The Silver Lining of NPC Delays Etc

[lemmy101]

This is something I've wanted to say for a while, and something everyone should remember when getting frustrated by the delay to the NPCs.

 

We started development of this game in early 2011. It's our baby and has literally consumed some 80%+ of my waking life (probably similar for the others) since 2011. We've had our lows (and some lows at that) and we've had our highs. The community we've built is incredible, and the love and pride we have for the game and community is immense. But...

 

This game has been in development for over four years now, and that is a long time for your life to be consumed by one thing (This goes way beyond 9-5 job levels). We'd never ever abandon PZ before it's the game we set out to make, but that's not to say we're not tired, worn out, and missing that feeling of working on something new. As well as the rewards, of which we are very grateful, PZ has taken its toll. Even when the day finally comes that some of us move on, as we've said before, we'd continue to support development of PZ for as long as it makes the money to support itself, and likely even some time after that. But there is that ache there for the truly fun and exciting feeling of exploring new ideas and the potential and wonder of a new game, an ache that strikes every developer and truth be told is years old at this point. I hope we score points for resisting it.

 

But we won't and can't even think about other projects seriously, even if we dabble in our spare time. It's too dangerous to even think about because we can't have any distractions as we need to deliver the full map, the vehicles, the NPCs, before we can hit 1.0. At the point PZ goes 1.0, a few of us will likely finally be able to explore what's next after PZ, and we hope our community is looking forward to whatever we do next too. As I said before, to reiterate, we'd make sure PZ was well supported as we don't want the day to come when PZ stops getting new content. I don't want to presume what the devs we've taken in from the community would like to do post 1.0, but I imagine PZ would continue with long standing devs the community knows and trusts to steer the ship straight, and of course even if working on something else we'd still be heavily involved.

 

So I guess around to my point: I know waiting for NPCs is hard. I know they keep getting pushed back, seem vapourware at this point, and trust me I want NPCs out there more than any single one of you, by a factor of like 10000000. I know many of you are patient, I know a few aren't, but I also know their impatience is a good sign as to how much people care. I also know that these NPCs are one of the most ambitious NPC systems in the history of games. It feels arrogant to say as much but I can't really argue against that statement. I'm aware of what we're biting off here. I'm totally confident we can do it, but the fact is after this huge delay we HAVE to deliver, and we HAVE to deliver something brilliant. So that's ironically the reason for the delay. They won't be released until they are brilliant. It's as simple as that. I don't want to say NPC development is a nightmare, because it is also wonderful and exciting in equal measure, but it's a shit ton of pressure that is on around the clock. It only makes me want to weep with sympathy imagining what GRR Martin is going through with the sheer monstrous scale of pressure on his shoulders compared to ours. 

 

BUT. This is a good thing. Not for us, but for you. Why? Right now, EVERY member of the Indie Stone is working full time on PZ. We need to provide you with stuff, meaty content, to keep you happy, interested, and to improve the game in the meantime while we get our shit together with the NPCs and whatnot. We can't have 6 months or a year of no updates while we tick off our last remaining big bullet point planned features. We can't go 1.0 until NPCs are in. If that took a gazillion years that means a gazillion years of updates and support for PZ. If you think of all the many many great features that have been added into the game in the past couple of years since NPCs were removed. A lot of them would have made it in anyway, of course, but many of them may not have been.

 

As we say, we don't plan on abandoning PZ at any point in the forseeable future. But the fact still remains, that when NPCs, or Vehicles, or the completed map, go into the game, the longer they took, and the more delays and frustrations they had in getting here, they WILL go in. And if they take a long time: The game they will be dropped into will end up better, more feature rich and deep because of it. All the while having the entire Indie Stone dev team dedicated to the game with zero distractions.

 

So yeah. Brain dump, but its a point of view I wanted to share with you all. hope you don't hate us for dreaming of new adventures at some point in the future.

[PZ-NOOB]

I can wait for the NPC's that's fine with me I can occupy myself with mods and that, I must say the thought of not having any more updates is, well, its a terrifying thought aint it. PlUS the NPC's give us something to look forward too after NPC's are added I think people will slowly lose interest. As for "hating you for dreaming of new adventures", well that's completely understandable. One life bro, live it.

[Slendy]

PZ Development from Pre-Alpha to Build 31.. you guys are amazing.. keep up the good work.

Patience = Quality.

