# Project Zomboid 42.8.1 UNSTABLE Released

- Product: Project Zomboid (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/project-zomboid)
- Vendor: The Indie Stone
- Date: 2025-05-20
- Original notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/108600/view/800062851651732505
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/project-zomboid/releases/2025-05-20-42.8.1-unstable-released

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

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- **fixed** — Game not launching with Video Effect being unchecked
- **added** — Ragdoll physics for vehicle collisions and gunplay
- **added** — Sand banks and areas of clay when close to water on the map
- **added** — More granular way to define the floor upon which things are created with params.placements
- **added** — Advanced blending with new floor tile properties and automatic attachment generation
- **added** — Outline to highlighted items in the world
- **added** — Highlighting of corresponding world items when mouse is over Extended Placement submenu options
- **changed** — Extended Placement menu now sorts items by name, fixes displaying multiple items with same name, and groups items into submenus
- **added** — GeneratorTileRange and GeneratorVerticalPower sandbox options to support generator use in tall and deep buildings
- **added** — Better detection for animal drinking from puddles when the player is absent
- **added** — Animal sinew item that drops when butchering animals
- **added** — Three new basements
- **added** — Animal's milk powder that can be used to feed hungry or thirsty animals
- **changed** — Wild animal hunting now makes shot animals flee instead of dropping dead instantly, leaving a blood trail
- **changed** — Animals become domesticated when picked up instead of when put in a designated zone
- **added** — Item icons in Grab and Extended 3D Placement context menus
- **added** — Eternal and disabled options for time, weather, and various cycles in Sandbox menu
- **added** — Color of Highlighted World Items rendering option
- **added** — New Pants_Skinny body location to separate baggy and skinny trouser items
- **added** — Support for 3-tile and 4-tile feeding troughs

##### _How do I subscribe to the Unstable beta branch?_

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Hotfix 41.8.1:

-  Fixed Game not launching with Video Effect being unchecked.

-  Welcome message can be disabled in the options.

41.8.0:

**NEW**

-  Introducing ragdoll physics.
    - Ragdolls are currently enabled for vehicle collisions and gunplay.
    - Melee ragdolls are planned but are not imminent.
    - This is the first implementation of a new feature that requires testing, balance feedback, visual feedback, and performance reports.
    - Disruption to your current playthrough is unlikely, but possible.
    - Ragdolls can be turned off on initial load, and can be turned on or off in Options at any time.

-  Biomes improvements

-  Added sand banks and areas of clay when close to water on the map

-  Added a more granular way to define the floor upon which things are created. "params.placements" now takes all the types of "features" plus "GENERIC", which is used as the old "params.placements".

-  Blending is more advanced now.
    - Added new properties to floor tiles ("FloorMaterial", "IsFloorAttached", "FloorAttachementN/S/E/W").
    - Removed "Attachments.lua", "Similar.lua", and all "attach" from the features.
    - Automatically generating potential attachments when a world is first loaded using the new properties.
    - Blending takes into account 'half-tiles' and blends properly.

-  Using the biome replacement facility and the new granular placement, we generated sand on all ph_forest biomes.

-  Added an outline to highlighted items in the world.

-  When the mouse is over an option in the "Extended Placement" submenu, the corresponding world item is highlighted.

-  "Extended Placement" menu changes:
  1) Sort items by name.
  2) Fixed displaying only one item with the same name.
  3) Group items with the same name into separate submenus when there are three or more.

-  Extended placement UI now closes the extended placement UI if you're too far away.

-  Added GeneratorTileRange & GeneratorVerticalPower sandbox options to support generator use in tall and deep buildings.

-  Default values are a 20-tile range and 3 vertical power.

-  Builder mode has it at 40 & 5.

-  Better detection for animal drinking from puddles when the player is absent.

-  Added Animal sinew item. This drops when butchering animals and depends on the animal's size, etc

-  Added three new basements.

-  The disassemble-furniture cursor will highlight objects using the "bad" highlight color, similar to the disassemble context menu.

-  The Loot window will be displayed and expanded when opening a vehicle trunk, and collapsed when closing the trunk (unless it's pinned open).

-  Work done on IsoMovingObject.DistToProper(IsoObject other) and IsoMovingObject.DistToSquared(IsoMovingObject other)

-  If both objects are vehicles, the distance is between the closest points on the bounding boxes of both vehicles.

-  HotSave improvements. Add hot-saving of Player Map, Animal Zones, and Game time. (This system is saving elements of the game world around you as you play, meaning that should your game crash or unexpectedly exit, you will not travel back in time / lose progress)

-  Added container outlines for corpses.

-  The Grab context menu now shows multiple corpses, and highlights corpses the same way items are highlighted.

-  Added options to the Wash context menu to wash "All Containers", "All Weapons", and "All Other" (like rags). The "All Clothing" option only washes clothing items, not containers/weapons/rags.

-  Added Jar of Roe recipe.

-  Added animal's milk powder.
- For now, you can only use it with either a bucket full of water or a feeding bottle full of water. (1 bag for 2 buckets of 10L)
- You can now give this animal's milk to any hungry or thirsty animal.
- This is to help people keep the baby animal if the mother has died in labor.

-  Changes on wild animal hunting:
- Shooting an animal will now make it flee instead of

_[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/108600/view/800062851651732505]_