unmog

I was just about to make a post about this and found this older topic.
 
Yea I completely agree, destroying things with the sledge hammer should leave materials the same as hitting something with an axe~
 
:/

Most of this sounds nice, except this last bit about fire extinguishers. As a former security officer I know for certain its part of many peoples jobs to check the fire extinguisher and make sure this never happens. In fact you can get fined if someone does a surprise inspection, or just so happens to notice, that a fire extinguisher is low/empty since its a serious saftey violation. Im sure even Kentucky has these sort of public saftey laws~ so I see no reason why most of them would be empty. Sure, maybe some, but if you find your fire extinguisher in a store it should be 99%  of the time perfectly functional.

Can we have zombies included in the drop down menu for types of fuel for camp fires.
saves me building a 20 zombie stack. Over and over. I could quite happily spend an hour or two burning bodies. Reminiscent of C3PO in starwars sad I know.

I dont know how you live it, but for me having to take cigarettes by 20 is tiring !
SInce 32.0 is about new items, maybe adding a cigarette pack would be great.
And we could open it, when needed, like seeds or ammo box.
 

I tend to agree with most of what you said. Specifically.
 
1)Totally agree. While I understand that profession should point you toward a path of survival that would emphasize your pre-apocalypse career, I feel this system is just too restrictive right now. A non-carpenter for example, maybe a police officer that doesn't even know how to hold a hammer would just have to improvise, getting experience in the process. I mean, it's not that difficult to build a wooden wall... maybe we should have "basic" versions of the higher tier carpentry buildings available to almost anyone... and they should help your character to develop his/her carpentry skill far more than, for example, barricading does right now.
 
2)Agree on this one aswell. Firearms, in particular. Grab all the ammunition and weapons you can find in Knox County, fire all that rounds into hordes of zombies, and you'll still need thousands of bullets to get half-decent with a pistol, for example. Successful kills and hits should vastly add to your experience with firearms, I think. Like... at least 10 xp for successful hit?
 
3)Agree. A carpenter with all possible picks for his/her profession. including handy, isn't able to build, let's say, stairs. I really wouldn't hire such a bad carpenter, not even if I had to fix a simple doghouse. The primary choice, the profession one, should add much, much more XP levels to our characters.
 
4)Unemployed is really hard to level up, I agree. Since you start with no major bonuses and you have to survive while you slowly level your carpenter/farming/everything else, I'd say an overhaul would really be beneficial. Maybe a flat-out bonus for unemployed characters in random skills? I mean, I may be unemployed, but that doesn't make me a total inept at everything I choose to do. 

I've been keeping a close eye on the level up system and the way XP increases with time and felt it needed a bit of balancing. Feel free to argue the points;
 
1) XP should increase faster. At the moment I'm getting to a point where I have loads of skills waiting to increase a level but I'm struggling to gather enough XP for a new level. Obviously the choice of skills we select should be tactical but I would have to survive for years at the moment to get a skill to level 10.
 
2) Some skills will never max out because there is simply not enough stuff available to achieve that. There's very little glue/tape etc. for maintenance for example. I don't think there's enough bullets to get gun skills up either. Perhaps the amount of XP per level or acquired through practice should be addressed to solve this. I don't expect to get every skill to level 10 however, just felt the process could be made easier in some cases.
 
3) Skills from professions should be balanced a bit better. I find the accuracy of the police officer/veteran with pistols to be too low, so perhaps they should have a greater level of that skill at the start? The carpenter isn't very good at carpentry either; he should be able to make most things straight away really. I wouldn't hire a chippy that couldn't build basic stuff!
 
4) The traits and abilities are already really good but I think some balancing of the numbers amongst them would help. If I'm choosing unemployed and giving them skills like first aid or carpentry it has to be worth it in balance with the negative traits that seriously affect the suvivors chances. With ten levels of skill to achieve and the current XP balance I'm not sure if it's worth it at the moment
 
Interested to see what others think...
 

