Mondoid Reposts

nasKo · July 23, 2013

Mondoid Jun 17, 2013

Hello everyone. Yes it’s Mondoid time again, and again we’re going to give you a bit of info about what’s coming up in the near future, since yes, the next build isn’t quite ready yet.

Truth is the Indie Stone team is in a bit of a tizz preparing for Rezzed, at the same time as trying to get the build ready for everyone. Not only for you peeps, but so we don’t look rather oafish on our Rezzed stand with a buggy build. We’re still uploading test builds and ironing out issues, and if we get something tasty in the immediate meantime we’ll for sure release. However we’re slightly concerned about the prospect of the entire dev team being absent for several days immediately after a release, so it’s entirely possible if we’re drawing close to Friday when we leave for Birmingham, the build we show at Rezzed will then be released as soon as we’re back.

Which just so happens to be a Monday, so if all goes well that wraps everything up in a neat little bow and we’ll have a very very good idea of any little thing that needs fixing up at that point.

Anyone frustrated at the wait should feel reassured that we simply have to get something good and stable by the weekend, so things are looking good for next Mondoid.

The good news in this is that we’ve had to focus on getting the build working on a system with no restarts, so it can survive a (hopefully) busy two days of inquisitive Rezzed attendees without falling over or slowly munching up the system’s resources. As such, this means 1) Finally the game will restart properly to the main menu instead of booting you out to the desktop. 2) A few memory resource leaks which may result in OpenGL slowly chewing up memory when ran multiple times will finally be sorted out.

Another thing of note is a thread related loading bug, related to the game loading on a separate thread concurrently to the main game thread, and the main game potentially trying to begin before loading was completely finished. This has been resolved. This is potentially an end for all the weird and ironic ‘This is how you died’ game deaths, since due to the way multi-threading works (two things happening at once on separate cores) it would expose random weird bugs depending on the speed of the processor / hard disc access speeds and such.

That’s not all we have to report.

Since we don’t want to leave you with nothing to chew over, welcome to THE PLAN. Albeit a slightly vague and secretive one.

The plan started six months or so ago when we realised quite how much of a stretch of time there would be until we could get multiplayer into the game, and were looking for ways to bring the date forward without sacrificing the development of the single player. We decided that during code restructuring, we would make our first steps toward the multiplayer version of the game. You all know this as the split-screen mode.

Although this is only a small step in the direction of full online, the reorganization of the code to allow for multiple players, multiple viewpoints, multiple stream radiuses, was vital and by no means a trivial task. This is now, obviously, sorted.

But how far from online are we now? Still quite some way, and certainly you won’t be seeing it before the Kate and Baldspot, NPCs and meta-game are implemented. Making PZ online is a BIG and quite daunting task.

This plan we have will make the transition to multiplayer much easier, and much more gradual, as well as giving people a fundamentally new way to play the game if they choose, and additionally bringing some online capability to the game much sooner than we originally thought possible.

This also ties into another element of our Rezzed exclusive that’s been ticking over in the background, half of which we shared earlier than planned, half which we held back when we released the joypad/split-screen support.

This idea occurred to us when testing out the Sandbox options, and was worked on on and off since then. Originally we intended to debut joypad controls, split-screen support and this… complementary thing at Rezzed, but as we said before, it became impossible to conceal the joypad and split-screen’s presence in Lua until then.

So what is it? Well, you’ll find out at/after Rezzed. It’s not online, LAN, NPCs. Just before anyone gets too excited.

It may involve a new main menu option. A clue would be to consider the amount of time people may have to play the game when coming across our booth, with only four machines available for people to play (the hope being that we don’t have 4 vacant PCs the whole time, obviously!). Perhaps someone who wanted a quick game of Zomboid?

So, as well as the benefits to presenting the game on Rezzed’s show floor, this also affords us another opportunity going forward. This will allow for a much more controlled environment for multiplayer development, which would dramatically cut down the development time. The scope for what would be required in the multiplayer development would be much more manageable, and would serve as the second stepping stone after split-screen on the road to the multiplayer dream many people have.

And at that point, we’d have a base to start building into full survival co-op or persistent servers, already having the framework for handling character control, server / client architecture, zombie updating, combat, will have figured out lag optimization, cheat protection and so on, and making the transition to handling the entire game world and all the features of the game online so much more manageable.

So, we’re stopping short of saying exactly what we’re adding, just for the sake of having some kind of Rezzed exclusive, however the clues have probably been a little on-the-nose. Discuss!

nasKo · July 23, 2013

Mondoid Jun 24, 2013

So we’re back from Rezzed! First off, as stated in tweets yesterday, there are a few minor fixes that need making and no amount of coffee in the world that will make our brains function sufficiently to get that done after what was an amazing yet surprisingly knackering weekend in Birmingham.

The big one being a frequent inventory lock-up brought on by dropping items and a few other glitches that luckily we could steer people away from when showing them the game. The fixes are minor and we should be able to get the game tested a bit more and released very soon, there isn’t much holding it back, but sadly not today. We do have some plans for a ‘cancel’ button on the UI to cancel timed actions, and this will also clean out the queue, so for these annoying inventory bugs the worst that will ever happen is needing to press that button.

But also, Rezzed! We met an absolute ton of wonderful people, finally got to meet Romain in the flesh (the handsome devil), and met countless amazing members of the community. Never have we felt closer to the community than after this weekend and can’t wait for the next opportunity to hang out! We also got to meet a lot of awesome peeps from the DayZ community and they were equally lovely.

Feedback on the game was very positive, and we were relieved to find there were a ton of people at Rezzed, and a good number of them were interested enough to give Zomboid a go. A big thanks to the Rezzed organizers for putting everything together and giving us the chance to do it. Seeing people playing the game and their reactions to it, hugging Tooks, hugging Romain, hugging Thuztor, Kirrus, Onto, Keepbro, Lexx, Eckyman–wait a minute, it’s becoming apparent that Rezzed 2013 turned out to be largely about giving people hugs!

Seriously, to everyone who stopped by and said hello, we can’t possibly name everyone, but you know who you are and we love you for caring about the game enough to come and meet us.

OH AND PHOTOS

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You should totally check out the Rezzed session “Is storytelling in games getting any better?” where famed NPC puppeteer and Zomboid words boss The Will Porter discusses where storytelling in games is headed too with the likes of Chris Avellone, Ed Stern and Dean Hall. Squeee!

We will continue to go through the photo archives and may be able to post more tomorrow, but in the meantime, sleep beckons!

Love,

The Indie Stone

nasKo · July 23, 2013

Mondoid Jul 01, 2013

Hello Zomboiders,

Since Rezzed, we’ve been tirelessly trying to get the latest build up to Desura release quality. Regulars to our forum will be aware we’ve started doing a short run of test builds (with the file strategically uploaded to the servers for short periods to minimize on the crazy bandwidth bills we had the last time, and mirrors created soon after)

It’s so close it aches, and after a long long day of trying to finally nail the reoccurring and endlessly frustrating ‘teleporting crops’ bug and finally think we might have got it. Then just as we start finally writing the Mondoid, we find out that the recently repaired carpentry stairs may still have a few issues. Such is game dev, I guess. Then it turned out the farming was still an issue. Some days it all slots into place, and others bugs repeatedly beat you across the head a bit and don’t go down without a fight.

Anyway, since these are both vital things people have been waiting for since the last stable version, we’d rather wait until we got it in there. And as it’s 8:30pm it looks like we’re running out of time for today. That doesn’t mean we’ll stop work, and are looking to fix these two issues as we speak. And as soon as we nail these two issues, we’ll post the next version on the forums. We’ll likely be working for a good few hours yet, but didn’t want to delay the Mondoid any more and keep people in the dark. That’s not to say it’ll be tonight, it all depends on if we nail these pesky things.

To anyone who the news of forum test versions is news, please be VERY careful to read the warning at the top of the forum post. It’s VITAL to back up your saved worlds, since the 8b -> 9 conversion process is one way, and there are some rare issues that stop saves from converting properly. If this happens to you and you don’t back up your world, then it’s gone. Forever. If you back up, you can copy your backups back in and load up on the Desura build until we get these sorted.

If you’re not comfortable with copying files, then be very careful not to attempt to load any world from the previous version if testing. We can’t be held responsible for any loss of your game data.

If you do have issues, and could post a zip of your original save (the original backups, not the converted ones) on the forum so we can bugfix, it will allow us to iron out any remaining conversion issues to make sure everyone who has a world on build 8 will be able to carry it onto build 9 without problems.

So with all that in mind, please look at the following thread for the latest versions:

Full version 3 build: http://www.theindiestone.com/community/viewtopic.php?p=206404#p206404

Hotfix for build 4: http://www.theindiestone.com/community/viewtopic.php?p=206522#p206522

So to sum up, remaining issues stopping a Desura build are:

- Farm plots teleporting around the map due to unknown streaming / saving issue.

- Carpentry stairs sometimes resulting in character floating through air.

- A few bugs with the world conversion system.

We’ll release a new forum build when bugs A and B are resolved. And a Desura one soon after once the last one is.

Then, hopefully, NPC dev will begin again in earnest and will have near full-time dev time from half the coding team until it’s in the game. That all said, we’ve been working on it in bits and pieces while waiting for tester feedback and such, and progress is good. Hopefully we can start to make some big headway as soon as the next Desura build hits.

Thanks again!

Indie Stone

nasKo · July 23, 2013

Mondoid Jul 08, 2013

Hello again,

Right, let us get this bit right out of the way first: this isn’t a, “yaaay! There’s an updated version released!” blog post. Sorry. Truly. But we’re all rather knackered after Rezzed and then burning the midnight oil to get a stable Desura release in the week following. So rather than risk bollocksing everything up horribly while our brains are a bit fried, we’ve taken a step back to relax, recuperate, and regenerate those pesky brain cells with a view to coming back harder, faster, stronger in a day or two.

That said, if you did miss it – yaaay! The Desura build came out! And it had that new Last Stand mode in it! Which you could play split-screen multiplayer if you have a couple of PC compatible joypads lying around! Here’s proof!

See? Hooray!

On top of that, Romain has been beavering away on some bug fixes and features for the up-coming version:

Changelist

Multiple inventory selection fixed

Better color for background inventory (colour change when you select a cold food, etc.)

When clicking in inventory while being in “attack” stance will cancel it (no more shooting or attacking in the air while clicking in the inventory)

Farming/Camping streaming rewritten to avoid the teleporting crops problem

Hitting escape while dragging a ghost item (for example placing a wooden wall…) will cancel it and don’t display the menu

Added text between each wave for Last Stand (Prepare yourself for vague X”)

Added “ReuseGridsquare” and “LoadGridsquare” event (used for streaming stuff, each grid which disappear throw a ReuseGridsquare, and each loaded LoadGridsquare)

Added a hotkey for screenshot (default F12), screenshot are saved in your C:/users/YOU/Zomboid/Screenshot folder

Re-added the star texture near your equipped primary weapon to show the condition of this weapon

Time to get wet under the rain increased

Other things in progress

Art-wise, work is still progressing nicely on the new map section of West Point. It’s difficult to provide sneak peeks of that region at the moment since until we start putting the whole thing together, it kind of exists as a series of individual buildings and raw map data. And that would be a bit meaningless to look at right now. But it’s big – this is no minor outlying village. West Point is almost two-thirds of the size of Muldraugh itself – bigger if you include the surrounding farmland areas – so will represent a significant addition to the world.

So, what else is new at The Indie Stone?

Now that the Desura build is out, we’re going to be more attentive to house-keeping issues. Those of you who frequent our forums may well have seen a rise in the number of (bizarrely) kitchen-related spam, which is starting to drive our moderators insane. So, amongst other things, we’re going to be moving to new forum software.

