RichCoconut

well that's great news!

It's a very interesting idea, for sure. I'm not sure if I'm for or against it, though.
 
On the one hand, it will almost certainly make for a better multiplayer experience in almost every case.
 
You could make the point that the system might be open for abuse, but my main concern is that it is further eroding the concept of "purchasing a game." I've always been worried (read: paranoid) because Steam Terms of Use were changed a few years back to say that all you're purchasing is a license to play the game. That means you aren't protected under consumer laws in most countries (some parts of the EU possibly excepted). It also means, legally, that they have the right to do anything they want with your game, including taking it away completely. This is the first step they've taken towards that, and in that regard I find it a bit worrisome with a focus on the future.
 
Further, while in many titles they may not be "taking the game away," in some they very much will be. Any MMO or MOBA, for example, as well as several other genres (L4D, et al.) are solely multiplayer experiences. If the dev happens to ban you, you have lost that purchase entirely.
 
Tl;dr I think it will be good for multiplayer communities but I'm terrified of what it means for consumer rights and game ownership.

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

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?

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.

Oh wow. This is.... interesting. However I'd only be comfortable banning people from the multiplayer aspects of the game. I don't think even cheaters, as much as I might hate them, deserve to lose the entire game they paid for, I dunno.  

It was the goal to make it as close to real life as possible, which is why the map is a carbon copy of the area.

THE GREAT CANADIAN LUMBERJACK COMPETITION
PVE / Hack & Build / McCoy Logging Co. (Muldraugh)
 
Calling all builders!  The Great Canadian Lumberjack Challenge is now open to applicants for registration!
 
A series of challenges that should come as no challenge for any burly, syrup-swilling , man's man (or woman).
This 2 day (in game) PVE Event aims to celebrate the greatest builders of our crazy mixed-up times. It's our safest event yet!
 
Grand prize winner!! : Competitor with the highest score at the end will receive 10 boxes of nails, a Construction Loot Bag, a mini fridge and a spiffo poster for their base
Second place! : the runner up will be awarded 5 boxes of nails and a Construction Loot Bag: (contains various locks and hard to find items)
All other competitors will have their points traded in for nails. Everyone's a winner!
 
Registration will be held for 24 hours, the event starts Friday @ 9PM EST
 
First come, first serve. The first 6 qualifying applicants will be announced Friday @ 5PM EST 
 
Participants must be prepared to build stairs and bring their own ropes, hammer and Axe. Everything else will be provided by McCoy Logging Co.
 
Challenge 1: Log Choppin & Haulin' Race  
Challenge 2: Tallest Tower /
Challenge 3: Barricade Race /
Challenge 4: Raider Trapping /
Challenge 5: Horde Defense /
And a super secret Bonus Round for extra goodies
 
To enter: send a message with your character's name and a brief bio (for a possible broadcast, hilariousness is encouraged) to Hobbes on The IndieStone Forum or to Zombie Hobbes on Steam.
 
The Great Canadian Lumberjack Challenge! Hosted and sponsored by McCoy Logging Co. in Muldraugh, Kentucky

Simply put, it would be pretty neat to see more visual weather effects/ambience other than just rain and thunder. I think these would be great and I have complied a list below of the effects.
 
 
Snow/Blizzard
 
Description: Basically what rain is, except it's white dots of snow falling to the ground. If the weather is more harsh, then a blizzard will occur which will have greater effects on the player.
 
Effects on Player: Same effects already put in when it snows, if a blizzard, the player will feels these effects even more.
 
Visual Effects: White dots of snow, if blizzard, more dense pieces of snow falling.
 
 
Fog
 
Description: Fog is pretty much what might occur after a thunderstorm/rain, or randomly during the seasons/months.
 
Effects on Player: Reduced sight (Not as bad as night time, but perhaps 15-30% of that) and the chance of slight panic/anxious if your outside for too long.
 
Visual Effects: Transparent grey visual with a slow, creepy animation.
 
Ambience
 
Description: Basically just more ambience to bring the place to life. Perhaps some trees could drop leaves and those said leaves could be seen blowing throughout the city. Some items such as Newspapers, Papers, various garbage, etc. should also blow in the wind. Would be nice to see some of the tall grass have an animation even if it's subtle of some weather occurring. 
 
Let's hear some wind blowing if its thunder storming or if it's a bad storm, let's see more visuals of the wind blowing water on the roads (if it isn't too much, if so, its fine.)
 
Effects on Player: A more immersive experience.
 
Visual Effects: Self-explanitory. 
 
 
I believe little touches like this can really give a heartbeat to a beautiful game such as Project Zomboid. 
 