[Svarog]

Back in the day I used to make maps and campaigns for Warcraft 3, I had a simple rule for all my creations, either I complete them within a day or I never will, because I had a single problem, I started adding too much detail and polish, I could never appreciate what I created because there was always something I could add to make it better in my mind. A bush here, a tree there, details, details, details. Not to mention getting new quest ideas over time and trying to add that there too and then detailing that as well.

So if it wasn't done and published within the same day I trapped myself in the cycle of "Eternal polishishing and detailing" that could never end. The funny thing is, most of what I managed to release was liked and appreciated while the other stuff that I kept detailing and polishing... never came to see the light of day. Because my attention span eventually ran out before I finished the core experience.

I kinda feel like you guys have a similar problem.

That being said I have nothing but respect for what you do because I'd go insane if I had to work on a single thing for as long as you do. It's easy to tell that a lot of sweat and tears went into PZ, that and a fton of hear and soul, it's a truly great game that can only get better and it's impossible to be angry at people who made such a great zombie apocalypse experience. Not to mention the community you've created, this is the only forum I've ever been active on and it's a big part of why I love PZ and it's developers.

I wish you guys all the best and thanks for the update.

[Shogoki]

As different is the domain than from Svarog example, I can understand what he is saying. I used to (poorly, for purely amateurish reasons in a circle of friends) write and no matter how I enjoyed doing it and was really pleased to see people enjoy it as I did, after a few dozen pages, the sheer will it required of me to keep going increased tremendously, while, weirdly enough, the pleasure I had in doing it increased too.

So, saying all that, I can understand that compared to the will a novice, unpolished and totally unprofessional work that took maybe one or two hundred hours, required of me, the drive to work on such a complicated game - for it is to be said, project zomboid is quite ambitious as it features a crapton of diverse mechanics - must be pretty much life consuming (in a good way, but life consuming nonetheless.)

 

As a player, the best I can do is give you my most sincere cheering, and talk about the game to friends.

May the brains be with you.

[lemmy101]

I won't deny there's been an element of the NPCs needing to grow to fit the expectation. It's kind of unavoidable to an extent after such a delay. However, the truth of it is is that the NPC system we're building now is the NPCs we talked about in the really early days. We gave an example in really early interviews of a clumsy kid in your survivor group who keeps leaving doors open and making noise, and you finally choosing to take him out and put a bullet in his head, go back to the safehouse and claim they were got by zombies. Dark moral choices, deceit and safehouse politics. That in a nutshell described our vision for the NPCs, and instead we implemented a quite shoddy implementation that didn't really even register on the chart of where we wanted it to be. that was our attempt to get a version in there and expand and improve, and it was a disaster. rotten at its core because it was just implemented in a naive way, and needed ripping out. And it turned out the vision of NPCs we had early on was a big ask. Bigger than we imagined. Then people were confused as to why NPCs would be removed. You can't build on shaky foundations.

 

I've had to learn a lot to be able to reapproach the NPCs from scratch, built upon a proper framework. It's been a tough job expanding my knowledge to be up to tackling what the NPCs need to be to complete that early vision. It's why it's been difficult to give a time frame, since a lot of the work is pretty experimental. And it's difficult to find good resources/libraries on the subject on the internet (considering a search for behaviour trees on google yields an article about Zomboid's AI code as the first result  but hopefully this should inspire confidence too)

 

It'll take as long as it takes. I know enough to know it can be done. There's enough of the system there to be proof of concept x 1000. It's just very very ambitious and with a high bar it needs to be reach before it can go public.

[Geras]

Dear Devs

 

Chill and take your time.

 

Yours faithfully,

Member of your community.

[migulao]

Dear Devs

 

Please take your time in making NPCs awesome.

 

Sincerely

-snip-

[nasKo]

 

 

Sincerely

-snip-

[Kittysong]

Don't worry Lemmy, We know good things take time 

PZ is truly a wonderful game and i'm so happy that you guys are trying everyday to make it even better 

but do take care of yourselves. It's always better to destress then burn out.

 

 that being said, I'm so excited for 32.

I'm glad that i have a game that i rush to check on every morning.

I'm not the slightest disappointed, i feel like a kid waiting for christmas morning.