Also, next monday we have a big The Indie Stone meeting with Will popping up from Brighton to spend the day in Newcastle planning out future gameplay and West Point-y stuff with the rest of us. And there’ll probably be hugs too, but that’s more something I personally am looking forward to more than anything you need concern yourself with.

And speaking of Will… Yaaaay! More kate and Bob stuff! You know that work is coming along nicely with the NPCs when discussion starts swinging back to what happens next in that story. It’s exciting! And it’s coming! And Will’s gone all giddy at the knees just thinking about it. This’ll be the part of the discussion on monday which will most likely lead to hugs.

So we’re sorry that we can’t give you too much in the way of specifics this Mondoid, but we hope you’re as excited by what’s to come as we are.

Love you all,

The Indie Stone <3

nasKo · July 23, 2013

Mondoid Jul 15, 2013

Good morning Zomboidateers. Today is an exciting day for the Indie Stone gang as Will, Mash, Chris and Andy have congregated deep in the industrial heart of North East England for the Super Huggy Awesome Zomboid Annual Meeting! (SHAZAM!). This is the point at which we actually get to see the pained expressions of our co-workers while we speak, rather than guess at them over Skype.

We’re chinwagging about both business-y and gameplay-y stuff, so we thought it might be a good opportunity for us each to individually have a Mondoid chat about what we’re up to in the background – as well as beavering away on the next actual update.

Story Stuff (Will)

Hello! After an extended period in the PZ development hinterland I’m back in the writing saddle. Even though there’s an awful lot of my work still in the can from yonks ago (the continuation of the Kate and Baldspot tutorial, NPC chit-chat and lots of people shouting ‘Agh! Zombies!’) the wishlist of extra material from the rest of the team is… extensive… to say the least.

For a start, there’s the increasingly fully-fleshed metagame system that Chris will explain in his SHAZAM! summary. Now we have a firmer grip on exactly how long people generally survive in PZ, too, I am adapting the radio broadcasts I wrote right at the start of PZ (that were never implemented) to get more of a fix on the overall apocalypse timeline that you’ll all be playing through. At one point I intend it that you’ll have a range of radio stations and televisions to tune into daily while you play, each providing snippets of news-based panic – before everything goes ominously dead.

Beyond that, the existing work on the K&B script also needs an update – to teach new players about the fun stuff introduced in the recent 2.9 builds. Baldspot will now, for example, have to enter the next door house via a smashed window, distract a group of zombies away from his safehouse by shouting and smother his wife via a tooltip – rather than a slip of an archaic inventory system. I’ll have a more detailed breakdown of what to expect in future Mondoids, but until then I’m just going to pass the mic over to Christoff…

Meta-Game Development (Lemmy)

Things are progressing splendidly with the meta-game system. We’ve made a few decisions about how development should be approached, and have decided in the short term at least, to leverage the power of a program called articy:draft to allow us to quickly develop flow charts that can be directly read in by the game.

The results have been exciting, and we now have a system that allows us to quickly define complex branching NPC scenes within the meta-game, with nodes such as ‘WalkTo’ and ‘Say’ and ways to determine how angry an NPC is or how tired they are. The beauty of this system is it doesn’t require programming knowledge to implement scenes, as well as looking pretty to boot. To other indie devs out there, it comes highly recommended and we may write more on how it can be leveraged directly in your game at a later date.

Modders need not worry, as we fully intend to extend our own toolset to allow our own propriatry free system in the future, but speed and ease of finishing the meta-game and NPCs is of prime importance at the moment.

During our SHAZAM! we’ve discussed new dialogue that Will will (will) be writing up soon, adding a whole wealth of insults, chats and plotting to round up all elements of the meta-game functionality that doesn’t have dialogue currently. Looking at the mountain of Will’s dialogue that RingoD has scripted up, it’s very exciting how quickly we should be able to get it in.

So in short, NPCs have dedicated 100% development time from three of the team, so it’s very much on its way. As usual, no time-scale on when NPCs will be out there just yet, as it’s still up in the air whether we’ll release all of it together (Kate and Baldspot, fully functioning meta-game and NPCs all in one update) or do more iterative releases to get NPCs in there much sooner. There’s little doubt that the presence of new NPCs would undoubtedly improve the game, even if incomplete. This is a topic for discussion as our SHAZAM! continues into the evening, but rest assured they are coming!

West Point Map Progress (Binky)

We talked a fair bit about West Point last update and there’s still a fair old way to go before any of it will start appearing in-game. That said, we are approaching the point where the first map cells of the area will begin to be populated with buildings and details and so it is possible to show something of the area. Showing a sneak-peek is also a nice way to demonstrate the process of how map development works.

In the image above (click to get a full-size version) you can see the map as it appears in World-Ed using in-game tiles (look top-right! Woo! Water!). This is roughly how the map looks at the point it’s handed over to Mash to populate (there’s a bit more work required for the terrain and layout, but you get the idea). So from this, she’ll add all the buildings, road markings, and all manner of other nice little details. In the top-left corner of the image, you can see a small region of the source image which produced this map area. The different colours in the source image represent different types of tile.

There are a few shades of red which indicate different densities of tree and foliage, bright green for grass, and various shades for the various terrain types. This means that it’s significantly faster to produce large areas of map than it would be to place each and every tree, brush, flower, tuft of grass, etc individually on a tile-by-tile basis – which is the method we used to produce the original demo map.

Mash’s Bit (Mash)

Hello! As Captain Binky has been saying, West Point is starting to come together. As a small town, you can look forward to a franchise of your favourite chains (hello Spiffo’s) as well as some new types of buildings. Why not take refuge in the safe confines of the Town Hall? Nothing can go wrong there! Or maybe stop by the manicurist and get your nails done. You’ve got to keep your priorities straight!

However, for things that are coming up a bit sooner than West Point, we’ve been working on a new tutorial/hint system for PZ before K&B return, with the aid of our lovely Community Raccoon Spiffo. He’ll pop up during gameplay (of course you’ll be able to shut this off) with appropriate tips such as “I see you’re cooking some soup, would you like some help?”

…no, he’ll just be demonstrating things NOT to do, with helpful illustrations! Here he is skipping merrily and fancy-free.

You can look forward to that in the next update, which will be out soon.

That’s it for today’s overview Mondoid! We’ll be going more in-depth in these topics in the weeks to come! Oh, and the oft-mentioned forum revamp is being discussed back-stage too – we’ll let you know when it’s happening and the war against the kitchen-bots will finally be won.

nasKo · July 23, 2013

Mondoid Jul 22, 2013

Greetings fair Mondoider. Last week you learned the wonders SHAZAM! but there was a voice that was curiously absent. A French voice. The voice of our very own Romain ‘RobertJohnson’ Dron. So this week we thought we’d have a chat with him, as we’re nice like that.

Hello Romain! So, word on the street is that you’re the man to talk to about the next update. OMG WHERE IS IT ETC?

Yup, looks like it’s up to me this time… although Chris is the one who creates the release builds. Yup, I still don’t have absolute power. As to when it’ll release, well I should hope it’ll be soon™. What’s more it should be releasing alongside my new version of Last Stand! Hoorah!

On top of the Last Stand stuff (that you’ve mentioned now, completely ruining the tension) what tweaks and fixes will the next build herald? What will be of relief to seasoned PZ players?

Well, the big stuff is on the upcoming post – but on top of what’s listed there I’ve now added fixes for inventory browsing. I’ve re-added the shift key to let you select multiple items for instance, and now clicking in your inventory will stop you from shooting in-game and stirring up the aggression of the local zeds.

A big task I’ve had, meanwhile, was the complete rewrite of the save/load system for camping and farming. It needed a ground-up approach to finally be rid of the teleporting crops bugs and I HOPE it’s now fixed – the map streaming made it a real toughie to gets to grips with. It was really hard to reproduce, understand and grapple with. As of right now I’m more balancing and polishing, and it feels really good. Can’t wait till it’s out!

So what else are you doing alongside all this balancey, polishy business?

Well, I’m in touch with a great bunch of modders – and I’m helping them make stuff by adding extra code to the game, or simply explaining how stuff works. It’s great to see the mods starting to pop up everywhere – and I really want to underline the fact that I’m always available to chat to people who’re interested in starting out in PZ modding. So don’t be shy, and feel free to ask anything on PM or on the forum. I talk to loads of modders over Skype, and can always do with more!

I’m also starting to learn more and more about the meta-game – how it works, what we’re going to do with it and how the tools are going to work. Oh, and I’m browsing the forum to kill the bugs people report. And making tea and coffee for everyone else on the team, obviously.

So what will you be up to after this update appears? What’s next on the hitlist?

I’m going on a long holiday. Oh, hang on… no I’m not doing that. My next job will be to make the game fully playable with a controller – which will cover a ton of bug fixes, as well as making sure that stuff like character creation, skills panels and various other menus can all be used with a pad. There’s also a lot of stuff that makes the current experimental split-screen mode a bit annoying – say, the moodles that are only seen on one player. It’s all stuff that’ll help on the long road to full multiplayer.

What are your favourite mods that you’ve seen appear on the forums recently?

Erm, I’ll be a little pro-French here (we say “Chauvin” in French!), but the alpha version of Peanuts’ hunting mod is really great. It’s the mod I always wanted to create, after fishing, and we’ve done a lot of work together to get it created. It’s not finished yet, but it already looks awesome.

There are lots of others though: RobotMat is doing a wonderful work with his Taunt mod and sleeping overhaul, Kinyoshi’s pickling mod is fab – and don’t forget the Vacation Island by Thuztor! A whole new HUGE map with a lot of new tiles.

You’ve waited long enough. Please regale us all with your plans for Last Stand, immediately.

While Chris works on the NPCs and the metagame, my personal project is currently in creating a new Last Stand challenge, with various upgrades on the original. The first variation on this should be coming out with the next update so we can get some community testing underway.

I love the sorts of games when you slowly earn money or experience – so every time you can make it a little further – so in my take on the mode you earn money for every zombie killed, and at the end of every wave the faster you’ve wiped out the zeds, the more money you’ll have, to buy weapon, ammunitions, bandages and crafting materials like planks and nails. You’ll also have a Global XP system linked to the character you create though – so there’ll be cash boosts, XP boosts, starting weapons and the like that are permanent too. It’ll take a while to unlock though!

(WIP screenshot)

One of the reasons we’re pushing Last Stand a bit is because we think there could be loads of cool, easily constructed mods that will come out of it. Could you explain a little about how modders will be able to make their own variants?

It depends what they want to do, but it’s a good start to copy/paste all my Challenge2 lua files, rename them, and start working! It’s pretty easy for sure, I’m planning to include something of a blank map where you’ll have something like 20min to build up your defences until the first wave – and a load of planks/nails. Then again, I’m fairly sure that an enterprising modder will end up making it first!

Everything is Lua driven, and I’m trying to leave advice within the code as much as possible, but modders should bear in mind that it all comes from the rambling mind of an insane French code monkey. So don’t hesitate to PM me if you have any trouble! I don’t bite, and if I do then I swear I’m not infected!

————–

And finally! A word from the dev team in general. We just wanted to say that we’re aware that we’ve not quite stuck to our weekly / quick update pledges since the latest bunch of updates came around. It’s become apparent to us that releasing a quick succession of updates bodes just as ill in terms of stability as releasing too few. Instead we’re trying to find a middle ground, where we get a good few new features in and have plenty of time for testing. We’re drawing to the end of things to do for this update, and a new closed testing version will be around in the next few days. We’ll keep you in the loop on how it all goes.

On the NPC front, work continues – as does the growing excitement. As well as the NPC looting that’s now mostly ported over to the new flowchart engine, we now have leaders bossing around the other members, telling them to patrol the house, or guard windows, which they all promptly do (though one day, they may not!). Good times! See you next Mondoid!

nasKo · July 29, 2013

Mondoid July 29, 2013

Hello Zomboideers,

It’s Mondoid time again, and we’re happy to report that build 11 is very much in the pipe. It’s just this second about to enter closed testing to make sure it doesn’t irradiate your PC, destroy your saves and set fire to your cat. Assuming all this goes okay, we’ll be making a public forum test build. You can look at last week’s Mondoid for more information on the contents.

