EnigmaGrey

We've always recommended creating private servers instead of public servers -- they are by far what most of our users use. It's the easiest way to prevent cheating. It's quite unlikely we'll ever truly be able to lock down the game entirely short of using something like Goldeneye or doing a total rewrite (like minecraft bedrock edition). We can only do the best we can with what we have, otherwise. Some of this will likely improve with build 42 though I can't speculate on this specific issue -- I believe it might be the first time it's been reported. We'll take a look.

We've always recommended creating private servers instead of public servers -- they are by far what most of our users use. It's the easiest way to prevent cheating. It's quite unlikely we'll ever truly be able to lock down the game entirely short of using something like Goldeneye or doing a total rewrite (like minecraft bedrock edition). We can only do the best we can with what we have, otherwise. Some of this will likely improve with build 42 though I can't speculate on this specific issue -- I believe it might be the first time it's been reported. We'll take a look.

We've always recommended creating private servers instead of public servers -- they are by far what most of our users use. It's the easiest way to prevent cheating. It's quite unlikely we'll ever truly be able to lock down the game entirely short of using something like Goldeneye or doing a total rewrite (like minecraft bedrock edition). We can only do the best we can with what we have, otherwise. Some of this will likely improve with build 42 though I can't speculate on this specific issue -- I believe it might be the first time it's been reported. We'll take a look.

I think perhaps my views seemed more critical than intended (it sort follows on from the context of the vanilla server discussion earlier).
 
So earlier in that original discussion, I mentioned I didn't mind other players using mods, I however feel some mods are compensating for unintended gameplay mechanics. I "embrace the suck", as you say, because for me, I'm approaching this game from a beta-test angle.
 
In gameplay design, there's a view towards protecting a player 'from themselves'. For example, players in video games will often hoard and not use health items, fearing some upcoming boss battle. What ends up happening is not only do they not use the items during the course of the game (which is what they're supposed to be for), they also don't use it during the boss battle. The end result is the player engages in hoarding and micro-management of the inventory in what should be a fast-paced game. Half-life 2 solved this by making medkits instant use. Other games solve this by making stationary healing areas, or by limiting the health item slot to one, encouraging the player to use up spares. Some games lean into the hoarding factor and encourage it, by making it more pleasant by removing inventory micro-management (for example, Link in BotW can hold basically an infinite number of meals. Don't ask where he stores it all).
 
It strikes me currently that players are so singly afraid of that one-bite-run-ender (especially if one has been squirrelling away a lot of resources), they either play extremely safe, in a way that's arguably not fun and defeats the point of having zombies (go to a remote enough wood area and you're basically in sandbox Minecraft), or upon the tiniest unfair mistake - and they do happen - they fire up debug mode and remove the infection via god mode. The other way being, they invent a mod that mitigates that risk; cures, super-thick body armour, a crap ton of guns.
 
Essentially it strikes me the players are trying to avoid the key feature of Zomboid, which are the zombies. What you end up with is a sort of... remote wood hoarding simulator. Which suggests to me the gameplay mechanics need an adjustment. I've not yet sussed what the adjustment needs to be as I'm testing the 'hide in a remote house' strategy.
 
For me, I had the most fun when I was periodically sneaking from house to house, staying for a period of time in each one, trying to conservatively use canned supplies, whilst killing zombies in backgardens, as I didn't have to worry about trying to ferry goods everywhere. At one point, I thought the zombies stopped pursuing you the moment you went indoors. It's not how they actually behave, but I found the idea of zombies losing interest if you go indoors interesting because it invites a stealthy strategy.
 
I'm having the 'least' fun with the remote house setup. It's safe, but it is... also boring. However, the game hard punishes any exciting playstyles. I tried a run where I was aggressive with a dedicated strength build, and despite capping 100+ zombies (pure melee), it was over by day 3 because of an errant bite. Essentially, the more zombie engagements you have, the higher the probability of a bite, so the game encourages zero zombie engagements.
 
I suspect this might be because killing zombies themselves does not carry any direct rewards (besides maybe better clothing and a bag). I think zombies ought to be carrying food supplies more frequently, as well as maybe other types of more frequent rewards. That way, the risk has a reward as trade-off.
 
