HyZ Dev Log — From 0.14 to 0.18

HyZ is a zombie apocalypse overhaul for Hytale. It turns every night into a fight for survival, with smarter zombies, real stealth, infection and hordes that come for you.

Since 0.13.1 HyZ has gone through nine releases. The last log was about zombies that hunt you. This one is about surviving them: defending your base, scavenging supplies, staying fed and hydrated, and outlasting a sky that turns toxic. It also brings an in-game admin panel and support for Hytale 0.7.0.

TL;DR

• Spike barricades: a craftable wall of sharpened stakes that hurts anything pushing against it. It wears down and can be repaired.
• Toxic rain: a radioactive green storm that burns anyone outside and enrages the zombies.
• Silencer support (HyGuns): suppressed shots are much quieter and don't give away the shooter.
• Headshots: arrows, bullets and other projectiles deal critical damage to zombie heads.
• The lab: a Centrifuge crafting station for cures, and a Gas Mask.
• Supply Crates: lootable boxes for abandoned buildings, with editable loot tables.
• Cave zombies: zombies now lurk in the dark in every cave.
• Apocalypse food: canned beans, soup and meat, bottled water, energy bars and military rations.
• Hunger & thirst: a full survival system with its own HUD, tied into infection, toxic rain and zombie noise.
• Admin panel (/hyz): configure the whole mod in-game, including every loot table, with a creative-style item picker.
• Hytale 0.7.0: HyZ 0.18.0 runs on the new game version (and no longer on 0.6.x).

0.14 — Hold the Line

0.14.0 — Spike Barricade

A new base defense: Spike Barricade (ZA_Barricade_Spikes), sharpened wooden stakes on a log base, with its own model and hitbox.

• Solid: zombies can't walk through it. When they push against it to get past, they get hurt.
• Placement: about 3 × 2.6 × 2 blocks; it turns to face the direction you're looking.
• Recipe: Workbench → Survival: 4 logs (any wood), 8 sticks, 4 fibre.
• Heavies are the counter: a Heavy Zombie (220 HP) survives long enough to tear it down. Wood counts as resistance 1, so heavies can break it.
• Breaking it like any wooden block gives the barricade back.

0.14.1 — Hotfix: crash when joining the world

• Fixed: a world crash ("Store is currently processing") that could happen while the map was still loading. The barricade check read blocks in map areas that weren't active yet.
• All systems that read blocks during gameplay now use a safe read that only looks at active areas. That covers barricades, climbing, door and block breaking, and bush hiding.
• The final block break by zombies now happens right after the tick instead of in the middle of it, because spawning the drops mid-tick could cause the same crash.

0.15 — The Sky Turns Green

Barricade durability & repair

• The spikes now hurt every living thing that touches them: zombies, animals and players. They deal 6 damage per second. Nobody is hurt in Creative.
• Each hit costs 1 durability (60 in total), and the wear is saved with the world.
• When durability runs out, the barricade doesn't drop. It becomes Broken: dark and cracked, harmless, but still solid, so it keeps blocking the way.
• Repair: look at it and press Use (the door key) with 4 sticks + 2 fibre in your inventory, and it's as good as new. Using it while intact shows the remaining durability; without the materials, it tells you what's missing.
• One barricade kills about 6 common zombies before it needs a repair.
• Configurable: damage, interval, durability, repair cost, who gets hurt and immune roles (Defenses.json).

Suppressors (HyGuns)

• A gun with the Suppressor attachment has a quarter of the noise radius: 12 blocks instead of 48.
• Zombies that hear it only come to look. Nobody learns who fired.
• Hitting a zombie with a suppressed shot makes only that zombie react. Its neighbours are not alerted, either by the ally alert or by mutual detection.

Toxic Rain ☢

A rare radioactive storm.

• When: from day 3, with a 3% chance per in-game hour and at least 36 in-game hours between storms.

• Warning: thunder and the message "The sky is turning green..." 60 seconds before it starts.

• The storm: lasts 5 minutes. The rain is acid green, and the sky, fog and light turn green too. It's a real weather type, made from the vanilla Zone 1 rain.

• Players caught outside (nothing above their head):

  • take 2 damage every 2 seconds;
  • get the Toxic Exposure effect: a green tint, a green screen border and a radiation icon;
  • have a 0.3% chance per hit of becoming infected, about 13% over a full storm.

  Any roof, tree or cave keeps you safe.

• Zombies get Toxic Fury: they glow green, move 20% faster and hit ×1.4 harder.

• /zombie chuva [status|iniciar|parar] checks, starts or stops a storm for testing or recording.

• Configurable in ToxicRain.json.

0.16 — Aim for the Head

Zombie models now have real head and body hitboxes. The vanilla zombies didn't have them, so projectiles never knew where they hit.