So now some other bits and pieces.

New Forum

In an attempt to escape the coming kitchen apocalypse (forum members know what we’re talking about), as well as our old forum software being buggy, insecure and woefully inadequate for the amount of activity and posts we get, we’ve finally moved to a new forum. You can find a link here. We’ve still not done a proper design for the boards, sticking a token Spiffo in there just to make it clear you’ve come to the right place, but the forum software is oh so nice and the fresh start is rather wonderful. Why not come in and say hello?

NPC Update

Development on the new NPCs continues apace, and it’s all very exciting. We’re keeping a lot of the specific scenes and events that we have added, or plan to add, a secret, as we’d love for them to be discovered in-game instead of being listed on the website, however here are a few things you can look forward to:

Guard / Patrol

Upon game start, when a survivor group is created, a leader will be assigned, and that leader will immediately start giving orders to their group to patrol the building, or guard windows. At the moment they open curtains, but in future they should probably use a currently non-existent ‘peek’ mode or something. Whether this will be in the first NPC update or not, it’s something that should be possible for the player too.

Patrollers will wander slowly around the building, randomly wandering about on occasion, investigating noises, etc.

NPC patrollers / guards will react to spotting a stranger, particularly one trespassing on their safehouse, based on their personalities.

Line of sight

NPCs will have proper line of sight, and will react to seeing zombies and strangers as you might expect them to, and thus sneak mechanics become more interesting. Sneak into an NPC safehouse at night and take what you need? Stake out the safehouse and watch for the stronger NPCs leaving to gather supplies, avoiding guard patrols. This all becomes a big part of the game. In future when we have anims for sneaking / peeking this should add a whole new level to the game-play and it’s very exciting to imagine what will come from it.

NPC Looting

The NPC leader will arrange looting missions, picking a team to accompany him/her, they will leave, leaving a new temporary leader back at the base. They will go to the target loot building and stock up, head back and report on any events. A new and completely valid tactic for a player would be to find a well established NPC safehouse and take what they need from there.

Group Meetings

NPC groups who meet may join forces, move along their way, or fight, depending on the personalities of leader and others in groups.

Archetype start groups

Lone crazy man? Brother and sister? Husband and wife? Father and (adult) sons/daughters? Gang of aggressive thugs? Groups at the start of the meta-game will have (as well as some randomness) different themes to draw from. Obviously these will change as groups join together or members die. While we may not have dialogue to represent all these kinds of relationships at the moment, they will have relationship modifiers and have some interesting effects on the meta-game.

Meta-Combat

New system of handling combat involving NPCs, players and zombies. Totally transparent to the player, but essentially has meta based combat system based purely on character stats when it occurs outside the player’s streaming radius. If a real combat situation occurs around the player, it will grab everything in the area and put it into a virtual ‘combat battle arena’ that tracks all characters involved (and adds / removes as necessary). Nothing changes about the combat itself, ran purely off AI and player actions, but this allows us to track victory, defeat, retreat, stalemate results out of real combat that works in line with the meta results. That all said we would like to tighten up the AI combat to be a tad more deterministic, putting different characters into the mix having similar or preferably identical probability results of defeat as the meta combat would. This may take some time, but the framework is there now.

Limitations

Because we would like to get some NPC action into the game sooner, rather than later, and because there is still a fair bit of UI work required to give the player the ability to order NPCs on looting missions and what not, it is unlikely we’ll have players joining NPC groups, or forming their own groups, in the initial build. Just like when we removed NPCs from the build in order to get it out faster, this is not impacting the amount of time until these features are added, but rather it is a way we can more quickly add NPCs to the game and we feel it’s the best possible move to fill the void in the game-play that currently exists. It’s possible we may allow the player to join other NPC groups as a subservient in the next version, but that’s not certain. Chances are you’ll either be allowed to stick around and be otherwise ignored, or told to leave and be shot if you don’t oblige them.

However, at this point, we’ll have the meta-game system in place, and as the UIs are completed we’ll be able to fill out the meta-game events, scenes, and NPC interactions pretty quickly after this.

nasKo · August 5, 2013

Mondoid, August 4, 2013

Hello everyone!

First off, we apologize for the delay in getting this build out. The reasoning behind this is while we’ve cleaned up the majority of issues found in closed testing, we really want to get the invisible wall / crafted door related collision bugs sorted out. It’s proving elusive so far, but is affecting many people’s enjoyment of the game, as well as making bad impressions on new players. As soon as this is sorted we’ll do a final quick closed test and release. Hopefully it shouldn’t take too much longer to weed out.

Before then, we’ll show you a few new things you have to look forward to in the nearish future!

Sheet Ropes

Yep, that’s right. They’re back! And much better than before, with new animations and everything. Adding new dimensions to safehouse defenses, no longer be confined to ground floor exits. People who aren’t ‘weak’ can climb up them, as well as down. This will hopefully be in build 11 and we’re very excited to have it back!

Meta-Game / NPCs

Today we can also finally show you a little something we’ve been working on for the 3.0 update:

With the new meta-game system, the NPC scripting and player scripting are one and the same. The main difference being NPCs will be given commands to move to areas and make branching decisions due to their AI, where a player will receive quests and influence the world by their actions.

In creating the Kate and Baldspot story, we have also therefore automatically created the NPC scripting and AI decisions for NPC versions of any character the player can control. Likewise, any NPC interaction in the game could also involve the player instead, meaning the scripted meta events or stories can be used for both transparently.

What this means is when you start playing in Survival, Bob and Kate will be in that bedroom, having that opening conversation. From that point MetaBob will be making all decisions the player would have open to them, and the result of his story and how the player may meet him will depend on the choices he makes. Will you run up to find a burnt out house, a dead raider in the bedroom, or a dead Kate and a zombie Bob and his new undead friend in the house next door? Or maybe a random group of NPCs arrived and threw their stories completely off track?

As an example above, we have just flicked the switch to select the Raider as the player character instead of Bob. This is no guarantee he will ever be a player character in stories in future, though modders would find it easy to expand his story out and insert it into the meta game themselves.

This also applies to any future stories we add, or any stories that modders create. All these stories will play out within Survival mode in the meta-game, with the various outcomes branching based upon the character’s traits and with set probabilities, or influenced by the player or other NPCs.

nasKo · August 12, 2013

Mondoid, August 12, 2013

Hello Mondoid survivors! It’s a fairly short crackle of gunfire from the Indie Stone safehouse this week, but nevertheless one that contains enough joy-nuggets to stave off despair. It’s all systems go round here, and you should be able to taste the fruits of a fresh Desura build imminently.

First up comes the news that our part-time coder, the gallic superstar Romain Dron (aka RobertJohnson to any internet people out there) is now joining the team on a permanent basis. Huzzah! He’s quit his job in the real world, and is now 100% committing himself to our build up to the Steam release – and beyond.

This means he can really get motoring on balancing, fixing and adding new survival features – shoring the PZ foundations, ready for the introduction of the NPCs and metagame that Lemmy is neck-deep inside.

Forum-goers will also be aware that we’re currently running a spate of internal and community test releases of the next Desura build (currently build 13). This is the primary reason for the thread-bare Mondoid this week, as the dev team are hard at work getting the build ship shape and don’t feel quite so guilty leaving the Mondoid short and sweet.

Things are progressing well, and each version is more stable than the last. We were hoping for a Mondoid Desura release but sadly it looks like there’s still a bit more work to do. In the meantime, feel free to drop in and give the builds a try (but back up your saves!)

Those who’ve given them a whirl will already be aware that there’s a few sneaky additions in there that’ll complicate your survival in Muldraugh – but because the moment you first come a’cropper at their hands we don’t *really* want to spoil them with a Mondoid video. Because you’re all so nice though, and because we know you DEFINITELY won’t spoil it for everyone else in the Desura comments if you’re reading over there, here’s a sneak peek on an unlisted YouTube vid… if you really must spoil your own fun!

That’s about it today’s Mondoid then (which, in French, would be ‘Lundoid’ – non?). We’ll flag up the point that the new Desura update goes live on all the usual channels. Until then fair

nasKo · August 19, 2013

Mondoid, August 19, 2013

Nobody ever expects it, do they? The Zomboid Inquisition? Apart from maybe the PZ community who collated their questions over the weekend for today’s Mondoid, and merrily clicked ‘like’ on the ones they’d most like to see answered.

We’ll get into our own variant of AMA (APZA? ATISA?) in a second – but first a few words on our next update and general Zomboidy news.

Lemmy has been taking a couple of days off NPCs (woah there, don’t worry) to improve the Lua debugging support in the game. The reason for this is the lack of a debugger in Lua, which means that tracking down bugs is nothing short of a nightmare. Instead of being able to climb into the code and poke around while it’s running, you’re left resorting to printing messages out saying ‘the code got in here’ and ‘if it went here then it gone wrong ARGH!’ – and watching for said messages when testing the game.

As such, we’ve developed a fully functioning debugger that sits directly in Project Zomboid. This allows us to step through the lua code line by line, see which way the code goes, inspect exactly what’s going on in there, line by line, instead of infuriating guesswork.

Words cannot express how much time this will save us in the long run: we’ll likely have gained the development time back 1000-fold before the end of the project. This genuinely could shave weeks off feature development.

The idea of writing an entire debugger never occured to us because it seemed such a ludicrously complicated and long-winded job, but in a moment of madness the task was taken on and (after a full 36 hours of no sleep and numerous coffees and energy drinks) it’s already massively massively useful to the devs and modders alike. This makes us happy.

In case you’re interested, here’s a vid of it in action!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCYIHnspQeQ

Romain’s work on build 16, meanwhile, continues apace – with the growing changelist for the next public test build found here. We’ll let you know when it starts to look Desura-bound, which’ll hopefully be soon.

And so, without much further adieu, here’s the very first ‘Ask Project Zomboid Developers The Indie Stone Anything!’ (APZDTISA!) These questions and answers are ordered, pretty much, by how popular they were – so feel free to get less interested the further we go!

Welcome to APZDTISA!

Q. “How is West Point coming along?” from nasKo.

Q. “Any news about constant water source other than wells?” from jhepong24.

A. I think these two questions can be answered in a screenshot:

This is taken from the more outskirt-y bits of West Point, and in the top right you’ll notice something interesting. (Mash)

Q. “I would just love to hear some more general info about how the whole npc-system is developing.” from RoboMat.

A. At the moment we have NPC groups being governed by a leader, going on looting missions and organizing safehouse defence, with a new combat system in the works. The issues at the moment are just making everything work solidly, leaving no room for characters to end up getting stuck while trying to walk somewhere and freezing. We’re adding content, but at the same time trying to tie up any of the loose ends and bugs that’d see NPCs break.

Once this is done we should see the speed of NPC development balloon dramatically. The further we go, the more tools we have at our disposal to add content quickly. It’s really exciting but at the same time has to be done right, so we’re not rushing it out there. (Lemmy)

Q. “When will fire be back?” from Zomboider.

A. Fire will be back soon (ish)! It’s a big priority for us since, for obvious reasons, it’s required for the tutorial to work properly. As you saw from the video a couple of weeks back, the tutorial is under heavy development, so hopefully you won’t have to wait for too long. (Lemmy)

Q. “How are your plans and ideas for new Jobs / Clothing and weapons you plan to add? Gives us some sugar “ from Gammlernoob.

