Project Zomboid explains Build 42’s massive performance and lighting improvements

Project Zomboid developer The Indie Stone is now absolutely positive that the game’s long-anticipated Build 42 will release sometime in 2024. Accordingly, the developer has ramped up its Zomboid blog posts to show off what some of Build 42’s most notable upgrades will be.

Appropriately titled ‘Upgradez,’ the latest in a long line of Project Zomboid development blogs goes into considerable depth on Build 42’s performance and lighting systems, both of which will be massively improved as part of the update.

“The difference in performance is honestly surprising, and extremely satisfying,” says The Indie Stone, whose findings indicate that Build 42 Zomboid should easily “get a solid framerate even on 4K, or on furthest zoom.” This is no mean feat for Project Zomboid, as the game’s underlying systems and engine-level features eat up plenty of hardware cycles in Build 41, ensuring poor frame times and shoddy overall performance.

Project Zomboid Build 42 will run and look way better, but…

“For full disclosure,” says the blog post, “we’ve discovered that a few of the absolutely lowest-end systems capable of running our game are still adversely affected. This is because the solution for such large FPS optimization comes at the expense of GPU memory usage for the caching textures used. Cards with extremely low dedicated GPU memory may run into problems.”

In other words, though the performance improvements are substantial, players enjoying Project Zomboid on super low-end hardware may still struggle to get playable frame rates, even after Build 42 comes out. Further, The Indie Stone feels that it should eventually be able to resolve these issues, and in a worst-case scenario, players will be able to turn off Build 42’s performance tweaks if needed.

For most players, the news is very good indeed. “Generally we estimate that a huge majority of our playerbase will benefit greatly from the optimizations. Since most of the optimization frustrations we hear come from players who feel their machine should be able to run PZ at a solid framerate, we feel this work will ease the vast majority of performance sadness we see in the community,” says The Indie Stone.

Aside from improving how Project Zomboid runs, Build 42 should also make the game way easier on the eyes. Notably, Build 42 includes an all-new light propagation system, as demonstrated in the video featured above. This, combined with massively improved view cones, door animations, and other assorted visual improvements, will elevate Build 42 from the get-go.

Another hugely exciting addition to Project Zomboid in Build 42 are the skyscrapers and underground garages and basements, as shown in this video:

The game’s rendition of 1990s’ Knox County should now be even more interesting to explore, with the added verticality. Moreover, this means that underground bases will now be a thing, and those have been a very long time coming to Project Zomboid.

Finally, The Indie Stone has also shown off its brand-new improvised weapon system, which features an almost procedural level of customization in Build 42. The humble baseball bat will be able to support several unique types of visual and functional customizations, ranging from the usual assortment of nails to rail spikes. “Although we tried to make these weapons realistic and believable, we have allowed for a couple of weapons to be slightly (reasonably) zany,” says the blog.

In true Zomboid fashion, then, Build 42 should have a few curious easter eggs thrown in for good measure, likely featuring the game’s mascot, Spiffo, in some capacity.