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Here is a bit more feedback. I think the very high requirement to be able to hotwire a car is all fine and dandy, because there are already plenty of vehicles available for both survival and 6 months after. If anything there are too many vehicles almost ready to go. Finding a battery is a pain in the ass and it should be that way for 6 months after, but I'd prefer to see more extreme vehicles conditions. By that I mean a decently charged battery, but all tires gone, or some doors ripped off. Another vehicle can still have some fuel, but the engine is beyond repair. Right now it doesn't feel like anyone left a vehicle for a good reason, but it looks like they suffered from wear and tear, which couldn't have happened. You got a bit of storytelling with the barricaded houses and people committing suicide and you can easily extend that to vehicles.

Maybe you want to add the text asking for feedback, which you have already posted on steam. Anyway, playing bog standard survival I spawned in Rosewood and filled up a whole fleet of vehicles with fuel and drove to a nearby farm. After commuting for a couple of days, I have more cars and fuel that I'll ever need and I am back to playing farmville. A broken muffler didn't impress me any. I can drive around the map, but I just don't know why I would do that at all. I know there won't be any airdrops, but there have to be reasons to move. There is no zombie horde approaching, no monsters in the yet non-existing mist, no special loot far away, no need for social interaction, just nothing at all.

I listened to a number of lectures on deep learning and neural nets. Now I wonder if any of that can be applied to PZ. Is it possible to let an AI learn this game? I know this game is indefinetely more complex than Go, but Alpha Go (that AI that beat Lee Sedong, the world champion) didn't win through brute computational power, but by learning on its own. My question is more wishful thinking than anything else, but for once in my life, I want to see some decent AI. The game feels real with the sheer amount of features and size of the gameworld and the zombies are like a force of nature you can't ever hope to defeat. Still, after a while I am back to playing farmville and I hope NPCs will keep me on my toes. I will possibly move back into town, to keep NPCs at bay. Anyways, I am still following the development of this game religiously, no matter if NPCs do arrive.

Average Framerate Seen: easily 80 fps driving at 60 - 80 km/h through the countryside, in cities 60 - 80 fps driving at 30 - 60 km/h Lowest Framerate Seen: I managed to make it drop below 60 fps in Muldraugh after creating a horde How it felt: very smooth overall, although I've seen some hitches driving from Rosewood to Muldraugh at 80 km/h +. Walking and running around at 100 fps. All the framerates are at max zoom. Resolution: 1440pGraphics Card: GTX 1080tiProcessor: core i-7 7700kRAM: 16 GB Game settings: Survival

I got two weeks off and haven't played PZ in ages. Is there anything in particular that needs testing?

I'm hoping for some proper descriptions of any given situation instead of the generic texts we have so far. Here are some examples: - People can't go back to Muldraugh, but there isn't even an interview with some concerned parents who left their kids home with the grandparents. Nor is there an interview with a business owner whose going bankrupt. - The situation is unclear, but the media isn't speculating. Really?! I haven't seen conflicting reports either. - Whatever text there is, is lifeless and so short that it can't be anything but lifeless. There is lots of military, but there is hardly any description, like a patrol moving out or returning to base. Their faces can show how shocked they are, maybe there is blood and the military claims that there has been a car accident. Anything is better than, oh there is lots of military and we can't go there. - Why isn't the media fighting for their right to report and violating the no go area? The access of the media could be restricted more and more. There could be press conferences with the general. A team of reporters could breach into the zone till they are arrested, even executed on the spot and a hidden away walkie talkie could go on broadcasting. - Even the politicians in PZ world don't comment on the situation. Don't these towns have mayors? And why aren't the republicans and democrats fighting over whose fault this situation is. Anyway, I was hoping for way more content with lengthy reports about small incidents, personal stories and people's feelings and short and concise news three times a day.

I said running through trees in a t-shirt. You can already wear a jumper and I don't think you should suffer scratches just because you are running through trees. Add to that wearing a t-shirt and being tired. The game is obviously far away from completion and the balancing will come later. I find it lackluster that already existing features are not really in use.

As I understand it Romain Dron is working on a new feature and we'll be able to gather some plants in the woods and to craft some medicine. Anyway, as it is getting easier to treat your wounds, wounds should obviously more likely. Back then, when the medical system got more complicated, I fully expected to injure myself from chopping down trees, sawing and the like. But it never ever happened. Even though getting bitten by zombies should be the number one cause of your death, I think there is too much of a focus on it. Someone who has never crafted anything with his hands will obviously injure himself, especially so as you can be hungry and thirsty and exhausted and working in a badly lighted room. I have no idea what the actual numbers should be, but a little bit of common sense like the above mentioned example should serve as a guideline. The same should apply after the animation update. Imagine you're running past 50 trees in a t-shirt. You should suffer a scratch and that can possibly turn into an infection. Anyway, you get the gist of it. More injuries, because more treatment methods and other ways of dying than just zombie bites.