• New models inherit everything from the vanilla zombies (look and animations) and only add the boxes. The head heights were measured on each model's real geometry; the hunched Heavy has a higher, wider head.
• Arrows and other projectiles: ×2 damage on the head.
• HyGuns bullets: HyGuns already had its own ×1.5 headshot that never worked on zombies because the head box was missing. It works now, and HyZ adds ×1.35 on top, for about ×2 in total.
• A bone-crack sound plays on every headshot.
• Melee never crits. Players don't take headshot damage by default (PvP headshots can be switched on).
• Only zombies spawned after the update have the new hitboxes.
• Configurable in Headshots.json.

0.17 — The Lab

0.17.0 — Centrifuge & Gas Mask

• Centrifuge (ZA_Centrifuge): HyZ's own crafting station for medicine, with its own model and hitbox.
  • Use opens the crafting screen on the Cures tab.
  • While crafting, its rotor with the vials spins and lowers, using the same animation system as the alchemy bench.
  • Recipe: Workbench → Crafting: 8 iron bars, 4 copper bars, 3 life essence.
• The Infection Cure is now made in the Centrifuge instead of the alchemy bench (8 seconds).
• Gas Mask (ZA_Gas_Mask): a head-slot item with its own model, texture and breathing animation.
  • Recipe: Armor Bench → Head: 4 light leather, 3 linen scraps, 2 iron bars.
  • It has no effect yet. It's ready for a future gameplay role, such as protection from toxic rain.

0.17.1 – 0.17.3 — Gas Mask fixes

• The mask showed up at the character's feet. Armor pieces attach to the body by the name of the model's root node, plus two model settings. These three releases fixed them one by one:
  • 0.17.1: the root node is now named Head;
  • 0.17.2: removed the "character" format, which made the mask act as a new skeleton;
  • 0.17.3: marked the root as a piece (isPiece), so it follows the head instead of replacing it.

0.17.4 — Gas Mask texture

• Updated Gas Mask texture.

0.18 — The Survival Update

The biggest update since the mod began.

Supply Crates

• New Supply Crate (ZA_Lootbox), with its own model, texture, hitbox and open/close animation.
• It's a container with 18 slots that fills itself with loot:
  • food: 1–3 items;
  • medical: 1–2 rolls (bandages, potions, antidote, and a rare Infection Cure);
  • materials: 1–2 rolls (fabric, sticks, charcoal, copper and iron);
  • weapons and tools: a chance of a crude weapon, a hatchet or arrows.
• Breaking the crate drops nothing; the loot stays inside for you to take.
• Made to be placed in abandoned buildings and prefabs. It is the first piece of the upcoming abandoned cities.

Zombie drops

• Each zombie type now has its own drop table (ZA_Drop_Zombie_Common, _Heavy, _Runner, _Frost). They start from the vanilla zombie drops, with a small chance of apocalypse food.
• The vanilla zombie tables are not touched.

HyZ creative tab

• All the mod's content now has its own tab in the Creative inventory, with a biohazard icon and sub-tabs for Items, Armor, Blocks and Furniture.

Cave zombies

• Zombies now spawn in every cave: all 33 cave environments, including the volcanic ones.

• They use the same mechanism as vanilla cave monsters. Up to 4 zombies, in groups of 1–3, spawn only in the dark, so a lit torch keeps an area safe.

• Each zone has its own mix:

  Zone	Common	Heavy	Runner	Frozen
  1	60	15	25	—
  2	55	20	25	—
  3	45	15	15	25
  4	45	25	20	10

• Cave zombies get day scaling, nameplates and special chances like the ones on the surface.

• They can be switched off with CaveZombies in Spawning.json or in the admin panel. /zombie dia shows whether caves are on.

Apocalypse food

Six new foods, with 3D models and icons in Hytale's art style:

They appear in Supply Crates and sometimes drop from zombies.

Hunger & Thirst

A complete survival system that plugs into what HyZ already has.

HUD

• Two new bars above the hotbar in the exact style of the vanilla health bar:
  • hunger (green) above health;
  • thirst (cyan) above mana.
• In critical state the bar turns red and the icon flashes.
• Every state shows up as a status effect icon with its name:
  • Hungry, Starving, Starvation;
  • Thirsty, Dehydrated, Severe Dehydration;
  • Well Fed and Food Poisoning.
• In Creative the bars are hidden and nothing drains.

Draining

• Walking, hunger empties in about 80 minutes and thirst in about 55 minutes.
• Standing still, sitting or sleeping drains less (×0.6). Sprinting drains double, and swimming ×1.5.
• Infection makes it worse: each infection stage adds +15% hunger and +30% thirst (fever).
• Toxic rain makes you thirsty (×1.75 while exposed).

