Artfactial

Hello peeps! I've been working on a working M113 APC mod for a while. This is its current progress!
 

 
All variants aren't actually shown, because there wouldn't be too much of a point to showing off all 30.
The sub-variants are all just different serial numbers to basically guarantee that no two M113s are the same.
15x Plain Olive 5x Woodland 4x Medevac The Woodland Medevac and the skins with inscriptions have only one copy.
Another thing: A major concern is how useful will the APC actually be. The answer is very. The player is unable to be attacked by zombies, and even gunfire! Shooting at a player in the M113A1 will be greeted with a "clunk" as the damage is negated.
However, M113s will suffer from very very high skill requirement to maintain, special parts, low top speed, somewhat high fuel consumption, and lots of injury to occupants upon a collision.
They also spawn with some nice loot in them...

Oh, looking forward to the foraging and fishing UI updates.
Aslo 'Yuri continues work on fire' is some damn dedication!

It’s largely been a week in which we’ve been drawing up plans for aspects of the MP work discussed last week, plus organising and putting roots down for stuff in Build 42.
Likewise, some big new optimizations and (code-level) combat reorganisation were only added to the internal 41 build yesterday – and could do with some more testing. As such IWBUMS beta patch 41.28 will be out early next week, most likely, and not this week.
If you’re desperate to try out any of the edited highlights changelist below, however, then there *is* a way – so keep on reading beyond the bullet points.
So, at the moment IWBUMS patch 41.28 will contain:
Experimental optimization. This allows zombies to be updated every X frames via a per-object gametime multiplier that depends on proximity / visibility to player. It spreads update ticks of zombies over frames, meaning higher FPS with large crowds. Options for different levels of this will also be provided. Turbo’s automated broadcast radio station – which provides weather forecasts, warnings on imminent power/water outages and other interesting things. Ability to turn off rain/precipitation when indoors, as this was making a fair few IWBUMS testers motion sick. Further improvements to the Foraging UI, and also now a new Fishing UI designed in a similar way. Code-changes to smoothen combat and remove the possibility of animation-cancelling. ZOOM BETA
On top of the usual public IWBUMS beta, we are also currently running a temporary beta for our ‘optimization for lower spec machines; and ‘higher res models’ zoom branch.
This is built on top of the current internal build (it will most likely be patch 41.29) so contains everything in the forthcoming 41.28 too. If you’re desperate for the new fishing UI then well, friend, you can try it out. 
Details on how to access the zoom beta and the password can be found HERE. Here’s a quick vid DrunkonLife took from it so you can see how it adds extra detail too.
Right now we need to know if you’re getting any stutters/judders after 5-10 minutes of play – which some people are reporting, but we may have fixed. We also have an odd issues with cutaways randomly failing to cut away, which we’ll need to address before we merge it all into trunk.
If you have feedback, please deposit it into the linked thread or onto the forum.
OTHER STUFF
Elsewhere Yuri continues work on fire, TEA/Bitbaboon Mark is coordinating MP efforts, Mash is working on new artwork for clutter and environments, Martin has provided new animations to counteract ‘window camping’ that we need to plug in, Xeonyx continues to beaver away on secret new map content, Binky and RingoD continue their assault on the Louisville suburbs, we’re sorting out a new website and trailer with different companies for the big 41 relaunch and… lots of cool stuff really. 
Finally:
TFW you go viral… but it’s a pre-anims build. And pre-cutaways. And pre-2x detail on the tiles 😢



Be happy. from /r/gaming
(Still VERY very cool though!)
This week’s sweet base, sweet hat and sweet bag from Kwintofly. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too!

