FireOnAsphalt

Currently on build Vehicle Test 40.6. Tested on default Survival mode with no mods: - Riverside - Rosewood - West Point Only 1 vehicle I've found has had any gas whatsoever, after a search of appx. 100 vehicles or more. Is that normal? I've checked the fire departments, the police stations, the town halls, several shopping centers, parking lots, residentials and everything. None of the vehicles had gas at all. They had vehicle parts of varying conditions, loot of various professions, all sorts of neat stuff. But zero gasoline at the onset of the apocalypse doesn't make any sense... Did everybody go to work that day and know they wouldn't need gas at the end of their shift because the zombies were coming?

The only problem I have here is that I've survived a bite. I don't have the save file to prove it anymore, but I actually had a survivor survive two bites once. Never have I even survived a bite once before then, or since. But back in build, I dunno, 34 or so, I had a character survive two bites. Interesting, no?

Not to take an unproductive macabre direction with this... But my immediate thought when I saw the toaster in the bathroom was not of a bed-and-breakfast scenario, but one more akin to someone who decided not to try to survive the outbreak and take their own way out... (run-on sentences ftw) Either way, great work Kenneth!

I've been doing my own unscientific study of melee weapons and there seems to be some variance in weapons concerning what I like to call "critical hits", zed stamina, and "sweet spots". Having never even looked at the code, I've gathered that some weapons have a higher chance to successfully do damage than others, and that zombies seemingly have a "stamina" buffer that can influence how much damage you do when you hit them. What I mean by stamina is that depending on how long a zombie has been lunging towards you, they have more or less stamina, which I believe is determined by their deteriorating speed until they "replenish" their stamina and revert to original speed once again. At the slowest portion of their moment is the time to strike I believe, as I think it increases your chance of rolling higher damage, chance of knockback or knockdown, and chance of critical. Again, this is all conjecture based on my experiences and observations; this could all be completely wrong. But I've killed enough zombies to start noticing patterns, and there is a pattern to be found. I may simply not have found all parts of it yet. But on the topic of weapons, baseball bats have high knockback, and the spiked variety does more damage. However it seems to me that the original bat has a higher critical ratio, as just by feeling, it seems like I one-shot zombies more often with the unmodified bat than the nailed version. There also seems to be a sweet spot to weapons that isn't fully explained or distinguishable. I've found that by timing my attacks differently to hit zombies with various "locations" of the weapon (tip of the bat, handle of the bat, middle of the bat) you can achieve seemingly different results. Long weapons benefit from achieving hits with the very end of the weapon; short weapons are about close-quarters timing. Hammers are a good example; the timing is precise since the weapon is so small, but a max-range hit seems to be one of the best critical rates for a blunt weapon I've found; there are times where I can eliminate multiple zombies in one hit (fresh fast shamblers and decayed shufflers both) with the hammer and a few well-placed hits, and at least four points into blunt skill. As far as combat effectiveness goes, I think we've all established that panic reduces accuracy, anxiety reduces accuracy and damage... depression may also have an effect on this, though I rarely let my characters get sad so I have very limited knowledge about that moodle. Maybe these ramblings are completely wrong and I'm insane. But I find melee to be quite engaging as it is... I'm just concerned that the animations update is going to force to me to learn how to play the entire game again. P.S. Pool sticks are crazy weapons. You swing them at light speed and they have an extremely low chance of knockback. Yet, in the right circumstances, you can demolish a group of zeds with one. What's up with that?

Given how easy it is to burn corpses, I think there should be something like a multiplicative time factor for how long it takes to burn corpses. The more bodies you have in a pile, the longer it should take to burn them. I think it'd be great to add a weight component too, so that you can only place so many bodies in one place. Then again, that would take away from making "giant mounds" of corpses to burn, but... I agree DramaSetter, there needs to be a change to the way burning corpses works. As it is right now, I can stack two hundred corpses on the same exact campfire and toss a few shoes on the fire, start it up and voila, five seconds later those two hundred corpses are no more!

I remember doing extremely basic cryptography in a Discrete Structures of Math class in college and holy crap, was that stuff complicated. Math isn't my strong suit to begin with so to even contemplate myself decrypting a military message is a funny thought. However, notes from fallen service members could provide information about channels to tune into when looking for new orders if your superior has died or something of that nature. The odds of a fallen soldier carrying around the key to an encryption is next to none, I'd think. That would be the type of info you might find at Fort Knox, but I digress. I have a friend who is currently serving in the United States Marines and is currently stationed overseas; I'll ask him what some of his knowledge regarding military radios/comms is and see if he can provide any insight!

I've found that with a group of two survivors you can easily stay well-fed with a well-balanced diet by simply foraging. You have to cover a bit of ground, and of course invest the time to level your foraging to a high level, but the amount of resources nature gives you is borderline crazy! Sticks and twigs (fire fuel), rocks (for axes!), logs (at high level), eggs (yum!), frogs (a different kind of yum), worms (we lived at McCoy Logging in Muld, so fishing wasn't really feasible but hey, trapping!), a plethora of berries (good snack throughout the day), mushrooms (wild game and mushroom stir-fries ftw), and HERBS, oh my LORD the herbs! Herbs are a non-perishable food source and the medicinal herbs make tending wounds a drastically less painful experience. With the right poultice, you can cut the healing time on a wound down to half, or perhaps even more. I am a firm advocate of adding Foraging to the OP skills list.

