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…

Report RSS The joys of 008

Hey survivors! We're just putting the 008 build through some vigorous last minute testing, and expect it to be at some point today. It's a biggie, for more reasons than you'll realise. We're hoping, a few minor bug fix updates aside, this will be the one that ultimately ends up going onto Desura proper.

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Here are a few points about what to expect from 008:

Memory Usage

We've made some massive, massive improvements to this. On 32bit systems with on-board graphics cards, where before we were seeing memory bloat to 2 gig and crash the game, you can now expect to use a maximum of about 800 meg. This will make it a close call for 1 gig systems (though we've had success at the game running then even so) but we still have ideas to bring this down further, and will be able to update the version quite quickly with more compacted character sprites and further memory optimizations. Computers with graphic cards with dedicated memory can expect to see the game running in 4-600 meg maximum, depending on what's going on.

We think we can get the game to run in about 600 meg even in the worse case scenario machines, possibly further, which will hopefully leave no one out in the cold with 008.

Other annoyances

Things like the alarms resetting on load have been sorted out at last. No more loading your game and drawing the attention of every zombie in Muldraugh to your safehouse. There are numerous other vital fixes that we hope will please people. You can read about those here.

Hurray!
But that's not all. We've had something in the pipe for a long long long long long time which we were dying to get into the first test build, but sadly slipped for more pressing matters. It's been rather agonizing not to be able to share, but it's finally going in. So here's a 'Lemmy and Binky explain badly' video about it, which features a special guest star!

FAQ

Q: Wait, so I can play online?

No. This is only split-screen, local support at the moment.

Q: Is this an Xbox version?

No. It's PC/Mac/Linux. We're just using the Xbox button prompts.


Q: So why were you working on this when you could have been...

As we stated in the video, this has been an ongoing thing for many months, and all in all has had much less time spent on it than anyone could possibly imagine. The main body of work was getting rid of all the single player specific code, and that all happened as streaming was being implemented. This is the first stepping stone to online, but we're still a way off.

We've literally spent about 4-5 hours on this in the past 2 weeks, and that time was spent largely sorting out button prompts, scaling the UI, and allowing multiple online inventories to be possible. We've been sitting on this for a long time and there have been frequent inter-team pleadings to show it off over the past month or two. If it annoys you that we've spent any time on this during the past few weeks, even 4-5 hours, please consider that we are massive geeks and stuff like this is what we do for fun to relax after a hard day of work.

Also, after 008 the evidence this existed would have been abundantly obvious from the Lua files, and last thing we'd want is for people to discover it was in progress before we could announce it and make a big deal about it. Especially since people would likely assume the Lua clues pointed to online play, and then be disappointed when we did reveal.

Also consider that multiplayer, in some form, is far and away the #1 requested feature, so if you aren't interested yourself, it is important for a lot of your fellow Zomboiders.

Q: I don't care about local multiplayer - why didn't you make it online?

Online is a million times more complicated, dealing with lag and server/client architecture and all the rest of it. This was relatively straightforward to add, and was the quickest way we could provide multiplayer functionality and start getting the game ready for online. Besides, there aren't enough 'sat in front of TV' split-screen games out there, and we're proud to have it in the game.

Q: Xbox pads? Really?

The game will support any joypad (with dual stick controls) but may require some tinkering in the initial version until we figure out how to support all pads out of the box. It was our (perhaps ill-informed) understanding from our own experiences with joypads that many PC games tend to use Xbox button graphics as a standard, but we'll look to providing alternates for Logitech / PS3 pads etc. XBox pads
are awesome though.


Q: NPCS!?

We haven't forgotten, and they are on their way. Our goal is to get Kate and Baldspot back for Rezzed, and the Sandbox NPCs shouldn't be too far behind them.

And in case you missed it, we blogged earlier today about appearing at Rezzed in Birmingham this year. So make sure to read that if you're interested in stopping by.

That's all for this week, and we'll do our utmost to get you your 008 goodness today. If not today then very very soon afterward.

Post comment Comments
ceriux
ceriux

(buried)

consoles are ******* ****.

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lemmy101 Creator
lemmy101

Who mentioned consoles?

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ngoadam123
ngoadam123

Oh my god thank you SOOOOO much!!!! I already bought the game and waiting for rc 3, and then you guys just added splitscreen! Alot of games don't really have splitscreen but this game does which is amazing! Thank you!