Tell me whatcha think!

unless it gives the back story of why the "survivors" got killed, then no thanks.
 
could simply be a case of one guy got ambushed and was able to take out his attackers before they got him.
would be unfair to  label him as an "unfriendly" when the fact may be that he is just a damn good survivor.
 
best to just leave it as is, and let the discovery happen naturally.

As a heads up, Snow makes it nearly impossible for player names to be read.  Not sure if that's for effect or whatever, but 
 
^^^ has a point.

Not being able to see the roads is a fine hinderance, so if it is for effect: it's a little overboard on player name visibility for the amount of snow that Kentucky ever sees.  Basically, would be nice to just toss a thin stroke on player names for those awkward bright white blind spots...

Must. These things add climate to the game.

I'd be happy with motor scooters and a wagon or shopping cart.
Cars could be a bad idea if you make too much noise with them.
 
Especially as I would hope they would be randomly placed on the map including some in crashes/pile ups hehehe. Broken down cars everywhere maybe some with zombies inside!
 
Just a thought since they posted gas would be able to be gotten from gas stations as long as the power is up could we just haul a generator there and power it for free gas after the power is off?  Gas Stations would become trade depots and war zones in mp!

putting someones whole base in the back of their own car and driving away with everything sounds like a rad idea

Cars will most likely be unable to transverse very far on the roads for many reasons.
1 - Gasolene, its a limited supply, and hard to find
2 - Durability, there are swarms on the roads, a car won't be able to plow through the mobs, animals, zombies, players
3 - Obstructions - Poor driving, and cars on the road. The roads are bound to not be clear, it'll take months to push the cars
     to clear the streets for any kind of driving.

Simply put, it would be pretty neat to see more visual weather effects/ambience other than just rain and thunder. I think these would be great and I have complied a list below of the effects.
 
 
Snow/Blizzard
 
Description: Basically what rain is, except it's white dots of snow falling to the ground. If the weather is more harsh, then a blizzard will occur which will have greater effects on the player.
 
Effects on Player: Same effects already put in when it snows, if a blizzard, the player will feels these effects even more.
 
Visual Effects: White dots of snow, if blizzard, more dense pieces of snow falling.
 
 
Fog
 
Description: Fog is pretty much what might occur after a thunderstorm/rain, or randomly during the seasons/months.
 
Effects on Player: Reduced sight (Not as bad as night time, but perhaps 15-30% of that) and the chance of slight panic/anxious if your outside for too long.
 
Visual Effects: Transparent grey visual with a slow, creepy animation.
 
Ambience
 
Description: Basically just more ambience to bring the place to life. Perhaps some trees could drop leaves and those said leaves could be seen blowing throughout the city. Some items such as Newspapers, Papers, various garbage, etc. should also blow in the wind. Would be nice to see some of the tall grass have an animation even if it's subtle of some weather occurring. 
 
Let's hear some wind blowing if its thunder storming or if it's a bad storm, let's see more visuals of the wind blowing water on the roads (if it isn't too much, if so, its fine.)
 
Effects on Player: A more immersive experience.
 
Visual Effects: Self-explanitory. 
 
 
I believe little touches like this can really give a heartbeat to a beautiful game such as Project Zomboid. 
 
Tell me whatcha think!

Oh! That's a weird coincidence, both servers have a active character named Alice, one bad and one good. RP server's Alice is the good one.
 
=P

PVP+PVE.
 
It'd be impossible for the RP server and we've recently found a way to make it impossible on the PVP+PVE (with the help of EnigmaGrey and others a week ago thank you.) recently.

Hey all, I saw how great Zeek's RP Server was doing and decided to post what's going on at Zeek's Haven! (PVP+PVE)
 
 
It's a cold winter, but the community base makes it easier to stay warm.
 
 
 

A glimpse from the "Mall of The Dead" event where players were trapped inside the mall for one hour (IRL time) and had to then make it back to the entrance.
 
9 people walked in.
 
2 people walked out.
 

I know and am part of them both, guess I choice wisely so 

The Zeek's Servers PVP & RP

Simply put, it would be pretty neat to see more visual weather effects/ambience other than just rain and thunder. I think these would be great and I have complied a list below of the effects.
 
 
Snow/Blizzard
 
Description: Basically what rain is, except it's white dots of snow falling to the ground. If the weather is more harsh, then a blizzard will occur which will have greater effects on the player.
 
Effects on Player: Same effects already put in when it snows, if a blizzard, the player will feels these effects even more.
 
Visual Effects: White dots of snow, if blizzard, more dense pieces of snow falling.
 