Most of this sounds nice, except this last bit about fire extinguishers. As a former security officer I know for certain its part of many peoples jobs to check the fire extinguisher and make sure this never happens. In fact you can get fined if someone does a surprise inspection, or just so happens to notice, that a fire extinguisher is low/empty since its a serious saftey violation. Im sure even Kentucky has these sort of public saftey laws~ so I see no reason why most of them would be empty. Sure, maybe some, but if you find your fire extinguisher in a store it should be 99%  of the time perfectly functional.

Id worry more about balancing and "OP" stuff after the hurdle if it gets implemented or not. I think too many people worry about "nerfing" things to "balance it" in fear if they dont that it wont get implemented. I dunno, like I said Im the kind to suggest ideas get implemented first before worrying about sacrificing realism for balance sakes. If something is unbalanced it could easily be balanced later.
 
Give it the chance to "be" first before taking a swing at it with the nerfbat. It isnt even out of beta yet so~

heh, here I was thinking this topic was "We should be able to hammer in screws!" Which... is something Ive had to do when I ran out of nails and didnt have a electric screwdriver~

What you could do for now though is just go into the Project Zomboid game folder, media, scripts, and find the items.txt file and just change the value for cigarettes to whatever you want. Normally the happy change is 10, could make it -10 to give it a happyness bonus, or -100, who knows~ whatever you want, depends on how much your character would like to smoke.
 
But I do think you're right, Im not a smoker myself but i dont see why smoking would make people unhappy... doesnt make sense to me that eatting a tv dinner would make you unhappy either now that Im thinking about it. Maybe I should go change that too. Anyway I wish we could add a list of favorites that our characters liked. For instance, if your characters favorite food is hamburgers then eating one would give you a pretty big happyness bonus.

Doesnt hammering also cause noise? Im pretty sure the amount of noise with an electric screw driver is actually less than banging on it with a hammer. But, yea it could cause the same amount of noise to be fair.

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Dowels are Alternative to Nails ! :3
 
http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/1091-handmade-wooden-dowels-realistic-nails-alternative/
 
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More seriously, I think screwing a baricade should be faster than with nails if you use a electric screwdriver but painfully long / impossible otherwise.
 
I mean, have you ever tryed to pierce a wooden plank with a screw using a common screwdriver ? Now try to picture you trying to pierce the plank and the wall behind to baricade a window with the PZ screwdriver...
 
As a counter part, using an electric screwdriver should make a lot of noise and use battery.
 
But I'm only talking about baricading here, I think screws are more apropriate in furnitures crafts like bookshelves, etc.

Okay Lucus time now.
 
 
·In Winter      As known to all of us, fallen snow would appear aground now in PZ winter when we play Survival or Sandbox of default climate setting, it proves that the environment temperature had fallen to 0 alre.     But what delight us is that TID already did make plants change as climate changes ingame, some tough all-seasons-growing plants still growing like Pine, but most defoliate n fall in dormancy, including most crops we could farm in PZ, beyond doubts.            Let me give u a for instances,   under growing info of tomato, we know that they would grow slowly even do not bloom with a temp below 15, and already frozen to death below 0 without question.       Now what I mention about is only influence of freezing excessive cold on plant, we could ignore the high temp cause it might be too different to farm under both.      So I suggest that crops stop growing even frozen to death in winter( might be changed in Sandbox settings? ), then most food with a long shelf life woulb be well-used to a large extent, and more fun added.   ·Building Greenhouse        Insane rare food rarity or have holded on for a long-----long time?      What we need is greenhouses that give plants a normal growing environment.( most added function before needed a large project right? Nice work n thank u so much TID.   )        So what a greenhouse can do could be growing crops with warm temps in winter and let them grow well( growing faster, high production or low farming diseases? )in others.  ·a little tip        Hey dudes I dunno what were u thinking bout, but we cant grow most plants esp green plants without light indoor! Well u could explain this before a blackout forever in game, but we actually cant make it after that except they were grown near windows.      A little tiny problem huh?      Anyway, THX for reading.And I hope these were not be mentioned yet.

One of my biggest complaints is the lighting. 
 