[Zeek]

[bumblemore]

I'm genuinely excited, now. Yes, I'm one of those impatient ones- but I try to limit my forum posts about NPCs and vehicles down to a bare minimum. Up till now, I've always been under the impression that NPCs were going to be... I don't know, the sort of NPCs you'd find in any game, and was not sure about the reason for the delay.

If the NPCs you guys are working on are truly one of the most ambitious in gaming history- then I am very excited. 

Beware the hype train!

[migulao]

 

 

 

Sincerely

-snip-

 

I hate everything 

[Ohbal]

That was a great insider-look and it tells about how personal this project if for you guys. Thanks for the lecture, Lemmy.

 

And on the NPCs... Keep it up, no rush! As you said, the more it takes, the more updates we'll have

[bumblemore]

" We gave an example in really early interviews of a clumsy kid in your survivor group who keeps leaving doors open and making noise, and you finally choosing to take him out and put a bullet in his head, go back to the safehouse and claim they were got by zombies."

 

Made me laugh

[Jamesonline]

Keep up the good work

[bvhv]

One of the best features takes the most amount of time!

[Sharpened Pata]

I've played manya game, typically triple A, that, one release day, sucked and were buggy.  They were rushed, and were terrible to begin with.  Assassin's creed unity is a good recent example.  From everything I heard about it's day one, it was the worst game ever.  Yes, they patched it.  Yes, they gave the people that bought it free games.  But it still hurt and ruined the gamers' trust for the creators.  As the old saying goes, haste makes waste.  Titanic is a physical example, but hey, that's another rant.

 

I'm glad you guys are taking your time.  I would rather, far more, to have to wait months or years for an amazing feature to come out, flawlessly, than for it to be rushed and be broken and horrible.  Plus, as people above have stated, the longer it takes, the more features can be fitted in before it's added.  (Personally, I'm just wanting to see what other survivors are going to try and kill me with, besides baseball bat-disguised weapons )

 

It's like Fallout 4.  Those of us who are hoping for it to someday be released (or even announced.  We can be hopeful.) would rather it be under wraps, and built to perfection, than for them to slap it together in a few days and call it good. If that happened, I would curl up in my bed and cry myself to sleep for a week.

 

I can name a fair list of things that are being pushed back, or not giving a release date, in gaming alone, so that the developers can make a better product  (Oculus rift and No man's sky are among those that I myself and looking forward to) .   All I can say is that for all of these, if Time = Quality, then I am willing to wait as long as it takes to get an amazing experience.

 

I'm ready to be wowed when your ready to wow me!

[BayCon]

I joke a lot about how NPC's will never come out, sometimes forgetting this one piece of wisdom...

 

"developers are people too."

 

And so are teachers, doctors, engineers, music producers, etc.

 

I personally would like to agree with the statement that this is the most fleshed out NPC system in games I've seen to date. Kudos to the devs for their iron souls, unbeatable work ethic, stellar communication, and untouchable perseverance. The Project Zomboid developers and community have had a special place in the gaming part of my heart for awhile now. What does all this mean?

 

I don't care if I'm older than the Grand Wall of China and my balls sag to ground when the NPC's are released as long as I know the developers put their absolute best effort into creating them to be better than the best they can be, which I know they are doing right now.

 

Keep it up guys.

 

 

[pylee]

Lemmy,

Could I copy this post to a China PZ community? cus they are waiting badly for NPCs too.

[Jonientz]

To be honest this video game's probably had more of an impact on me than is within realms of most people's understanding,especially considering I only play it. Having battled depression my entire life probably since I was like 8,I've had to find countless coping mechanisms, doubly so since almost none of my anti depressants helped. Zomboid became a very major one after I had seen robbaz do a let's play. It helps grant a serious sense of escapism, while escapism isn't exactly the best coping mechanism a reprieve from the existence of permanently having bipolar + depression is ecstasy after periods of bad mental health. Sorry for the person dump. Really glad yall are taking your time on npcs. Every member of the community worth their salt should definitely recognize why its takeing so long. Love all you developers, guys are rad as heck.

[Tyken132]

Hey, as long as you guys keep working on the game and improving it, I have no issue waiting.

[_Gold_]

 

I read while listening to this....

[_Gold_]

Hey, as long as you guys keep working on the game and improving it, I have no issue waiting.

 

What this guy said.

[blindcoder]

Take your time. Make it awesome. Just like you did with the rest.

 

And it's posts like this that make this games community AND developers so awesome! To see that you are genuinely interested in your own product.