nasKo

That's exactly what it is. It only bans you from playing games online. It does not prevent you from launching the game or playing offline.
Very nice system. I hope GTA will use this. Getting a bit frustrating in GTA Online.

It's just not the kind of attention we want for the game. We're sure someone will manage to mod them in at some point, though

You will have to activate the option that broadcasts all applications in the broadcasting settings.

GTA Online has a similar approach, depending on the offense (putting you in a cheater pool. Some minor disturbances give you a dunce hat for a few days, as well).
VAC has a similar effect like Titanfall, just that it outright tells you you are banned and forced to play with cheaters instead of silently matching you against them.
 
Too bad it didn't help making Titanfall more popular (looking at you, other 200 people currently playing...)

GTA Online has a similar approach, depending on the offense (putting you in a cheater pool. Some minor disturbances give you a dunce hat for a few days, as well).
VAC has a similar effect like Titanfall, just that it outright tells you you are banned and forced to play with cheaters instead of silently matching you against them.
 
Too bad it didn't help making Titanfall more popular (looking at you, other 200 people currently playing...)

I'm not all that aware with consumer protection laws right now, but IIRC even with retail copies at a game store, all you get is a  license. This makes sense, because even we say "I bought game X" all you really buy is a license to run "game X" and not all the rights to all the assets to use as you please (music, textures, models, characters, etc).
 
While the license to a boxed copy might still be revocable by law, it's much harder to enforce any such revocation. That's where Steam has a much bigger handle.
I just hope that there's a reasonable check and the possibility to challenge any such bans if the player feels they are wrongfully accused. Especially if people were "just" frustrated enough to be assholes for a moment.

That's exactly what it is. It only bans you from playing games online. It does not prevent you from launching the game or playing offline.
Very nice system. I hope GTA will use this. Getting a bit frustrating in GTA Online.

I can imagine developers will have to jump through quite some hoops in order to be approved for this system.
Overall, I think it's a great system, though.

That's exactly what it is. It only bans you from playing games online. It does not prevent you from launching the game or playing offline.
Very nice system. I hope GTA will use this. Getting a bit frustrating in GTA Online.

"Valve has implemented a new "Game Ban" policy on Steam, allowing game developers to permanently ban Steam users from individual games, the company announced recently.
Through the game ban initiative, Valve is allowing developers to run their own systems to "detect and permanently ban any disruptive players, such as those using cheats," according to a Steam Community page that explains what a game ban is. This is separate from Valve Anti-Cheat, the technology that is already built into Steam.
If a developer discovers a player who is cheating, the company notifies Valve, which issues the game ban on the player's Steam account for that particular game. Until now, only Valve has been able to root out cheaters and ban them.
"The game developer is solely responsible for the decision to apply a game ban," Valve noted. "Valve only enforces the game ban as instructed by the game developer."
 
via Polygon.
 
Thoughts? Will this help PZ at all?

Oh nice. Then I'm totes for this, it's just how to handle it fairly and justly and without massive administrative cost to us. It would certainly make the official TIS servers a perilous place for hackers to hang out, I'll say that much

I can imagine developers will have to jump through quite some hoops in order to be approved for this system.
Overall, I think it's a great system, though.

