reasonpolice

I read through a good chunk of the "we need more maneuverability" thread, and agree with most of what is suggested there. That thread has been closed to replies however, so I'm starting a new one. Let's try to keep things civil, eh? My reason for creating this thread is, of course, a recent death in game. Part of the issue was that the cutaway system isn't yet working properly in all cases, but the main issue is still the fact that your character cannot move and turn at the same time if you aren't aiming. Long story short, I looked through a door with a window, saw one zombie hitting the door, opened the door while aiming and walking backwards, expecting to fight one zombie. There were actually 5 zombies all stacked on one tile that 100% should have been visible through the door. Vision and cutaway problems aside, I can't help but feel that the clumsy character movement was what allowed the zombies to grab me and bite me. I was already almost a full tile away from the door, since I was preemptively moving backwards, yet in order to even start walking in the direction I was already moving, my character has to stand still for half a second to turn around. That half a second was enough for the zombie group to reach me. I was not trying to fight or swing my weapon at all, I was only trying to run away from a few zeds while I was already a few feet away. This kind of character movement makes the game nigh unplayable for me personally (still gonna play it though lul, it's a great game), and I'm sure there are many who would agree. In my opinion, it seems like you literally cannot play safe enough to avoid death by clumsiness. I completely understand that the game is still a work in progress, and I see in the latest thursdoid that some cutaway system improvements are coming in 41.32. I'm simply giving feedback for what I think about the character movement animations. My suggestion to actually fix this issue is to create a sort of side-stepping animation similar to strafing while aiming, but blended into the other animations for walking, turning, and running, so that you can turn away while still building up from a walk to a run. Your character absolutely should not have to stop moving in order to turn around and move away.

YES! I'm so glad this was a bug and not intended behavior. My brother and I were both seriously bummed out that we basically couldn't play haha. Thanks for everything guys

I just want to drop by with an update, I just played about an hour of single player on normal settings, the difference is night and day. In multiplayer it is very clear that once you have a zombie's attention, it will follow you forever.

I'm running into the same issue, on 40.11, 100% default settings (The only change is a static spawn point so my bro and I can start together). Zombies seemingly never lose track of you after the first sighting. I kited 20-30 out of the yard of my starting house, ran 4 blocks, cutting through trees, houses, jumping fences, taking sharp turns around corners, sneaking 90% of the time, AND my profession was burglar. I made my way back to the house I started in without pulling any additional zombies, started rummaging around, organizing what I had, feeling satisfied that I had kited so many zombies despite the obvious increase in difficulty. Then, quite literally five entire minutes later, there is the same horde of 20-30 zombies that I had originally kited away, all grouped up on the front door. As soon as I opened the door, I was dead. I noticed the difference in behavior literally within 5 seconds of playing. I though "Oh wow they really increased the difficulty! this is fantastic!" And after actually being convinced that I successfully kited that pack of zombies away, only to have them all at my door several in-game hours later, was a huge disappointment. This is a drastic, drastic difference from the last version I played, with was 39.something. TL;DR; I have to chime in here and say this is definitely a bug. Either that or the zombie tracking was balanced around a previously bugged version, and the bug fix broke the balance.

Hey this thread is back from the dead! You could say it's... *sunglasses* zombified. YEEAAAAAHHHHH!!!!! But yeah... forum etiquette, super simple stuff.

I have died from broken glass scratches too, before 'remove broken glass' was added in. One time I had no medical supplies on hand, and it healed up fine, and another time I had plenty of supplies but I got a fever and died (didn't reanimate). I've only died this way a handful of times but still, I noticed no pattern to it. I think every time you get an open wound, you have a chance of getting an infection (note: "infection" doesn't always mean zombie virus) and/or a chance of getting sick. And every time you get sick it has a chance to just be fatal from the start.

This is terrible but every time I find a lady zombie in a laundry room I always think "she died doing what she loved." First time I made that joke my brother and I laughed for a solid five minutes.

I'm thinking more along the lines of "stupid" NPCs firing off shots near your safe house and screwing you over. Or, if you run around with a firearm equipped, it's would ideally make any NPCs you run into much less likely to try to hold you up or outright attack you, unless they also have a firearm. Like if you run around with a pistol and run into an NPC with a bat, that NPC, if hostile, would act friendly and then try and hit you from behind (Giggity), instead of just coming at you with the bat and getting his brains blown out. But then maybe NPCs would do that sometimes, leaving you with no choice but to fire and attract a shitload of zeds. Ugh I love theorycrafting about this game. Also I can see why NPCs are taking so long lol.