A. Definitely, just a question of getting round to it. I have a bunch of glasses made and waiting to be exported, so that’ll be the first set of accessories. Then after that, we’ll look into doing more clothing types, since we’ll need some for some of the characters as the story expands. (Binky)

Q. “What is the situation surrounding the map modding tools? Really can’t wait to start doing the only thing I’m good at – making maps.” From AkHolic.

A. The mapping tools are rather feature-rich now thanks to some stellar work by Easy-Pickins which means that we’ve become much more efficient at producing map cells, to the extent that Mash frequently catches me up – producing content for the cells far more quickly than I can produce the terrain. (We might spotlight Easy’s work in a blog all to its own in future weeks).

However, this all means that all this mapping power will be available to modders – there’s no fixed timescale on releasing them just yet but, by and large, we’re thinking about when West Point is finished and we’ll have had them sufficiently tested. (Binky)

Q. “How many Coffees do you drink per day to work on PZ?” from datkid.

A. I’ve cut down on the coffees. Have one or two at breakfast, and another to round off the day. In between: staggeringly large quantities of tea, but tea is not coffee so it’s fine. (Binky)

Q. “With introduction of NPC’s, can we expect something like ‘up to 3 NPC friends’ on spawn, with customizable looks, names, professions and even your relationship to them?” from LeoIvanov.

A. We actually have some interesting plans regarding this. Certainly in character customization you should be able to specify that you’re married, or have a brother/sister who may be around. One day we’d like to do a kinda G.O.A.T test style Choose Your Own Adventure before you start playing (you could revert to standard character customization if you wished).

This would detailing key events in your life and choosing what you do, to shape your character. Then perhaps a bunch of questions about the day of the apocalypse. Were you travelling down the highway to meet your wife from work maybe, or laid in bed after pulling a sickie at work?

This would define your starting circumstances, and may add additional quests for your character to try and complete during the game, such as reuniting with lost loved ones and so on.

This is a while off, of course, but it’s something we’ve talked about a lot. (Lemmy)

Q. “In a screenshot a while ago I noticed NPCs sitting on chairs and the like … will us as the players be allowed to sit down on chairs?” from Rancorist.

A. Yeah, the ability to sit on chairs is sort of functional but it’s a bit rough-and-ready at the moment. There’s obviously slight draw-order issues with having a character sit down on a chair that might have a high back and arms, so the initial version of that functionality will definitely have some glitches. But we’ll improve this later down the line. (Binky)

Q. “Will there be layers below the surface some day? Tunnels, underground parking lots and basements would be a great addition to the game world.” from topy.

A. Yes, this is something that is planned in the future. (Mash)

Q. “Do you plan to implement the more powerful, game-mechanic altering mods into the vanilla game if they are in-line with your long term goals of the game and are widely popular? For example – Stormy’s reload mod. How often will you be accepting mods like stormy’s into the game? ” from Burianu.

We would certainly consider doing it, and as you say have already done so with Stormy’s mod. Hell, we took RJ on board and snaffled up all his mods (and got him to re-write them into the new UI and improve them) once he had code access! At the end of the day though if we kept taking everyone’s mods and integrating them into the game, there would be no mod community. We want modders to keep doing what they are doing. (Lemmy)

Q. “Is the engine pretty much done or do you plan any bigger changes?” from Dr_Cox1911.

A. Hahaha, oh we have big plans. Long term plans though, and we’ve fought against the urge to act on them yet! Just compare the pre-alpha tech demo to the game now, and you’ll see we’re constantly trying to improve the engine and graphics. At the moment though, filling in the holes in the gameplay comes before anything else! (Lemmy)

Q. “I’d like to know if modders could have a separate changelog where we can see changes in lua, folder structures and things like that. It would really be helpful. I’ll certainly give a hug for that, at the Project Zomboid conference which is bound to happen someday.” from Aricane.

A. This would be great, but to be honest when developing the game, it’s really really hard to keep track of changes to that detail. Once the game is in a more stable complete state, we could certainly look to do this. (Lemmy)

Q. “How is the Dragon implementation going and will they be as OP as expected?” from Tooks.

A. Dragons were so OP they crashed all of our computers. They will have to wait until future CPUs can handle their mightiness. (Mash)

nasKo · August 26, 2013

Mondoid, 26 August, 2013

Evening all, it’s something of a ‘work in progress’ update this week – seeing as we’re hoping to have some decent NPC and West Point stuff to show off in the next exciting episode of Mondoid.

So just what have we been doing with our time this week?

Test Buildin’!

Survivors helping us out with bug-chasing in the test builds on our forum will first and foremost be aware of some of the successful FPS optimization we’ve now got running beneath the Zomboid hood. We’ve added multi-core rendering support y’see, which should yield significant FPS boost on multi-core machines.

(This will be automatically turned off for those running PZ on single core machines, and on some Linux systems. The lack of some Linux system’s multi-core love might be fixable, there is hope, we’re just going to have to keep prodding it for a while).

On top of smashing bugs that this new system has created for build 17, we’re also now working on improving inventory/world context interaction. Much of Romain’s work currently is about balancing and soothing interaction woes. For example a double click in the loot inventory will now grab the stack or item. Within the world it can also be tricky to drink at a sink or fill a bottle – and we’ve changed the way objects are picked for right click menus to make this easier. We’re generally just polishing up bugs and making what’s there as fun as possible, in preparation for NPCs.

In other news: teleporting crops are now fixed (huzzah!), while invisi-walls remain a massive pain in the arse (grumble!) – however we have a few leads we are following and are quietly hopeful.

Supportin’ Moddin’!

As anyone who uses mods will know, the current method of handling mods leaves a little to be desired. We added lua support to add release-friendly modding, but then mods need for you to overwrite game files in order to work. This meant if anyone had mods installed and updated the game, their save could become incompatible if they didn’t have the same mods installed.

As such, we’ve taken the plunge and added some proper modding architecture, so a user can tick to enable/disable mods. Each is stored in a separate directory, and the files in the mods just‘override’ the base files – or each other depending on the mod ordering. This will make it much easier to maintain installed mods, as well as mean they stay installed between new versions.

We’ll be starting a new series of mod blogs on the main PZ site this week, so soon there’ll be no excuse for not getting down and dirty in the modding community!

NPC’n!

As usual a lot of NPC work has gone on this week. The focus of this being character movement. Not the animation, but the way that in their previous guise AI survivors always walked in tile-by-tile units, and only ever in 8 directions. They were always a little robotic, really, and as such we’ve had some interesting ideas that may allow for NPCs to move more realistically, and look a lot more engaging.

We’d hate to leave you bereft of video action though, so here’s a sneak peekat our experimental system that’ll allow NPCs to have realistic movement around the map, in real-time. We’re pretty confident that we’ll have a more tasty video next week on this front (nb. pretty confidence is not legally binding).

nasKo · September 2, 2013

Mondoid, 2 September, 2013

Okay, first off – there’s no NPC video this Mondoid. And yes, we can hear your collective ‘Nooo! Whyyy?’ from here. (The zombies can hear it too though, so… do it a bit quieter.)

Over the past week we looked at the two primary development plates we were spinning – that of the overall NPC meta-game, and that of building up the game into a state that could feasibly be released on Steam Early Access to a mainstream audience. Almost a year after our Greenlight, we’ve decided to knuckle down on the latter.

It should be underlined however that a huge part of this is getting the Kate and Baldspot tutorial back, much of which is NPC development, so despite the fact that we’re temporarily looking away from the meta-game – it’s still all part of the meta-map.

With this in mind… let’s Mondoid! Just what have we been up to this week?

Steam Progressin’

So yeah, we managed to get Steam integrated into the game. This was the last technical hurdle outside of development of the game itself before we could technically put the game on Steam. However, we don’t feel we’re ready for even Steam Early Access yet, the game as it currently stands, having too many bugs and issues that still need to be resolved and with some still struggling to play without a tutorial.

This also means we may be a big step closer to providing existing players Steam keys, though it’s unclear how quickly that can happen, we will set the ball moving as soon as we can and you shouldn’t have too long to wait.

Kate and Baldspot is starting to get close to completion (and by that we mean an improved version of what was in there prior to its removal, though at that stage additional story can go in super quick), and bug-fixes are on-going. As such we’ve decided to prioritise these two to get them finished. We’ve drafted up a technical todo list of what’s needed for K&B, and all the biggest bug/balance/ui/polish and are starting to plough through it. Familiar faces on this list include: invisible walls, rendering thread issues and every crash you ever might’ve come across.

Steam Early Access will mean big things for the game, for obvious reasons, and hopefully we’ll see our already awesome modding community grow dramatically – so Steam Workshop functionality is definitely on the list too.
(It’s worth saying at this point that we’ll never, ever be abandoning our Desura audience – even if you’ll all get Steam keys should you wish. In fact, Scott and the Desura team have been even more amazing than usual in discussing our next move.)

Caterin’ for you lovely foreign-types
Romain’s been busy at work writing a proper localisation system, to allow the community to easily create translations of the game. Hurrah! We apologise it’s taken this long but there were some issues in our way and sadly it always slipped by the wayside for serious bugs and issues. However, now we have support for accented characters, and full-on different alphabets like Cyrillic for our awesome Russian communities.

We’re immensely lucky to have a passionate community who seem happy to help in the quest to bring PZ to their own language. The list of different language translations in progress is quite astounding already. So if you’d like to bring PZ to your own language then check out this thread.

http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/1255 -help-us-the-official-pz-translation/

Buildin’ West Point

Here are some important West Point facts! West Point consists of seven cells of ‘town’ and three cells of farmland (ish), as compared to Muldraugh’s 8 cells of “town” – discounting the surrounding areas such as the logging area.

Two of these town cells have been filled with buildings, while the remaining five cells have been terraformed – and have been handed over to Mash for the insertion of building and details today, along with 10 cells of the surrounding area that’ll link West Point to the existing “finished” map area.

To give you a sense of scale. to run to West Point following main roads will be about the same distance as running to the farm by road. In this WIP satellite view the grey slab and grid roads to the East is where the main shops, town hall etc. will go – and as you go further west it all gets residential, and then increasingly rural.

Finishin’ Forum Build 17

Just a quick note to say this is still on its way, and will be out ASAP! We’re thinking it’ll probably be as soon as the new language system is complete. Progress thread here!

Promotin’ NasKo

Kneel before your new Community Manager, and rightful King.

Sayin’ goodbye till next time

So that’s about it for this week. We’re really into one of those ‘knuckle down’ periods now. We’ll continue the forum / Desura builds so the community can help us quash bugs, but we’re really dialling back on big new features (unless they are vital to address severe balance issues) and focusing on bug fixing and polish while Kate and Bob are completed.

Oh, but there’s fire obviously, which is on the list immediately after the language system is completed. Viva la Molotov.

nasKo · September 9, 2013

So we’ve finally gone and done it. The first big step toward Early Access is getting our game running within Steam, and to begin the process of giving out keys to our existing customers. The time has come! To make it clear, we are NOT currently available on Steam Early Access, however Desura customers of Project Zomboid are able to redeem Steam Keys.

First some information on how to get a Steam key, if you’re so inclined:

Important things to read first

1) The version that’s on Steam is effectively build 17, since the only build possible to use was one with Steam integration we couldn’t upload the last Desura build, or forum test 16. However, there may well be some bugs still in this build that need sorting out. So please don’t consider this an official release. This is about getting people on Steam who want to be, primarily, so we’re not cramming it all in last-minute and risking any delays. That said, a few issues aside, will give you a chance to play with the new stuff in the build!

2) There is currently no ‘install script’ for auto installing java and whatnot on the three platforms. This will come within the next day or two. If you can already run the game, then you should be golden. 64bit OS users who used to run the game in 64bit may need to get Java 32bit (x86) JVM installed if they do not. This will obviously be automated soon

3) At this time the only way to obtain a key is through Project Zomboid on a Desura account. The ever awesome Desura have offered to help us distribute keys to everyone, even those who did not purchase the game on Desura. To do this ourselves would likely have absorbed a whole chunk of our time that could be spent working on getting the game ready, so this is wonderful of them.

