ZomboRut 1.2.3.1

**ZomboRut works in multiplayer. ONLY 1.2.4.1 version** Scenes between two players and between a
player and a real zombie, on every screen in the server. Everything between
players is opt-in — there are two ways to say yes, and both are yours.

Plus a new defeat scene, a pose wheel, seated poses that read your character's
state, defeat screams that follow the traits you picked, escape chances all
the way through a long defeat, big hordes that take their whole turn — and a
big safety pass on giving up, the traits the 42.20.1 game update broke, and a
long run of fixes across captives, corpses, bandits, moodles and menus.

> **Multiplayer and the poses are EARLY ACCESS (1.2.4) — 1.2.3 does NOT work
> in multiplayer.** The stable build (1.2.3) gets everything marked
> *(both builds)* — including, for the first time, the struggle mini-game and
> the new scene.

---

# 🛑 READ BEFORE YOU TOUCH MULTIPLAYER

> ## **This is a VERY early stage of multiplayer, shared for TESTING ONLY.**
>
> ### 🚫 **NOT intended for third-party or public servers.**
> Do not run this on a public server, a community server, or anyone else's
> server. It is not built for that yet and I am not putting it forward as
> something that belongs there.
>
> ### 👥 **Play it with people you know and TRUST — and only them.**
> A small private game with friends who all agreed to be there. That is the
> whole intended audience for this build.
>
> ### 🔛 **Player-to-player content ships switched ON.**
> Everything between players is opt-in — a scene needs a yes from the other
> player first. An admin who doesn't want player-to-player content at all
> switches one sandbox option off. See "For server admins" below.
>
> **Expect rough edges. Report them — that is the point of this build.**

---

# ⚠️ READ THIS FIRST — HOW TO INSTALL

> ## 🚫 **DELETE THE OLD `ZomboRut` FOLDER FIRST.**
> ## ✅ **THEN drop the new one in.**
>
> ### **DO NOT merge, overwrite or copy on top of the old folder.**
> ### **BACK UP YOUR SAVE before you do it.**
> ### **QUIT TO DESKTOP and relaunch afterwards.**
>
> ### 🎮 **Requires Project Zomboid build 42.20 or newer.**

---

# 🌐 MULTIPLAYER — Early Access

> ⚠️ **Testing build. Trusted friends only — not for third-party or public
> servers.** See the notice at the top.
>
> **A note from me:** multiplayer still has bugs I know about and haven't
> managed to fix yet. I'm also thinking about moving multiplayer into its own
> separate mod — and it will get more attention once the modding tools
> release.

## 🔛 For server admins — player-to-player ships ON

**Sandbox option: `[MP] Allow player-to-player content`
(`ZomboRut.playerScenesEnabled`), default ON.**

Scenes between players, and tying another player up, work out of the box. Set
the option to false and they do nothing at all — the `ZR:` menu never appears
on another player. Player-versus-zombie content and **all** of single-player
are unaffected either way. The switch takes effect on a server restart, and
keeping the default needs no config edit.

If you host with it on, **that is your decision as the operator, and the
responsibility for this server is yours** — your players, your rules, your
moderation. Everyone on it should be an adult who knows what's installed and
agreed to be there.

*Whatever this is set to, scenes between players always start from a yes on
the other player's side — a give-up, or an answered ask.*

## 🚫 What's different — read this before you play

Multiplayer is **not** single-player with more people in it. Some things work
differently on purpose, and a few are switched off:

- **No grapple.** Scenes play each half locally instead — your game plays your
  part, theirs plays theirs. It looks the same, but everything below follows
  from it.
- **No defeat mini-game.** The struggle you get when a zombie takes you down in
  single-player is **not offered in multiplayer**. A proper version is queued.
- **The only mini-game in multiplayer is the escape from being tied up.**
- **Sprinters don't drag you** — they take you down where you stand.
- **No corpse scenes**, and **no "Drag Subdued"** on captives.