I also tried the hobo foraging approach, which sort-of works but because foraging does not find food regularly enough, and most of that foraged food goes stale very quickly (sometimes, such as mushrooms, even immediately!), you end up still setting up a collection point, which then turns into a remote wood base.

I'm not sure what the 'right' style of play is, or what the gameplay mechanics should be tweaked to... but I'm not a fan of OCD hoarding where I spend all day inventory sorting, and I'm also not a fan of suicide missions. Still, I think mods are trying to patch the symptoms, and not the cause.

Updating the AI to act a bit smarter around fences would add a really fun way to weigh risk versus reward around fences and windows. 
 
If the player is within a certain small radius to where the zombie may vault over that window or fence, then the zombie will go for a grab over the fence and attempt to bite the player. Similar to the scene in Shaun of the Dead where the guy gets grabbed through the window of the bar and ripped to shreds. This would still fit the mindlessness of Brook's zombies.
 
Gameplay wise, this would balance the instakill cheese over windows and fences where players are just waiting with their backs against the fence/window for zombies to vault over. Instead this would make it a matter of timing/skill to keep distance to not get grabbed before the zombie vaults and not getting tripped when the zombie lunges after the vault. High risk, high reward for the instakill. 
 
I think that this would be a welcomed change given the new updates to breakable chain link fences and could be linked in to the WIP in regards to updated zombie fence AI. 

*shrugs* To be blunt: We fundamentally disagree on game design and what PZ should be.
 
So your only alternative is mods.
 
Edit: just to be sure, I do agree with you in principal. Project Zomboid has certain design choices that does not make it a good game in a traditional sense. That's one of the things that likely most frustrates players who find themselves on the fence. The trouble is ... a lot of things that work in other genres don't work in a "realistic" survival game when combined with an open world sandbox and PZ's setting.
 
Events have to happen more organically (and unfortunately sometimes it means not at all); progression and survival become  risk aversion and hoarding; death is one wrong move away; the mechanics are mostly nondeterministic (but have just enough wiggle room that you can still master them if you pay attention and experiment); tedium, when done right, even feeds into the feeling that this is "real" and discourages some bad behaviours (see mods that remove weight limits eventually bricking saves because people collect so much when there's no impediment); and, worst of all -- the game either ends in your death or your player bored out of their gourd in purgatory -- how very existential and uncomfortable.
 
It's a very strange tightrope to walk versus the usual thing you would do when making a game. And it's simply not done yet; that as more content gets into the game, I feel many of these problems are going to slowly fall away, albeit in unexpected ways. But, it won't work for everyone. :/
 
I appreciate the enthusiasm. Please don't let me discourage you -- there's lots to work with, it's just a lil ' bit niche. :p

*shrugs* To be blunt: We fundamentally disagree on game design and what PZ should be.
 
So your only alternative is mods.
 
Edit: just to be sure, I do agree with you in principal. Project Zomboid has certain design choices that does not make it a good game in a traditional sense. That's one of the things that likely most frustrates players who find themselves on the fence. The trouble is ... a lot of things that work in other genres don't work in a "realistic" survival game when combined with an open world sandbox and PZ's setting.
 
Events have to happen more organically (and unfortunately sometimes it means not at all); progression and survival become  risk aversion and hoarding; death is one wrong move away; the mechanics are mostly nondeterministic (but have just enough wiggle room that you can still master them if you pay attention and experiment); tedium, when done right, even feeds into the feeling that this is "real" and discourages some bad behaviours (see mods that remove weight limits eventually bricking saves because people collect so much when there's no impediment); and, worst of all -- the game either ends in your death or your player bored out of their gourd in purgatory -- how very existential and uncomfortable.
 
It's a very strange tightrope to walk versus the usual thing you would do when making a game. And it's simply not done yet; that as more content gets into the game, I feel many of these problems are going to slowly fall away, albeit in unexpected ways. But, it won't work for everyone. :/
 
I appreciate the enthusiasm. Please don't let me discourage you -- there's lots to work with, it's just a lil ' bit niche. :p

Almost none of this fits Project Zomboid. :/
 
50/50 fences? Sure, maybe.
 