I am deeply sorry to hear of your loss RJ; I have a brother myself and I cannot imagine losing him, so I can only fathom what you're going through. Stay strong! This game and the community it has created is a testament to the love people have for your efforts! Now I'm thinking how awesome it would be to have in-game posters with your brother's amazing artwork to bring home and display... On an unrelated topic, right on Svarog! Community Member of the Month award goes to you!

Sounds like you visited an alternate version of me. I'm always the guy who smokes a ton of weed and introduces people to music they've never heard before. And I also love pizza. K.Flay is pretty popular though, so I won't be surprised if a few forum members have heard this one before. Caravan Palace is also very popular. This one in particular is pretty groovy.

That's an interesting detail I never thought about; deaf characters should have zero ability to listen to the radio! Sure, televisions usually have text accompanied with pictures, or subtitles could be turned on. But unless I'm mistaken... there's no such thing as subtitles or text images with radios.

This erosion bug is present on build 37.14 as well; during some of my longer gaming sessions (4-6 hour mark), I've noticed that upon visiting an area I've yet to load during that session, grass and foliage will be rendered incorrectly. The spot this occurs most at is the small construction yard in south Rosewood, along the road heading towards the gas station. All along those fences, on the outer-most side, there are rendering issues with my erosion. I get the impression it has something to do with the way line-of-sight is drawn, because the only places where this rendering glitch happens are in unseen areas (unseen, as in yet to be revealed during that play session).

Jeeze... I don't want to sound like a "Negative Nancy", but these screenshots were enough incentive for me to just turn off auto-updates for my Project Zomboid on Steam. I'll stick with build 37 until these rendering kinks get worked out. I would have conniptions trying to play like that.

I completely agree Trombonaught. When I was uninitiated to the ways of Project Zomboid, the helicopter event was an extremely dreadful experience every single time I played the game. However over time, I learned. Over time, the developers changed the way zombies move and helicopters operate. At this point, I feel like the helicopter is almost more of a blessing than a curse. I use it to clear city zombies into a rural area so that I can get a clean sweep of my looting zone of choice. Of course, it doesn't always work that way, but the days where I was terrified of the chopper have departed. They've instead been replaced with days of carefree looting! Not a complaint, but I do miss the old challenge I used to face. That's why I think us veteran players (and I use that word because while I haven't hit the lofty one-year survival status, I consider my roughly nine months of survival enough experience to consider myself a proficient survivor) are looking for a fresh challenge, and one of the things that remind us of challenges we once faced is the helicopter. On the one hand, I don't want to try to fix what isn't broken. But on the other hand... this is a sandbox game. To have it play out the exact same way, every single time, sort of goes against what I play sandbox games for. Again, not a complaint! Just... an observation. Such is the life of a gamer and becoming more experienced with a game... It reminds me of how I wish I could learn about the Dark Souls series for the first time again...

As for creating new axes with an axe head from a previous, broken one... Also, I'm not sure how I feel about broken items becoming completely useless once broken. I suppose it would cause the player to keep a far better eye on their equipment, but there are times where RNG makes you quickly bust through two chunks of durability on two axe swings on a tree and BAM, now you've got a useless axe? Crap... seems harsh. I watched my father break an axe once like a jackass (who tries to use an axe as a stepping stool while it's embedded into a tree? ) and so he removed the head and replaced the handle with a new one and affixed it with, naturally, some wood glue and a nail! Maybe only some items should be rendered useless when broken and some should still be salvageable? Not every item is a black/white case of "when broken, this is now useless".

Well... I think the current concept of "winning" will be re-defined once NPCs are introduced into the game. That being said, I suppose I'm not disagreeing with you. The idea of bombing runs just doesn't quite seem to fit into the current Project Zomboid atmosphere. At least, that's just my humble opinion. Perhaps this is a great idea for a mod? I know that there was en explosions mod Nolan made a while back... if you were to put in such a request for a mod, he'd be the man for the job.

If there were to ever be such a thing as an actively hostile helicopter event (shooting at you, using megaphones to draw hordes, etc), it shouldn't be until late-game. The first helicopter should be a guaranteed "scout", where the traditional helicopter rules apply. Once the world has had some time to fall apart around Kentucky, it would perhaps make more sense to see variety in helicopter missions. For example: Seeing as the first helicopter event takes place within two weeks of the event (presumably Kentucky is ground zero), it would make sense that reconnaissance is priority one, to learn about the event. The chopper would be there to observe and collect data. Six months later? Well, I assume the military knows quite a bit about the infected at this point, so they would have a gameplan at that time, aka shooting you in the head or assisting survivors, whatever it may be. One thing I personally do NOT want to see would be the implementation of "traditional military tactics" (whatever they may be; I'm just a civvie) and have there be a "bombing run" event where they just blow half of Muldraugh up with bombs or something. I'd be exceedingly pissed off about that, and as a gamer, if there was no option for potential recompense via revenge murder of an entire base a la 28 Days Later style, it would probably be enough for me to always disable said option in Sandbox mode and never play Survival mode again.