**Single-player keeps all of it, unchanged.**

---

## 🙌 Giving up is the consent

**Giving up is something you choose to do, and it's what says yes.**

- Press your **give-up key** (default **K**) — hands go up. That's you
  consenting.
- **Don't press it and you're simply not on the menu** — other players see no
  scene options on you.
- **The window is 10 seconds**, then it lapses and you're off the table again.
  Accepting a scene freezes the clock so it can't run out while the other
  player is still walking over to you.
- Your own game is the authority on your own state — it checks again before it
  accepts anything.
- **And you can always take it back.** Right-click while subdued → **"Withdraw
  consent (stop everything)"** — ends any scene, drops the ropes, and clears
  your yes until you give it again. Works on the spot, no captor approval
  needed.

---

## 🔞 Scenes between players

Right-click a nearby player for the `ZR: <name>` menu. **The first two appear
only on someone who has given up** — that's them saying yes.

- **"Have your way with them"** — rolls a random scene, never the same one
  twice in a row on the same person.
- **"Use your captive"** — the same, for someone tied up. Tied and untied have
  their own scene families.
- **"Ask for sex"** — the second way to say yes. A **yes/no box opens on their
  screen**; yes plays the scene, no just makes them say "No." out loud. **The
  answer is the consent**, so this one works on anyone — no give-up needed. A
  yes buys exactly one scene, and only ever a friendly one. **Holding** and
  **Standing Doggy** now live here *only*, so a scene meant for two willing
  people is only ever reachable by asking.
- **"Stop the scene"** — ends it. *A tied captive doesn't get this one — the
  ropes mean it isn't theirs to end in fiction; theirs is "Withdraw consent",
  which ends everything, ropes included.*

**All 22 multiplayer scenes play in full** — intro, main and outro, including
the new Reverse Lotus. Onlookers see it too.

---

## 🪢 Tying up another player — TWO restraints

Only offered on a player who has given up. Right-click them:

| | What it does | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| **Tie the hands** | **They can still walk** — march them somewhere, or let them try to walk away. | **1 Belt** *(or a Rope, if that's all you have)* |
| **Tie the hands and legs** | **They can't move at all.** | **A Rope, or 2 Belts** — the same as tying a zombie |

**No duct tape** — rope alone. *(Zombie captives still take tape, unchanged.)*
Your character crouches and works at it, so walking away mid-tie costs nothing.

**Being tied carries the consent forward** — scenes can start for as long as the
ropes are on, without the captive having to give up again between them. Win the
escape and that ends with the ropes.

**A hands-tied captive:** keeps their arms bound through every step, **can't run
or sprint**, **drops whatever's in their hands**, and **can't put their hands
up**. They're still in real danger — march them past a horde and find out.

**Only the captor is offered the untie.**

---

## 🔓 How a captive gets free

**Mash SPACE.** That opens the escape mini-game. *(Or right-click yourself →
"Struggle against the ropes".)*

- **Winning it is the escape** — the ropes come off with a proper getting-free
  animation.
- **Every attempt costs endurance, win or lose.** Rested, you get about six
  tries. **A captor who keeps you working wears you down.**
- Too spent and the option greys out — rest and try again.
- **You grunt and strain while you work at it**, audible to whoever's standing
  over you.
- **Movement is locked while it runs** — the mini-game uses those keys.

**There's also "Withdraw consent (stop everything)"** on your own right-click
menu whenever you're tied — scene or no scene. It ends the scene, drops the
ropes, and clears your yes on the spot. The struggle stays the in-fiction way
out; this one is for when you just want to stop.

---

## 🧟 Zombies and hordes

- **Give up in a horde and the zombies leave you alone.** They **re-arm the
  instant a healthy player steps in**, so a scene is left alone but a rescuer
  isn't.
- **Two surrendered players no longer maul each other's protection.**
- **Defeat scenes use the real zombie** — never cloned or killed. It keeps its
  own clothes and wounds, and gets up and walks away afterwards.
- **Clothing rips now show on every screen**, including mid-scene.

---

## 🎮 Controls

- **Escape opens the pause menu** instead of cancelling the scene.
- **Movement keys no longer cancel a scene by accident.**

---

## 🔧 Multiplayer fixes

**Finishing a scene now pays out like it does solo.** It used to leave no
trace on the character at all — no stench cloak, no arousal relief, no trait
payout, no post-scene dirt, no Being Female hand-off. All of it works now,
which also means **Being Female pregnancy risk is live in multiplayer** — it
was silently dormant before. *Reported as "I don't get the cloak moodle" —
the moodle was only the visible corner of it.*

Scenes no longer crash or leave permanently harmless zombies behind. Partners
no longer stand up, flicker, freeze mid-scene, jog on the spot, or stutter at
clip changes. Actors are placed, turned and released correctly — the framing no
longer depends on which direction the zombie attacked from, and the zombie gets
up afterwards instead of staying stuck on the ground. Tied captives no longer
wave hands-up on other screens. Debug hordes survive instead of vanishing
*(admin only, and walkers only)*.

