Pre-alpha v0.3.1 is out for playtesters. Furniture and props are now destructible with the Fire Axe and break down into resources like planks, nails, cloth, feathers and metal scrap, while zombies tear through doors to get to you. Controls are fully rebindable, and the inventory screen gained a full set of keyboard shortcuts plus drag-to-world dropping. The Load World screen, backpack grid, cooking stations and menus all got a revamp, and a whack of client side bugs around gear and storage have been fixed. Zombie pathing and horde-night frame hitches are improved.

Features

• Co-op sessions now hold up to eight survivors, up from four.
  • New Game trades the old 1-4 buttons for a 1-8 slider that shows the upload speed your connection needs for the group size you pick.
  • The size you choose is saved with the world and actually enforced, so a full world turns people away at the Join screen instead of letting them in.
  • Joining a host who is still loading now waits and succeeds, instead of showing a loading bar for two minutes and dumping you back at the menu with no reason given.

• Furniture and props are destructible: chop a table, an armchair or a metal bed frame apart with the Fire Axe, which is the only tool that breaks them.
  • Wreckage drops resources: planks and nails from wooden furniture, cloth and feathers from upholstery, sheets and shards from metal.
  • Zombies now destroy doors while trying to get to you.

Fire Axe destruction

• Cooking stations are now a queue: pick a recipe and orders line up three deep while fuel loads into its own slot by dragging wood onto it.

Cooking stations

• You can rebind controls in Settings, and in-world prompts now show whatever key you actually bound rather than the one the game shipped with.
• The inventory has keyboard shortcuts for everything you do: shift-click to transfer, ctrl-click to split, double-click or E to equip, 1-8 to send to a belt slot, G to drop, space to take all, Z to sort.
• Drag an item out of the menu and let go over the world to drop it, and while you drag, the slot it would land in lights up.

Key binding

• The Load World screen has been rebuilt: it always shows eight slots, saved worlds first and empty ones after, each with its own New Game button.
• The backpack grid now previews every slot the biggest pack in the game would give you, with the ones beyond your current pack locked until you upgrade.
• The Hiking Backpack is now the Hikers Pack, an Uncommon find, and it unlocks one extra row instead of two so bigger packs have somewhere to go.
• A quality pass across the menus and title screens: solid panels, legible inactive tabs, rounded corners, a three-column controls list, bracket keys to step through sub-tabs, and the Developer tab renamed to Admin.
• Motion blur is now off by default, and the Upscaling setting names the upscaler you are actually running instead of offering a vague "Auto".
• Selecting a gun in your backpack now shows which ammo it takes, next to its weight.
• The version stamp in the menu footer reads "v0.3.1 Pre-Alpha (build N)" and the build number ticks up with every build, so a bug report can name the exact build you were on.

Bug Fixes

• Zombies chase you properly again: they take the fire tower stairs instead of standing on the ground beneath you.
• A closed door no longer stops a horde: the pack streams in from spawn, piles onto the door, breaks it down and comes through, rather than freezing until someone opens it.
• Zombies that trailed you with a casual walk and never swung now attack.
• Hordes no longer spawn frozen zombies that never move, or sprint off to an empty area and stand there.
• Zombies wedged on rocks and scenery are cleared away out of sight and replaced with fresh ones near you.
• Horde nights run noticeably smoother, with far fewer frame hitches when zombies spawn, die and respawn.
• Gear restored when you join is wired back into your character, so weapons in your belt can be drawn, dropped and reloaded, and your backpack and flashlight slots work (this only ever hit players who were not the host).
• Other players can no longer see your bow targeting arc, whether or not you have it switched on.
• Items drag both ways between an open storage crate and the hotbar, and shift-clicking a hotbar item sends it to your backpack.
• Quick-depositing into a crate works for everyone rather than the host alone, and the item now appears for other players immediately instead of seeming to vanish.
• Your worn backpack can no longer swallow your things: taking it off or dragging it into its own bonus slots is refused while those slots hold anything, the slots at risk glow red as you drag, and the warning text fits inside its menu.