Zombies already differ in physical state. We are not going to L4D it.
 
Discount the human characteristics from Romero zombies and focus on Brook's stuff to get a better idea of why we've landed on what we did.

I enjoy mods, but I've not looked at modding PZ. I think the only mod I would like to make right now is to have a vegan trait where meat and such makes you unhappy and beans and lentils give you a boost instead of their current negative. The unhappiness would decrease over time as the character got used to it but it would never fully go away.

Gotta disagree about most of this.
 
Mods more often fill niches we're not interested in exploring, in ways that we feel would not be fitting with the game; Mods often scratch that power-fantasy itch that some expect from their games; mods often turn something more organic ( and yes, playing it safe is the natural outcome of that in this setting ) into something more gamey if that's what players want. This may sound judgmental, but it's all good to me -- the whole point of supporting mods is to let you do your own thing (up until it impinges development) while we do ours, after all.
 
It's just that people as a group also do not agree on everything and don't seem to have a grasp on what they actually like. They often ruin the fun for themselves because of this. We can't make millions happy -  sometimes we can't even make ourselves happy because working in a team is always going to be some of compromise, even while pursuing a specific vision.
 
  PZ can't be all things to all people short of recreating the universe atom by atom: you see needless grind, other people see 400 hours of gameplay  inexplicably chasing those skills (when they could just change the XP modifier). I'm personally bewildered by this and we'll likely change the skill system to what we feel are it main detractors, but you do you.
 
Same thing for combat. Some people do not seem to want to put in the time to plan ahead (anticipate momentum, know when they pushed too far for the underlying mechanics)  or learn how it works (trial and error; change behaviour; die a lot) -- so be it, there's a mod for that. Some people do not like randomness in games at all -- so be it, someone will probably mod it out one day. But ... we're not going to take on things we feel would hurt the game or slow/distract development just because server owners are way too liberal with mod selection. :/
 
We respect your right choose, to customize the game. Just remember that our goals might not match your taste (same for individual servers).
 
In practical terms? just got to get out of your own head and have some fun. That's all that matters (so long as you're not hurting other people). Don't worry about ruining the vanilla experience for yourself. Mod it, tweak it, or don't touch anything and embrace the suck. Don't overthink it, unless that's fun in itself, ofc. :p

Gotta disagree about most of this.
 
Mods more often fill niches we're not interested in exploring, in ways that we feel would not be fitting with the game; Mods often scratch that power-fantasy itch that some expect from their games; mods often turn something more organic ( and yes, playing it safe is the natural outcome of that in this setting ) into something more gamey if that's what players want. This may sound judgmental, but it's all good to me -- the whole point of supporting mods is to let you do your own thing (up until it impinges development) while we do ours, after all.
 
It's just that people as a group also do not agree on everything and don't seem to have a grasp on what they actually like. They often ruin the fun for themselves because of this. We can't make millions happy -  sometimes we can't even make ourselves happy because working in a team is always going to be some of compromise, even while pursuing a specific vision.
 
  PZ can't be all things to all people short of recreating the universe atom by atom: you see needless grind, other people see 400 hours of gameplay  inexplicably chasing those skills (when they could just change the XP modifier). I'm personally bewildered by this and we'll likely change the skill system to what we feel are it main detractors, but you do you.
 
Same thing for combat. Some people do not seem to want to put in the time to plan ahead (anticipate momentum, know when they pushed too far for the underlying mechanics)  or learn how it works (trial and error; change behaviour; die a lot) -- so be it, there's a mod for that. Some people do not like randomness in games at all -- so be it, someone will probably mod it out one day. But ... we're not going to take on things we feel would hurt the game or slow/distract development just because server owners are way too liberal with mod selection. :/
 
We respect your right choose, to customize the game. Just remember that our goals might not match your taste (same for individual servers).
 