---

# 🕺 NEW: Poses — Early Access *(placeholder anims)*

**The anims are placeholders — the mechanic is what ships here.** The wheel,
the pose types, other players seeing them; new poses drop into this system
from here on.

**Hold the Emote key** — the wheel now has **Poses** and **Dance** slices.

- **Gesture poses are upper-body only**, so you keep walking.
- **Ground poses hold you still** until you tap a movement or cancel key.
- **Anything that grabs you drops the pose instantly.**
- The starter set: **Hands Up**, **Kneel**, **Crossed Legs**, **Hip Stance**,
  **Cat Dance** and the **Gracepunk dance**.
- **Crossed Legs and Hip Stance are full-body stances** captured from motion
  capture, and they loop seamlessly — no visible reset tick.
- **A dance with an ending plays once and finishes on its own** — Gracepunk
  runs its 28 seconds and hands you back to a normal idle instead of looping.
- Switch it off with the new **"[Poses] Enable the pose menu"** sandbox option.

---

# 🪑 NEW: Seated poses — Early Access

**Sitting now reads your character's state.** A chair no longer always plays
the one vanilla pose:

- **Calm**, she has an even chance of settling in with **crossed legs**.
- **Traumatized, panicking or badly stressed**, she pulls her knees up into a
  hug instead — every time. If something rattles her while she's already
  sitting, she draws into the knee hug **on the spot** — and that only moves
  one way, so a panic spike that passes can't make her fidget back and forth.
- **Sitting on the ground after a defeat curls her up** for as long as she's
  still limping it off, instead of the ordinary cross-legged ground sit.
- **Armed characters keep vanilla's weapon idles.** The poses are authored on
  the female rig and are **female-only for now** — a male survivor sits
  vanilla in every mood until poses that suit him are authored.
- **Other players see the poses too.**

---

# 🌸 NEW: Reverse Lotus *(both builds)*

**A sixth defeat scene** — a downed female character with the zombie between
her legs — and it is **female-on-female only**: a male zombie never starts it.

Until now a female zombie had exactly **one** scene, so every same-gender
defeat played out identically. She now rolls roughly a coin flip between this
and the face-sit. The main loop carries the full set of behaviour variants —
leaning on a movement key changes what she *does*, not just which way she
faces — and winning the struggle plays a proper escape animation instead of
the defeated one. **On early access it plays in multiplayer too.**

---

# 🥊 The Struggle: fight your way out *(both builds)*

**New to the stable build.** When a defeat scene starts you get a few seconds
to tear loose — **three mini-games, all on your movement keys**: press the
shown directions in order, tap as the marker crosses the lit zone, or mash to
hold a tempo. **Random** rolls a fresh one every grab and is the default.
**How exhausted you are is the difficulty.** The widget is small and sits
under your character, so the animation stays visible, and there are new
sandbox options to tune it or switch it off. *(Early access has had the
mini-game since 1.2.2 — everything below is new for everyone.)*

Big hordes play their whole crowd now (see below), which made the old rule —
one escape chance at scene #1, then nothing for the rest of the ride — a life
sentence. So the escape economy is reworked:

- **The struggle arms on the first scene of a give-up and on every 5th after
  it** (#1, #6, #11, …).
- **Only the first chance is consequence-free** — win it and it didn't happen
  to you. **Winning a later chance still breaks you free, but that scene
  counts** — everything it would have done to you applies, good and bad.
- **Every win grants a burst of stamina** (about 40%), so breaking free while
  exhausted is a real escape instead of a death sentence with extra steps.
- **The empty-tank difficulty was eased** — exhaustion still decides the
  fight, but the escape always has a fighting chance now. The sandbox
  difficulty slider still applies on top.
- **A win can't be beaten to the punch anymore** — the Virgin trait no longer
  slips away while the winning rounds are still running. *Reported by
  bluemarshal.*

