[B42] How to Gunplay

An American Patriot should know how to use a firearm and use the second amendment right to protect his property and his community!

In this short guide, you will be taught how to aim your firearm like a true American just like the founding fathers intended.

Introduction

Arguably, build 42 is a great major update that offers a wide range of new features and mechanics that only enhance the player experience in Project Zomboid, but there is glaring issue in the community of new players and old players a-like struggling with the new gun mechanics of the game.

In this short guide, I will try to explain the new mechanics of Gunplay in build 42 to the best of my ability, this will be based on how I understand it and from other resources of information available.

So maybe that time you decide to pick up a gun to shoot at Zomboids, you will find yourself hitting most of your shots dead-center.

Understanding the Settings and Crosshair

Build 42 introduces new crosshair settings in the options which might confuse people at first glance. With some quick testing however I have figured out a simple understanding of how it works.

A Quick Overview of the Settings In-Game:

You might have noticed a few options in the settings and that they do look like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo with no tip descriptions of what each setting does, for some reason, Indie Stone did not provide any tip descriptions of what each setting does.

Luckily, I did some testing and I feel confident in explaining what each setting does.

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Understanding the Settings

With some quick testing I have devised a table for you, the reader, to better understand what each setting does. This table format will have easily understandable descriptions for each given setting, or at least I will try to keep them easily understandable and I will provide my recommended setting.

Setting Name	Types	Description
Reticle Mode	Chance to Hit or Aim Penalty	Chance to Hit shows the chances of hitting a zomboid through colours between Red, Orange and Green, colour change seem to be based on B41's target outline and affected by Aiming Skill. Aim Penalty is dictated exclusively on your character moodles such as panic, stress and movement and perhaps other moodles that may affect aim, for example, extreme panic will cause the reticle to go red. Honestly, I would recommend keeping it on Chance to Hit, as I've found both settings to have the same result regardless.
Aim Texture	0-17	Represents your aiming accuracy and looks like the slightly transparent background in the crosshair, this inner background shows the Chance to Hit or Aim Penalty and naturally changes colour depending on what setting you use. I would recommend using 4, as it is somewhat transparent but just has the right opacity to be seen and it fits my UI recommendations.
Reticle Texture	0-6	Represents the center aimpoint, by default at 0. It is a big white circle. I would suggest leaving it on 0, but recommend to go for either 4 or 5, this way you will get a classic dot reticle.
Valid Target Reticle Texture	0-6	By default is set to 3, and has the same principle as the reticle texture, except it only appears when you are actually aiming at a Zomboid or a Player, it will have the natural colour as red when set to 3. I would recommend leaving it on 3, as it gives you a nice indicator whether you are aimed at something. Having any other setting than Valid Target Reticle 3, you should use Reticle Texture 0.
Crosshair Texture	0-2	This is entirely up to personal preference, but 0 is the standard crosshair with a rounded lines, 1 is the standard straight line crosshair. 1 paired with my recommended settings, you'll get that classic look of crosshairs in many game like Counter Strike. 2 gives you a triangular crosshair, similar to the original Advanced Trajectory mod.
Reticle Camera Zoom	On or Off	I recommend leaving this on if you have a small monitor or have issues seeing the crosshair. What this essentially does that the crosshair will scale with the camera and will be larger when zoomed in.

Notice, how I did not touch on Reticle Colour and Reticle No (Valid) Target Colour. I recommend leaving those as white. Now lets review the recommended settings I have given you:

• Aim Texture = 4
• Reticle Texture = 4
• Valid Reticle Texture = 3

And thats it!

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Understanding the Crosshair

This part will mostly be covered in visualized photo examples with short descriptions, I also just included this part just so you can see what the default crosshair looks like and then the recommended settings looks like.

Default Crosshair



Notice every aspect of the crosshair is active in this photo. When there is a target in sight, your aim texture will immediately change colour corresponding to your chances of hitting or aim penalty.

The red reticle inside is the valid target reticle and confirms that you are aiming at something.

Recommended Crosshair



I have found that this recommended crosshair setting is somewhat more aesthetically pleasing, but of course you can disregard my recommendation and go for what you find absolutely the best crosshair setting for yourself.

How To Aim

Accuracy levels are no longer represented in aiming outlines on the Zomboids. The developers have changed the mechanics to be dependent on the aim texture colour on the crosshair, although it can be said accuracy remains the same except now it is represented on the crosshair.

A rough estimate what each colour represent are as follows:

• Red - High aim penalties, unlikely to hit.
• Orange/Yellow - Some penalties, not impossible to hit, might not kill the Zomboid in one shot.
• Green - Guaranteed hit, no aim penalties. You would have to be very unlucky or aiming wrong.

One thing you should immediately know it is also now viable to shoot from Aiming Skill 0-1, you obviously will not be as accurate as higher aiming skills but it is possible to start using firearms from absolutely no skill at all.

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Aiming properly

With the basics laid out, I can finally begin to explain how aiming works and I can confidently say if you have played with any of the projectile or trajectory mods. Build 42's Improved Gunplay kinda plays out exactly similar to those mods.