We would very much appreciate anyone who hasn’t bought the game through Desura to look through the games when they convert, and consider sticking around the community, because there are many gems in there including many ungreenlit games that deserve more attention. And as evidenced for doing this, Desura themselves deserve endless support!

Converting to Desura for Google Checkout / Paypal purchasers

To convert to Desura, input your Project Zomboid username and password (game log-in details emailed to you when you bought from Google Checkout, NOT your forum user/pass) into this form:

http://www.desura.com/games/project-zomboid/activate

Finding your Steam key

When logged onto Desura’s website, go to this page:
http://www.desura.com/collection

Click on the ‘Keys’ link, and you’ll find the Steam redeemable code listed there. “Activate a Product on Steam…” in the Steam game menu. Alternatively, go here:
http://www.desura.com/games/project-zomboid/keys

Simple as that.

Zoom

Those who keep tabs on the forums may know that Zoom is set to return to Project Zomboid. However, this time we’ve implemented a few extra things, all optional. You could have the game at x2 zoom at all times, or you could have the game auto zoom when indoors and zoom out when outdoors. You will also be able to specify scroll speeds and whatnot. Here is a little demo.

So why this? Well zoom support reintegration has been a much much requested feature. Also we still have had concerns about the difficulty navigating buildings, and in the run up to Steam want to try and get as much of this sorted as possible as it contributes to the frustrations new players have in particular.

You may also notice in the video that we have fixed various issues with the light system during some optimization stuff, and in the process now rooms with no windows are dark, and daylight can now light rooms through doors and windows.

New Combat Controls

Upon downloading the Steam version you may notice the mouse controls not behaving as you’d expect. For a long time, a big criticism of the game has been the unintuitive combat controls, and we’re attempting to fix that. Anyone unhappy with the change can be assured that a ‘classic controls’ option will be available, but we and the majority of those who have tested it seem to agree think the new controls are much more intuative and will be easier for new players to pick up, while it has no effect on the actual combat mechanics depth.

We’re deliberately not mentioning how it works, because we’re hoping it won’t require it and will be easily guessable with a play with the mouse, and part of seeing if a system is intuitive is not telling everyone how to do it in advance!

Fire!

Fire makes a return! It’s still undergoing some balance to up the virility, but as of the new test builds, Molotovs and cooking disasters return to Project Zomboid!

Everything else is coming along too, Westpoint is starting to fill out with buildings, and some cool animations are in the pipe for Kate and Baldspot. We’re very excited about what’s coming up for Project Zomboid. Yay!!

RoboMat · September 16, 2013

Happy Monday Zomboid peoples. Again we’re here with a ‘we’re just getting on with it’ Mondoid as we continue work getting the Steam build up to scratch!

Bug Batterin’

Getting the Build 17 steam beta version stable, so we can then get the stable Desura build updated, has been this week’s priority. Once we’ve cleared up its eccentricities this will become the defacto PZ build, and we can get back to powering through the reintroduction of Kate and Baldspot.

If you’re out of the loop and need to find out what’s happening with Steam, then please check out last week’s Mondoid. With that in mind, here’s what’s cooking round Indie Stone Towers…

Build Smoothenin’

The good news is that invisible walls and many other stream bugs are, as far as we can tell, history. We’ve been wary to say this out loud, however, because saying ‘We’ve fixed invisible walls!’ seemed like a sure-fire invocation to summon it back.

A few other issues have cropped up on the Steam build, however, that need chasing down. First up is the ‘black square’ line of sight loading issue, that’s clearly a must-fix. We’ve made good progress in this already.

After this, and just as importantly, we’ve been getting ever more frequent complaints about zombies appearing where they really oughtn’t be, so there’s currently a major clean up operation to make sure our zeds don’t ever multiply or teleport erroneously.

This Mondoid also heralds Romain’s first full day on the game away from his old day-job (yay!) so he’s grappling a bunch of other stuff like new translations, zoom issues, reloading bugs and anything else that’s been flagged up on the forums. Report any and all previously unseen bugs to the forum, and old RJ will start rattling his sabre…

Optimisin’

There’s, as always, a continued fight to make the game run as smoothly as possible, seeing as we need to keep the game playable on as many of the low end PCs as possible. As such we’re currently exploring the possibility of creating a native C++ library to take over the more CPU intensive 1% of the code (and to hopefully definitively answer the often raised question ‘why does AAA game X run at 60 fps on my PC and Zomboid does not’, consider that we see great potential value in making 1% of our game native C++, and 100% of those games are written in native C++)

Some good progress on this has been made, however it’s tricky and time consuming, and therefore we drop in and out of the job from time to time in favor of bug fixes, so it will likely not get into a version for some time. We’ll let you know how we get on!

West Pointin’

Over to Mash for the very latest on the creation of our next PZ location!

“West Point will see the return of some familiar names, both from the original map (Seahorse Coffee!) and good ol’ Muldraugh, as well as some new amenities. Do you have some noisy next-door zombies ruining your backyard barbeque? Then why not go to Town Hall to file a petition to create an no-zombie zoning by-law!”

“If there’s one thing that scares off zombies, it’s the threat of hefty fines. Or maybe you could fight/defend yourself using some items picked up from some nearby stores…?”

“Finally, I know what most of you are thinking: new locations are all well and good, but WHERE ARE THE PIE SHOPS? You, sir or madam, are indeed in luck! Here is a small slice (hee!) of Crystal’s Pie Palace, home to many a future safehouse.”

Sayin’ Goodbye till next week

That’s all for now! More as it happens!

nasKo · September 23, 2013

Mondoid, 23 September, 2013

Hello everyone! It’s Mondoid time again, and we have some interesting updates.

Bufferin’

This week has been a very interesting and exciting one. It started with a sudden issue with the game presenting itself last Wednesday, which turned out to be down to memory creeping back up to dangerous levels on Intel cards. We finally decided enough was enough and made some bold changes to finally look to address the FPS and memory issues in Project Zomboid. We’ve had one particular plan in mind for a long time, but it always seemed a drastic move.

But with the run up to Steam, we figured if we left it any longer it would only hold us back in the future, with Westpoint being added soon, we’d just keep hitting this problem, and this is our best shot at finally fixing all the performance issues.
For one, we have converted all the wall and floor tiles from drawn isometric:

To textured polygons:

As you can see, the size difference and lack of wasted space is massive, and this will dramatically reduce the memory the map tiles take up and take us well under the threshold.

We’ve also converted the game to use an actual isometric projection, which means we now have some exciting optimizations available to us that were not an option before. Namely z-buffering. We’re hoping this will have a dramatic effect on the FPS, though it may take a few versions for the effects of it to be fully felt.

If you want a more in-depth look at the changes we’ve made, why it had to be done, and what it will mean, you can go to this rather lengthy forum post and discuss!

TL;DR – Huge potential for future optimization of the game. The game runs again (though the system is not fully finished yet). We now as a bonus have engine support to be able to do proper cut-away walls, and potential future features post-Steam like terrain height, shadows, fog, and all manner of things that were never really possible.

We’re massively excited and relieved now this has gone in as it’s one of the last big hang-ups from the technology of the first version of Zomboid.

Bug Fixin’

Now Romain is with us full-time, he’s been carrying on polishing and fixing up the build to the highest level of quality we can, so once we’ve finished off the rendering changes and got the game running properly, we’ll have the best possible build to go with.

You can read the changelist for the version here:

http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/1836-upcoming-steam-release/

West Pointin’

As you can imagine, work on Westpoint continues apace, and the streets are filling up every day. It’s very exciting!
That’s everything, folks!

RoboMat · September 30, 2013

Mondoid, 30 September, 2013

Hello everyone! A short and sweet Mondoid this week, as we’re all hard at work finishing off the new rendering system detailed last week. Just a few updates.

Rendering System

Work on this is going tremendously, but we’re still waist-deep in it at the moment.
The exciting possibility is that 2 of the biggest bottlenecks in the game’s performance may not only be reduced, but may more or less disappear completely.

We’ve converted the map to use ‘static vertex buffers’. Before the game was forced to composite each and every frame of the game from scratch, forming a frame-by-frame list of polygons to draw for both world and characters alike. It would then ditching them, and starting anew for the next frame.
Now, since we’re not confined to draw order and characters can all be drawn after the world, we can construct a set of one-time vertex buffers that’ll hold all the composited geometry of the world for as long as you’re stood in the same chunk.

Then, as soon as you run onto a neighbouring chunk and trigger the map streaming, a new vertex buffer is composed to represent the geometry around you – which can then be reused and reused again until something changes.

This means something rather costly that used to happen every frame now only happens every ten tiles, when transitioning between rooms or when someone opens a door. (Or when something breaks down a door.)

Lighting
Another big bottleneck of the game was the smooth lighting, not only for the actual iso order drawing that we described in detail last week, but the calculations of the lighting across the loaded world’s tile grid.

Now we’re using OpenGL 3D for our rendering, it means we can easily transfer responsibility for lighting to the graphics card. As such, Binky has been working on a new lighting system that’ll not only speed the game up massively, but will also look a lot prettier and more accurate:

It goes without saying these are WIP and are tests, and we’re not changing the name of the game to Project Disco-oid.

This all means that we’re taking the slow lighting calculations out of the PZ java code, and putting it into super fast native (and probably hardware accelerated) OpenGL code.

Interim Build
If this process takes much longer to finish off, we may consider doing a beta build with our former badly compressed textures – just to get a version out there.

It’s not something we’d want in an official version, but would give us an opportunity to test Romain’s fixes that have been in development during the overhaul. This would be to make sure that we’re on track with the rest of the game once these changes are complete, as well as tide over those waiting for new stuff!

We’ll come up with a good compromise that scrapes under the memory budget if we can, and will see where we are in a couple of days.

Until then! Love yus!

Of sawn-offs…

nasKo · October 7, 2013

Mondoid, 07 October, 2013

Hello peoples! It’s another ‘just getting on with it’ Mondoid today, but with the added bonus of…

Interim Build

As promised, we’re releasing an interim beta build (accessible right now via the beta page in Project Zomboid properties within Steam and called interim_64bit_only.) The name of the build is perhaps a clue to one big limitation of it, which is explained more fully here.

TL;DR is that:

1) We are only able to release a 64bit version at this time. Due to the memory issues the current 3D work is being done to solve, people with 32bit systems will be unable to run the game. This is why we’ve made a new Steam beta branch, so as not to auto-update anyone to a build that does not work.

2) We’re also still working to get 64bit versions working reliably on Mac and Linux with our Linuxy and Maccy testers, and we’ll be hotfixing a-plenty until we get this up to scratch. It may be that by the time this Mondoid is posted we’ve removed this line and renumbered the below accordingly. If not, time has obviously been ticking and we didn’t want to delay the Mondoid any more, so we apologize and will get the Linux and Mac builds running in 64bit as soon as possible. Though as usual, the brainiest of our community on those platforms may be able to prod and poke at it themselves, and offer our Microsoft brainwashed brains some feedback on how to speed this process up.

3) Steam overlay is disabled for now, due to the fact that enabling it for 64bit builds would involve installing Linux and Mac OS’s, installing dev environments on said OS’s and recompiling things. As a happy sideeffect no longer will PZ players annoy the crap out of people on their Steam list with restarting the game after each death!

4) We will look to providing a 32bit version of the game on a ‘if it works, it works’ basis (e.g. those with good graphics cards and a bit of luck may be able to scrape through on a 32bit system), but there are complications with how Steam works that could see us fubar the other branches of the game on Steam, since they all share the same launch information, so we’re dancing around this so as not to break it for everyone else.