NEW
 
Revamped mod system:
- Updated the Mods screen. The mod description is displayed for the selected mod on the right side of the screen, instead of in the list of mods. Other details such as the ID, Workshop ID (if any), installation directory, and any posters are displayed on the right.
- mod.info can have multiple poster= lines to specify multiple images in the Mods screen.
- mod.info can have multiple description= lines which add to the total description.
- The New Game screen has a button to choose which mods are enabled for the new game.
- Each savefile has its own list of mods saved in a file named mods.txt.  mods.txt also has a list of map folders that is used in cases where parts of different maps overlap each other.
- The Load Game screen displays the map folders and mod names used by the selected savefile. Since old savefiles do not have a mods.txt file, all currently-enabled mods are used when loading an old savefile. After loading an old savefile for the first time, the mods for that savefile cannot be changed, except by editing or deleting mods.txt.
The old Zomboid/mods/loaded.txt file has been replaced by Zomboid/mods/default.txt.  This file contains the default set of enabled mods that will be used when creating a new game.  The default mods can be overridden when creating a new game in the New Game screen.
default.txt also contains the list of map folders that was previously saved in options.ini (the old "mapOrder" setting that was used to deal with overlapping maps). If there are no map-overlap conflicts, this list of map folders is empty.
- Added bBeingSteppedOn IsoZombie GameVariable to test if a player (or zombie) is standing on a prone zombie. Originally I was going to use this to prevent fake-dead zombies turning over when the player is standing on them.Prone zombies won't stand up if another zombie is standing on them.
Changes on character creation:
- Can now save/load outfit (clothing, m/f, name)
- Can now select texture when item using multiple texture but no colors (jeans comes in 3 colors, but a random one was choosen everytime).
- Tweaked washing clothes at sinks:
 - Clothing is washed one item at a time.
 - Items are washed in order from least-bloody to most-bloody when Wash > All is chosen.
 - Context-menu tooltips display the required amount of soap and water.
 - The correct amount of soap and water is used.
- Added a display option to specify which modifier key used in combination with the mousewheel cycles between containers in the inventory and loot windows.  The default is Shift.
- The "Walk To" context-menu command displays a cursor to specify the location to walk to.  This allows the player to click multiple times without having to choose the "Walk To" command again, making long jaunts through forests easier.
- Items are now placed onto an adjacent not-full square when dropping items on the ground. This is needed since the loot window displays items from the surrounding 3x3 squares, and each square can only hold 50 weight.
- Added an option (under Accessibility) to drop items near the center of the square the player is standing on, rather than exactly where the player is standing, for neat freaks.
- Items now transferred from lightest to heaviest, to maximize the number of items that will be transferred.
- Animation now plays when transferring items between main inventory and equipped bags.
- Vehicle-headlight distance and intensity are based on the part condition instead of being randomly set  when the vehicle is created. Headlight width is also based on part condition. The Focus Up and Focus Down context-menu commands which changed headlight width were removed.
 
- Updated community translations.
- Added a nag panel that pops up the first time the user tries to access the Mods screen.
- Added the word "ERROR" to the little red box of doom.
- Zombies can now have random bandages (bloody!) on them, thanks Captain Australia on reddit for the idea!
- Overlays updated
 
BALANCE
 
- Limited the forces applied to vehicles when driving over corpses to prevent liftoff.
- Added sewing kit (icon pending) to kitchen loot table, this contain needles/thread and few strips to fix clothing.
- Added mouse trap in kitchen random distributions.
- Forbid building barbed wire fences without a connecting fence post or barbed-wire segment.
- Color palette at character creation now doesn't heavily favors shades of pink and green over others.
- Flint knife now has crafting recipe 
- Now possible to recover and repair a weapon used in Spear creation
- Stomp with fractured thigh/shin/foot now affects stomping accuracy
- When stomping on multiple zombies, player now chooses the one whose head is closest. Previously, the distance to the zombie wasn't considered, other than being in stomping range.
- Allow the player to drop items while moving, to avoid unfair deaths
- Changed Screws weight to match Nails.
- Changed IsoGameCharacter.maxWeight from Integer to int.
- Reduced the damage to headlights from hitting zombies.
- Added more attack prediction for the standing/on ground zombie detection.
- Moved Tailoring perks from Survivalist to Crafting sub category.
- Changed Flint knife to Stone knife (using a sharped stone).
- Increased Digital Watch spawning rate.
- Lowered chance of some helmet removals.
- Can now attach meat cleaver to the belt.
- When a car spawn in zed stories (police, fireman..) key of the car can be find on one of the zombie spawned with it.
- Lowered general condition of car spawning in house stories.
- Renamed Key in House keys.
- House key can now spawn in kitchen counter.
- Fireman in burnt house stories now spawn a firemen vehicle.
- Added Drink from pot anim.
- Can now use the Stone Knife in various recipe (cutting animals, fish, creating stake...)
Some changes on Foraging UI:
- Foraging now doesn't close the UI.
- Added progress bar on the UI when foraging.
- Items gathered will be displayed on the right.
- Can now filter on "fish baits".
- Animals filter still get all the fish baits too.
- Worms can now be found at level 0.
 