---

# 🩸 Giving up no longer gets you killed *(both builds)*

Five holes, all in the stretch **between** defeat scenes where the mod holds the
crowd on you and keeps you still:

- **Zombies could land real bites mid-give-up.** Five separate systems were
  re-arming the zombies on you while the give-up was still running. *Reported by
  bluemarshal — "after the drag drop they bit me so many times."*
- **A give-up could leave part of the horde permanently harmless** — after one
  defeat, chunks of the crowd would never bite anything again.
- **The cover after a scene ran out too early**, leaving you surrounded and
  unprotected for half a second. It now lasts as long as the give-up actually
  needs.
- **The crowd was aimed at you before the mod could answer for it.** The re-aim
  after a sprinter drag now waits until a scene can actually start.
- **A sprinter tackle now lands on contact instead of biting first.** It used to
  close the last stretch and visibly start a bite, with the sound, before the
  tackle fired. *Reported by bluemarshal.*

---

# 🧟 A big horde takes its whole turn *(both builds)*

**Caught by a large group, the give-up often ended after the first couple of
scenes** with most of the crowd never getting a turn — the window quietly
timed out with credits left, because the mod's own protection blanks the
crowd's targeting and the next scene then waited for a zombie that was
targeting you. The give-up now picks the next zombie itself at each scene end
(a natural attacker still wins the race if it gets there first), and zombies
still walking in are added to the budget instead of ignored. *Verified live:
8 zombies, 8 scenes, one turn each, zero damage taken.*

---

# 😱 Screams are yours now *(both builds)*

**Every defeat played the same two screams for every character** — roughly
half of every scene was pure screaming, and it flattened every character into
the same panicking voice.

- **Screams are now something a character IS, not something the scene does.**
  Take **Fear of Rape**, **Experience: Virgin** or **Defiant** and you scream
  on the segments that scream, every time. Take none of them and you never
  scream, whatever state you're in — those segments fall back to the ordinary
  pain vocals. No hidden stat decides it: what you picked at character
  creation is what you hear.
- **They're shorter** — the falling scream plays twice and gives way to pain
  vocals instead of running wall to wall through the segment.
- **The screaming traits actually reach their screams now.** Panic used to
  push a defeated character *away* from the two segments that can scream —
  measured live, she spent 77% of a scene where screams can't play. The
  behaviour weights now let the traits push back, so a screamer spends most
  of the scene where it counts.

---

# 🗣️ Your character stops babbling *(both builds)*

- **The exhaustion monologue fired a new line every few frames.** *Reported as
  "the exhaustion text is spamming now, like nonstop each tick a new text."*
- **Close to giving up, she reeled off every line at once.** One line now, then
  silence — but getting **worse** still speaks immediately. *Reported by
  bluemarshal.*

---

# 🧬 The traits are back *(both builds)*

**Vicious Zombies and Glass Bones stopped appearing in character creation**, and
the mod list carried an error on every launch. The lube tooltip threw it too.
The 42.20.1 game update changed how translated text is handled and any line
quoting a percentage broke — which is why it started out of nowhere. Fixed in
all seven languages. *Reported by yila555, jina_lemon, subo5510 and
yuriminalinsky.*

**Sandbox tooltips lost their text and ran off screen.** Same cause — the defeat
mode, give-up sensitivity, rip-chance and struggle-difficulty tooltips were all
cut off at every percentage they quoted. The bottom option's tooltip also
couldn't be read at all; that's fixed too.

---

# 🧷 Other mods stop being torn off you *(both builds)*

- **Body-replacer mods** — ZomboLust Lewd Models, Tomb and the rest — had their
  skin layers, body hair and genitals ripped off as if they were clothing. Only
  ra's Body Mod was protected. *Reported by _sakuretsu.*
- **Zombies could still peel them off one hit at a time** through a separate
  path. Closed too.
- **Defeat scenes healed The Only Cure amputations** — the arm came back whole
  and stayed back, while one-handed restrictions kept applying to an arm that
  looked fine. Stumps, prosthetics and tourniquets are all protected now.
- **Then the protection overshot** — it decided by asking whether a garment
  declares a model, and in build 42 hundreds of perfectly ordinary clothes
  answer "no model", so a defeated character kept her trousers on through the
  whole scene. The lower-body strip no longer consults that guard at all (no
  body replacer lives in a trouser slot); every other path still protects
  those mods exactly as before.