In short, this build will hopefully allow the majority of the Zomboiders out there to get a taste of the new build and we’ll continue to fix and refine this build as we approach completion of the 3D stuff, and if you’re currently not able to run the game, we can only apologise and promise we’re doing our all to get everyone running on it, be that hot fixes to this build, or the 3D work we’re doing to vastly and definitively fix memory and frame-rate performance.

We’ll also continue to patch up this build all regular like in response to feedback and bugs, so don’t fret if there are new problems, or old problems you expected to be fixed by now, as we can start pumping out the builds for those able to run them to polish these up.

West Point Almost There

The TileZed view of West Point has filled out dramatically over the past month or so, and it’s starting to look ready to get into the game. However, we’ve still got a fair bit to do on the tile properties, to avoid walls characters can walk through and floor tiles characters fall through, containers that don’t spawn items, taps you can’t drink out of or lights that don’t work. This will be a rather fiddly repetitive job that would be best tackled at the same time as the various changes required in the 3D switch-over. We’ll get West Point to you as soon as we can.

We’re refraining from showing any more screens of West Point until its release, however, to retain some level of surprise and mystique.

Progress on that 3D stuff

We’re still plodding away on the new engine upgrade – the fab news as far as this goes is the work that EasyPickins has been doing on the tools side of things. Those of you who have played with world modding will know that we use a customised version of Tile-Ed (called Tile-Zed, also thanks to EZ) which is designed for placing isometric walls and furniture into an isometric world.

Of course, the work we’ve been doing ‘enflatulating’ all the textures from faked iso to flat textures, so that we remove duplication and save a fork-tonne of texture space doesn’t integrate with that system natively. So what EZ has been doing is developing a system within TileZed so that the necessary isometric tiles can be generated automatically from whatever flat textures we have, and these editor tiles can then be placed in the editor as actual 3D textured objects, just as they would be in the game.

In other words, it means we can continue to work the way that we are currently working with world creation (and modders can too) even though the method used to render the world in-game will vary considerably from the way that it’s rendered in the editor.

“But wait!”, I hear you cry, “That sounds stupid! You have isometric tiles, you convert them to flat textures, and then you convert them back into isometric tiles. What on Earth is the point? Why not just keep the original tiles?”

Well. Yes. But, you see, there are *loads* of wall types that were never fully expanded. For example, there are 5 main (plus a few extras) tiles you need just to have roof sections of a wall type (you know, those sloping wall parts), so not all walls have these because they take up loads of space. That’s why there are certain brick houses in game with a different coloured brick or wood part where the roof is. We can pretend that’s a stylistic choice but really, it’s because the ‘correct’ tiles aren’t available to us.

Well now they will be, because we don’t need to worry about tile ‘bloat’ in the editor. One wall texture does all walls including the roof bits. So now, using EZ’s convertulator, we can spit out every single wall segment we need for every single wall type. Hooray!

The editor support means that already, roofs have been added to the system as 3D objects, allowing us to light the roofs of buildings much better (as well as potentially allowing for their collision to behave properly. As well as this, it should be trivial to do the same for counters or any other simple shaped furniture in the game (aka probably not sofas)

nasKo · October 14, 2013

Mondoid, 14 Oct, 2013

Hello everyone! Mondoid time, just a quick one due to the team being busy bees. We’ve got a few things to report.

Interim Memory Budget / 3D

So while we’ve been developing the 3D stuff, which still progresses but has been increasingly sidelined by work fixing up the interim builds, we’ve also been continuing our efforts to lower memory usage and optimize the game in the main development branch of the game. In the process of that we’ve somehow managed to sneak back under the memory budget to allow 32bit systems on integrated graphics to run the game. This is great news.

The 3D engine work is absolutely vital for the long term compatibility and speed of the game, so we will continue working on that alongside polishing up the current build, but we will likely continue to release on Desura and look to get ready for Steam using the existing engine.

The reason is that we are mindful of breaking what is currently, a few issues aside, shaping up to be a pretty stable version of the game by doing a major engine change at this time, undoubtedly adding new bugs and potentially costing us a ton of extra time, if (as it currently appears) we can avoid it.

We’ll continue to polish and optimize the interim builds until they can be updated on Desura and on released on Steam proper. At that point we’ll start releasing beta builds with the 3D engine, at that point hopefully quite mature, as well as NPCs and other much awaited features.

West Point

West Point is more or less good to go! We’re just fixing up some tile property and zombie / loot distributions and we’ll look to making an interim release at that point, so expect that update in the next day or two! Make sure to pack a bag though, as the trip north is not for the faint of heart!

Also, to celebrate an end to building endless West Point houses, our Mash has decided to unwind by running a half-marathon (!!) to raise funds for Arthritis Research this Sunday! Click here for details!

nasKo · October 21, 2013

Mondoid, 21 Oct, 2013

Welcome to the second ‘Ask Project Zomboid Developers The Indie Stone Anything!’, or APZDTISA II – as the cool kids are all calling it.

First off though – West Point news. The map is in our internal build, testers have reported nice things and Mash has fixed up the bugs and inconsistencies that they found – in that way it’s all ready to go. Only problem is that we’re waiting on some save fixes and Steam build optimisation before we can pump it out to you. So, super sorry for keeping you hanging, but it’s increasingly seeming like it’ll be worth the wait. Here’s the menu selection blurb we’ve written so you know a little of what to expect.

“West Point – Population 4207”
“Whether you’re strolling through the town square, chowing down on one of our pies or just chatting with friendly locals – West Point is the true Small Town USA.”

“Don’t let sleepy streets, affordable housing and acres of rolling farmland fool you – this is the Knox Country administrative hub. If our mayor isn’t busy rubber-stamping public ordinances in the town hall, you might just find him in the famous Twiggy’s Bar! No matter how long your stay: a West Point welcome is guaranteed!”

Enough of that though, on to APZDTISA II!

Have you planned on what will be your next larger endeavour after NPCs and the 3D stuff is in? Or in other words, do you have somewhat a linear plan on what you will be doing in the more distant future, or is it a scramble? (Suomiboi)

TIS: We’ve obviously got a lot of plans to add new items, weapons, map additions and gameplay mechanics as we go, and we do not tend to plan for these but rather tackle things as seems an appropriate time, or if the community repeatedly requests them. The next major milestones in the game after NPCs and the new 3D engine are in, however, run as follows.
(Probably in order, and nothing set in stone).

Sneak mechanics – Hugging walls, crouching and other stealth manoeuvres to make traversing zombie populated areas without being spotted a deep and rich experience.

Wilderness 2.0 – Proper trees, with canopies, river banks, hills and sloped terrain. As we add more survivalist features to the game we want to make the wilderness truly interesting and diverse.

Hunting. Allowing support for wild animals, probably starting with rats. This may include feral dogs.

Vehicles – The implementation of vehicles depends somewhat on when the size of the map justifies the feature, however with the 3D changes we’re planning vehicles become a lot more feasible a lot sooner.

Electronics/Traps

Military quarantine and clean up operations – Making the quarantine an actual physical thing, with NPC soldiers. Having meta events triggering soldier patrols through town. Putting snipers on helicopters. Things like that.

Online Co-op Multiplayer – Though work on this may begin before this point, we’ll at this point start working on

multiplayer in earnest

Online persistent server multiplayer.

Mash, How did the run go? And also what’s the next map project you’ll be working on,
now that’s West Point is done? (Suomiboi)

Mash: The run went very well! I ran the half-marathon in 2:15:22, which was a very good personal time for me! Thanks to all who supported my run, whether through donations to the Arthritis Research Foundation ($795 was raised!) or sending well-wishes. Every bit helped!

Now that West Point is generally in the bag, I’ve been working on little random areas around the map. We have ideas for which major areas would be next, but as described in the next question’s answer below, map development is heavily influenced by our community. For example, we didn’t originally plan on making West Point the next major area away from Muldraugh. However, when the new Muldraugh map was released, there was quite a lot of feedback that people missed having the heavily dense areas, with lots of zombies and lots of loot, that were in the old map. This was a big consideration to us during map planning, and West Point was pushed ahead to recreate that sense of variety.

Have you guys considered some form of “roadmap” to show the community what your goals are and the order you’d like to achieve them?” (Tazyload)

TIS: Apart from the major bullet pointed features we describe above and the overall ‘planned features’ we’ve listed since we announced the game, we’re not keen on the idea of detailing the entire game in a overly detailed roadmap. There are numerous reasons for this, but primarily the developmental focus and direction of the game is fluid, driven not only by ideas we have during development, moments of inspiration that may not earlier be anticipated, but also our focuses are heavily influenced by the community.

To have a rigid development plan that encompassed the entire game would stifle creativity within the team, may lead to focus on areas of development that is not in the best interest of the majority of our community, and furthermore having arbitrary ‘progress’ on said items would just pressure us to pull % numbers out of our backsides.

We also don’t want to promise anything we cannot deliver by discovering that some vague planned feature turns out to be incompatible or not fun, and then either have to redact parts of the roadmap, or worse try to crowbar features in against the best interests of the game and community just to avoid complaints.

When do we get to see the Modding Tools (Map editor and Sprite/Character editor)? (RoboMat)

Lemmy: As soon as West Point is out there (we did hope it would be before this Mondoid, but sadly there are still some issues with saves and performance we’re eager to sort out first.) we will release the modding tools to create maps. However, it should be noted that once we’re on Steam, and we implement the 3D system, it may require some work from modders to make their maps compatible. Due to the incredible awesomeness of Mr. Pickins, this will hopefully not be a massive job.

Has working on Project Zomboid been more stressful than you expected and has it been worth it? (Insanehuman)

TIS: More stressful than it’s possible to describe in words. But good times and bad, it’s been worth every second!
Is there a bunch of secret features that you arent going to tell us about and make us find them ourselves? (Insanehuman)

Lemmy: That would be telling! Generally, apart from West Point, and likely similarly major map locations (such as the city, once we get there), we don’t tend to tell people about any map additions we make. Then again, down to the pesky but amazing blindcoder and his wonderful yet cursed mapping project http://pzmap.crash-override.net/, our map secrets are not likely to stay secret for long in future!

What do you plan the pricetag to be for Zomboid once it hits Early Access on Steam? (LeoIvanov)
TIS: £9.99 or equivalent – no more, no less. We’ll raise this again at a later date once we feel the additional content and features justify it, perhaps at the stage multiplayer is introduced, but have no solid plans on how to price the game going forward. However, we’ll always ensure that, even in sales, we never drop the price below or equal to what the early adopters have paid for it until long long in the future.

Looking WAY in the future, I know you’re keen to implement vehicles of some variety, and I think that’s going to be increasingly important given the sheer size of the map & distance to West Point. What pitfalls/hurdles can you foresee with implementing vehicles, what will be very difficult to do, or even impossible to do? And if you’ve thought about it yet – which kinds of vehicles do you think you’ll implement, and why? (BladedSmoke)

TIS: As we said above, we will consider if the distance to West Point justifies, or demands, the existence of vehicles, and that will define our timeline with regard to them – although in the short-term, the idea that the trek to West Point is a long one appeals to us. Travelling there should not be a decision made lightly, and once there the same goes for leaving again.

Most of the pitfalls we anticipated related to having rendered sprites with only 8 directions making for pretty crappy driving mechanics, but in a 3D engine we could go the whole hog and have low poly 3D vehicles with proper physics for the steering and collision and whatnot.

What kind of vehicles? well, ultimately, any vehicle you’d expect to find in Muldraugh. With the 3D it makes it a lot easier to add more variety.