CUTAWAY FIXES
 
Cutaways - [Bug] Can't see character through some objects
Cutaways - Can't see inside of a house through a window facing top-right
Cutaways - Cut-away walls plop back up when trying to open a window, even when unsuccessful.
Cutaways - Hide the eaves on roofs when entire building is hidden/transparent
Cutaways - Player made walls not display walls, windowframes, doorframes on north and west when build it on Z>0.
Cutaways - Wall cut away system not hiding enough of player-made walls
Cutaways - Wall cut out issue when near window
 
FIXES
 
- Fixed advantages give through cancelling attacks (IMPORTANT: If you prefer playing with the ability to walk while attacking zeds (kiting), then this is possible by disabling Melee Movement Disruption in Sandbox options)
- Fixed player animation lockup when gun breaks after firing it.
- Fixed blob corpses in McCoys and Prison zones.
- Fixed a reused zombie's animation blending in from the previous one it was playing before the zombie was removed from the world.
- Fixed the wrong HurtSound being played for zombies after male/female swap.
- Fixed reversing over corpses not playing a sound.
- Fixed bunch of bugs in Fixing Generator (perks wasn't taking in calcul, also now gives electrical exp.)
- Fixed snapping in farming actions due to wait for turning to finish before playing the animation
- Fixed the player taking damage from heavy loads when resting, sitting or sleeping.
- Fixed vehicles taking fall damage each time they were loaded.  It didn't happen every time, possibly only when two vehicles were touching.
- Fixed issues with targeting windows and shooting zombies through windows.
- Fixed failing to load models with capital I in the filename using the Turkish language.
- Added 'world' attachments to more weapon models so they are centered and lie flat in the world.
- Fixed zombies farther away than 10 squares having a negative chance to spot the player.
- Fixed not being able to build barbed-wire fences in one direction.
- Fixed zombies thumping fence posts.
- Fixed fake-dead zombies sometimes appearing naked until the player gets close.
- Fixed no wait for turning to finish before starting ISBuryCorpse.
- Fixed inventory items displaying the timed-action green highlight after actions finish.
- Fixed the player continuing to move while sleeping somtimes.
- Fixed lua error after clicking Continue after the last-played savefile has been deleted.
- Fixed Flashlight not being consumed from bags or on the ground when crafting Lamp-on-Pillar.
- Fixed battery status not being preserved when installing a radio in a vehicle. Changed ConditionMax from 10 to 100 for radio items that can be installed in vehicles.
- Fixed not being able to remove a clothing patch without having patch material in inventory.
- Fixed clothing tooltip using the wrong player in splitscreen.
- Fixed mod IDs for deleted mods not being removed from mods/default.txt, resulting in them being added to mods.txt for new games.
- Fixed texture-filtering issue that affected scrollbars and the debug console sometimes
- Fixed being able to drink from a Washing machine
- Fixed not being able to put a corpse in a grave without a shovel
- Fixed fresh, frozen ice cream having negative boredom / happiness values for some inexpiable reason
- Fixed Hats held in char inventory (not worn) also becoming wet/soaked
- Fixed translations for new game modes not being used in Load Game ui and post-death text.
- Fixed zombified players not standing up due to other zombies standing on them.
- Fixed game-mode translations not being used in a few places.
- Forbid digging graves above ground level. People could put dirt on a roof then dig a grave in the roof.
- Fixed dragging items from a bag to the floor not unpacking them first, as was done when clicking the Drop button.
- Fixed military fences being climbable when facing south or east.
- Fixed new bandage items being added each time the game is loaded, resulting in bandage models not being removed.
- Fixed higher engine quality lowering the chance of starting a vehicle.
- Fixed colder weather increasing the chance of staring a vehicle.
- Fixed vehicle engineQuality sometimes being less than zero or greater than 100.
- Fixed rendering of lightswitches, shelves, and other objects that are on the south or east side of a square. This also fixes rendering of doors that swing open the opposite way of most other  doors (double-doors in Westpoint Gigamart and church for example).
- Fixed placement of sheets on doors that open the opposite way from most other door
- Fixed cutaway outline for window frames that have no window (such as carpentry window frames).
- Fixed not being able to build doors on a square a player or zombie is standing on.
- Fixed metalwork not using items on the ground.
- Fixed metalwork not equipping a non-empty Blowtorch if an empty Blowtorch is equipped.
- Fixed non-empty bags being allowed but not being used when doing carpentry (creating a rainbarrel for example).
- Fixed Torch and Rope items on the ground not being allowed when creating Lamp-On-Pillar.
- Fixed tooltips blocking mouse movement over context menus.
- Fixed properties of some light switches (attachedE, attachedS).
- Fixed properties of some overlay sprites in tiledefinitions_overlays.tiles.
- Fixed clothing on zombies and on the ground not getting wetter in the rain.
- Fixed unnecessary reading of directory contents when looking for mod.info files. This slowed down activating mods for the first time.
- Fixed water effects animating while the game is paused.
- Fixed lua error when creating a splitscreen player.
- Fixed player being able to walk through compost bins by making them solidtrans
- Fixed characters pathfinding through Lamp-on-pillar by making them solidtrans
- Fixed log walls not being transparent like tall fences. (not LOS transparency)
- Fixed the savefile picture not updating after playing then quitting to the main menu.
- Fixed DebugOptionsWindow being taller than the screen sometimes.
- Fixed being able to sneak run/sneak run low when having foot injuries.
- Fixed making stakes not giving woodwork exp.
- Fixed being able to remove battery while the car engine was running.
- Fixed drink from bowl. (drink from pot anim is coming!)
- Fixed drinking from popcan having timing issue.
- Fixed duplicate bandage models and body-damage models being applied to zombies sometimes.
- Fixed a zombie snapping upright after hitting it after it climbs over a counter. A zombie will still snap upright if it is hit while it is still on the counter.
- Fixed replaceOnUse/replaceOnDelete not setting favorite is the previous item was favorite.
- Fixed destroying stuff not having a calories modifier.
- Fixed riverside garage missing their loot table.