The big plan was to have a super-cool new animation video today, but despite a valiant all-night effort to eradicate a glitch that stands in the way of an exciting vid – it stubbornly persists. So: sad face.
Mondoid waits for no man, however, so Romain ‘RJ’ Dron has thrown his hat into the ring with the full run-down on his current contribution to Build 32! Over to RJ!
CRAFTED DEVICES AND TRAPS
Traps have receive some more RJ love since last week, in fact they’re pretty much done. I’ve had a few more ideas I want to add in, but all the items and systems are now working, present and correct. We’ve mentioned it in a few Mondoids now, but haven’t really put anything in an easy-to-read fact list – so here are the basics of my stuff in Build 32.
With new engineering and electrician skills you can now build, throw and detonate device and traps to aid you in your survival attempts. There are explosive devices, fire-spreading weapons like molotovs, a smokebomb and a noisemaker – for example.
As well as throwing these in/around crowds of zeds, they can also be set down and triggered in various ways. There’s the movement sensor, for example, that will need to be crafted from the movement sensor in a home’s burglar alarm. Each constructed device, meanwhile, has its own level of effectiveness – meaning that a character who is an electrician by trade will be able to build a better movement sensor than someone who’s just learnt from books they’ve looted.
Beyond the movement sensor we’ve got a timer – an old classic! This can be crafted from a kitchen timer or an alarm clock and it’s pretty simple: put it into your device, set the timer before ignition and wait! Finally, there’s a remote control. You can craft a trigger from electronic scrap found in devices and a receiver that’s found in, for example, radios. Then take a remote control for a television set, link the devices [through a simple right click ‘link to’ dropdown menu] and place the crafted receiver on your device. The higher your skills, the better the receiver – and the further away you’ll be able to trigger the explosion. Just think: when NPCs come around you’ll be able to leave all sorts of surprises in their safehouse!
GENERATORS
I’m currently working on generators, after doing a lot of research on them. You’ll find them in sheds, garages and storage units in Build 32. They’re not all that rare BUT they do require certain skills to operate them. As such, an electrician will know how to use a generator, but an average joe will have to get some reading done!
If you know how to operate them, however, then you can carry them [although they are really heavy!] to the outside of your safehouse, plug it in and turn it on. A wise survivor, however, probably won’t place it inside the house as, yes, the threat of poisoning will be very real. Electricity will then be provided in the home – and the generator will slowly consume fuel and lose condition as it does so. Fuel itself will be obtainable at any gas pump in the game, while there’s still electricity to pump it. Comfort does have a price though, and users should be aware that generators make a hell of a lot of noise, and might get a bit explode-y and fire-y should their condition deteriorate to dangerous levels.
WILL AND TURBO STUFF
Will continues to write radio and television transmissions, and is looking with mounting horror at how much there’s left to do compared with what Romain is industriously ticking off his Build 32 list. Turbo meanwhile, with 95% of his broadcast system in place, is still fiddling with the innards of his ApCom mod with an eye to bringing it over in a future build.
He did, however, find the time to allow certain images in MP chat. This led to a spurious demand from Will, which ultimately led to the creation of a video in which a lady hacks zombies to bits while singing ‘The Hills are Alive’ from ‘The Sound of Music’.
OH, AND HEY
Our favourite PZ video in a fair while surfaced over the past week. Before you go, please do check out what happened to poor old TehMikal’s brother:

This week’s featured image from Healerus over on Steam. Do you read to the end of Mondoid every week, but still persist in NOT wanting to receive the Project Zomboid Mondoid and Update newsletter? Only you can change your life for the better, by clicking here.

The big plan was to have a super-cool new animation video today, but despite a valiant all-night effort to eradicate a glitch that stands in the way of an exciting vid – it stubbornly persists. So: sad face.
Mondoid waits for no man, however, so Romain ‘RJ’ Dron has thrown his hat into the ring with the full run-down on his current contribution to Build 32! Over to RJ!
CRAFTED DEVICES AND TRAPS
Traps have receive some more RJ love since last week, in fact they’re pretty much done. I’ve had a few more ideas I want to add in, but all the items and systems are now working, present and correct. We’ve mentioned it in a few Mondoids now, but haven’t really put anything in an easy-to-read fact list – so here are the basics of my stuff in Build 32.
With new engineering and electrician skills you can now build, throw and detonate device and traps to aid you in your survival attempts. There are explosive devices, fire-spreading weapons like molotovs, a smokebomb and a noisemaker – for example.
As well as throwing these in/around crowds of zeds, they can also be set down and triggered in various ways. There’s the movement sensor, for example, that will need to be crafted from the movement sensor in a home’s burglar alarm. Each constructed device, meanwhile, has its own level of effectiveness – meaning that a character who is an electrician by trade will be able to build a better movement sensor than someone who’s just learnt from books they’ve looted.
Beyond the movement sensor we’ve got a timer – an old classic! This can be crafted from a kitchen timer or an alarm clock and it’s pretty simple: put it into your device, set the timer before ignition and wait! Finally, there’s a remote control. You can craft a trigger from electronic scrap found in devices and a receiver that’s found in, for example, radios. Then take a remote control for a television set, link the devices [through a simple right click ‘link to’ dropdown menu] and place the crafted receiver on your device. The higher your skills, the better the receiver – and the further away you’ll be able to trigger the explosion. Just think: when NPCs come around you’ll be able to leave all sorts of surprises in their safehouse!
GENERATORS
I’m currently working on generators, after doing a lot of research on them. You’ll find them in sheds, garages and storage units in Build 32. They’re not all that rare BUT they do require certain skills to operate them. As such, an electrician will know how to use a generator, but an average joe will have to get some reading done!
If you know how to operate them, however, then you can carry them [although they are really heavy!] to the outside of your safehouse, plug it in and turn it on. A wise survivor, however, probably won’t place it inside the house as, yes, the threat of poisoning will be very real. Electricity will then be provided in the home – and the generator will slowly consume fuel and lose condition as it does so. Fuel itself will be obtainable at any gas pump in the game, while there’s still electricity to pump it. Comfort does have a price though, and users should be aware that generators make a hell of a lot of noise, and might get a bit explode-y and fire-y should their condition deteriorate to dangerous levels.
WILL AND TURBO STUFF
Will continues to write radio and television transmissions, and is looking with mounting horror at how much there’s left to do compared with what Romain is industriously ticking off his Build 32 list. Turbo meanwhile, with 95% of his broadcast system in place, is still fiddling with the innards of his ApCom mod with an eye to bringing it over in a future build.
He did, however, find the time to allow certain images in MP chat. This led to a spurious demand from Will, which ultimately led to the creation of a video in which a lady hacks zombies to bits while singing ‘The Hills are Alive’ from ‘The Sound of Music’.
OH, AND HEY
Our favourite PZ video in a fair while surfaced over the past week. Before you go, please do check out what happened to poor old TehMikal’s brother:

This week’s featured image from Healerus over on Steam. Do you read to the end of Mondoid every week, but still persist in NOT wanting to receive the Project Zomboid Mondoid and Update newsletter? Only you can change your life for the better, by clicking here.

After stumbling over this thread http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/13649-serious-problem-with-the-new-keys-and-lockable-doorknobs/ I realized that I actually do have that implemented already.
 
What's this mod do?
It shows you a short info in a doorknobs tooltip if you have a key for this specific knob in your keyring.
Also, when you right-click on doors, you get an option to drop one key for this door to the ground.
 

 
Where do I get this mod?
On github: https://github.com/blind-coder/pz-dihakft/releases
 
How do I install it?
Like any other mod, download and extract to Zomboid/mods, then enable it in the Mods section.
 
Does this mod have tiny_avc support?
Yes!
 
What is the license of this mod?
It's Free For All!

Hydro, relax.
you already added a TON of stuff to the game. no need to drive yourself to the point of exhaustion,V2.1 will be ready when its ready.
 
in the meantime come to the server and just play the game.
 
burning yourself out will only frustrate you further, take time to just play.

I'll go and get the shovel

We'd have to burry you up to your neck somewhere in the woods if we were to tell you.

There's a pretty big gap inbetween a brief animation directly triggered by the player's choices/reactions, and "randomly taking the control away from the player".
The random things I mentionned doesn't "happen" to the player but still directly influences the outcome of any given situation, randomness is everywhere, it doesn't matter what's the subject of the random event/thing (player or environment) ; what matters are causes & consequences (why/how tripping may happen ? and how harsh is the punishment ?).
Being randomly "punished" for no reason would be artificial difficulty, being punished because you're doing something reckless and dangerous without the required skills/physical aptitudes, or in bad physical/mental condition, is not.

Just to put this straight, we have not asked you to take down the mod and are not going to stop you from distributing it elsewhere.
 

Crosspost

I don't think such a system will ever see the light of day. Even if it would be implemented as an option for server owners (to only let people with a Steam Account on it), Steam Family Sharing makes this too easy to bypass.
Never heard of something like this. Most likely for a good reason.

We'd have to burry you up to your neck somewhere in the woods if we were to tell you.

It’s just another Manic Mondoid, and no: we can’t quite believe that it’s taken us this long to make a reference to The Bangles either. There’s lots of fun stuff brewing here in Zomboidton, and today we’ve got a few updates on the upcoming animation system as well as Build 32’s new crafting and broadcast system. Hope you like!
 

Chris and Martin’s Animation Adventures
After running into some export issues that slowed us down for a bit while when we tried to get all of PZ’s current hair and clothes working with the new animations we’re now back to the exciting stage of implementing them over into the game itself. Let’s go over to Lemmy for some on-the-spot reportage!

“Animation stuff is going well. The bank of animations that our animator Martin is creating is growing larger by the day. We now have a tall fence climbing anim, for example, so survivors have another escape route from the horde. On top of this panicked or clumsy survivors will soon find themselves tripping over when running, turning corners and vaulting fences at high speeds – as well as scrambling along the floor trying to get back to their feet. This will all be done with animation driven movement, and should make for some really exciting gameplay moments. We’re not quite ready for another video, but hopefully soon!”
 

RJ’s Build 32 Adventures
Meanwhile in France: coder Romain Dron is still worrying his fiancée by leaving windows open on his PC that contain information that would be of interest to paranoid government officials.