In practical terms? just got to get out of your own head and have some fun. That's all that matters (so long as you're not hurting other people). Don't worry about ruining the vanilla experience for yourself. Mod it, tweak it, or don't touch anything and embrace the suck. Don't overthink it, unless that's fun in itself, ofc. :p

see, what really draw me to this game was exactly the "The Sims 1" visual, but with guns!  Also, being able to get in a car and actually drive it , something TS1 wouldnt allow.
some may say that bad advertising is still advertising. But getting too many people to the game with the wrong idea, could be harmful in the long term. To tell you the truth, the first time i installed the game, i hated it, and ended up uninstalling it. Didn't ask for a refund. Later on, i don't know why, it came to me that saying "good things are hard", ... so i decided to try again. In my gameplay, i came from "dying in the 2nd zombie" to "being able to survive almost 2 months" .  I'm still trying.
many games allow external modding, PZ is not the first and surelly wont be the last. Hell, depending of that one person's perspective,  any changes to the default behaviour of a game could be considered modding. Like difficulty (easy - normal - hard) , camera-view, etc.  Its just "internal" modding.
 
like i tried to mention in the other thread, (and SilentLight 's writing corrected me ) its only my personal feeling, that external mods change too much the original gameplay intention. And it really might get to a point of being a cheating mechanism. Someone said in an earlier post, that a non-official modded server could be used intentionally to harm  other people, and i agree, because the majority of the players actually have no idea  of what the source code of those mods could do. Trojans and backdoor exploits, maybe ? It's online , right,  so it's always good to be careful.
Yes. Well, if the game allows modding, as long as the source code is not being modified, people could have a possibility to create their own experience. It's a good thing, i think. But at this point, i'll stick with the "vanilla way" of playing. At least, until i can figure out the rest of the game. Who knows, in the furure, i might too, to try mods, We never know.

Gotta disagree about most of this.
 
Mods more often fill niches we're not interested in exploring, in ways that we feel would not be fitting with the game; Mods often scratch that power-fantasy itch that some expect from their games; mods often turn something more organic ( and yes, playing it safe is the natural outcome of that in this setting ) into something more gamey if that's what players want. This may sound judgmental, but it's all good to me -- the whole point of supporting mods is to let you do your own thing (up until it impinges development) while we do ours, after all.
 
It's just that people as a group also do not agree on everything and don't seem to have a grasp on what they actually like. They often ruin the fun for themselves because of this. We can't make millions happy -  sometimes we can't even make ourselves happy because working in a team is always going to be some of compromise, even while pursuing a specific vision.
 
  PZ can't be all things to all people short of recreating the universe atom by atom: you see needless grind, other people see 400 hours of gameplay  inexplicably chasing those skills (when they could just change the XP modifier). I'm personally bewildered by this and we'll likely change the skill system to what we feel are it main detractors, but you do you.
 
Same thing for combat. Some people do not seem to want to put in the time to plan ahead (anticipate momentum, know when they pushed too far for the underlying mechanics)  or learn how it works (trial and error; change behaviour; die a lot) -- so be it, there's a mod for that. Some people do not like randomness in games at all -- so be it, someone will probably mod it out one day. But ... we're not going to take on things we feel would hurt the game or slow/distract development just because server owners are way too liberal with mod selection. :/
 
We respect your right choose, to customize the game. Just remember that our goals might not match your taste (same for individual servers).
 
In practical terms? just got to get out of your own head and have some fun. That's all that matters (so long as you're not hurting other people). Don't worry about ruining the vanilla experience for yourself. Mod it, tweak it, or don't touch anything and embrace the suck. Don't overthink it, unless that's fun in itself, ofc. :p

Gotta disagree about most of this.
 
Mods more often fill niches we're not interested in exploring, in ways that we feel would not be fitting with the game; Mods often scratch that power-fantasy itch that some expect from their games; mods often turn something more organic ( and yes, playing it safe is the natural outcome of that in this setting ) into something more gamey if that's what players want. This may sound judgmental, but it's all good to me -- the whole point of supporting mods is to let you do your own thing (up until it impinges development) while we do ours, after all.
 