Oh wow, I knew about the videogame mod, but hadn't seen the Cd one yet. Should probably have checked beforehand. I have about 200 Cd items ready so that'll be a nice base to experiment on the implementation.
Thanks a lot! I will check them out, see how easy they would be to appropriate and contact the authors!:D

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1934920186
Here is a mod that adds CDs and functioning CD players to the game. There are only 3 CDs but each has several custom music tracks on them.
 
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1934751140
This one make it so you can play those handheld videogames you find in closets and dressers.
 
You should be able to use these mods as a base to make your own, or send a message to the maker of these mods and maybe he will throw a few tips your way.

NEW
 
- Change the color of non-icon buttons when clicking them for visual feedback.
- Removed Tutorial from main menu.
Added new sandbox loot options:
- Canned food, Medical, Mechanics, Survival gears, Ranged weapons, Ammo, Literature.
- When loading a previous game, these new loot modifier will be based on existing one (so ranged wpn/ammo will take weapon modifier, the others will take "Other" loot modifier)

BALANCE

Zombies have less chance spotting the player during night (it was already there, but happen only during really dark night, lowered the threshold a tad)
Halved the odds of jamming a gun
Growing hair now take 20 days instead of 30.
Balance weight of some clothing.
Burglar profession can now hotwire vehicles & have less chance of breaking lock when opening windows.
Hard of earing now gives 4 points (from 2).
Increased ThickSkinned cost to 8 points (from 6).
Increased ThinSkinned points given to 8 (from 6).
Some weight related traits now reduce fitness.
Weight related traits have now a bigger impact of chance to fail climbing big fences.
Nightowl fixed, now works properly.
Being Hemophobic and having blood on your on your clothes now slowly increase panic.
More forgiving about the direction the player is facing when auto-vaulting over fences.