Let’s look to the future again. After the new engine stuff has been done, and this build has been polished and put up on Steam, and work on the NPCs resumes… What little feature is each individual member of the Indie Stone most looking forward to working on? I’m hoping for a more specific answer than just ‘the NPCs’ if possible! (BladedSmoke)

Binky: While the NPCs are obviously tremendously exciting, it’s all the other things which come along with them which makes me do a little squee. All the little touches of flavour, things to discover, clues about what’s going on outside of Muldraugh, events and stories which can turn your survival strategy on its head in an instant – an example of which, albeit in a very crude form, is when the water or electricity shuts off. Stuff like that which you might be in the right (or wrong) place to see, or may only hear about. Basically all the stuff which cements Muldraugh as “a place in the world struggling to contain the apocalypse” as opposed to an isolated map, outside of which is just void.

We have a fixed map – which means people can offer advice directly transposable to someone else’s game – “this place is a good safehouse”, “this place is located in a good area”, etc. But it also means we can introduce events and stories which make sense both in time and geographically. We intend to take full advantage of this.

Lemmy: Well I’m very excited about a lot, But one thing in particular that we’ve chatted about a lot yet said relatively little about publicly is the electronic / trap system we have planned, which is a natural extension of the current crafting system. We’ve talked a lot about creating a kinda UI circuit board system, where you could drag and drop components from your inventory, and connect them together with wires. Inventory items could be de-constructed into base objects that could be used on these boards.

The best example would be, for example, grabbing an automatic security light and dismantling it to get some wires, a battery, a light and a movement sensor. You could then dismantle a fire alarm to get wires, a battery and a alarm speaker. You could then connect these components up to create a movement based alarm system. With the existing base crafting we would like to allow for wires to be placed along walls, and connected to various systems, to allow for players to create all manner of traps and gizmos to help secure their safehouse. Or imagine just getting a fire alarm, getting rid of the fire sensor and replacing it with a radio receiver, to make a remote noise maker you could trigger with a walkie talkie to help lead zombies away from your safehouse. Once this system is in place we could build and build upon it, adding more and more components to allow for a lot of creativity.

This would be Zomboid’s redstone, and we don’t need to tell anyone how many exciting doors this kinda thing opens up to players.

Mash: non-NPC-related and gameplay-wise, and a bit strangely, I do look forward to seeing rats in the game. I’ve always liked that one of our goals is to be a zombie survival game that’s fun even if you never see a zombie, and adding rats/vermin that could ruin your crops, contaminate your food, be used as a depressing food source, etc. is another step toward that goal. They’ve been the enemies of mankind far longer than zombies have, after all!
In terms of the map, I’m looking forward to making some larger buildings as we get into more more population-dense areas, such as malls and hospitals.

RJ: I would like to create a pet system, not with tiny cute dragons (mmh well… maybe a little one) more a dog thing. You’d find dogs that had gone slightly feral, each with its own personality, strength, characteristics, and then you’d have to tame them so they could follow you/attack and whatnot.

I think it’ll add some great experience, and make the player more “connected” with his character. A dog with a backpack on him would be awesome, eh ?

And now with West Point is pretty much here, and has the river, I need to get back to work on the fishing. I started a mod for fishing before tied up by TIS to work for them ( ), we had like 7 different fishes based on real Muldraugh/West Point river fish. I was even in touch with some fisherman to help me doing this! The weight/size of the fish was randomized (again based on real weight/size of fish), which gave you more or less hunger reduction/boredom reduction, etc. So eventually we could even have some kind of fishing competition!

We still need animations for it, and I need to rewrite the code a bit, but the idea is there.

Any plans for feral dogs/ escaped zoo animals, Clowns, or other non-human, non-zombie enemy types? (Dr.Gigglestein)

Lemmy: Very much so. Probably not zoo animals, but wildlife and feral dogs are definitely something we want to add. And as for those dead rats people find about the place? One day a dead rat will need to be earned. No zombie animals though.

Binky: I can’t deny that the prospect of drawing a bunch of realistic animal sprites by hand, with a sufficient number of animation frames to not look utterly ridiculous… did not appeal to me! Thankfully with the new system of transmogrifying animated meshes into sprites, this has turned into a task much more within my comfort zone. Well, at least I don’t wake up in a cold sweat at 4 in the morning about it any more.

What’s the prio on split-screen multiplayer? Not saying it needs work, I’m just throwing questions out there. The more information the better I think. (Pezi)

Lemmy: Yeah, about that. Due to all the recent changes that have been required to get the game up to scratch for Steam, things in the split-screen department may have gotten a little broken. We’ll look to fix that as soon as possible, but at the moment getting onto Steam is of utmost importance and while Big Picture Mode is going to be a big part of the game going forward, it may be split-screen needs to wait until Steam to get the love it deserves. Fear not though, it’s our intent to get split-screen working perfectly and are convinced that, despite being keyboard and mouse fans through and through, Zomboid is much nicer to play on joypad and while we’ll always make sure keyboard and mouse controls and UI always get the love they deserve, that joypad is in no way lacking.

Without giving too much away, do you have any idea of how many professions do you definitely want in the game? No need to name them. We like surprises. (Sir.Twiggy)

TIS: We haven’t got any solid ideas on numbers of professions, but we’re aware that professions are due some love and see no reason why we can’t ultimately have quite a large range of professions in the game. We do have plans to introduce ‘hobbies’, which would be additional ‘mini-professions’ that can be picked in multiple alongside main professions to further specialize your characters, but have not decided how this would tie into the existing points system, or whether they would have points of their own.

I ask this all the time so its probably already anticipated but… How is progression going in balancing the dragons? Will they be solo-able? (Tooks)

TIS: Unfortunately we regret to inform you that a couple of weeks ago we received a letter from the lawyers of hit HBO show Game of Thones, claiming our dragons were too similar to the dragons that appear in their show. As such, we’re currently in the process of remodeling our dragons with moustaches and fedoras before we will be able to implement them in the game.

nasKo · October 28, 2013

Mondoid, 28th October, 2013

Hello everyone! Just a quick Mondoid to go through some of the developments and plans this week.

State of 17

FPS

The good news is we’ve made a significant increase in FPS in the closed test builds. This should put it at least higher than any Steam build to date, and possibly improves on a lot of the pre-Steam version performances. There are some mild glitches and lighting artifacts due to this though and we’re looking for ways to fix these up.

Save/Load issues

Due to the inclusion of West Point, and West Point being (ironically given its name) to the North of the original map, we discovered a hotbed of potential bugs from allowing the coordinates of the world to go into the negative (int casting truncation errors in negative numbers) so as a future proofing measure we’ve moved the entire world to give us room all around us to spread out (so we don’t hit the same issue once we add Louisville). As such as well as fixing up a few issues related to loading old versions of the map (think that people could be coming from the steam beta, steam main, or desura) we’ve got to make sure maps convert properly to the new coordinates so players don’t reload into a forest.

There are a bunch of other bugs being reported, some being relatively high priority to fix. Not too many of them would forbid a public test version however, it’s really only the Save/Load issues holding us back.

Price Increase

The time is almost here. We’ve been at the same price for a couple of years now, and although we’ve yet to add the NPCs, we feel the game is getting to a place where we should raise the price. Not only because the extra money would help us better expand the game in future, but we feel it important to finally rise the price to reward early purchasers by actually having them have bought the game at a lower price than future players do.

As stated last week, the game will be priced at £9.99 (or equivalent) but we will give some days notice before we make the change and it will change after West Point is released.

Steam Launch Date
In true Indie Stone style we’re not giving an ETA on when we are planning on going on Steam, but we do have an idea ourselves which we’ve discussed with Valve. We’re planning on a pre-Xmas release, and by pre-Xmas we mean pre-Xmas sale. We’ll give more solid info as we approach the planned time and see how the build is looking. Our priority, as always, is getting something stable so we can update Desura, and we’ll see where we are at that point.

As stated in previous Mondoids, we’ll not be risking adding the 3D engine changes or NPCs prior to Steam, as the risk for completely destabilizing the build before we go onto Steam and risk us either slipping to next year or having an unplayable version on release and potentially blowing first impressions on there. As soon as we appear on Desura and Steam with a stable build, and release on Early Access, we will begin in earnest to add these features.

In the meantime, our focus is on stability, compatibility, bug fixing, polishing, and basically fixing up as many holes and loose ends as possible. We’ve also fixed the game to go back to main menu screen instead of quitting, which was long over due, and again this introduced second playthrough bugs we’d like to axe if at all possible before release. Generally though, a few biggies aside, the build is looking really good and its great to see frame-rates back where they should be. And to know that there is still plenty more to do to those (3D).

The amazing Josh_H, who created our Rezzed trailer and the amazing Zomboid teaser is working on a new trailer for us, and we’ll be looking to expand our screenshot competition (of which there is still plenty of opportunity to take part in and win!) with another competition to find exciting zomboid footage to use in it, so we’ll keep you posted!

That’s all for this week, a rather factual look at where we are. The team are massively excited about the next couple of months and can’t wait to get this update out the doors.

nasKo · November 4, 2013

Mondoid, 4th November, 2013

Yes folks, it’s official. As of Friday 8th November, Project Zomboid will finally take a place in the Early Access section of Steam!

The version that’s currently on Steam Beta today seems to be a good ‘un. We’ve sorted the FPS issues, or rather in the short term added some additional options to help players customize PZ to provide better FPS. As well as raising the FPS a bit, we’ve also locked the game to 30FPS by default (with options to raise to 45 or 60 for super rigs) but 30 provides a smoother framerate on low and high-spec systems alike, as unstable framerate is really what has been causing the game to be unplayable for many. It’s the best it can currently be and perfectly playable in the short term.

As we said last week, really there is no better time for us to go on Steam this year, and next year is not an option for us. We’re pleased with the stability of the latest build and without ripping the code apart (a mistake just before Steam) the FPS is about the best we can realistically hope for in the short term. So bring it on!

We’re both excited and terrified, but it is Early Access after all, and there are many other games up there that have gone up much earlier in development, so at some point we just have to bite the bullet, draw a line under it, and put our baby up there in front of the Steam audience. Our Greenlight voters have waited long enough!

Launch Weekend

To celebrate our launch, as well as to help provide the Steam audience with as much information about the game as possible, we are planning a whole weekend of streams from our regular streamers and YouTubers, along with reviews and information about the game, which we are hoping to link directly from our Store Page. Bug fixes permitting, we plan to spend as much time as possible in those streams to answer questions from people checking the game out.

We will also be launching a demo within the next week, which we’ll have available to download on launch from Steam to make sure everyone has the ability to see if the game is something they are interested in, if it runs okay on their machines, and if it’s developed enough for their tastes. We want everyone to be informed in their purchase to make sure as many as possible are satisfied, and this will be a big focus of our Early Access store page.

Price / Desura

We’re putting the final bit of polish and last remaining bug fixes in place before we release the new build on Desura and release on the main Steam branch. We are planning on doing this tonight, but making a few last checks to make sure save issues are a thing of the past. It’s possible it could slip to tomorrow if not, but we’re close.

At that point, we’ll be raising the price of the game to £9.99/$15.99. The game has remained at the same price since day one, and as we’ve said, not only is it important for us to help increase funding of development and look to expand going forward, but also it’s unfair to those who bought in at the start to not be rewarded with a discounted price for their early support. However, that said, the game will go on 50% off sale upon the price increase, taking it down to its original price for a limited time period, just to give people advance warning and a final chance to get the game at this price.

Trailer Footage

So this is where we need your help, fast! Once the next beta version launches today, we would be eternally grateful if some wonderful Zomboideers would be willing to help by capturing some footage for our trailer, which video miester Josh_H is currently working on. The rules are simple: Stable 30FPS, M to disable music, 720 res (or 1080 if you can handle it with stable FPS). More info can be found here. Obviously time is pretty short if we’re to have it up on Steam this Friday, so any help would be massively appreciated.

That’s all there is to say really. A very busy week ahead of us, but we’re comforted to know that, a few bugs aside, and accepting the admittedly not 100% ideal 30FPS as default for now, the build seems to be in pretty good shape already.

Love you all!

