Virindi_Screenwriter

Loving the updates fam! I don't even play Zomboid without Nolan's car mod anymore, so the real thing will be sweet.
 
 
In your next game waiting for the corpse disposal update, you may want to give the Cremation Mod On Steam a chance. You make a fire, and add the corpse for fuel. No massive spreading fires.
 
 
 

Looking forward to seeing Mash's new cars once the Mac test build is ready.
 
Corpse disposal is something I'm glad is being looked into. In my current play-through, there's 3 big piles of bodies near my house that I'm too scared to set fire to incase it spreads.

So, this is either gonna sound really cool or really stupid. 
 
You know how certain fast food chains have costumed mascots to advertise their products? Like the Chik-Fil-A Cow, or Ronald McDonald, etcetera? Well, one would think that with a chain like Spiffo's being popular enough to warrant its own feature-length film, it would stand to reason that the restaurants would have a Spiffo suit lying around for some hapless employee to climb into and sweat his balls off while holding a picture of chicken and waffles on the side of the highway. 
 
Thus, I suggest a Spiffo mascot outfit as form of clothing/armor (at least, for when the animation update finally drops). I know what you're thinking: a mascot costume as armor? Is that realistic or practical? Well, yes and no. I used to be a college mascot, and let me tell you, the fur on that costume was THICK. It wouldn't be easy to bite through that, especially if the person wearing the suit was resisting and fighting back. Plus the mascot head would have full protection at the cost of limited visibility. With that in mind, a thick, fluffy Spiffo suit could protect against bites and scratches on the arms, legs, and torso, as well as pretty much negating all damage to the head and neck area. 
 
The downside would be the heat. Again, from experience, I can tell you that it gets REALLY hot in those things. I've even passed out on one occasion from the heat. Thus the character wearing the suit would be much more susceptible to overheating and thirst. Plus you can't easily drink water while wearing the mascot head, so you'd have to remove it in order to drink from a bottle or water source. 
 
I dunno. I just think it'd be both hilarious and badass to slaughter zombies across Kentucky while dressed as an adorable raccoon. Spiffo IS the official mascot of both PZ and Indie Stone, after all. Why not take that to a whole new level? 

mainstreet for a last of us map im working on, took me about an entire day to finish... every single room is completely hand furnished, not a single bit of copy pasting done (except for eyedropping furniture)
besides that i have about 19 other buildings ready for my map and if everything goes fine it should be finished tonight or tomorrow

meant to post this into the discord but people are currently talkin bout a dif map that just released and i dont wanna look like i wanna grab attention from it or anything, just to clarify these buildings arent gonna be for public use although im planning to maybe release the map pack buildings later on at some point

Hydro I am so, so sorry to read this. I simply can't imagine what you must be going through right now.
 
Real life comes before everything, and please don't let Hydrocraft occupy even a fraction of your mind while you're going through such difficult times.
 
I'm sure I speak for all the devs and all the community when I say that you're in all of our thoughts today x

There’s a plucky modding adventurer who’s been digging into the PZ mainframe, connecting wires and conducting wild experiments for a while now. He’s an ingenious soul, and we thought it’d be good for us all to get to know him better.
 
As such, here comes the thrilling return of the Mod Spotlight. Or, more to the point in this instance: Modder Spotlight. If you’re interested in the many and varied works of Nolan then you can find his Workshop here.
 

 
Hello Nolan! First off, could you introduce yourself? Who are you and where are you from? What do you do in your ‘real life’?
You didn’t know that I’m Canadian, eh? That’s okay we Canadians don’t get offended that easily. I’m also part Japanese. Well, at least some of the culture and language is integrated into me. I lived in Japan for a few years, and have a number of Japanese family and friends so I’m sort of… part Japanese?
 
Professionally, I studied Computer Network Engineering and afterwards got a job as a Laptop Technician for about a year. From then on I worked as a web development freelancer, or on short contracts with web dev or database/SQL stuff.
 