FIXES

- Temp fix for Kingsmouth hanging while saving. The island is surrounded by water, preventing the game from finding any path to respawn zombies.
- Fixed fake-dead zombies in House in the Woods challenges.
- Fixed walls flickering on fast-forward.
- Fixed zombie skins changing at random.
- Fixed belts etc not drying over time when worn.
- Fixed missing zombie footstep sounds for slow-moving and sprinting zombies.
- Fixed IsoGameCharacter.DoFootstepSound(String) volumes being ignored.
- Fixed sprinter zombies lunging at full speed through trees and bushes.
- Fixed animation and turning issues when performing medical actions on a splitscreen player.
- Fixed bandage models appearing on the doctor rather than the patient in splitscreen.
- Fixed rapidly clicking a button ignoring every second click (buttons were ignoring double-clicks).
- Fixed Frying Pan model rotation when on the ground.
- Fixed Revolver & dbl barrel shotgun getting hammed
- Fixed invisible bandage (used to apply bandage model to player) weighting 1.0 (now it's 0).
- Fixed sometimes bandage model not being removed (e.g when getting bite).
- Fixed zombies attacking while still turning to face the player. This was most noticeable when the player was sitting in a vehicle; a zombie would walk to the vehicle's window, then
attack as it was making a 90-degree turn. It could also happen when opening a door with a zombie behind it, or walking around a corner into a zombie.
- Fixed inventory-context-menu command "Move To > Floor" moving items to the player's inventory but not dropping them on the floor.
- Fixed NullPointerException in IsoMovingObject.checkHitWall() when adjacent chunks haven't been loaded.
- Fixed playing the player's hit-reaction animation after exiting a vehicle. It looked like the zombie hit the player from the other side of the vehicle.
- Fixed the player dying twice sometimes while getting dragged to the ground.
- Fixed multiple issues with zombies knowing the location of players for a period after losing LOS
- Fixed zombies seeing the player behind them as soon as they heard noise from the player. Now they don't see the player until
they have turned enough.
- Fixed metalworking actions failing because the Welder Mask can't be equipped in the hand anymore. Now it is worn.
- Fixed ground attacks hitting doors, trees, etc.
- Fixed a bit of debug code blocking the main thread every frame.
- Fixed ISInventoryTransferAction failing if the item is already in the destination container. This fixes not being able to put gas in a vehicle when the Gas Can is in a bag to begin with.
- Fixed duplicating items exploit involving corpses.
- Fixed NullPointerException in ThunderStorm when the player's current square is null.
- Fixed players getting blood on them after shooting zombies from a distance.
- Fixed VehiclesDB not reporting many save/load errors. Now it uses the little-red-box-of-doom.
- Fixed multithreading bug with the player/vehicle database. Existing files with already-corrupted vehicle data will repeatedly throw exceptions.
- Fixed VehiclesDB throwing exceptions repeatedly if BaseVehicle.load() failed
- Fixed NullPointerException in IsoPuddlesGeometry.
- Fixed VERSION=1 not being written to keys.ini in some cases

I have learned enough to pass on the knowledge on how to make your own custom 3D models for Project Zomboid. This is mainly for weapons, but can be used for any model. I have created a video series showing you everything from designing, color, importing, and programming the model to work in game. In time I will release many more tutorial videos on anything and everything with Project Zomboid. I hope you guys can enjoy and more importantly benefit from my videos. If you have any suggestions on things that I have not covered please let me know!
 
(3D Modeling playlist)
 
 

Hi!
 
First, sorry for my bad english. Then, i know that NPCs are planned for future builds and that a mod already exists but I want to bring my vision to the game.
 
I love the Nolanri mod that I have been using for a while. But I find it incomplete. So I decided to create my own mod.
What will he do more than the Nolanri mod?
Better AI. Explore, loot, eat, drink, sleep. Better survivors spawn handling. Better management of groups (yes with S) Talk with NPC. Become friends or.... ennemies Quest! Not a priority but i work on it. And more...  
Currently the mod is only at its beginning but I already have a screenshot to show you!

 
At left bottom of the screen you can see the interaction window. The available dialogs are below (yeah i have a deubg dialog lol) and the conversation history above. Still above is the status of the relationship. With "Let me see your equipment" (that changes in future) i can see the inventory of NPC in the window at right. I can drag and drop item like a normal container.
The dialogs are like tree and each branch can contains other branches.
 
I'll give you soon more news about development

So first of, I love the new belt feature. It was much needed. While digging through your inventory while beset by zombies was stressful and scary, often it wasn't really immersive or engaging, and more often frustrating. This is something, however, that I feel could be expanded upon to deliver some higher overall quality of life for players without greatly affecting the code base or decreasing the difficulty.
 
The strongest example of this is cigarettes. Currently you have to dig through your inventory to smoke a cigarette, though any smoker keeps a pack on hand. Adding a non-essential pocket button, and binding it to a key, let's say 6, would give your character the ability to smoke when they start feeling antsy if you put a pack in that pocket.
 
