jefferyharrell

I like this idea a lot, though given that clothes are so easy to loot, I wonder if it would really add anything to the game, or if it would just be a click-to-win mechanic. I love anything that adds more realism, but "you must click this button to continue playing" doesn't add much to the game.

I can't recall running across a crawler in the wild, but I've created a great many while using blunt instruments like the baseball bat and the crowbar. Well, in the US its spelled without the h. Its one of those things that seem odd in-game, like Remoulade Sauce. Took me awhile to figure out what it was, since its the French equivalent of tartar sauce in the States, or at least similar to it. I'm from Louisiana. We make our sauce rémoulade with celery and bell pepper and lots of cayenne and paprika and we eats it with shrimps. I think the PZ developers have something radically different in mind.

Actually the last time I looked, KSP was still using single-precision floats for at least some of the critical numerical integrators, which goes a long way toward explaining why that game is so buggy. It's true that they use a moving coordinate system for some of the gameplay (where the active vessel is defined to be the origin of coordinates and everything else in the universe moves relative to it), but in practice that's of limited utility. COMPLETELY off-topic. Sorry.

Hoo boy, not in my experience. They're tenacious.

The big problem with solar panels is the inverter. A PV array generates direct current (DC), but pretty much every electrical object in the PZ world is going to run on alternating current (AC). If you're lucky you can maaaaaybe scrounge up some PV arrays from things like streetlamps (though I think you're overestimating their common-ness by quite a lot), but without an inverter you wouldn't be able to use them to power your coffee pot. Even with an inverter, you'd be looking at something on the order of seven square meters of PV panels to power that coffee pot, and that's on a cloudless day at noon. A regular household coffee pot draws on the order of a kilowatt of power, and solar power is only good for a kilowatt per square meter at about 15% efficiency under full, direct sunlight. Of course, the way around that is to wire your PV arrays up to a bank of batteries. Charge the batteries gradually over several days, then dump all their amp-hours into your coffee pot at once. But that requires even more electrical know-how and scrounged parts. Not saying it couldn't be done. It might even make for a fun little aspect of gameplay for the mid- to late-game. Just saying that throwing solar panels into the loot table and calling it a day would, to be, be overly simplistic and disappointing. But I'm weird.

Not to sound negative or whatever, but doctors don't typically carry medical supplies on their persons. They don't tend to have drugs or surgical tools in their pockets, if you follow my meaning.

For their size and weight, car batteries hold surprisingly little charge. Under unattainably ideal conditions, one couldn't power a coffee pot for a whole day before being fully discharged. They're designed to deliver a lot of amps for just a few seconds in order to start your car. As soon as the engine turns over, it starts generating electricity to recharge the battery again. If you've ever forgotten to turn off your headlights, you know how little charge a car battery really holds.

Okay, but fighting with a knife would be completely unlike fighting with a crowbar. I agree that putting a bat with some nails in it in one category and a fire axe in another seems kind of arbitrary, but it's no more arbitrary than grouping all weapons by how many hands they're held with. If you wanted to get really granular, you'd have to think about swinging weapons like clubs versus slashing weapons like knives versus stabbing weapons like … well, also knives but knives that are being used differently. Personally I think that level of granularity is excessive for a game like PZ. At first blush, I'm inclined to think that the game would be no worse off if all melee weapons were covered by one skill and all shooting weapons (guns now, eventually things like bows perhaps later) were covered by another. I mean, let's consider the overriding fact: You're supposed to win. When it's you versus a zombie, one on one in a fair fight, you're supposed to win. Even on your first day with no skill bonuses, you're supposed to be able to win that fight. I think if we said that somebody who's competent killing zombies with a baseball bat is incompetent with a machete, it would end up diminishing the game somewhat. That's just my two cents, though. I'm open to being told I'm wrong.

Shadows don't work quite like you'd expect in an isometric scene. Every shadow would be infinitely long, for instance, meaning every pixel in the scene would end up being in the shadow of some object somewhere.

I'm not 100% sure that's true, and here's why: As Rass said, there was a bug in one of the builds 31 where strength was gained much too quickly. When I played that build, my character gained the "Stout" trait. That is to say, I did not choose the "Stout" trait, but after a day or two in-game, the "Stout" trait appeared in my character's info window. So I think traits are gained and lost, at least in some cases. Overweight/Obese might also appear and disappear as the hidden Fitness "skill" changes. But I'm just guessing.

This is exactly, word for word, what I think. You expressed it much better than I did. And as for control, in a sense the player would have slightly more control over it than he would over the progression of a fever or starvation. If a character gets to that depth of depression, the player can keep him or her away from guns, knives, sleeping tablets, bleach, rope, whatever tools of self-harm might be implemented in the game. The player would have the opportunity to put his character on a very literal "suicide watch" until he can improve his character's emotional state. It would make playing the game very, very difficult, but isn't that kind of the point? Anyway, let me emphasize again that I'm not married to my idea. It was just a suggestion. I'm grateful to Rass for expressing it so clearly and succinctly.

I'd like a random start date option too, now that you guys mention it. I'd still like to choose my starting time of year, at least, but the option to have the game choose for me would be fun.