“Right now I’m still balancing and testing the new trap crafting and recipes, and doing some additional research on them too. It’s important that they’re not too overpowered or too useless, after all. I’ve got all the MP code up and running, but whether in SP or MP a mix of engineer and electrician skills will be the most useful if you want to turn your safehouse into a trap-laden nightmare for interlopers.”

“I’ve also just added sound effects, and if you think zombies are attracted to the noise of gunfire – wait and see how they react to a pipebomb! While I’m in there I’m also playing around with fire spread, so you don’t burn down a whole neighbourhood with a single Molotov. After a lot of talk with Twiggy we’ve also thought of a few more traps and devices that would be useful, so there might be a few more surprises.”
 

Will and Turbo’s Broadcast Adventures
Finally over to Will, [who’s actually the guy writing this buy… hey-ho] for an update on the new TV/radio system that will let you listen in on the world falling apart.

“We’re at the point now at which all the systems are ready and waiting, so basically I’m going to be ‘writing up to the line’ in terms of Build 32 testing. In a perfect world I’d like 5 TV channels and 5 Radio stations ready to go in the first drop, so there’s still quite a lot to do – not least because whenever I think of fun new events and lore elements I have to go back and tweak each of the broadcast timelines. The thinking is that this batch will cover ‘official’ broadcasts and transmissions, while survivor/military channels commenting on the same events will follow later on.”

“That said, to give me some extra options, Turbo’s also worked on a way to get different fonts and custom images into the lines that appear on-screen. This came from my request to have a ‘musical notation’ symbol so that it’d be clear when a line was sung or a radio jingle – it should put us in fine stead for the development of the system too. Turbo is now off investigating the integration and development of his ApCom Ham Radio and Walkie Talkies mod for future builds.
 

In Other News about Adventures
A quick request from EnigmaGrey to see if anyone would like to help out as Admins on the new TIS SpiffoSpace Server. We basically need some nice community types to help out new players and keep an eye out for cheats. Please contact him via a direct message on the forums if you’re interested.
 
 
This week’s featured image is from Mrniffty. If you’d like Mondoid thrown onto the porch of your electronic house every week, then why not give consideration to a newsletter subscription?

Good Mondoid one and all. A fairly decent offering this week, spotlighting work that’s taking place on both the current and next build of the ongoing Project Zomboid saga.
BUILD 32 INVENTORY PROLIFERATION
Let’s go over to our French correspondent, Romain Dron, for an update on some of the new in-game items that will play a part in Build 32’s massive crafting update.
“Well, today has been an exciting day in which I come across all the different new items that Mash has been giving life to. There’s over 70 new items right now, and some will be useful (as traps, for example), while others will just be there to give a little more life to the game’s environment.”
“So to name a few: perfume bottle, dog leash, crayons, comic book, pinecone (can be used to light a fire), Washing Up Liquid, Mop (blood cleaning!) and alarm clock.” Look! Some balls!

“I’ve currently created 30+ recipes that use these and existing items – so you’ll be able to take apart a CD player to salvage components, and likewise house alarms, that’ll let you include parts of these devices in your crafted triggers/bombs.”
“A lot of this crafting will be exclusive to professions, so you shouldn’t expect to be able to craft a motion sensor if you’re not an electrician by trade, but that said we will look into realistic in-game ways to garner the more basic skills. You’d never be able to learn everything that a real electrician could though, in the same way that in Build 32 only engineers and repairmen will be able to fix up generators to the same high levels.”
SPIFFOSPACE SERVER
A quick nod to EnigmaGrey’s new SpiffoSpace Server, which is an official TIS server that we’re hosting for two very important reasons. Firstly we thought that we needed a friendly official server that new players could hang out on and learn the ropes. Secondly, it means that we can monitor what the game’s doing first-hand while EP is streamlining MP code and (as mentioned last week) we look for a MP coding genius who can ensure that we are a fully armed and operational battle station when we hit 1.0 later this year. Full details here on SpiffoSpace here! 
WATCH AND LEARN
Whoever said watching TV was a waste of time? As discussed previously, Build 32 will give the opening days of the apocalypse radio and television broadcasts to tune into so you can listen live to the downfall of humanity. That doesn’t mean that the usual schedules will be entirely interrupted however, and as such there’ll be cookery shows, home improvement shows and the like that will provide players with examples of the stuff that can be crafted in PZ and – thanks to TurboTuTone’s recent work – give you XP boosts as well. As such, profession-specific recipes will be made available to all avid TV-watchers no matter what their role in life.
This system is also being built with moodle lifts and lows in mind. So repeated viewings give markedly less and less XP – and also impact on boredom moodles. Quite how we’ll balance these with the current skill books is the next challenge we’ll face, but also on the menu is letting you record shows onto blank videos – and to have pre-recorded videos of both informative and entertainment shows lootable in homes and stores on the map.
Here’s a WIP video, BUT two things to note: XP gain is currently waaaay OP, and lines are currently too long in the show-content proper. It would usually be a much longer broadcast.

