BayCon

Studying to be a game and software developer in school, and being a huge nerd, I really enjoyed reading about some of the work that goes into one of my favorite games. I know most people won't like this stuff, but I hope we can occasionally get more dev blogs like this in the future, at least occasionally. I haven't been signed in here in quite some time but when I read this on the website I just had to let my thoughts be known.

I don't comment very much on Mondoids anymore, but I read about RJ's brother on the Zomboid website and hopped over to the forums to send my condolences... I have a brother, and I know what it's like to have the strange brand of love that brothers have, so it's not hard for me to imagine what you're going through right now having to let him go, RJ. I'm terribly sorry to hear about his death. Hopefully TIS is alright with you taking as much time to mourn as you need. His drawings are spectacular... I glanced at the attached picture and before I read that it was his artwork I thought it was a close-up photograph of a real man. He had some serious talent. Hopefully it's not inappropriate for me to say that. Anyway, I hope you're having some time off man.. Peace.

I think you consistently have some of the best ideas in this community.

I can't tell much of a difference between pitch black nights and what it used to be. Is it bugged? Here's a comparison of what my game looks like at night in previous builds, and here's what it looks like in the current build (It's darker indoors than it is outside). Build 37 (Survival): IWBUMS Build 38.1 (Sandbox w/pitch black nights): I wanna show a screenshot of Darkwood at night for comparison like Svarog mentioned, but I'm too lazy to sit in the game for 10 minutes until night for one screenshot lol. But in that game, you cannot see a thing at night. Nothing. Period. Unless you have lights on, but even then, the darkness is solid.

Died in 10 hours. I was never able to outrun the sickness somehow. I made it away from the corpses around my house and felt a little better for like a second, but then I decided to go back and use my new hope to clean up the corpses and the sickness went back to where it was. Finally, I decided I would have to go on the run from the sickness if I had any hope of surviving, but it seems like even the corpses that randomly spawn from the game were contributing to my sickness. Either that, or the 6 - 8 corpses at home caused an irreversible sickness that snowballed into a terminal illness, ultimately leading to my untimely death. TL;DR - Zombies have some hardcore airborne super powered illnesses and they killed me in 10 in-game hours.

Really looking forward to pitch-black darkness at night and hyperactive zombies, but I literally cannot decide if I wanna wait for the stable branch or help testing lol. However, I do wonder if the dirty clothing mechanic would be best added under the new animations, because I feel like without a visual indication, it would be an annoying feature, I killed maybe 6 - 8 zombies outside of my base and within 2 - 3 real life minutes I'm already queasy. I don't have a shovel though, so how else can I get rid of the corpses? Genuine question. Thanks.

Really looking forward to pitch-black darkness at night and hyperactive zombies, but I literally cannot decide if I wanna wait for the stable branch or help testing lol. However, I do wonder if the dirty clothing mechanic would be best added under the new animations, because I feel like without a visual indication, it would be an annoying feature,

Not sure how I feel about that. It could make it harder to know where your windows are and how many barricades are still on them, things like that. Plus, I've always felt that, because of the way PZ handles sight, it has always had the best indoor "feel". I like the current style and don't see much of a reason to change it, but as long as it doesn't hurt gameplay I guess it's fine. It might be too much to ask, but it would be nice to have both graphical styles in the options.

There are a lot of things I would like to respond to here so I'll break it down by paragraph. Paragraph 1: I agree with what you said about the zombies. They should be the primary threat. If I wanted to play a game where interactions with NPC's and characters pushed zombies to the side, I'd play The Walking Dead game by Telltale, which I wouldn't, because after awhile the plot becomes even worse than TWD on AMC. Paragraph 2. That is the intended purpose of NPC's, yes, however, I argue that there has never been a game with NPC's where there hasn't come a point where we've seen it all, and I think unless the developers release a few patches and updates concerning NPC behavior after they are released, this will happen with Zomboid as well. That's not necessarily a bad thing, either. From what I've heard, Lemmy is programming a very advanced and complicated system for NPC behavior, and I'm interested in seeing just how many possibilities it provides for NPC-player interactions. Paragraph 3: I'm not sure what you mean by "you and your friends can compete in accuracy and teamwork with the NPC's." Could you clarify? Paragraph 4: I hope no one expects the NPC's to be like real people, and I certainly hope zombies don't take the back seat later in the game so we can have these weird faction wars and character dramas. I would be fine if the official NPC's were like the NPC's in nolanritchie's "Survivors!" mod, just slightly smarter and with more lines of dialogue.

I mean it's fine if you like it and would like to praise it, but it's equally fine for me to hate it and trash it. You or anyone else liking the show doesn't (and shouldn't) discourage me, or anyone for that matter, from criticizing or trashing it. I'm simply keeping the comparison that some of you made to The Walking Dead. I was saying why and how placing humans as the primary threat ruined the show due to how poorly it was done (in my opinion) and could also ruin the game. However, you're right, I did go a little to far off on my tangent.