Many buildings will have random rooms that have crazy amounts of light in them.  Just last night, i was playing on V31.11 and I went into a bathroom (window less) and the lighting was perfect.  I turned on the light and it completely flushed everything out.
 
There have been times when i was walking down the road at night and I look over at a building and see perfectly into the room through the window like the light is on.  This was months into a game.
 
Or some times it's just part of a room.  a piece of the wall that lit while everything else is dark. 
 
Have any of you noticed this?  All my friends that play have the same complaint.

Please Note: This is not too be confused with bringing back the wheelie bins from previous versions, this suggestion is about having it so we can possibly make a wheelburrow ourselves with the carpentry skill.
 
It is that time of the year now (at least where I live) where you start to put your snow stuff away and start bringing out the lawn mowers, etc. I was kind of thinking what we do not have yet is like a wheelburrow that can be useful for moving wooden logs around and I think that wheelburrows don't seem to be that complicated so I think we should be able to craft our own.
 
I think to make it so it is not too overpowered and easy to get they should make it so that it requires a high carpentry level to make, here is how the recipe should be like below:
 
1x Small Wheel
16x Planks
32x Nails or Screws
1x Hammer/Screwdriver
 
Here is a real-life image of how it would look if you would have made it yourself.

I see in some of the small cabins what looks like cast-iron wood burning stoves. I've not been able to get them to function as a wood burning stove however. Are they just cool looking normal stoves, or am I doing something wrong? ... and if they're just pretty normal stoves will they ever be altered to be actual wood burning stoves? That would make the cabins out in the woods much more awesome. Especially if they actually heated the cabin as well. A nice stove warmed winter cabin out in the woods amongst the trees and the snow.

Okay, so this has been a gripe of mine for a long time. Why does smoking make you unhappy? It shouldn't, that makes absolutely *no* sense what so ever. lol
 
Instead, here's what I'm suggesting. We making a 'smoker' trait and when you don't have a cigarette it makes you angry (however it negates the sadness portion of the cigarette) in other words removes it entirely. 
 
The longer you go without cigarettes the more agitated you become now to avoid this you can optionally not take the smoker trait (however) then cigarettes would make you unhappy and even nauseous. 
 
This has been bothering me for some time and essentially makes smoking totally pointless. But I love my cigarettes so when it's fixed I'll have something else to stock pile!
 
Oh and the smoker trait should obviously be a negative not a positive. Since it's only partially severe on how it effects gameplay I suggest a negative 2 or 3 maybe 4 but no higher than that.

I think it would be really cool if we could capture a zombie somehow, and if we were going insane being around that zombie and talking to it would improve our mood. This is sort of related to the implementation of npcs soon-ish. It would be cool if we could essentially turn a zombie into an npc, like restrain it in a way ala Walking Dead to have a little zombie buddy. Id think you first push one and knock him down, then right click with some handcuffs or rope or gag it with a rag or whatever, then you leash the little guy and bring him home. Maybe could even be a perk, Zombie lover. Sure, if you get too close or dont check its restraints then your little friend turns out to be a benedict arnold and your forced to either put it down or find out thats how you died.
 
I've tried locking a zombie in my bathroom for this sort of roleplay aspect but, it eventually gets out

I think it would be really cool if we could capture a zombie somehow, and if we were going insane being around that zombie and talking to it would improve our mood. This is sort of related to the implementation of npcs soon-ish. It would be cool if we could essentially turn a zombie into an npc, like restrain it in a way ala Walking Dead to have a little zombie buddy. Id think you first push one and knock him down, then right click with some handcuffs or rope or gag it with a rag or whatever, then you leash the little guy and bring him home. Maybe could even be a perk, Zombie lover. Sure, if you get too close or dont check its restraints then your little friend turns out to be a benedict arnold and your forced to either put it down or find out thats how you died.
 
I've tried locking a zombie in my bathroom for this sort of roleplay aspect but, it eventually gets out

We'll go simple in this one - I honestly can't imagine at this day and age to see areas in America or any other country that isn't poor without some kind of PC at home. It has became such a big thing for people that a lot of jobs require you to have a computer so you can get emails from it, etcetera.
 