I think 2-3 of these slots would be reasonable, and binding specific items to these slots could help with various quality of life actions that aren't actually that difficult for a Player Character to do, but are frustrating for a Player themselves to access through the menu system. Below I will list some possible items and their benefits in pocket slots.
 
Cigarettes: Easily smoked to help manage anxiety, useful for RP Wrist Watch: Silence an alarm at the press of a button, since it is only on your wrist anyway Walkman: While it currently does nothing, putting it in a pocket with headphones will give you access to a music happiness buff at expense of your characters hearing Flask: While liquor bottles themselves are too large to fit in pockets, if a flask is added then characters will have access to a way to drink out on the field, while providing ample opportunity for RP Notebooks/Maps: A player that likes to use these features, for RP or otherwise, will be able to make more use of them with the feature being available at the click of a button Snacks: You aren't going to fit a whole ham in the pocket, but perhaps you could prepare a ham sandwich for lunch while you are out scavenging. This would encourage using the cooking skill to it's fullest rather than being ignored by many players Tissues/Handkerchief: Have a cold? Pull a tissue from your pocket to stifle some sneezes Sand: POCKET SAND!!!! (jkjk)  
These are all the ideas I personally have on the matter, thought up while writing this. This originally started simply as a smoker button idea, but evolved while explaining it. Please, if anyone else has ideas, please post them. I would like to see this feature implemented.

With the animations update coming, the models of characters are being overhauled and with this comes many more possibilities for modding. For people who play RP servers for example some of us play older characters or teenage characters and yet the models of the default characters generally don't seem to be able to reflect this, rather being more suited toward the default 27 year old character the info button denotes. So will it be possible to mod such types of characters into the game, and have them be selectable?
 
It would probably be a lot of work as they would need their own animations, and maybe their own accompanying traits .(e.g - old people get weakness/lower strength, reduced stamina, unfit etc. as a tradeoff, and maybe the benefit being something like an 'experienced,' multiplier that adds up onto all your skills, or maybe only the occupational ones)
 
Perhaps the menu would look something like this? 

 
I'm no modder so I don't know what the inner workings of how to do this stuff is like, but it'd be awesome to have.

At no point anywhere in any of the store page do we suggest that there are NPCs present in the game. While we apologize that development of them has been delayed long further than we expected and understand the frustration of those waiting for it, you can't hold us to task for a feature you assumed to be in the game that is not, when we not only never once claim is in the game, in fact explicitly state is not, on our store page. The whole point of the store page and Early Access blurb is for us to inform potential customers to the features and state of development of the game. It's hard to know what further we could have done to prevent getting this complaint post beyond development of the game having gone differently and the focuses and requirements of the game's development to have been different, and unlike all the early purchasers who bought the game with the understanding of NPCs down the road, you had nothing to stop you waiting or voting with your wallet except your own lack of investigation into the game's state of development. 
 
If it's useful for you to blow off steam and get your frustrations at not investigating what was in the game before purchasing out of your system then fair enough, but otherwise this post has no other useful purpose and there is nothing we can do beyond recommend you put the game aside and return to it once the features you want are present, or request a refund if you are still within the window. If we'd have focused on NPCs at the expense of the other areas of the game, there is a very good chance that the game would have died and ceased development by now. We've taken the path we've needed to to ensure the game reaches completion and features are added in an order that doesn't cause severe development issues down the road. That's the fact of the situation and one we make great pains to express clearly on our store page. If you think that the estimated sales numbers you quoted are either an accurate representation of the revenue we've earnt, or enough to mean we can just throw as much money and bodies at the development as we'd like, then unfortunately you've underestimated how expensive running a business and a development team over years can be.
 