---

# 😷 Moodles *(both builds)*

- **The Stench of the Dead moodle only showed if you had MoodleFramework.** The
  scent cloak worked, but invisibly — no icon, no way to see how much was left.
  **MoodleFramework is now entirely optional.**
- **With MoodleFramework installed, ZomboRut's moodles never joined its stack.**
  They do now.
- **Moodle icons sometimes sat in an opaque black box** — the mod's and the
  game's own — and were fine again next session.

---

# 🪢 Captives, corpses and menus *(both builds)*

- **Killing a tied-up zombie left a body you couldn't loot or drag.** It lay
  there playing the tied-up animation forever and never rotted. It's now an
  ordinary corpse. *Reported on LoversLab.*
- **A female zombie could be doggy-styled as if she were male** — the game
  quietly played the male zombie's clip, and with Being Female installed **a
  female zombie could get your character pregnant**. *Reported on LoversLab.*
- **The corpse menu appeared on dead animals** and listed scenes that couldn't
  play. *Reported on LoversLab.*
- **A corpse stayed frozen and still looked alive after a cancelled scene** —
  and could be saved that way and come back standing. *Reported by bluemarshal
  and zan_an_bey.*
- **The BJ scene is a placeholder** and is now hidden behind debug mode.
  *(zan_an_bey — "BJ not working on me")*
- **A corpse offered the entire scene list**, none of which is animated against
  a body. It now offers only what actually plays. *(zan_an_bey; phil0133 —
  defeat options on a bandit corpse)*

---

# 🏴 Bandits *(both builds)*

- **Untying a bandit left it able to bite** — freed bandits walked away as
  half-zombies. *Reported by bluemarshal.*
- **A bandit came out of a scene crippled, gone, or oddly friendly.** It could
  never get back up, could be erased from the Bandits mod entirely, or wander
  off calm after attacking you. All three fixed — an enemy comes back hostile, a
  willing partner comes back friendly. *Reported by bluemarshal.*
- **A bandit could vanish for good after a give-up scene** — not wandering off,
  gone, and never coming back.

---

# 🔧 Everything else *(both builds)*

- **Your backpack comes off for a scene** and lands at your feet with its
  contents, next to whatever was in your hands — the animations were authored
  on a bare back, and a partner behind you clipped straight through the bag.
  Covers every bag slot the game has — back, satchel, webbing, fanny packs —
  and modded bags on slots we've never heard of.
- **Gagging fired every second and a half**, so oral scenes read as constant
  puking. Now about once per pass.
- **Stress and sadness climb together.** Sadness started later and slower, which
  read as "stress doesn't work". *Reported by franka96 on a clean run with no
  other mods.*
- **The escape lines drew in the wrong typeface** — an em dash was falling the
  whole line back to another font. *Reported by bluemarshal.*
- **Simplified Chinese has been overhauled** — 270 of 531 strings were showing
  Traditional characters. Rewritten natively and normalised, with the
  Traditional set regenerated from it. ***Contributed by community translator
  Heinrich.*** 🙏
- **The stale 60-FPS warning is gone** from the master toggle tooltip. No
  60-FPS reference remains anywhere in the mod.
- **Lubed vegetables couldn't be made.** The four lube recipes produced nothing
  and the debug Items List crashed on them. *(Stable build — early access has
  had this since July.)*

---

# 🥒 Early Access extras

- **Male players are no longer offered toy animations that don't exist** — the
  entry raised your hands and did nothing, which kept getting filed as a bug.
  It's greyed out with the reason now. *Reported by bluemarshal.*
- **Right-clicking with a tool in hand no longer kills the whole world menu.**
- **The toy scenes' contact sounds were hand-tuned by ear** — the tool clip
  ended in a burst of stray hits and the zucchini carried noise in the middle.
- **A captive tied with belts now reads "Unbuckle", not "Untie"** — and the
  warning names what actually comes back (the belts and the tape) instead of
  promising a rope that was never part of it. *Reported by 8BitRizz.*

---

## 📌 Notes

- Anything odd → **#bug-report**, with repro steps and clips.
- Multiplayer is new. If a scene desyncs, say who you were with, what you
  picked, and what each of you saw.