I don't think I've been clear about my thought process behind my opinion. I'm talking about the game. From a gameplay perspective, I would rather have NPC's as an accessory to the survival experience, not as my main threat. It just sounds boring. No matter how many experiences Lemmy programs, or how good the AI is, no matter how many lines of dialogue Will writes, there will most likely come a point when we've seen it all, and I don't want my reward for late-game survival to be, almost exclusively, interactions with NPC's that I've already experienced time after time. It just sounds boring to me. Frankly, the cheapening of zombies in TWD (aside from the terrible writing, half-explored character arcs and development, dialogue that consists almost entirely of TV language/punch lines and bad jokes, and predictable storyline with terrible pacing that only relies on its finales) is what drained my interest in the show. I can understand wanting to play with people, because people are living, unpredictable entities. People will always offer you a new experience if you interact with them. No matter how many gray hairs Lemmy sprouts from working on NPC interactions, they cannot provide the same unlimited experiences and interactions that real people can. Whether it takes 2 hours, or 200 hours, we will see it all. People do whatever they want, but NPC's only do what the programmer tells them to, and that's why I don't want them to turn my playthroughs into The Walking Dead. In a way, those characters act more like NPC's than people anyway, creating contrived problems where they don't really need to happen and things like that. Now, this is not to show doubt or distaste toward the capabilities of Lemmy or anyone else working on the development of NPC's, and it's certainly not to discourage them. I just don't think I personally would enjoy trying to have meaningful interactions with computer-controlled characters over my own personal stories of survival. I would enjoy having those interactions along with my daily quest for survival against zombies and all of the other threats found in Zomboid, but I would not want them to replace it.

Glad to see that people like you will continue to push me away from public multiplayer.

I don't want the NPC's to become a bigger threat than the zombies, and I started to hate The Walking Dead when it became a people drama. You know the most recent season finale (or whatever episode that was where all the gangs tried to screw over Rick's crew) had one zombie in it, right? ONE ZOMBIE!!! And it was just a dead main character, so that doesn't even really count. It's just the actress with some makeup to pale her skin, and some gray contacts, nothing creative like the zombies in TWD usually are. (side note, I didn't care one bit that she died because the characters of the show have no "character" and the writers suck at developing them, writing their dialogue, and getting me to care about any of them. Seriously, Rick, Carl, Michone, and Daryl could all die in the same episode and I would not care, where as a few years ago I would have flipped. That show sucks now.). Also, I gotta say, I don't want these set-in-stone Walking Dead-esque NPC groups. I want a more dynamic system in place than that. Now, it would be fine if the system was so sophisticated that sometimes it would create these huge bands of survivors that go to war with each other, but seriously, it would get old for me having the same groups pop up over and over.

See, this expanded post to me seems a lot more reasonable than "darkness annoys me". Although I still disagree about darkness being annoying, I can't argue against the fact that this is a great set of suggestions and a very well-done post. I hope each one gets implemented!

Thanks for your clarifications guys.

And they should last a good deal of time too. At least a few days of constant burning (Sorry if this is mistaken, I haven't seen a burning candle in awhile, and haven't dedicated any brain power to determining how long they would burn if they were never put out), like candles in real life. If I'm not mistaken, they are already in the game as an item, right? You just can't actually use them?

I don't see how this relates very much to darkness in the game other than your mention of a campfire. I make my bases in various different places, not just in the city, but I always make sure there's a decent amount of zombies in the area, sometimes even a lot just to challenge myself (which is when I choose the city). I get too bored if there are no zombies around, because it basically just turns into Sims or a farming simulator.

Most of the bugs I can deal with, but... 1. the messed up loot spawning (loot appearing in inappropriate locations and not appearing in the appropriate locations) makes supply runs not worth the effort. 2. Interior doors being locked, and cannot be unlocked from either side.

What makes you say it's "more frustrating than challenging"? Even as an experienced player, I personally get a little anxious at night when I hear a bunch of zombies banging on my barricades after the power goes out. When I start to feel confident, cocky even, The darkness after the power goes out puts me in check.

Well, what they're talking about is becoming sick, not just repulsed. A person's reaction to a pile of corpses isn't exactly related to the fact that if they live around them on a daily basis, they will become a threat to the person's health, no matter how little the corpses mess with them emotionally.

This comment pointed out to me the lack of sounds outside at night. I live in the country (not too unlike Muld & WP, Ky) and on a loud night, there are almost a deafeningly large amount of crickets. Sometimes you can hear a giant frog that grows in our back pond every year croaking loudly, and on quieter nights, you can hear owls singing a song they only sing in my area. If I could program, a sound overhaul would be the first mod I would make. It would probably just start with night sounds though.

Wohoo!!! Thanks for responding to our suggestions! I think if you could find a way to allow us to have seperate settings for day and night, we could accomplish exactly what you said in the Mondoid, but with even more detail! For example, zombies are inactive during the day, weak, and short-sighted. But, for whatever reason, at night, they are sprinters with eagle-eye vision and pinpoint hearing. It would allow us players to create our own lore. That would be so cool. ^.^ Then, suddenly, Zomboid becomes like Darkwood, my favorite horror game ever. Here's a screenshot of the game during the day, and one during the night. I wish I had taken better/more screenshots of Darkwood so I could explain this better, but here they are: Darkwood during the day (note, I was looking at the ground, but when your character is facing forward, everything is as bright as the little area in the circle around my character): Darkwood at night (note, you can only see what little light is provided by the lights connected to the generator if you choose to start it. Starting the generator in-game uses a priceless in-game item, gas, and it is unknown whether keeping it on attracts the horrors of the night or repels them, so it's a gamble): If you choose not to have any light, NOTHING outside of your character's immediate radius is visible. Period. It's completely black like the right side of the screen, but they've added some neat fog and smoke effects to give the darkness even more of a solid feel. I'm not expecting smoke effects or anything, I just want everyone to know what I was basing my opinion on when I wrote my last post about pitch black darkness. By the way, almost anyone who likes Zomboid would like this game. It's terrifying, has permadeath as an option, procedurally generated world, good story (so far). EDIT: Happy 400th post for me!

What would that include, and how would you make it exclusive to experienced players? RJ needs more details.

You're right, I hadn't thought about the fact that most houses would be broken into on the first night because of that. You have a great idea for balancing it.

3. I've been out in the wilderness at night before too, and like you said, the only things that weren't black were the stars. 4. I think I heard somewhere that they already are, but it hasn't made a big enough difference in my gameplay for me to notice. I'm basically asking for it to have a more noticeable effect.