It's just that people as a group also do not agree on everything and don't seem to have a grasp on what they actually like. They often ruin the fun for themselves because of this. We can't make millions happy -  sometimes we can't even make ourselves happy because working in a team is always going to be some of compromise, even while pursuing a specific vision.
 
  PZ can't be all things to all people short of recreating the universe atom by atom: you see needless grind, other people see 400 hours of gameplay  inexplicably chasing those skills (when they could just change the XP modifier). I'm personally bewildered by this and we'll likely change the skill system to what we feel are it main detractors, but you do you.
 
Same thing for combat. Some people do not seem to want to put in the time to plan ahead (anticipate momentum, know when they pushed too far for the underlying mechanics)  or learn how it works (trial and error; change behaviour; die a lot) -- so be it, there's a mod for that. Some people do not like randomness in games at all -- so be it, someone will probably mod it out one day. But ... we're not going to take on things we feel would hurt the game or slow/distract development just because server owners are way too liberal with mod selection. :/
 
We respect your right choose, to customize the game. Just remember that our goals might not match your taste (same for individual servers).
 
In practical terms? just got to get out of your own head and have some fun. That's all that matters (so long as you're not hurting other people). Don't worry about ruining the vanilla experience for yourself. Mod it, tweak it, or don't touch anything and embrace the suck. Don't overthink it, unless that's fun in itself, ofc. :p

This is a forked thread from a discussion about someone's offer for a free server. I've forked it on the basis the discussion is less about the server offer and more about views on the differences between vanilla and mod experiences. I don't want to derail the other person's thread. Original post I'm replying to.
 
 
The issue I have with modded play, especially in YouTube videos, is they actually change what the outside perception is of the base experience of Project Zomboid.

I was drawn in because of a YouTube video, but I was very confused when I noticed certain features were absent in the game. Many of these videos don't carry disclaimers upfront that they're modded - often just mentioned offhand late into the video - and some them can even give advice that is incorrect for unmodded gameplay.

And many of these mods can be contradictory (a 'realistic' weapons mod that introduces a lethal rapid fire BB gun), or contrary to the difficult spirit of Project Zomboid gameplay, for example, rapid fire machine guns, an overabundance of easily accessible guns, easy-to-move doors, overpowered armour that is 'relatively' easy to access, negation of slower-walking-whilst-aiming (without the nimblefooted skill), the introduction of careers that make things easier (E.G. soldier), a bow and arrow that offers stealth and no drawbacks.

To me, that effectively feels like I'm cheating the underlying mechanic, or rather, not respecting the underlying intention that things be difficult. I also think it distorts the outside perception of what Project Zomboid actually entails. As an outsider, to me, it looked like a game where you endlessly gun down large hordes of zombies, with maybe some Minecraft-esque base building and survival. A sort of, tower-defence type feel.

But when I started playing it, and saw how slow reading for a skill was, and the manual fridge food cooking washing and mood aspect, I said 'this is like the Sims [the classic early 2000s version] with zombies'. And that's probably the more accurate portrayal. The Sims with zombies. Not 'Doom run and gun large hordes'.
 


For me, the jury is still out on my opinion of Project Zomboid. I like the intention, I can see what they're going for - what a Zombie movie would look like if you took away the glamour and showed what happened inbetween. But I also feel like certain elements of the gameplay... don't lend themselves to fun. And I don't mean 'Doom shooty shooty' fun, but the kind of general fun you're meant to have in a game. The skill tree feels grindy and inconsistent - somehow a guy who spends days studying a book knows less than a guy who watched a one hour cooking show(???) and gameplay kinda feels like it swings between two extremes - high intensity all-on zombie fleeing action or household chore simulator. There is something there, I can feel this game has greatness, but, it feels a bit... sloggy.

I feel like the mods are an attempt to compensate for the uneven vanilla gameplay, but they're introducing other people's visions of what they think a zombie game should be and nearly all of those views involve 'gunning down large quantities of the undead'. The problem is those ideas aren't novel. I think Project Zomboid is onto something with the Sims angle, but it feels like the zombie combat experience and the time spent hiding like a coward in your house doing household chores in vanilla gameplay are disjointed affairs.