This is more of a personal note in game development and communicating with the fans, instead of the usual heads up for Lemmy. In general I don’t care, if I buy a crappy game. Some years ago, I bought The Witcher 1 and 2 during a winter steam sale and both games are just shite. Although they are both well made, they are still shite. They are just as unappealing as a Tomb Raider game I bought during the last summer sale. After all, I have only spent a few euros and I can’t be upset, because it is like trying some new food. Even if the game development suffers, I still don’t care. I bought Spintires for 20 something euros and played it for one hundred hours. To this day, the game still seems to be plagued by a bad relationship between the lead developer Pavel and the publisher (or whatever they really are) Ovee and then there are unknown and unsurmountable problems in the actual development no one must know of. That is some properly fucked up situation, but the game entertained me and that is all that matters to me. I have also bought Starbound and have played it for 50 hours. Yes the game isn’t done yet and some guys feel cheated or something. All I have to do is wait till the game gets finished and I’ll have another go at it. Here is another example of game development: Mount and Blade Bannerlord. Taleworlds announced that game in 2012 (or 2013?!) and have been working on project obvious for years before that after milking their M&B franchise. There was very little info till Gamescom this year and the crappy marketing still continues. In a way Taleworlds and TIS are similar. Both are indie studios, which are financially stable and who can therefore work at their own pace. If the development needs another year, so be it. No fucks given. There are some rare exceptions, which really get my blood going. Think of X: Rebirth. This game was planned as a console release, but I was just too bad and then got turned into a horrible Pc game. It is like Elite or Privateer or Star Citizen and that game didn’t even have a fucking radar at the start. I won’t go into detail, but the marketing before release was pure lying, nothing else. And this crap is and will always be beyond repair. And so I wait, because I am so easy to please. Even if PZ development stopped this very day, I still had fun playing it.

Will a higher difficulty level ever be a challenge? Here is what I mean to ask. Choosing 8 months in instead of Survival as a difficulty level the game becomes more of a grindfest. But the game still doesn't require you to think to survive. Beating up a battalion of 3 year olds is tedious and boring. Killing another sniper in a duell is a proper fight. Does the team view this as a problem and will it ever be adressed?

I have a number of questions regarding the new map editor. Will people be able to add new ground textures, vegetation, new floors, walls and roofs, so we can create new biomes and cities? And equally important to me, how will we able to add layers like zombie density, rain probability and heat? Or is the editor on its own smart enough to distinguish the city centre from the outskirts and to adjust the zombie density accordingly? I am so looking forward to this. Unfortunately it takes a disciplined team with a clear idea and focus to create anything noteworthy. Years ago I made scenes for M&B: Warband it always took ages to breathe life into a scene. Now that there will be an easily accessible tool, there will be lots of crappy maps.

About the "You have one day challenge" Possible exploits: 1. The game doesn't save that zombies are banging on a door. Saving and loading therefore increases the longevity of your safe house. 2. The game keeps on adding more and more zombies close to you in your safe house. Saving and loading resets the zombie count to way lower numbers. 3. It seems that I can see the number of planks going down a door and I therefore know when the defences will be broken. It is also possible to see the glass of a window get broken, even though I am inside a flat and the window is in the hallway. Some general feedback: I like safe scumming in this challenge, because the start is always the same old grinding and I prefer to try different ways to die. The performance issues make this one tough to rate though. When am I supposed to make a run for another house? I can't possibly do this when too many zombies are around and the performance tanks, but doing it after loading the game feels like cheating. On a general note: The random character generator helps a lot in making the game challenging. I recommend this to experienced players, because the game bores me by now without forcing me to play as a retarded and crippled gollum like creature.

I don't like the approach to this survey. Which difficulty level are we talking about? Is it Survival? If that is true, make sure you state that upfront. And then there is a huge difference between SP and MP. Finally there should be a spreadsheet with all the traits, so the likelihood of people going through the long list of traits is increased and the grading should be standardized. The grades could be very OP, OP, a little OP, balanced and vice versa. And then there is the category of plain useless traits. If a mod can create an excel spread sheet for the users to download, we can upload the survey for the mod to copy&paste and analyze the results. And here is my last suggestion: Redo the whole character creation. Why can't I go for a +1 or +2 in any trait and +25% +50% etc. XP gain? That's the way to stay true to my name.

Some feedback on the CDAA: I obviously like it for a change and I am glad that I can save and continue properly. The problem is, it is just too easy. I see how I can no longer kill many zombies effectively with fire or brute force and it creates a different kind of sneaky gameplay. Still, once I have tweezers I am fine, because the deep wound heals without suturing it and even though I have an infection I can't see how it has any impact on my gameplay. Here is what I did, which might help as a guide for those who just die. I have enough time in the burning house to take some curtains down, rip them, bandage my groin and take some food with me. The next step is to kill zombies who wear trousers and sweaters, so I don't freeze while I move in northward direction (top right corner of the screen). Being drunk is annoying, but no real problem and by the time I am at the farm, I am sober. As long as I have the cold, which doesn't stay for long either, I stay away from the zombies. Only a lack of food makes me go on a loot run. By the time the wound is the only thing that is supposed to be harmful, I search for tweezers and once you have them you are already settled. Just take the glass shard out and wait for the wound to heal and the infection to vanish. After that it is just the usual gameplay.