In other Turbo news, the clever chap has also coded us up a profanity filter that you can choose to drape over our narrative content if needs be. This was always a hotly requested feature back in the K&B days, and we thought it a necessary part of the game as rude words start to reappear once more.
EASYPICKINS’ IWBUMS MP ADVENTURES
Build 31 is still with us and currently has version 31.16 being tested in the IWBUMS beta channel. Why? Well, only due to a gargantuan battle between EasyPickins and what many call The Terrifying MP Map Corruption Bug of Ultimate Doom.
WARNING: Mondoid gets techier than usual from this point.
It all began when renowned server-hoster Zeek get in touch on March 21st with an issue that saw the map getting corrupted seemingly at random – with either all-black chunks or chunks from another part of the map being placed where they didn’t belong. For the longest time it just couldn’t be replicated, so EP was stabbing in the dark with fixes – errors about truncated maps, fears of non-flushed data and countless checksums were all thrown into the mix.
“I got onto Zeek’s server to see first-hand how bad it was, and it was nuts.” Explained EasyPickins, shortly after the battle was won. “Chunks where nothing was loaded plus parts of the map placed where they didn’t belong.  And very often the errors in the log files pointed to completely different parts of the map than the ones we could see were messed up. The logs would say chunk X,Y was corrupt but then we’d go there and find a different chunk (or two or three) was messed up that wasn’t even in the error logs. It was so random that last Sunday I thought I had found the problem and his server ran the patch for 10 hours with zero errors.  Problem solved!  But no, the next day the logs were filling up with errors again.  And people on other servers reported they had no problems at all!”
At the end of a demoralizing final week, our champ was beaten – lolling on the ropes and hoping beyond hope that it could just be his Zeek’s personal RAM playing tricks. A software switch and a few hours of corruption-free play lulled them into a false sense of security, but then it came back. Back for the boss battle, like Kathy Bates in Misery.
“By that point we’d had enough people willing to run around on Zeek’s server trying constantly-changing test builds that I was able to get enough clues about what the problem was – and of course the other server admins trying the fixes I put out also, so my thanks goes to them as well.”
“The actual cause of the bug turned out to be a freakin’ variable related to saving zombie corpses. One part of the game was adding corpses to this list variable while at the very same time another part of the game was adding corpses from a different chunk to the self-same list.  Even chunks that had no corpses were being affected by chunks that did have corpses due to this shared list variable.”
And so, after 22 days of frustration the beast is slain at the hands of EasyPickins and friends, never to return again. Isn’t game development fun? Thanks to Zeek and everyone else who joined the battle!
OH, AND THIS TOO:
While we’re on the topic of EasyPickins and his victorious IWBUMS activity, running concurrent to his head/wall slams was quite a significant change to how PZ servers streams the map to clients. Again, it’s a smidge techie but… it’s highly likely that you’re a smidge more intelligent than the person that usually writes the Mondoid.
Back to EP: “The server has always created ZIP files containing parts of the map that are newer than the client has. A big performance problem with this has been that while creating these ZIP files, the server isn’t updating the game world or processing network messages. The more clients that needed map updates, the more time the server would be spend creating these ZIP files. As such creating ZIP files is now handled in a separate thread (actually, one thread per client).  So the server is no longer affected nearly as much when streaming the map out to clients.”
Got all that? Huzzah! Now to do the usual Mondoid sign-off stuff.
See you next week!
Today’s featured image is of our least noticed in-game reference. Can you spot it? As taken by Olaf the Merchant. Would you like to receive babble like this in email form? Well who wouldn’t? Click here!

From yesterday's Mondoid:
“I’ve also just added sound effects, and if you think zombies are attracted to the noise of gunfire – wait and see how they react to a pipebomb! While I’m in there I’m also playing around with fire spread, so you don’t burn down a whole neighbourhood with a single Molotov. After a lot of talk with Twiggy we’ve also thought of a few more traps and devices that would be useful, so there might be a few more surprises.”
 
There's a Mondoid for EVERYTHING