Right now, I’m working on a few projects on a very secretive contract with a company that has a new software product that’s unlike any other that’s gonna take the filesharing world by storm! Well, hopefully, because I could use a raise.
 
In my spare time, I’m also often programming stuff like tools, cheap little games, or my own website ideas. I’m quite picky when it comes to actually playing games. I can’t stand learning how to play new games, so I just play the old ones that I know how to play.
 
 
What’s your history with modding on other games before us?
PZ would be the first game I’ve modded. Unless… does an undetectable farming bot for Diablo II count? [Editor: *unsure face*]
I have done some game design though. Or, more to the point, I’ve made countless attempts to make 2D games with the likes of C++ and SDL. I say ‘attempts’, but really what happens is that I lose interest somewhere along the way every time!
 

 
How did you first discover Project Zomboid?
You probably won’t believe me on this one but… I discovered PZ while I was trying to make an isometric game engine for a zombie game. I had envisioned a game like PZ and then searched vigorously on the internet assuming something like it must exist. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything apart from zombie shoot-em-ups.
 
Once I’d given up looking I thought, half-jokingly, about making something like it myself. I spent a few months on my isometric game engine: copying furniture, walls and such from the Sims 1. I had a nice level editor thing going on, I could make a house and such…
 
So I then thought I’d go rip off some isometric character sprites from google images to use in my ‘game’, and it was then when I was scrolling through google images, I saw a screen shot….OF THE GAME I WAS MAKING.
 
Well more or less the same thing: a screenshot of someone playing PZ. So obviously I followed up and that led me to Zomboid. At that point, I was kind of relieved that I didn’t actually have to make the game myself. It already existed!
 
I confess I didn’t immediately buy the game, I downloaded the demo version (from the Pirate Bay!), and after playing it for a while I was impressed enough that I did what I had never done before – and actually bought the game!
 
We are proud and happy, Nolan, that Zomboid was the game that turned you away from such dastardly and wicked ways! So anyway, you are easily one of the most prolific PZ modders. So why Zomboid – and where do you get your ideas from?
Why PZ? Well, the zombie apocalypse is a fascinating thing. And PZ tries to simulate the zombie apocalypse. Enough said.
As for my ideas, well they weren’t all mine. And I’m sure some people before me thought of those things, but I was just the first to actually be able to scrape the idea into something more real I guess.
 
 
You’ve created many mods for PZ, but which is your favourite? How did it come about and how did you make it a reality?
Maybe the Silencer mod? It was my first mod, and I made it because I really wanted a silencer at the time. I had just seen the Pillow Silencer mod, and thought why not a real silencer?

Even though I had never even heard of LUA language, it wasn’t hard for me to get to grips with it and manipulate the code because I code in other languages daily whether in my employment or spare time. So it didn’t take me long to mould it into something nice!
 
That’s actually how I made most of my mods. Because I wasn’t familiar with the LUA language or PZ’s Java methods and structure, I would find a similar mod that was open to community development (or one with a similar mechanic I knew was necessary) and would just start manipulating the code. So if anyone reading wants to start modding, I recommend this as a good way to start
 
 
What challenges do you face when creating stuff like your vehicles mod, when the released game’s framework for them isn’t yet in place within the code?
The cars came about because someone had mentioned to me that a certain server had a teleporting taxi cab mod. I thought I’d try and make something like that at first, where a car on the ground could just be used to teleport to various places.
 
After a while, it became clear that it wasn’t going so well, and I eventually just started looking at actual movement. I knew I could make the player ‘drive’ around by setting coordinates in the game loop, with some physics variables and calculations and such. That’s how the 2d games I have made work.
 
My cars are actually ‘bags’ from the game – and at first, I didn’t know how to get them to move with the player. Then someone showed me the projectzomboid.com/modding/ documentation, and it was there that I found all the methods needed to make the functionality work.
 