I support this idea, with one teeny reservation: Vending machines don't actually have glass fronts. They're transparent plastic, and specifically to prevent people from pulling a smash-and-grab. But after a moment's reflection I think I can ignore that because of what you said: It would make noise and alert zombies. I think that's a very good gameplay trade-off. I was thinking the same with the smash-resistant plastic. Perhaps follow what you said about the vending machine having a good amount of snacks/drinks, but have it require a much heavier tool to break into? Perhaps a crowbar or even a sledgehammer. Maaaaybe, though I'm kind of prejudiced right now against the sledgehammer because I recently went on a crate-smashing spree at the logging company trying to find a spade and one never turned up. So phooey to the sledgehammer and all that it implies. But personal vendettas aside, yes, that's an idea worth considering. Although since the vending machine is a container, won't the sledgehammer work on it regardless? I think it would destroy it and leave its contents (if any) on the floor, wouldn't it?

I support this idea, with one teeny reservation: Vending machines don't actually have glass fronts. They're transparent plastic, and specifically to prevent people from pulling a smash-and-grab. But after a moment's reflection I think I can ignore that because of what you said: It would make noise and alert zombies. I think that's a very good gameplay trade-off. The benefit, I think, should be that instead of a packet or two of chips, a vending machine might hold six or eight small junk-food items: chips, chocolate, maybe something not yet present in the game like cookies or something. But the risk is that there's a slim chance you might end up with a scratch or deep cut from the broken glass, like climbing through a broken window. (Also if you eat too many junk-food items too quickly it should totally make you queasy.)

I'm still new, but every time I start a game I get tripped up by the fact that a new game starts on the 23rd of the month. Last game I decided I wanted to try starting in the autumn just for a change, so I thoughtlessly chose September as my starting month. Got into the game and found it was the 23rd of September, in other words practically October already. I'm sure I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, but would it be an improvement if choosing September (or whatever) as your starting month started the game on September 1st?

Call me crazy, but in an end-of-the-world situation, the minuscule possibility of getting stuck in a malfunctioning elevator would be far too great a risk for me. I wouldn't press my luck. I'd just take the stairs.

Oh sure, I agree. But it's a matter of degrees. Spilling dirt on top of a warehouse just doesn't work for me as a player, personally. If it were harder, then yeah, no problem. I want to be clear: I'm not criticizing the game here. I'm just expressing a personal quirk. I know it's a fine line.

Exactly, I never take Handy UNLESS I go with Carpentry profession, then I will have carpentry level 4 right out of the bat which is very nice, won't need to grind at all! Because then you can build the small rain barrels, which is more than okay. Think 5-6 pots can be filled in one. Maybe this should be nerfed? Otherwise nobody's gonna go for the big rain barrels when they small one does the job just fine. Maybe if there was another trait/hobby that only gave a point into carpentry and let it cost 4 points and then reduce the other skill hobbies to 4 points? Maybe if structures decayed a carpenter would have a bonus to repairing them. I like this idea a lot. I'm not in the middle of the end of the world, and sometimes I feel like I spend half my life patching things up.

I've got very little experience, but I've found that in build 31 at least, farming is very much a set-it-and-forget-it thing. It takes a relatively long time for plants to bear fruit, and longer for them to bear seeds; I didn't time it or anything, but I want to say it was on the order of an in-game month or more. In one game I sowed seeds and then watered (which was tedious), and in another game I sowed seeds and ignored them and let rain do the work, and I didn't notice a significant difference. Maybe I just got lucky. Doing things like planting on a thin layer of soil spilled on concrete strikes me as being too video-gamey, so I personally don't care for it. That's just me being weird, though. My biggest problems, which I've yet to figure out good solutions to, relate to storage. Harvesting two plots yielded something like twenty cabbages. I didn't have enough room in my fridge for them, so where and how do I keep them such that they don't spoil before I can eat them? Stocking up for winter is a challenge I haven't overcome in any of my games yet (mostly because of zombie-related death before the first snowfall). I know canning is a thing, but I haven't found any jars or anything yet, so I haven't had a chance to experiment. Vinegar I always end up with in spades, but that's it.

I think it's fair to say okay, carpentry is a skill and skills are hard to learn and that's fine, but what useful things can an unskilled person do with a hammer and some nails? Barricading windows and doors is a great example: Give me a board and a hammer and some nails and I can totally barricade a window, and that's useful in the context of the game. But what else could I do with a hammer and nails that would be useful? I think that's where the game can be improved vis a vis low level carpentry. It takes a lot of skill to build furniture, but an idiot with a hammer can … whatever. Fill in that blank.

I think that's probably valid, but I'm very new to the game still, so I don't know much about the NPC thing, or any plans or intentions related thereto. I have a lot of trouble thinking about anything but the single-player survival game, because that's all I've had experience with.

If you're playing with the zombie count set to "high" or "insane," those destinations can be days away from your starting house.

I think I presented the idea poorly. A lot of the response has been along the lines of "your character shouldn't die because of something you can't control," but I really see my idea as being more akin to death by starvation, which is already a totally non-controversial game mechanic. I'm not saying my idea is the best and the critics are idiots; farthest thing from it. I'm just saying that I think it's possible that my idea isn't quite as bad as some have thought. I'm really not married to it, though. It was just a suggestion.

I didn't even think of that, and in retrospect it's obvious. Great idea. Tapping on a window should draw zombies in the room to the window and make them start "attacking" it, or whatever we call it.

It does pose a kind of buttered-cat problem. Do any of you guys know much about how gas stations (petrol stations, whatever) work in real life? I know I've heard that the pumps are electric, so yes, the mains power has to be on to get gas or diesel out of the pumps. But the fuels are stored in below-ground tanks, right? Can the fuel be siphoned out somehow without using the pumps? Is there a reasonable, realistic and non-game-breaking way to use the Fossoil station to get sustainable fuel for generators?