Gotta disagree about most of this.
 
Mods more often fill niches we're not interested in exploring, in ways that we feel would not be fitting with the game; Mods often scratch that power-fantasy itch that some expect from their games; mods often turn something more organic ( and yes, playing it safe is the natural outcome of that in this setting ) into something more gamey if that's what players want. This may sound judgmental, but it's all good to me -- the whole point of supporting mods is to let you do your own thing (up until it impinges development) while we do ours, after all.
 
It's just that people as a group also do not agree on everything and don't seem to have a grasp on what they actually like. They often ruin the fun for themselves because of this. We can't make millions happy -  sometimes we can't even make ourselves happy because working in a team is always going to be some of compromise, even while pursuing a specific vision.
 
  PZ can't be all things to all people short of recreating the universe atom by atom: you see needless grind, other people see 400 hours of gameplay  inexplicably chasing those skills (when they could just change the XP modifier). I'm personally bewildered by this and we'll likely change the skill system to what we feel are it main detractors, but you do you.
 
Same thing for combat. Some people do not seem to want to put in the time to plan ahead (anticipate momentum, know when they pushed too far for the underlying mechanics)  or learn how it works (trial and error; change behaviour; die a lot) -- so be it, there's a mod for that. Some people do not like randomness in games at all -- so be it, someone will probably mod it out one day. But ... we're not going to take on things we feel would hurt the game or slow/distract development just because server owners are way too liberal with mod selection. :/
 
We respect your right choose, to customize the game. Just remember that our goals might not match your taste (same for individual servers).
 
In practical terms? just got to get out of your own head and have some fun. That's all that matters (so long as you're not hurting other people). Don't worry about ruining the vanilla experience for yourself. Mod it, tweak it, or don't touch anything and embrace the suck. Don't overthink it, unless that's fun in itself, ofc. :p

IsoThumpables are objects that can be thumped; it's inherited by IsoObjects which may be things like IsoDoor -- but every IsoDoor is ultimately an IsoThumpable. It's not that convoluted.
 
You're looking at byte flags for loading isoThumpables from a save file. *Shrugs*  I don't see how replacing a couple if statements with a full on trait system would make a difference in loading files that are so tiny. It's premature to blame your problems on load speed, frankly.
 
OOP is often needlessly complex/verbose to the point it's difficult to conceptualize and expand upon. It's increasingly fallen out of favour for game development, giving way to entity-component systems. It's really what we should have done back in the day. Regardless, there'll be a lot of jank that developed out of necessity or while transitioning from C# to Java from back in the day.  
 
Welcome to the infinitely interleaving alpha-beta-release-maintenance cycle that is Agile.

This is because these objects are composed of multiple tiles and each tile has different lighting. It's not a bug; unsightly, yes, but just an intentional part of the way the game is built. It may change in the future.

IsoThumpables are objects that can be thumped; it's inherited by IsoObjects which may be things like IsoDoor -- but every IsoDoor is ultimately an IsoThumpable. It's not that convoluted.
 
You're looking at byte flags for loading isoThumpables from a save file. *Shrugs*  I don't see how replacing a couple if statements with a full on trait system would make a difference in loading files that are so tiny. It's premature to blame your problems on load speed, frankly.
 
OOP is often needlessly complex/verbose to the point it's difficult to conceptualize and expand upon. It's increasingly fallen out of favour for game development, giving way to entity-component systems. It's really what we should have done back in the day. Regardless, there'll be a lot of jank that developed out of necessity or while transitioning from C# to Java from back in the day.  
 
Welcome to the infinitely interleaving alpha-beta-release-maintenance cycle that is Agile.

Sorting in terms of occlusion; the frustum of s 3D fps/3rd person over shoulder will contain far fewer things than an overhead camera giving 360 degrees of vision.
 
AoE capped max units for the entire map. It was a very small number compared to PZ; we'd exceed the cap pretty much immediately on spawn if we were to do that. Red Alert 2 letting its fps chug if too many units were present wasn't a great approach. I just don't get the point of this -- yeah, its cool (I lived through it :p), but we can't roll back the clock and write the game like it's 1999 anymore (though the first versions probably count as they could be run on hardware from 2001 or so. It wasn't until 2018 that PZ required shaders. If Intel GMAs weren't so common, we probably would've advanced a lot faster -- but it couldn't handle the drawing the 3D models with em).
 
