombies spread out everywhere and having to do the ‘lure away ball up’ rinse and repeat just to get to an area, now it really feels like I can sneak around and explore areas while losing a group instead of knowing that I’m going to run into a ton more and just shouting instead to get it over with.”

As discussed last time, we have put a lot more thought into how, where and why zeds spawn in the locations they do in B42. This was a primary thing we asked the testers to report back on and, as seen above, they seemed to like it.

There are remaining concerns that rural areas might be a little too empty, but we will address this as more feedback comes in. In the meantime the following video gives a good feel for how things compare to B41 – and the second half of it is also is a good demo of the lighting.

General

• “I do really like how many different containers can be filled with liquids now. Makes finding a drinking source early way less frustrating. Thumbs up!”
• “I like the doors swinging open, and the game actually feels much smoother.”
• “Holy fuck.  A basement. I wasn’t expecting that. Man it’s awesome.”
• “Yeah you guys really fucking hit it out of the park already WHAT THE HELL this is SICK. Even though I’ve played in this area probably a hundred times seeing the stairs going down and then finding this area just made me feel like I was playing the game for the first time again wtf”
• “Also SUPER happy with the traits, it was a bit of a shocker, smoker no longer OP.”
• “The voiceovers actually helped a lot with immersion, I felt it.”
• “I like the brutalness of the combat, in terms of combat fatigue, needing to rest more, and training that skill up as you progress.”
• “It felt fun and fresh.”
• “Love the density. It’s terrifying.”
• “The first thing I noticed was the map in and around Muld. Within 15 minutes I encountered Cortman Medical and was amazed. I actually had to pull out the online PZ map to compare, it was that amazing. This extended to each house I visited, beautiful.”

WHAT WE’RE IMPROVING

Clearly, any playtest won’t all be roses – and the fact that the new testers were PZ mega-fans should be taken into account too. (And also, although there’s a lot of quotes above, it should be noted that the current set of testers is small, and many of these bullet points come from the same people.)

We also got pointers on zed awareness, the discomfort system, and much more on other new additions that we’ll need to keep an eye on as the test pool goes wider.

Likewise, as mentioned before we will also need feedback from more elongated play sessions – and far more contact with the huge new systems like Crafting and Animal husbandry.

Combat tightening

Something that the test sessions revealed were some combat irregularities that needed to be addressed, and were resulting in unfair deaths – and which in turn was limiting peoples’ fun and exploration.

This has led us toward doing a deep-dive into both some issues that have been introduced during 42 dev, and also some legacy issues from B41 that deal with zed targeting.

The latter could explain some of the rare edge-case combat irregularities that seasoned 41 players might have come across during their bouts of survival. It’s our hope that the results of this will bring some added consistency to combat in general.

Crafting

The Crafting UI needs more love, and attention will turn to this once we are 100% happy with the new Build menu. You can see the Crafting UI in its current form in this lovely little video that’s been made for Halloween.

[Skeleton animals not accessible in vanilla game. Debug version shown. Craft speed not final.]

For the past half a year or so we have had six people working on our new vision for crafting. As regular readers will know, delays with it have been a primary reason that things have been held back. During B42 development we didn’t build in enough safeguards should key members of the team become unavailable due to illness or personal matters.

This is now very much a lesson that has been learned and, alongside new production and support staff who have been brought in over the past six months, this is not a beartrap we intend to step into ever again. We’re really, really sorry that it has led to such understandable frustration in the community.

We are currently very happy with the progress being made by the Crafting Team, and can’t wait for the time at which you can all take their work out for a spin.

NOTE FOR MODDERS: Something that has been a long standing frustration for modders is how difficult it was to add new player-buildable-tiles to the carpentry and metalworking right click options. This came into sharp relief for us when it also became frustrating to add new B42 buildables to those same options.

Previously, the code for all of the tile building options was basically hardcoded in lua, and very inflexible. In B42 we are using text file script definitions (similar to how inventory items, vehicles and recipes are defined) to populate the build options versus using hardcoded values. For the most part the buildable scripts use the same format and syntax as the new b42 crafting scripts.

This means that in B42 it should be a far, far simpler matter for modders to add new building options for their subscribers.

Animals

Animals and animal husbandry are currently in polish and bugfix mode, waiting on more extended playtesting. One thing, however, we would dearly like to improve is the current requirement on players to draw their own ‘animal zone’ around sheep/pig/cow enclosures to ensure that they feed, mate and develop while the player is off-screen.

During the development of 42 we have expanded our team and knowledge pool, and can now likely improve this – and as such the Prof is looking into ways to use an algorithm to automate the process around each animal, thereby removing the need for manual zoning from the player.

If we can make this work, however, it will likely be an addition to the Unstable beta – as opposed to being a feature at Unstable launch.

Zed Awareness / Stealth

Something the new lighting and zed spawn has flagged, given as it has is that our ‘zed awareness’ needs some polish.

While its inclusion will likely not be as a part of the Unstable beta, we are rebalancing zombie senses so that they better take into account sneak levels, zombie focus and direction as per usual – but also take into account lighting, low obstacles like fences and bushes, and (yes) weather effects like rain and fog.

Reading Materials

Last time we showed some of the flyers that we’d been creating, which will serve the gameplay purpose of directing players (especially new ones) to interesting locations, good places to loot, and satisfying places to hold out inside.

We received some valid feedback in that, even if supposed to look 90s-ish, some of the graphic design could be improved – and as such this past month got our friend Stuart (who in a former life was the Art Director on various London fashion/celeb mags) in on the case.

While we were overall happy with what we had before, we do feel these are now far improved – and getting completed far more quickly to boot.

[Please note, in the below examples – not all of these would logically be found in a mailbox.]

A full round-up of everything confirmed for Build 42 can be found here. 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. We also live on Twitter/X right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. If you fancy you can sign up to receive PZ blogs in your emails right here.