Great to see that the CDAA can be continued. I will surely test that once the update is out.

I am all in favour of the player character committing suicide. The idea is unfortunately too unpopular to ever be in the game.

I like this. How about a number of stompy finishing moves to choose from, so your character starts "dancing" on the zombie and just inadvertently stomps on the head? Imagine a special river dance head stomping solo with music, or a country line dance version, or a ghetto rap version, or a I should really go take my pills now version...

Well, the challenge does safe, but the save is somewhat broken. I even reported this as a bug quite a while ago. And I suggested to expand on the idea of challenges so that there are different challenging game starts like a CDAA based on your profession and hobbies. One starting point is to have the player come home from work as a lumberjack or a fisherman from some isolated place, so that it is somewhat plausible that you are unaware of what has been going on. You start with a starterkit based on your profession and hobbies and come home in a car or coach or plane and the vehicle breaks down or you have an accident/crash and you start with or without a group. The idea is to give the player a background to start with hopefully with a few lines of text explaining your character and the situation. Add to that a bit of a challenge and chance. Instead of a fixed and boring gamestart you are surprised by the situation you're in and need to deal with it. So yeah, I agree.

What the title says. Add to this my previous suggestion of more a background story and possibly a plane, coach or a car that crashed, broke or is still fine and you have more items to loot and start with right from the start along with injuries and illnesses.

Now that the CDAA challenge has added a bit of a more interesting start and some background and the devs want to see this expand preferably with the help of some coders, I think it is a nice idea to make up some more CDAAs. I am not so much interested in the challenge that is offered, but some background instead of you just spawning into the world. The mere fact that you are spawning into this zombie apocalypse without any explanation as to why it has been going on for quite a while is disappointing. The game starts as if you have completely ignored what has been going on and that is so implausible, especially as the player quickly improves his own situation. Anyway, let's assume the player has been away for a while and is ignorant up to this point. I'd like to see some text that explains why that is. For example you are a lumberjack and are on your way home and your car breaks down. Up north in the canadian wilderness you didn't have internet or a working phone and as you drive south you wonder why you can't switch into any radio station and the roads are desolate. Car wrecks along the highway alarm you and none of your family members answers the phone. The game can then choose via a role of the dice to either have you crash with your car, or you run out of gas or it breaks down. So you are either injured or not, hungry or satiated, have more or less gear with you and so on. To simplify the writing of the story and the CDAA, I suggest to make this modular. The game has a lore nobody but the devs know of, so currently I can't see this going anywhere. Sure, some other CDAAs can be written, but as I said, I want different game starts with a background story and slight variations. Maybe you didn't go by car, but by plane and it crashed and you are the only lucky survivor. Maybe you already start with a group, because others have survived the plane crash too. Maybe you didn't drive home in your own car, but in a coach and once again you start with a group. There is quite a number of options there. I hope TiS is already planning exactly this.

The governor will be the evil AI that will hopefully make this game difficult. I suggest to have it change the weather, e.g. create a hailstorm that destroys your harvest and create minor natural disasters like a fire. The zombie hordes will challenge the player, even if he has built a nice safehouse and has stored a lot of tools and resources and the weather and disasters will simply add to that. I don't care much about the plausibility at this point. Times without rain or excessive rain are plausible on their own, so is an exceptionally cold winter. Lightning to ignite a fire is plausible too and so is a hailstorm. Problematic is the fact that all of this is directed at the player.

There is already too much water available in the game. Instead the amount of potable water should be limited to the water container behind the toilet. I can level up to carpentry level two without books quick enough without water ever being a problem.

How about your character decides to commit suicide? The NPC AI takes over you character and commits suicide by burning or shooting him/herself, running into a horde of zombies, drinking bleach, cutting through the veins, jumping from a great heigt and so on. I actually like this idea very much if it is hard enough to trigger the mechanic.

This is a very minor suggestion after I had my fun burning zombies by the hundreds. It takes way too long to add any item as fuel and I can only add them one by one. Furthermore, Little Red Riding Hood is always undressing to add any clothes she wears. Please, for the love of God and little baby lord Jesus on a motorcycle, make clothes you are wearing disappear from the list of items to be added as fuel.

I want to talk about burning zombies after trying it myself. This is a major issue because it reduces zombies to a nuissance. There are several ways to adress this ranging from igniting the zombies to the spreading of the fire and the amount of damage it causes. My campfirekit and me are already best buddies and I sing it to sleep.