Similar thing for Jedi: Academy, but we made a very generalized game spanning 3 platforms simultaneously in Java, not one custom built and optimized for specific hardware, as it's ports likely were.
 
Rewriting the game in C and assembler isn't an option for us. Neither is greatly scaling it down, unfortunately. 
 
Iirc, caching is already done for PZ's pathfinding, as is reducing individual zombies into large hordes when unloaded to reduce costs. Modified A* to handle the possibility of 4 walls on a single tile? But again, not my job to know the intricate details of it. Same deal for whatever rendering algorithm is used.
 
You're always welcome to poke around with IntelliJ IDEA's decompiler if you want.  It'll probably provide clearer answers.

Go to %userprofile%\zomboid\saves\multiplayer\ and change servertest to match the name of the new server. (Servertest is the default name. If you used a different name initially, rename that one.) 

Sorting in terms of occlusion; the frustum of s 3D fps/3rd person over shoulder will contain far fewer things than an overhead camera giving 360 degrees of vision.
 
AoE capped max units for the entire map. It was a very small number compared to PZ; we'd exceed the cap pretty much immediately on spawn if we were to do that. Red Alert 2 letting its fps chug if too many units were present wasn't a great approach. I just don't get the point of this -- yeah, its cool (I lived through it :p), but we can't roll back the clock and write the game like it's 1999 anymore (though the first versions probably count as they could be run on hardware from 2001 or so. It wasn't until 2018 that PZ required shaders. If Intel GMAs weren't so common, we probably would've advanced a lot faster -- but it couldn't handle the drawing the 3D models with em).
 
Similar thing for Jedi: Academy, but we made a very generalized game spanning 3 platforms simultaneously in Java, not one custom built and optimized for specific hardware, as it's ports likely were.
 
Rewriting the game in C and assembler isn't an option for us. Neither is greatly scaling it down, unfortunately. 
 
Iirc, caching is already done for PZ's pathfinding, as is reducing individual zombies into large hordes when unloaded to reduce costs. Modified A* to handle the possibility of 4 walls on a single tile? But again, not my job to know the intricate details of it. Same deal for whatever rendering algorithm is used.
 
You're always welcome to poke around with IntelliJ IDEA's decompiler if you want.  It'll probably provide clearer answers.

A city has tens of thousands of tiles instead of hundreds; thousands of isoobjects (like interior decoration and objects) and up to eight layers to sort through. Trees and grass on one level are much simpler.
 
Think of it like unpacking a Pickup. You have 36 boxes. The only thing you can change is how fast you move them, not how many you move at each time. (The forest.)
 
Now you try to unload a box truck. You have 180 boxes to move. 
 
Now imagine that box truck might be 8 trucks high and has half a dozen boxes nested inside each box that need to be sorted first. (A city.)
 
What's going to happen? The job's the same -- move a box. But it takes much longer to complete because there's so many. You can only move them one at a time -- faster when fitter, but still only one at a time.
 
 Lot of programming boils down to this sort of thing -- how long it takes to interact with and sort  a group of things; and unfortunately you do eventually hit a wall where you just can't go faster without significant consequences (if at all). ( That's also why having an arbitrary goal like using "100%" of your gpu or cpu is meaningless in practice, because sometimes things can only happen one way to get your end result.)
 
(also you have to do it in reverse because the game is 2d and isometric, hence issues with occlusion.)
 
b42 is in theory the fix -- take the cpu out of the equation so it can do other things (depth buffer on the gpu); reduce the number of boxes to sort by putting them all in one big box, etc. But there are trade offs to this -- we can't use that depth buffer for other things anymore, it'll need more ram, or the game will have to reprocess that megabox if something changes. 
 
btw, I'm self taught and have only a cursory knowledge of this stuff myself, picking up what I could while I worked here for the past 12 years and I am not the people that wrote it -- tested the results and pointed out things, though. So I'm not going to write an exam on it, frankly. No idea why you'd see the same results on significantly different hardware -- I certainly don't. Iirc in testing, hiding the interiors was simply the difference between 60 fps and 40 fps driving through West Point, on a middling system, so we did it. Easy trade, since most people never noticed. 
 