To counterbalance the negative feedback offered last week, I wanted to say that I really enjoy your Mondoids NasKo. They're brief and informative, and the errors contained within are next to none. I can't even remember the last time I saw a typo in your Mondoids, a small detail but a deeply appreciated one nonetheless. Each time I read your Mondoids, I feel like I'm eating a nice light Project Zomboid breakfast to start my day. Keep it up!

For ease of access, the thread Trombonaught naught was referring to can be found by clicking here. I agree that with a spiced up helicopter event, the game could become much more challenging and interesting when those annoying pests fly by. While many ideas have been presented, it's up to the developers how they want to approach this feature. Hopefully they find some inspiration from our discussions here.

I'll admit, you have a good point JM_Forest. It wouldn't make much sense tactically to use such a small weapon to eliminate such a numerous opponent. However given that the lore of the game describes the entire country falling apart, skeleton crews may be tasked with simply patrolling an exclusion zone and eliminating anybody trying to escape. It's actually a concept that I read about in the zombie book Apocalypse of the Dead by Joe McKinney. Basically the premise is that the United States military is stretched so thin due to complete infestation along the Gulf of Mexico coast that they order patrols to only eliminate survivors who are deemed a threat to the safety of the wall (oh yeah, a wall was erected to keep the infected along the coast and prevent them from going to mainland U.S.) or are actively trying to escape. To accomplish this, they would only use what they had to and tried to minimize any excess force being used. They also recorded zombie moans and blasted the moans over loudspeakers as they flew overhead to draw hordes of zombies towards bunkers of resistance. It was a great way to eliminate pesky survivors without shooting a single bullet. There were far too many zombies to kill without simply bombing the entire area, so the military found other ways to accomplish their goals. I can't exactly remember why they chose not to bomb the area in the book though...

I was going to say something very similar Svarog! I think it would be great if the player could use some of the military grade radios to perhaps intercept a transmission and get a clue as to when a helicopter or swarm of choppers would be sweeping the area. It would allow the resourceful survivor to prepare by finding a working HAM radio and spending enough time fiddling with the knob to accidentally isolate a signal. Perhaps with the integration of clothing when the animation update hits, annotated notes could be found on fallen service members that would provide hints to tuning into military broadcasts. Or perhaps the military could issue some information on the television, such as a random frequency chosen each time you start a new world that the player and other survivors can use to tune in. It would then fall on the player to write this information down for later use once the power is out and you can't get a television signal anymore. Maybe allow an opportunity to contact the chopper and discover what it's intentions are? It could provide the player and eventual NPC characters with an auxiliary objective where the chopper could relay a supply crate drop to collect and force the player to compete or work with other survivors to extract the crate. Or flip the coin and it could be a trap to lure survivors to a location and begin shooting them in accordance with military orders to eliminate anything that moves.

Retracted.

Sorry I couldn't make it; my family had an unfortunate medical emergency last night and so I had to drive to the hospital and sit in a waiting room for about three hours... That being said, it doesn't look like any more people were needed for the test. Good to see the event was successful! Also @EnigmaGrey and the TIS staff at large, I'm sorry for all the hassle and vitriol you're receiving. Unfortunately it comes with events like these... like flies to honey. Though the smell in some parts of this thread reek a little more like vinegar unfortunately.

I am SO there! I haven't contributed to the vehicle test branch, so this will be a good way for me to give back to the community in a small way.

I find myself agreeing with your general statements, Drama_Setter. As of right now, the only way to reliably level your first aid skill is to self-inflict injuries... Maybe one out of every fifty buildings I get glass in my hands, I'm one of the few people in my group of friends who has a healthy respect for fire (just look at my username) so I never get burns... Sure I get scratches and bites, but those usually end up in death anyways. Though I did have a survivor live through two bites once... Truly an amazing man, he was. I'm just not entirely sure how to approach the whole gaining experience aspect of first aid. It makes sense that you have to get injured to practice first aid, unless you're learning in an artificial environment, but I'm not sure how to make injuries more... commonplace? Again, it's a conundrum that is difficult to consider. Once NPCs are released, I imagine an entrepreneurial character will have a lot more people to practice first aid on. But until then, single player worlds seem to be devoid of any real opportunities to practice your medical skills...

You're just performing self-inflicted sensory overload to brainwash yourself into a better carpenter! Also, I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but it appears you can only shove someone once on a multiplayer server... Haven't tested to see whether or not a server reset fixes this issue, but the main problem persists: only one shove. Does anybody else have this issue? My friend and I are just running a Steam server, with PumpPower and Wooden Dowels mods turned on.