Indie Stone

nasKo · November 11, 2013

Mondoid, 11th November, 2013

Hi everyone, the briefest of brief Mondoids this week as it’s probably pretty clear what we’re up to!

The Project Zomboid Early Access Weekend went super well, and there’s an awful lot of excited new survivors scurrying around West Point and Muldraugh and dying horribly – which is great news! Our eternal thanks go out to our amazing team of mods who’ve made everything go so smoothly, and to our entire community for their patience and support. Oh, and of course to Mathas, Twiggy and anyone else who streamed the game! Twiggy’s 24 hour Zomboidathon shall go down as a thing of legend…

Clearly, there’s a lot of work to do on optimization and crash bugs that’ve got in the way of some people’s fun, alongside various other important fixes. So smoothening out the build is currently top priority – as soon as we can we’ll be putting out a Steam beta branch with a build that’ll hopefully fix current memory issues.

Another key thing to do right now is figure out a way to gracefully flick the ‘compatibility mode’ switch if people’s hardware is incompatible instead of it just locking up and pulling a grumpy face – which is tricky to do with our Java set up. So keep an eye on the Steam boards for updates as they happen.

Any other news? Well…

If you haven’t already checked it out, please have a peek at the arrival of West Point on the amazing Blindcoder’s amazing PZ Map Project!

Andy, aka Captain Binky, is doing a talk called ‘Pixelating the Apocalypse’ this Wednesday afternoon at the Bradford Animation Festival. So if you want you can buy a ticket, pop along and throw stuff.

That’s probably about it for now. Thanks everyone! You’ve all been ace to us over the past few days! We really appreciate it!

nasKo · November 18, 2013

Monoid, 19th November, 2013

Hello everyone! Just a quick and functional Mondoid this week as the team try to combine a bit of post Steam down-time, with the frantic fixing of post-Steam problems. One day we’ll get to take a proper holiday (an alpha-funders work is never complete!) but until that time comes, we have a new test version (accessible to all via the Steam ‘beta’ tab) and you can read the details of this patch here.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/108600/discussions/0/648811126626643581/

Be wary there are still a few issues we’re trying to fix before we can roll this out to everyone, so please only give the beta a try if you have no problems with trying unofficial builds and the likely higher incidence of bugs. We’ll likely be patching this beta build in the next day or so with the few new issues that have cropped up, before releasing the build proper.

In other news, Mash has been hard at work making some additional items for carpentry. At the moment, there are still a few types of object which don’t start off poor and improve as you level your skills (as the walls do, for example), but instead are immediately flawless. This needed a bit of addressing both visually, and in terms of the stats of the items.

Romain on the other hand, is plodding away making the entire game 100% playable using a controller. This is essential both for playing the game using Steam Big Picture mode and for splitscreen co-op (which is in the process of being de-bugulated), as well as hopefully making the game more playable for those with accessibility issues.

SO, Steam then eh?

Phew! Well, the Steam launch started off a bit shaky but it looks like everything’s worked out reasonably well. We had heard stories about the nosediving effect having a demo can have on sales but we’re really, really glad we stuck to our guns on that one, even if it’s possible we may have lost some sales because of it. Numbers have been strong enough that we’re sorted for continued, and possibly even slightly expanded, development in the New Year. Which is nice. Unless everyone immediately stops buying PZ now. Please don’t do that.

But by crikey, there’s a lot to look forward to in the New Year and beyond. And we, along with everyone else on the planet, are also massively looking forward to DayZ standalone, and huuuuge thanks and love and hugs to Dean Hall for the shout-outs to Zomboid.

Population Exploooooooosion!

Well, that’s what we’re hoping will happen with our forum, anyway. Why not join our lovely community and chime in on some of the fun discussions happening right now?

Share your survival tips and safehouse locations (the last link is where the header image came from, btw!)

Zombies and bathrooms–what’s with that?

Your most undignified PZ moments

Check out the mods available for playing, or learn how to make your own!

The essential question: Pancakes vs. Waffles, which is the superior breakfast food?

vs

See you next week!

nasKo · November 25, 2013

Mondoid, 25th November, 2013

Hey everyone, Happy Mondoid! Here’s the run-down on what we’re up to here at The Indie Stone.

MAP RENOVATIN’
A fair portion of the original Muldraugh map was built in the wee early days before Easy Pickins’ amazing building editor was available for use by the development team. We’re currently in the process of rebuilding these, even though the renovations might not be immediately obvious to the player. Right now we’ve worked on all the relevant ‘non-house’ strutures, and are now moving onto residential areas.

So, why bother? Well, rebuilding these potential safehouses will make them more stable – you should hopefully be able to kiss goodbye to bugs like falling through the floors of the factory. On top of that loot will be better defined, and lighting errors that stem from having things on the wrong layers should be eliminated.

The next bit of map building will concentrate on filling out areas and completing half-done areas all over the map. (As of now, you might ‘choo-choo-choose’ to revisit certain areas…)

STABLISIN’ AND OPTIMISIN’
This is a continuing process, and in the beta branch and the upcoming build we’re already seeing much better results in some that previously found the game unplayable.

We’ll continue to improve this as we go forward and will remain a priority until the game can run on any PC that should be able to handle it. Another version of the beta is due out within the next few days (depending on how testing works out) and if that goes well we’ll look to doing a full release. Then we can start thinking of restarting work on exciting stuff like NPCs that we know most people are clamouring for.

BALANCIN’
In the existing and upcoming Steam beta patches we’ve been going to great pains to improve item balance in Zomboid. On one hand we don’t want you to get too much loot, but on the other we don’t want to make every survival bout a treasure hunt for… say… a trowel. Or for tent pegs. Or a hammer. The lack of these items certainly seems to’ve made it difficult for people to start farming, camping or building when starting a game in West Point.

As such we’re introducing lots of new ‘specific room/area’ spawning. So, for example you’ll likely find those items in the West Point tools store (in front of Sea Horse coffee). There’ll also, meanwhile, be an added likelihood to find them in kitchens, sheds and the like. Useful tools should be where you expect to find them!

While we’re talking balance, meanwhile, we’ll also be nerfing the rain collector. We’ve noticed in playthroughs that players haven’t been stocking water prior to the shut-off, and have been able to survive with two or three crafted rain collectors. That’s too easy, don’t you think? You’ll now be able to build a rain collector at Carpentry level two BUT it’ll be small – and need extra materials, like trash bags. The one you’re used to crafting now will only be available at Carpentry level 4.

BUG HUNTIN’
In the released beta patch and the upcoming one we’ve stomped on a lot of bugs and glitches – some of which will have been making your survival more painful than it needed to be. For example, the alarms that could sound in your safehouse after loading up saved games. That one’s been killed. Likewise farming bugs, disappearing textures and problems with harvesting.

In terms of crafting bugs we’ve also now defeated the ‘getting naked to create bandages’ bug, and the weirdness that meant that rotten food could be used in recipes to make fresh food. (Cooking now takes into account the age of the recipe items used, and the resultant product is their average age). All this will be in the next beta build.

Next up on the priority fix list is the crafted stairs bugs – we want to stop limiting your wooden skyscraper creation!

CONTROLLER SUPPORTIN’
It isn’t an immediate priority, but in Romain’s down-time he’s also been working on gamepad support. As people will be aware, plugging in a pad results in rudimentary (and highly experimental) local co-op play – and Romain will be slowly building on this whenever he doesn’t have bugs to fix. This week gamepad-use on the menu screen has been worked on, and next up he’ll adapt the in-game menu to it too.

Once we’ve got the game fully playable with a controller, Romain will be finishing off local co-op – with multiple moodle displays, skills panels, save game capabilities, character creation etc. This is all a way off though, and we don’t have any particular timescale for it.

NEW ITEM CREATIN’
Eagle-eyed survivors will have noticed new items popping up in the game that currently have no obvious use- glue, duct tape and whatnot. Well, they might have something to do with the weapon-repair system that’s under discussion between Mash, Binky and Romain/RJ. Likewise other items will go towards making our current recipes more realistic – thread will be needed to make a tent kit for example. So, watch this space on that one!

COMMUNITY MEET-UP PLANNIN’
Would anyone be interested in a PZ meet-up in Newcastle on a weekend in January? It’d be lovely to meet some of you lot. We’re also considering having a PZ group hug at Rezzed (Birmingham, UK) in March if you’re interested. Just putting it out there!

That’s about it – tune in to the Steam beta to try out the new builds as and when they appear. Enjoy your desperate, and doomed, attempts to survive against insurmountable odds!

nasKo · December 2, 2013

Mondoid, 2nd December, 2013

Once upon a time Mondays were exclusively reserved for comic strip cats to make snide observations about while discussing lasagne and/or their owner’s love life.
Well, no more. Monday’s now for Mondoid – your one stop shop (Hi Mathas!) for everything that’s happening deep inside Project Zomboid development.

Stabilisin’ / Bug fixin’ / Beta build releasin’
Fixing up for the next Steam beta build is still progressing, and we’re hoping for a public beta to go out today. It’s possible it already has by the time you read this. We’ll see where we are before this Mondoid is posted and if it’s already been released then we’ll say ‘Yes! Released!” here and link to its thread on Steam: [sorry, not released yet].

This past weekend has been awash with bugs fixes, and we launched this upcoming beta branch build build to our internal testers for feedback.

Bug fixes relating to farming, carpentry as well as some UI polish have also been completed. You can read the complete upcoming beta change list (along with the current beta features that are still new and upcoming to non beta and Desura peeps) in the following thread: http://steamcommunity.com/app/108600/discussions/0/648812305221475882/

As always work on performance, plugging up memory leaks and other important tasks are still going – and going well. With this coming beta build we hope to see some improvement on most systems. As we say in the beta thread though, it may take a few versions to get where we want to be – so if you still have problems, have hope.

We’re also looking into auto-detecting the need for Compatibility Mode to avoid the black screen issues, and already hope to have reduced the number of instances dramatically. Then again we’re unlikely to have gotten them all, so again – this will be an ongoing effort throughout the next few patches if necessary.

Buildin’ hordes
We got lots of enthusiastic ‘thumbs up’ motions from our internal testers when we gave them the upcoming build – especially in relation to its rebalanced (read: raised) zombie counts. New survivors should beware… hordes are coming back, and they’re not pleasant to deal with.

We’re braced for a torrent of ‘OMG too many zombies’ forum posts when the build hits, but we think it necessary to get the zed-count and difficulty levels back to what it was in pre-Steam Muldraugh. You’re gonna get munched, but that’s how things roll in and around Knox Country…

Repairin’ weapons
In and amongst his bug hunt RJ (Romain) has crafted a new weapon repair system that’ll be part of the upcoming beta build. This involves a bunch of the new items that we’ve recently added to the game, weapon condition stats and a couple of new traits. You can find details in this forum thread: http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/3735-the-fixing-system/

Designin’ long awaited NPC / Meta-Game stuff
Okay we’re not ready to go into too many details, as we’ve run into the issue of blowing our load way too early and hyping everyone up a little too much on the NPCs issue in the past.
BUT…

This week we’ve made some massive strides in terms of designing the high level meta-game in such a way that it should dramatically ease the work that’ll be involved when it comes to restarting full-scale NPC development.

It’s also safe to say that the approach we’ve opened up can potentially open up better, more interesting results – as well as open up some ace future gameplay possibilities for the Sadistic AI Director component. Especially when it comes to… erm… multiplayer.

Oh man, so many PZ excitement buzzwords in once place! Please don’t get in too much of a tizz over all this just yet, this is all a fair ways off, but we’re building the NPC metagame framework again – and it feels good.

Love y’all.

TIS

PS: we still get quite a few questions about how to get a Steam key if PZ was previously bought from Desura (or Google Checkout, way back in the day), so if you’re wondering about this, please check out this page: http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2013/11/returning-to-pz/

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