Guys, I think guns are going to be a whole new ball game once NPCs are in, not to mention hostile players in multiplayer. As for how they work now, I don't have much trouble killing zeds with them, though the shotgun is infinitely superior to the pistol. I don't really use guns at all though because the noise just isn't worth it. I'd like to see silencers, bows, and crossbows added for killing zeds at range.

WHAT.

I'd like to see cold packs usable for pain relief. You could attach it to a wound with a ripped sheet to reduce pain and swelling. After a few hours it would turn into a 'Warm Cold Pack', and would have to be put into a fridge for a few hours to be usable again.

I like where all this discussion is going! There are some cool ideas in here. Also, as king jjwpenguin said, the bottom 2 cm or so of the laundry basket would fill with water. I figure it's there in that scene to show that the father and daughter were getting very desperate and were trying to use anything and everything they could find. It does look funny though

Good point about foraging, maybe that skill would get a dew collector that generated small amounts of water each morning. I think you're missing my point about just how little water is actually collected from just setting out cups and bowls and stuff. Even a garbage can would only collect a little bit of water at the bottom, and considering that it only rains every once in a while, I think it's safe to say it would take a lot of containers (as shown in the screenshot of my original post) to be even barely sustainable in terms of water. You'd still be thirsty all the time, and if it didn't rain for a long time, you'd be screwed, which is exactly what happens in 28 Days Later. From a gameplay standpoint, the amount of water collected per container would reflect what I just mentioned. Also, if zombies blunder into your collectors, it would put them in a state of being knocked over, emptying them and disabling them until you put it back. But that still leaves the issue of the carpentry water collectors being only 1 tile and somehow being more efficient. I would say make the water collector a 3x3 structure that requires 9 garbage bags with a much higher water-collection-per-tile rate than that of the makeshift collectors. I also envision the hypothetical dew collector I was talking about being a 2x2 structure. This should be possible with the implementation of the furniture moving system. Sorry if I'm all over the place here, I'm trying to brainstorm while also maintaining coherency haha

Why should there be? We can assume that any player after at least one or two attempts has figured out how to get to water before the water cuts out. The thing that comes to mind is "eight months later" mode, though I don't play it much myself. Also, if someone wanted to focus on fishing, trapping, foraging, and/or farming without having to invest a lot of time and effort into other professions, that player should have a sustainable way to collect water. Also, from an if-PZ's-zombie-apocalypse-actually-happened-in-real-life standpoint, it seems obvious to me to use containers that already exist (like in the screenshot in my original post) instead of going through the trouble of building one. If you're in an area where it's safe to settle down, then by all means build a larger, more efficient collector, but if Les Stroud has taught me anything, I'd say use what you already have.

I get what you mean, but I was thinking it would be very small amounts of water for something like a mug or bowl. Since they have smaller areas to collect from, they would fill slower than pots/pans/buckets. I'm envisioning something along the lines of 20 smaller collectors just to get one to two bottles' worth of water from one rainy day. Not only does that mean you need to use up 20 tiles, but it would also increase the value of kitchenware. I do like the idea of having multiple professions with a water collecting option, but I think there should be a no-profession option as well, even if it's like 100 times less efficient than with a profession.

So from browsing around the forums it seems like there are a few main issues with collecting water. Some people (myself included) are of the opinion that being able to get a large amount of fresh water from houses after the water goes out is unrealistic (yes I know zombies are unrealistic, shh), and makes the late game too easy given the sheer amount of water fixtures in the world. Barring that, you have to either rely on carpentry or start in West Point. I would change water collecting in two ways: First, nerf the gathering of fresh water from houses - make it so that instead of getting, say, 4 bottles worth of water from each water source in the house, you get 4 bottles worth of water from the entire house regardless of which source(s) you gather from. Second, allow mugs, bowls, pots, jars, buckets, pans, etc. to be placed in the world as rain collectors with different maximum capacities respectively. This scene from 28 Days Later comes to mind: The rain collectors made with the carpentry skill would have course gather much more water and use much less space. Now, I don't know the way the game is coded, but it seems like you'd just have to replicate the functionality of the current rain collector object, but add a parameter for which item was used, and set the max capacity accordingly. The art is already in the game, just use the same sprites as when dropping a pot/mug/bowl/etc. on the ground. (Ideally one tile would fit more than one mug/bowl/pot/etc. but I feel like that would add a huge amount of complexity to the code.) Please let me know what you think of my idea!