The dark side of Early Access, or alpha-funding as it was when we started, is you have to lay out the big picture of development, get people excited about planned features and so on, long before you have the knowledge of what obstacles you will face, what the pressures of development will drive your focus on, what skillset you will have in the team down the road or what other priorities will emerge to keep the game afloat and keep people purchasing to continue to fund it. All of these factor have a huge impact on development, and it's just a sucky thing about Early Access that it forces developers to make promises they can't possibly have all the information without hindsight. The developers 5+ years ago who made the promises they did were much greener, and much naiver to the challenges they would face and would have been wiser never to mention NPCs in the first place. With vehicles going in, we've delivered on every single other promise we made, but are always instead held to account over the one we have not yet. The irony being, since most of our negative reviews are about features like NPCs not being present yet - if we never promised them in the first place our review scores would be higher, not lower, and we'd have probably at this point called it 1.0 and would, ironically, be ourselves used as an example of developers who 'did it right' and finished their game in a reasonable time, perhaps even by yourself when complaining to someone other developer about their Early Access game missing a feature, despite our game's content being identical in that scenario to how it is now minus the expectation of promised NPCs.
 
The developers you are chastising now are not those same people that made those promises at the start, we've grown, changed, as a long time has passed, and can only do what they can do to try and finish development of them as soon as we can. Yet still where many other developers would think 'we've worked on this enough' and stick a 1.0 sticker on it, all these years later we're still working toward that goal and sticking to our principles of delivering the missing features. Yet that same dedication, despite the fact many of us might enjoy working on something new, is then turned into something to attack us with. Our game is not one of the longest Early Access developments on Steam because we're the slowest (tho I won't deny we're slower than a fair few), it's one of the longest Early Access developments on Steam because we're principled in finishing what we promised. Many others have delivered far less in far less time, then hung up their spurs and moved onto pastures new, and then later down the line when the planned features they abandoned or couldn't do are forgotten, they are used as examples of developers that did a better job than us, and to be honest I'm tired of us having to apologise for not doing the same.

I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt here and assume the charged language isn't intentional.
 
tl;dr: Getting NPCs back in the game and doing it quickly, just to rake in that sweet cash, is a matter of "won't," rather than "can't." 
 
NPCs
 
NPCs were in (basic tutorial then later survivors running around the map) up until the Steam release, but between the community outrage ( bugs and fear that the game would wrap up, leaving people with crap NPCs) and changes in the way the game worked, they were not immediately put back in. While it'd be possible to just re-enable and update the old NPC system, there's little point in doing so. Yes, it'd check off one more box on the planned features list and those that just want NPCs for the sake of having NPCs would be satisfied, but that's not what most of us want from Project Zomboid.

They'll be released iteratively, just like everything else. Once animations releasable, NPCs will be the focus (because what's left aside from housekeeping, engine improvements, and injecting content, really?).
 
Money 
 
-Sold for $5-8 before sales up until it's Steam release
-Sold only a 16th of its Steam sales figures on Desura (its first 3 1/2 years)
-whatever upfront costs were required to develop the game before it became successful
-7 years of development is expensive
-People that work for you generally like being able to support themselves and their families, rather than donate their time (almost all of us work remotely, anywhere from Russia to France, Britain, and Canada)
 
So we have the interesting scenario where PZ sold comparatively well to many other games in early access (around the top 40), but sold for anywhere between 4 - 10x less than many of its contemporaries. Couple that to how long development has taken and that the future is uncertain, much of that profit cannot be freely spent. Unlike most developers, TIS doesn't tend to cut features and isn't interested in just getting a cut-down version of the game out of EA. 
 
Time
 
You'll find if you compare PZ's dev team (particularly the number of programmers that worked on the game) to most (there are exceptions to this, such as one or two-man teams that produced great games, but they are exceptions for a reason), PZ's team remains pretty small. It's only this year that it's seen a large expansion (four new coders, not all full-time, but several at the top of their field). 

For the first three years, there were only 2 coders working on the game. After Steam, this changed to ~5 working full time on the game.
 
TIS chose to do the game in Java (back in 2011 most indie-available engines weren't exactly great for isometric, tile-based games and  Microsoft had started to shelve XNA), which rather creates a talent vacuum for games programmers and, later, some interesting quirks about the JVM and its garbage collection (namely the lack of control over it, outside of aggressive profiling) became more prominent. 
 
They also chose OpenGL, which isn't always well supported by the type of hardware people tend to think a "simple" "2D" game can run on, that only costs $5. Intel's lack of support for FBOs, texture mirroring on integrated chipsets, and other various things made it much harder to expand the game.
 
The survival genre was also quite new when TIS started and expectations of what should be included in a survival game have just ballooned since. As can be seen, by its contemporaries (most of which are still in development), it's not exactly conducive to finishing quickly.