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letrompe
letrompe

good job caveman. i'm glad you could form sentences and use technology and what not, but please, go back to your time.

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AFellowStalker
AFellowStalker

Yeah god forbid one person uses a different piece of technology than you.

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Skylar15
Skylar15

PC is technically a console, you know.

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caekdaemon
caekdaemon

Whoa.

Out of all the things I expected to see in this game multiplayer wasn't one of them :P

Any chance of LAN one day? It looks absolutely epic so far :D

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Wasserstern
Wasserstern

I hope the new release fixes these strange little loading problems in my game. My fps stay at 60+ constantly, the game runs pretty good, but the game just suddenly freezes for a 1-3 seconds every half minute or so. The music freezes too at that time.

Its really annoying to play like this.

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AlexVSharp
AlexVSharp

You know what I would really like in a future update? For the wall and furniture located in the next room to completely disappear from view when in front of my character unless I he can specifically see them. Also, the annoying roof bits...

As for the update: Split-screen sounds quite cool actually. It's a nice often overlooked feature, however you will need at least some form of online play if multiplayer will be a thing (although to be perfectly honest I'm much more interested in a simulation/rpg singleplayer).

Any chance for a 4-split later down the line? ;P

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FW:TOW_Hakre1
FW:TOW_Hakre1

You should watch the whole video, it already has 4-way split....

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earlyrider
earlyrider

i bot PZ from desura but the new update RC2.9 hasn't bin added to the desura version somebody please help me i would aprreciate it

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sabman84
sabman84

Great work so far. One request if by any chance possible: im a sucker for realism, so is it possible to make the backpack/schoolbag etc visible on the character back when equipped? Keep up the great work, hope the online version is not too far away.

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Icetea117
Icetea117

Yeah same. It doesnt matter if its not implemented, but I would love it if you coyuld see the backpack on your chracter.

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Ausländer
Ausländer

I decided to try the demo, and my god....You people have my purchase!

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Amishdadz
Amishdadz

Just make sure its compatibale with win7 i downloaded the new version on indie stone and it wont load the .exe when i click on it i have a laptop 4gig ram 2 dou 2.6 ghz processor and a 4520 amd radon graphics card and win7

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Harikien
Harikien

This is the best thing I've ever seen in any game ever, and I am so glad I bought this 11 months ago. I regret absolutely nothing.

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Tajin
Tajin

Splitscreen? Lovely!
Good to have another game that supports this, it's really kinda rare nowadays.

Oh but, did I get that right in the video? It's "game over" as soon as one of the players dies, not both?

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Chad51
Chad51

When the first player dies, its game over, just as if it was singleplayer.

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eternalrainbow
eternalrainbow

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH!!!!!!!!!

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Volumed
Volumed

I have to find friends to play split-screen! :FOREVERALONE:

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AydinDubstep
AydinDubstep

DID I READ THIS RIGHT?!!?!?!?!? LOCAL COOP???!O

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AydinDubstep
AydinDubstep

Could we have it released this week if possible? I have a friend coming over on the weekend, would be cool to own some zombies Shaun of the Dead style! :)

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Dr.Goupyl
Dr.Goupyl

Well that's unexpected but still, pleasant surprise. I hope it's not making the game lag a bit more cause that's going to be impossible for me then.

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dnboswous
dnboswous

cant stop looking every hour if 008 is already online XD

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Guest
Guest

Split screen? oh well, I guess you guys will finally have my money. :)

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ArathHunter
ArathHunter

I bloody love you guys!

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navyseal
navyseal

Project zomboid looks awesome, I wish I could work with you guys. I've been creating my own isometric engine and trying to have the same light effects.

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GodBlock
GodBlock

Don't ever post anything detrimental / voice your opinion (if it isn't that the sun shines out of the developers arse) on the forums, the fanboi's will eat you alive (no pun intended)

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pizza2
pizza2

it wont work on window 7

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dnboswous
dnboswous

yes its released!! XD!!
Theindiestone.com

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Shoodex34
Shoodex34

Awh, this update kills the performance on my PC. My computer is trash, so it's my fault, but still a little disappointing. From what I've seen though there's lots of improvements, though I'd like to see that zoom feature come back.

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sergioreynel
sergioreynel

1 question so you need 2 xbox 360 controllers in order for split screen or just 1?

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sergioreynel
sergioreynel

nvm i figured it out you only need 1 :)

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