I now realize residential alarms and business alarms are different, my mistake. Sorry reasonpolice, but I am putting you under citizen's reason arrest. You have the right to remain to silent... Har har I c wut u did ther. I definitely meant Kentucky, not Tennessee, that was like a brain typo. I actually do have family living in Tennessee so that's what my brain decided to type. Said family always like to talk about how easygoing small town life is, and how they "don't even lock [their] doors!" Having visited them, and also having lived in Kansas, I guess I actually have formed the notion that most rural areas in Bread Basket, U.S.A. are pretty similar. I suppose that's wrong, sorry you got robbed. Also, very good point on the thermal sensors, I hadn't even considered that. Haha man I dun goofed with this thread. Oh well.

They should, however alarms do seem to reset until the player enters. Good idea, though it sort of ruins the suspense a bit. Personally, I like people being caught inside. If you look in the game files, there's also a count down sound effect and voiced warning.* ADT, the most popular alarm company in North America, loves blaring sirens. If they're plentiful in Ecum Secum, Nova Scotia, I'd assume they're popular in most rural settings, particularly since most insurance companies will provide a rebate. Sure dropped the ball on the "no disrespect" thing. Sorry they've offended you so much, but demanding something be removed (or added!) to the game isn't appropriate. *Like most things in the game, everything is in a constant state of flux. Just because it's simplistic now doesn't necessarily mean it'll be simplistic in the future, or that the developers don't have some ideas for how to improve the systems. Everyone's time is limited. I didn't really demand anything... I stated my opinion as an opinion, not a demand or a fact... I love TIS and what they've done with this game. It's not that the alarms are really challenging, either, they just don't make much sense to me. I guess it's all the tiny little one-bed one-bath houses with alarms that bugs me, it'd make more sense for them to trigger more often on the bigger houses.

As the game stands right now, security alarms are the one and only feature of PZ that ruins my experience. This one little big thing makes the game pretty much unplayable for me. Why don't zombies trigger alarms? Any respectable home security system would involve basic motion detection; zombies should trigger them. Why does the alarm wait to trigger until you're inside instead of immediately when you shatter the window? Many home security systems have glass-break/window sensors; they should trigger as soon as the glass so much as cracks. As for the blaring sirens... I'm pretty sure 99% of home security systems don't have those. All of the examples I've seen (not too many, I admit) have a silent activation, letting the security company know that a break-in has occurred. The company then calls the home/homeowner to ensure it wasn't just user error, and calls police dispatch in the event of an emergency. Also, I'm HIGHLY doubtful that any of the residents in some small town in Tennessee have any sort of home security beyond the family dog or a shotgun hanging on the wall. On top of that, after living in a little town in Kansas (Population ~2900) for two years, I would say that crime is pretty much non-existent in areas like that. People barely even lock their doors. There isn't even a need for home security. So, all in all, pretty much no aspect of these 'house alarms' makes any sense whatsoever. Zilch. Nada. No disrespect to The Indie Stone at all, but it seems like just some cheap little gimmick or afterthought to add a random element of artificial difficulty to the game. Given the current fantastic zombie spawning and migration system, I'd say the game is hard enough without the alarms. To me it makes sense to completely remove them from the game. TL;DR: House alarms make no sense at all, take them out of the game. P.S. I totally still play this game and love it despite saying it's unplayable :<

Burnt in this case means an unrecognizable flaming wreck of charcoal. It had only JUST filled up the 'burning' bar as I turned the oven off (I was looting/clearing the rest of the house as I let it cook), so it couldn't have been that bad! Besides, charcoal is just carbon, and you can actually eat it to calm an upset stomach...

I just want to chime in here by adding that I got a fever and died from eating a burnt stir fry. Not rotten, burnt. I know it's not 100% related to the topic, but it made me realize the health system needs a drastic overhaul.