‘Project Zomboid’’s “very big” Build 42 update will introduce basements
The Indie Stone has revealed a series of improvements due to launch with the “very big” Build 42 update for Project Zomboid, leading to the introduction of basements and sewers.
In a new blog post, developers confirmed they were working on a new rendering pipeline which “should rid us of all the performance issues we’ve been plagued with due to the isometric draw order over the years.”
They also detailed a new “light propagation system, which allows for light to naturally leak through doors and windows, providing much more atmospheric and believable lighting” and spoke about getting rid of the 8 storey limit, allowing “each chunk to have its own unique defined height up to 32 levels.”
“Whilst all these features are gamechangers in themselves, they were also done in service of another very specific feature we’ve had planned for a long time, which required each of them to be made feasible in any way,” said The Indie Stone before revealing plans to introduce “basements and sub-levels” to Project Zomboid.
The update “will provide a lot more replayability to the game map, which is otherwise completely static at the moment”
The devs went to explain that in Build 42, “when an area is streamed in for the first time, an appropriate basement ‘building’ created in the building editor and exported as a binary file is selected randomly from the list of all possible basements and will be injected into the map as it is loaded,” meaning any areas with basements will yield surprises in every playthrough while offering “the least disruption to the existing map development, modded maps and everything else.”
“We’re also considering the possibility of other sub-surface structures, such as sewers for locations like Louisville. We’re still researching what would be appropriate and sufficiently realistic for this,” they added.
Build 42 is shaping up to be a major update for Project Zomboid, as it’s also set to add the game’s first set of animals and an improved crafting system.
However, The Indie Stone did confirm that Project Zomboid‘s Build 42 will appear “a sizable amount of time” after Build 41 is fully wrapped.
In other news, Twitch is currently trialling a feature that allows viewers to pay up to $100 (£90) in order to get their message highlighted in chat.
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Ali Shutler
NME