(3D fpses have far less to sort compared to 2d isometric games. Dramatically less. Old isometric games tended to be much simpler and cheat an awful lot to pull it off -- see how many floors you can build in the sims for example. GTA is also full 3D, so isn't applicable.)
 
(and you're not wrong -- zombies are a significant cost themselves. Nothing is free.)
 
(CPU sorts the tiles then passes the list to the gpu; the cpu isn't drawing the tiles unless you're using some sort of software renderer to make up for missing features in your gpu.)
 
(Cores don't matter -- not everything can be multithreaded. You'll be limited by how fast the main thread or the rendering thread runs which will ideally be on different cores, but thats up to your os. And note GHz is fairly meaningless these days; generally cpu manufacturers use other tricks to get more operations per cycle, so you can't compare a 2.4 ghz system from 2024 to 2011 on ghz alone.)

This is because these objects are composed of multiple tiles and each tile has different lighting. It's not a bug; unsightly, yes, but just an intentional part of the way the game is built. It may change in the future.

A city has tens of thousands of tiles instead of hundreds; thousands of isoobjects (like interior decoration and objects) and up to eight layers to sort through. Trees and grass on one level are much simpler.
 
Think of it like unpacking a Pickup. You have 36 boxes. The only thing you can change is how fast you move them, not how many you move at each time. (The forest.)
 
Now you try to unload a box truck. You have 180 boxes to move. 
 
Now imagine that box truck might be 8 trucks high and has half a dozen boxes nested inside each box that need to be sorted first. (A city.)
 
What's going to happen? The job's the same -- move a box. But it takes much longer to complete because there's so many. You can only move them one at a time -- faster when fitter, but still only one at a time.
 
 Lot of programming boils down to this sort of thing -- how long it takes to interact with and sort  a group of things; and unfortunately you do eventually hit a wall where you just can't go faster without significant consequences (if at all). ( That's also why having an arbitrary goal like using "100%" of your gpu or cpu is meaningless in practice, because sometimes things can only happen one way to get your end result.)
 
(also you have to do it in reverse because the game is 2d and isometric, hence issues with occlusion.)
 
b42 is in theory the fix -- take the cpu out of the equation so it can do other things (depth buffer on the gpu); reduce the number of boxes to sort by putting them all in one big box, etc. But there are trade offs to this -- we can't use that depth buffer for other things anymore, it'll need more ram, or the game will have to reprocess that megabox if something changes. 
 
btw, I'm self taught and have only a cursory knowledge of this stuff myself, picking up what I could while I worked here for the past 12 years and I am not the people that wrote it -- tested the results and pointed out things, though. So I'm not going to write an exam on it, frankly. No idea why you'd see the same results on significantly different hardware -- I certainly don't. Iirc in testing, hiding the interiors was simply the difference between 60 fps and 40 fps driving through West Point, on a middling system, so we did it. Easy trade, since most people never noticed. 
 
(3D fpses have far less to sort compared to 2d isometric games. Dramatically less. Old isometric games tended to be much simpler and cheat an awful lot to pull it off -- see how many floors you can build in the sims for example. GTA is also full 3D, so isn't applicable.)
 
(and you're not wrong -- zombies are a significant cost themselves. Nothing is free.)
 
(CPU sorts the tiles then passes the list to the gpu; the cpu isn't drawing the tiles unless you're using some sort of software renderer to make up for missing features in your gpu.)
 
(Cores don't matter -- not everything can be multithreaded. You'll be limited by how fast the main thread or the rendering thread runs which will ideally be on different cores, but thats up to your os. And note GHz is fairly meaningless these days; generally cpu manufacturers use other tricks to get more operations per cycle, so you can't compare a 2.4 ghz system from 2024 to 2011 on ghz alone.)