What I thought of - have computers work as a reliable source of information while the electricity is still there (read as - electronic skill books, all in 1). As a bonus you can also watch some TV news on internet (same thing as what you're going to hear on TV/Radio broadcasts once those are also in), listen to music very loudly (attract zombies' attention) and maybe research info about zombie virus (some cool background story to do for our amazing writers).
 
Allow players to "download" digital books on the computer so once the internet blacks out (more on that further) you can still read them while the power is on. MAYBE also give the ability to people to have a "chat" function integrated, so you can find someone online in the same town that needs rescuing. Have it work as some kind of "quest" when NPCs are in, so you have a goal to make on your first days of survival. (all optional) And when you conclude where the said person is, you can investigate and find a person's house, and find him/her dead or alive.
 
Have the internet black out the same day TV and radio broadcasts black out, leaving you completely in the dark and cut off from any human contact or ability to read online skill books. However, still allow people to listen to offline songs at full volume and read offline skill books that you've managed to download.

Just found my first Sledgehammer and I said ''Cool! Now I can take down those doors I wanna break for hinges and planks. Maybe even get myself some more planks from some wooden houses I saw.'', but, when I destroyed my first door IT LEFT ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BEHIND. Then tried with house's wall, same result. With a wooden wall I built? Same result....
 
It's as if more than a sledgehammer, it was a sort of ''Delete'' button that magically disintegrates everything it touches. Why is that? Why can a humble hammer or ax demolish a door more realistically than a sledge? Why do demolished walls don't leave a single bit of rubble? This turns the rare and sought-after sledgehammer in little more than just a big eraser you can use to remove stuff (something which, by itself, is pretty unrealistic. See my other thread for ideas about these furniture issues.)
 
When destroyed by a sledge, doors should behave just like when this is done by a hammer or axe, same for anything player-built.
 
Normal house parts should leave behind different stuff depending on their material; wooden fences and walls should leave planks, roofs should leave roof tiles (which should be used for building a roof instead of just Wooden Floor-ing everything), metallic walls should leave scrap metal or metal plates, etc.
 
I'm really surprised this hasn't been implemented yet.

You already consume (most of) the materials you use, that's basically the idea of the game
Theoretically (and eventually) you will run out everything...
 
 
I do understand your concern, of course no player wants to "lose control". I agree that's a bad game mechanic. However this change would not make you lose control. You would still be able to build e.g. a rain collector barrel 100% of the time on level 4, exactly like before, but would allow you to take the risk of attempting to build one before level 4, without being 100% sure you are able.
 
It is exactly the same thing with breaking windows, you might get cut or you might not.
You let a zombie scratch you and you might get infected or not.
That's already randomized.
You just need to know the rules, know the consequences and be in control.
 
 
Well... that's just silly.

Hello,
 
I thought I'd share an idea I thought would be:
easy to implement logical rewarding interesting So, instead of being able/not able to craft a certain item at a certain level, it should be possible to try at any level. This is how real life works, so... it makes sense.
 
The rate of success could follow an exponential function such as:
 

 
Of course there must be a penalty for failure, right?
 
Suggestions:
 
crafting materials are destroyed crafting materials produce some unwanted product you hurt yourself  
(clyde)
 
ps. It could be even be made so that the "quality" of a produced item depends on the combination of your experience and luck, like it is in real life, but in a less "quantized" manner (level X != you always produce quality, level Y != if you have luck you may be able to exceed the typical quality of your level)

I like changing the starting month so it isnt balls hot when I start the game. I like March, so it starts kinda cold then slowly becomes warmer... so, theres plenty of situations where the power shouldnt be out and its cold. Not to mention the power and stuff going out is customizable as well...
 
 Gotta remember this is in kentucky though~

I think, than when player reaches agony and/ maybe/ extreme panic level levels, he should randomly start shouting, akin to random sneezing. He is agonizing and in so much pain. Shouldn't he?