Remember when you are aiming you need to make sure the valid target reticle appears in the middle, that is how the crosshair confirms you are aiming at something.

Always aim directly for the head or slightly above the head. This should ensure your character is perfectly aligned to the target you are shooting at.

I have tried other angles with the crosshair being slightly forward, slightly to the left or right will produce the same results too, so as long as your character is aligned with your target and the crosshair is on the head.



Notice how my character is exactly in line with the intended target. This is what good aiming looks like.

Under no circumstances, should you be aiming center mass or even at their legs as this may cause misaligned aiming, in this case when you fire you will find that your shot will go in a completely other direction than intended.




Notice how my character is misaligned with the target, if I were to shoot my gun the bullet will go past her. This is what bad aiming looks like.

Aiming with Offset 10% or Higher

As I mentioned before by default the game sets aiming crosshair lines to 05% meaning the crosshair will only focus on the Zomboid you are aiming at.

I have turned off aim texture and valid reticle texture for these example photos.

Notice how the lines are more closer to the reticle, this is roughly an estimate the radius your bullet will be able to travel. As you see it is more closed in so you are likely to hit only your target.

If you change the value to higher percentages, you will notice your crosshair will be slightly wider also increasing the radius of what can get hit.

This is what the crosshair line radius will look like, as you can see it looks a lot wider than the previous 05% and it will ensure anything within this radius can get hit.

To conclude this chapter: The higher the offset, the higher chances your bullet will not only go to your intended target.

Things To Avoid or Look Out For

Negative Moodles/Stats

As mentioned before firearm accuracy is not only dependent on Aiming Skills, it is now dictated also by penalties from panic and pain moodles, and if it is anything like Advanced Trajectory Overhaul, I theorize stress, fatigue or exhaustion will give aim penalties too although I am not entirely sure.

Definitely try to avoid taking on large groups of Zomboids when you are using a firearm as this will gradually increase panic or stress and affect your aiming.

If you are wondering what moodles I am using in this playthrough:
Moodles Re-Animated by Muhrakk
Square Borders for Moodles by Molecule31

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Weapon Jamming

Weapons can also now jam, so if you find your gun clicking but not feeding out bullets, quickly press X or your preferred custom keybind to fix the issue.

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General Hits to Limbs

Depending on the accuracy, your character may have hit other body parts than the head even though the crosshair is aimed directly on the head. I call these hits, general hits.

General hits can also temporarily make a Zomboid fall or stop in their movement track towards you.

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Finishing downed Zomboids with Alt + Right Click

In Melee Combat you can use Alt + Right Click to force your character to look down and kill a downed Zomboid. The same thing also applies to firearms, although in Build 42 it can be a little wonky.

I would only recommend this when you find yourself in a situation able to finish off a downed Zomboid.

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Orange Accuracy

Orange accuracy can have a chance of being direct hits to the head or be general hits to any body part at point-blank range or ranges up to 30-50 meters or in American feet distances, that should be up to 90-160 feet.

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Higher Crosshair Offsets can cause General Hits on Limbs

I mentioned previously that Crosshair Offsets can change the radius in which direction your bullet can travel which can be useful to hit groups of Zomboids in a cluster.

What I did not mention in the previous chapter, the Crosshair Offset setting in higher values can also cause general hits on Zomboids on their limbs or bodies, despite aiming on heads, this is exclusively true to higher offset values than 05%.

Conclusions

In conclusion, it may seem a little daunting at first but the new system isn't really that complicated.

With a little tweaking and proper aiming, you will become an unstoppable gunfighter and a true American.

I hope this guide has helped you understand the new systems and the settings, consider giving it a like and perhaps share it around, I'd greatly appreciate it!

Anyway, happy zomboiding!

Consider checking out my work for Project Zomboid!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3386956442
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3389003300

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This guide was at the time written only with Build 42.0.0 in mind, some information may or may not be outdated in any other version of build 42.x.x.

[feenjareen]

by virtue of not being a gel human and relying on everyone to do my thinking for me, i've already tried every fix i can muster aside from messing with game files. it's just an AMD compatability bug, fixed it by re-enabling zoom.

(some AMD cards have a glitch where having zoom enabled will desaturate and blur the edges of every texture. disabling fixes it at the cost of being nearsighted.)

[[BRE] Galand]

You might need to adjust your crosshair settings in that case.

[feenjareen]

i straight up don't get the crosshair when aiming? it's just the iso cursor

[NeonScreams]

I've been bouncing back and forth between this guide and another with pic examples of the Reticle Textures and they've both been amazingly helpful! Thank you so very much.

[Valen Logan]

Thanks for writing this. I was a bit mystified by the new aiming system at first but this really help clarify how I should be thinking when using firearms.

[Monday Left Me Broken]

nice

[Biff Buff]

ok

[mizaginist+]

123

[[BRE] Galand]

@SteelBlaze Good catch, I'll add it in sometime after the holidays

[𝐆𝐇𝐎𝐒𝐓]

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