Consequences

• Hungry or thirsty (25 or less): stamina can't go above 75%.
• Starving or dehydrated (10 or less): stamina is capped at 45%, and dehydration slows you down.
• At 0: you lose health every few seconds until you eat or drink, and you can die of hunger or thirst. You're also slower and the screen darkens at the edges.
• Your stomach growls: when starving, it growls every 25–60 seconds and zombies within 10 blocks hear it.
• Starvation speeds up infection: with critical hunger or thirst, infection advances 25% faster.
• Well Fed: with hunger and thirst above 85 you regenerate health slowly. The buff only appears while you are actually hurt.
• Food poisoning:
  • raw meat and fish have a 35% chance of making you sick;
  • untreated river water has a 20% chance;
  • while poisoned, hunger and thirst drain 2.5× faster and you take a little damage, though poisoning alone never kills.
• Respawn at 70 hunger and thirst. New players start full.

Eating and drinking

• Every food and drink counts, whether it's from vanilla, HyZ or another mod.
• Each item has its own values:
  • Military Ration: 70 hunger, 25 thirst;
  • Canned Meat and pies: 45 hunger;
  • Water Bottle: 45 thirst;
  • fruit: a little of both;
  • coconut: mostly thirst;
  • potions: a sip of thirst.
• Drink from rivers: fill a mug, tankard or bucket with water and drink it. It quenches thirst, but the water isn't treated.
• Any food without its own entry restores 15 hunger.
• /zombie fome shows your status, and lets OPs fill, set or poison for testing.
• Everything is configurable in Survival.json or in the admin panel. Food values use one line per item (ID = hunger / thirst / poison %), and * works as a wildcard.

Admin panel (/hyz)

An in-game window for OPs to configure the whole mod without touching files.

• 12 categories, one per config file:

  • General & Infection, Block Breaking, Noise, Scaling, Hordes, Spawning;
  • Stealth, Pursuit, Defenses, Toxic Rain, Headshots, Hunger & Thirst.

  That adds up to 264 settings.

• Every setting has a friendly name, a short explanation and the default value. On/off settings are buttons, numbers and text are fields, and lists use one entry per line. Decimal commas (0,25) work.

• Changes stay pending until you click Save and apply. A gold dot marks each changed field, and each category shows a counter.

• On save, each file is validated by the game's own rules, written and reloaded on the spot. Invalid values show a red error on the field.

• Discard and Restore defaults buttons.

• Opens with /hyz or /zombie admin. It needs OP or the slayer.hyz.admin permission, which is checked again on every click.

Loot & Drops editor

• The admin panel also edits the Supply Crate loot and each zombie's drops:
  • groups with a chance (%) and how many items they roll;
  • each item has a weight and a min/max quantity;
  • a live Chance column shows the real odds of each item, and the item name appears in your language.
• Pick items without typing IDs: click the slot to open a creative-style item picker:
  • tabs: Inventory, All and every creative category;
  • a search box that works in your language and ignores accents;
  • 50 items per page with hover names;
  • click an item and it goes straight into the slot.
• Saving applies instantly to the whole server. Edited tables are kept in the HyZ data folder and reloaded on every start. Restore defaults + save goes back to the original.
• /zombie item <text> does the same search in chat or the console.

Hytale 0.7.0 support

Hytale 0.7.0 rebuilt how the world stores blocks, which broke a big part of HyZ. Everything is ported:

• Zombies breaking doors and blocks now use the new block-health system, with the same cracks and regeneration, and break blocks the way the game does, sounds and drops included.
• Barricades, toxic rain shelter checks and /zombie blockinfo run on the new block access.
• Eating and drinking follow the 0.7.0 changes: eating isn't cancelled by damage, you move faster while eating, there are new eating times and a potion cooldown. The hunger and thirst hook is still in place.
• Hunger and thirst bars are re-aligned to the new 0.7.0 HUD, where stamina is now a thin centered bar and mana sits on the right.
• HyZ 0.18.0 requires Hytale 0.7.0 and will not load on 0.6.x.

Fixes in 0.18

• Admin panel save hang: saving a loot table showed an infinite loading screen and nothing was saved. Fixed; saving is now instant.
• Item drag & drop in the loot editor didn't work in-game. It was replaced by the click-to-pick item window.

For server owners

New config files in the HyZ data folder (all editable in /hyz):

New commands

Installing 0.18.0

• Requires Hytale 0.7.0.
• Remove every older HyZ-*.jar (and any old ZombieApocalypseAssets-*.zip) from the mods folder before adding HyZ-0.18.0.jar.
• HyGuns: the current HyGuns (6.1.1) fails to load on Hytale 0.7.0 and stops the server. That's on HyGuns' side. Run HyZ without it until HyGuns is updated. HyZ works on its own and turns the gun features back on automatically when HyGuns is present.

What's next

• Abandoned cities: generated ruins with Supply Crates inside.
• Gas Mask protection against toxic rain.
• Clean water: boiling or filtering river water to make it safe.