Project Zomboid is an open-ended zombie-infested sandbox. It asks one simple question – how will you die? Whether surviving in Knox County free-roam or controlling Indie Stone mascot Baldspot in his quest to save his injured wife Kate – death is always a certainty. Quite how long you manage to put it off is another matter…

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Hello everyone! Just a quick Mondoid to go through some of the developments and plans this week.

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State of 17

FPS

The good news is we've made a significant increase in FPS in the closed test builds. This should put it at least higher than any Steam build to date, and possibly improves on a lot of the pre-Steam version performances. There are some mild glitches and lighting artifacts due to this though and we're look for ways to fix these up.

Save/Load issues

Due to the inclusion of West Point, and West Point being (ironically given its name) to the North of the original map, we discovered a hotbed of potential bugs from allowing the coordinates of the world to go into the negative (int casting truncation errors in negative numbers) so as a future proofing measure we've moved the entire world to give us room all around us to spread out (so we don't hit the same issue once we add Louisville). As such as well as fixing up a few issues related to loading old versions of the map (think that people could be coming from the steam beta, steam main, or desura) we've got to make sure maps convert properly to the new coordinates so players don't reload into a forest.There are a bunch of other bugs being reported, some being relatively high priority to fix. Not too many of them would forbid a public test version however, it's really only the Save/Load issues holding us back.

Price Increase

The time is almost here. We've been at the same price for a couple of years now, and although we've yet to add the NPCs, we feel the game is getting to a place where we should raise the price. Not only because the extra money would help us better expand the game in future, but we feel it important to finally rise the price to reward early purchasers by actually having them have bought the game at a lower price than future players do.As stated last week, the game will be priced at £9.99 (or equivalent) but we will give some days notice before we make the change.

Steam Launch Date

In true Indie Stone style we're not giving an ETA on when we are planning on going on Steam, but we do have an idea ourselves which we've discussed with Valve. We're planning on a pre-Xmas release, and by pre-Xmas we mean pre-Xmas sale. We'll give more solid info as we approach the planned time and see how the build is looking. Our priority, as always, is getting something stable so we can update Desura, and we'll see where we are at that point.

As stated in previous Mondoids, we'll not be risking adding the 3D engine changes or NPCs prior to Steam, as the risk for completely destabilizing the build before we go onto Steam and risk us either slipping to next year or having an unplayable version on release and potentially blowing first impressions on there. As soon as we appear on Desura and Steam with a stable build, and release on Early Access, we will begin in earnest to add these features.In the meantime, our focus is on stability, compatibility, bug fixing, polishing, and basically fixing up as many holes and loose ends as possible. We've also fixed the game to go back to main menu screen instead of quitting, which was long over due, and again this introduced second playthrough bugs we'd like to axe if at all possible before release. Generally though, a few biggies aside, the build is looking really good and its great to see frame-rates back where they should be. And to know that there is still plenty more to do to those (3D).

The amazing Josh_H, who created our Rezzed trailer and the amazing Zomboid teaser is working on a trailer for us, and we'll be looking to expand our screenshot competition (of which there is still plenty of opportunity to take part in and win!) with another competition to find exciting zomboid footage to use in it, so we'll keep you posted!That's all for this week, a rather factual look at where we are.

The team are massively excited about the next couple of months and can't wait to get this update out the doors.

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Dralel
Dralel

Full Steam ahead?

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anduril1015
anduril1015

I'm excited to see PZ continue to progress! It's been great so far!

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sabman84
sabman84

EXCELLENT news!!! just tried the latest build on Steam few days ago its looking sweet. I did have some bugs tho, im playing on Macbook and after loaded the game from day before some areas were dark inside the building (warehouse). as well as when i died the game froze up and had to shut down the computer manually. Anyway, love this game. Keep up the great work.

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Discorded
Discorded

Great work!

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TheUnbeholden
TheUnbeholden

If you guys are getting a steam release I think you should increase the price, I mean the game is obviously reaching the point where its got lots of content, with NPC's I would gladly pay $20. But you have to absolutely sure that the build is stable before the price change.

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holmesc2009
holmesc2009

they said they were raising the price dummy.
It's going to be around 15 bucks.

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tr01k8j2
tr01k8j2

15 bux, no NPCs? LOL, guess I should buy it now..

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holmesc2009
holmesc2009

Yea, I bought a copy for a friend because of the price raise that'll happen in December.

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Fluffeh
Fluffeh

It might be better to release on early access asap, and have the "default" release you plan to release, and a seperate release under "beta/patches" with npcs engine changes, pathing options. Since everyone has seen some news at some time about zomboid, a lot of people looked at it, so the first impression is gone when everyone saw where you were headed with it. Steam users and desura alike, love updates more than anything, so patching everything thats "mass well known" keeps up second impressions ^.^ Leaving space for bigger patches that change the engine or looks, and so on. Not that any changes would be sculpted or mesh based, so might as well just push forward with everything there is.

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carlqua
carlqua

It's up to you guys if you think it's a good idea to increase the price to £10 but I for one don't think it's a good idea because as you said, the game is not complete concerning features like the NPCs. I bought the game for £5 ages ago but I know if my mates were to buy it, they wont buy it in it's current condition, especially for a £10.

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thisoldhat
thisoldhat

LOL people on the forums are banned for asking about updates - and now y'all want more monies?

You guys are bad at making money on the Internet. You deliver a product - then get paid. Not ask for money for 3-4 years, ban everyone who pays you, and then ask for more money, with a still incomplete product.

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nasKoo
nasKoo

To my knowledge, noone was banned for simply asking about an update. Could you clarify?

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ceriux
ceriux

will there be a way for me to transfer my desura version over to steam? i use steam way more than desura and would much rather have my game stored and download on my steam account ?

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nasKoo
nasKoo

There already is.

Projectzomboid.com

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Rizno
Rizno

Kind of disappointed to read the last part of this, I remember awhile back that the Steam release wouldn't come until NPCs where in the game. NPCs are what I'm personally waiting for before I begin playing again.

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TheUnbeholden
TheUnbeholden

It would be a very nice way to celebrate the steam release, and buy the game on christmas sale. But I suppose we will have to be content with West Point until work resumes on the NPC's, getting the issues ironed out with saves/performance boost is essential.

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umoito
umoito

keep it up!! PZ is the best game in the genre i've played EVER

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