 
Fog
 
Description: Fog is pretty much what might occur after a thunderstorm/rain, or randomly during the seasons/months.
 
Effects on Player: Reduced sight (Not as bad as night time, but perhaps 15-30% of that) and the chance of slight panic/anxious if your outside for too long.
 
Visual Effects: Transparent grey visual with a slow, creepy animation.
 
Ambience
 
Description: Basically just more ambience to bring the place to life. Perhaps some trees could drop leaves and those said leaves could be seen blowing throughout the city. Some items such as Newspapers, Papers, various garbage, etc. should also blow in the wind. Would be nice to see some of the tall grass have an animation even if it's subtle of some weather occurring. 
 
Let's hear some wind blowing if its thunder storming or if it's a bad storm, let's see more visuals of the wind blowing water on the roads (if it isn't too much, if so, its fine.)
 
Effects on Player: A more immersive experience.
 
Visual Effects: Self-explanitory. 
 
 
I believe little touches like this can really give a heartbeat to a beautiful game such as Project Zomboid. 
 
Tell me whatcha think!

Hey guys,
Dreamteck here (Pepi writing). We are a small indie studio making its first "grown-up" steps in the industry. And we are super excited.
I wanted to show you the game we've been working on (yes, it's a Unity game and it draws tons of inspiration from the games with which we grew up.)
 
Viberift is a multiplayer, music-driven, action, arcade game that reimagines some of the classic music-driven game mechanics and puts them in the 3D environment of a fast paced, dog fight-styled gameplay (imagine a not-so-goofy-but-equally-fun Starfox atmosphere + dynamic Afterburner-like gameplay + Beat Hazard/Audiosurf-like game feel - you get Viberift xD).
 
 

 
Music
 
The most important choice in Viberift is the choice of music. In the lobby you'll be able to select between playing with the in-game music library or loading your own tracks (or why not just specifying a sound input device like a mic and beatboxing while you play xD). But whatever choice you decide to make you should know that every audio track generates different outcomes in terms of actual gameplay. Viberift's audio analyzer has been designed to "read” any given music track (or sound input) and identify a large amount of its elements. This allows us to create a great variety of weapons, abilities and enemy behaviours, each of them governed by a different frequency band or aspect of the music.
 

 
Gameplay
 
In Viberift's multiplayer you'll get to test your skills against other people in a set of open-world arenas and in a variety of game modes (in PvP) or you'll be casted against AI-controlled Viborg swarms in massive, cooperative arena battles (in PvE).
 

 
At a later stage we will be introducing a single player campaign, which follows a female human pilot in her struggle against a self-replicating race of alien robots of death and destruction (it's serious, though). It will guide you through the world of Viberift in a set of levels - each with a specific environment, objectives and enemies.
 

 
Mechanics
 
In our game we strive to reintroduce some of the classic, for the genre, mechanics, seen through the prism of a music driven-game:
 
-  A fluid and generally awesome control system with boost, dodge, flight-plane switch, fake death and other components, some of which - heavily music-driven (ok, I lied about the fake death button because no one on the team likes it but together we can #makefakedeathhappen, right guys? Guys?).
 
- A good variety of ships with different stats, stat limits and visual modifications.
 
- A selection of our finest music-driven weapons, each with its own effects and behaviour.
 
-  An in-depth customization system with the possibility to upgrade your ships’ stats, weapons and appearance.
 
- A special ability system with many music-driven abilities (in-game you'll only get to pick one, though, because it's already getting too much for a self-budgeted indie studio)
 
- (And the cherry on the pie:) A super-kick-ass Sonic Mode which you'll get to rarely activate but when you do - you'll be transported to a parallel dimension of magical music-driven rainbows and unicorns and stuffs. So… yeah… It'll be worth the wait.
 

 
Story
The Viborg are a mechanical creatures created by and modeled after a long extinct race of vibrational beings. Their only energy source is mechanical vibration, thus, to survive the soundless vacuum of space, they decompose every piece of matter they come across, feeding upon its vibrations. Shortly before the first attack, the humans manage to replicate some of the Viborg's technology and implement it in a handful of individuals. Thanks to our race's natural ability to make use of higher and more complex organizations of sound, those bio-augmented pilots are able to draw massive amounts of energy from... ehm... their favourite music, becoming far superior fighters than the Viborg. Nonetheless, we are fighting a lost war and our last, lingering hope lies within Vihra.
 

 
In the coming months we'll be launching a closed beta and soon after - our Steam Greenlight.
Stay tuned and support us on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, IndieDB оr Google+ (or just check our Team Page or Game Page) - we would really, really appreciate it!
 
Love,
Dreamteck