The modding doc site showed me a function I can use to drop items, in my case Car “bags”, on the ground. So I set the Car bag to re-drop at the player's feet every time the position is reset in the update loop which is a good number of times every second.  I also found the setTexture method for items on the doc which means I could change the image of the car based on its physics variables to make it face the way the car is driving.  Of course, that means I had to make many images of each car at various angles, but hey: worth it.
 
So after finding the methods I needed from the modding doc site, at that point I knew I had all the needed ingredients so… it was time to make the cake.
 

 
Other functionality and features just came along the way as a response to all the mod’s positive feedback. To be honest, though, most of my time on the car mod was spent trying to find a way to make it work on MP. I never really found a method that I was satisfied with.
 
What’s next in the Nolan mod pipeline?
At the moment, I’m not thinking about any new mods. I’m just thinking of ways to improve the stability and reliability of the Survivors mod, as it’s hard to move onto other features when there are still lingering problems.
 
However, just like how so many of my mods were born, a new feature could come out and then I could suddenly have all the necessary ingredients for something interesting. Something new could pop into the Workshop all of a sudden!
 
Editor’s note: Since Nolan spoke to us about all this cool stuff, the following popped into existence all of a sudden!
 
 
What other Project Zomboid mods and modders would you recommend that people check out?
I’ll shout out to ddraigcymraeg who has recently been contributing to Survivors. He added a ‘Hostile Marauders’ event that can happen while you sit around in your base. So lock your doors! He has made some mods of his own too. Check them out! 
 
Also thanks Tommysticks for making the Chainsaw model for my Chainsaw mod. He’s got some nice weapon mods as well.
 

 
Anything else you’d like the blog-reading world to know about?
I’ll take this opportunity to share something else I made that’s PZ related, and that I think most people don’t know about. It’s a character build planner page.
When you want to show someone what build you use, go to the site, click all your traits and input all your other info. Then the URL updates as you click around, so just copy the link and send to whoever you want. When they click, they’ll see your build straight away!
 
Our thanks to Nolan for all the cool stuff he brings to the Workshop, alongside all the other modders beavering away to make gruesome zombie survival a more fun and varied experience.
In fact, if there’s any other particular mod or modder you’d like to see with the name in bloggy lights then please just let us know!

Forget raising funds for Zomboid--we need a ToonBoom animated series starring Spiffo--with teeshirts and plushies.
 
Get some animators, some voice actors--maybe a fast-food tie-in. It'll be the premiere YouTube series.
 
EDIT: Saw this in the Mondoid. MOAR:
 

I for one would love to get a Spiffo with my next Happy MealTM Teeshirts are cool, too. There are a number of online marketers that would do custom tees in a heartbeat as a fund raiser. I've seen some that give a couple of weeks for pre-orders and distribute them as long as there are at least 50 buys. A Spiffo tee or a Project Zomboid tee could probably hit this mark easily. I'd probably buy a few.

Forget raising funds for Zomboid--we need a ToonBoom animated series starring Spiffo--with teeshirts and plushies.
 
Get some animators, some voice actors--maybe a fast-food tie-in. It'll be the premiere YouTube series.
 
EDIT: Saw this in the Mondoid. MOAR:
 

Forget raising funds for Zomboid--we need a ToonBoom animated series starring Spiffo--with teeshirts and plushies.
 
Get some animators, some voice actors--maybe a fast-food tie-in. It'll be the premiere YouTube series.
 
EDIT: Saw this in the Mondoid. MOAR:
 

Forget raising funds for Zomboid--we need a ToonBoom animated series starring Spiffo--with teeshirts and plushies.
 
Get some animators, some voice actors--maybe a fast-food tie-in. It'll be the premiere YouTube series.
 
EDIT: Saw this in the Mondoid. MOAR:
 

At this point we have enough funds to complete the game, please don't think of ways to give us extra money beyond the simple act of recommending the game to your friends if it's in a state that's to your liking

Watch your tone around here. This is our private forum and we don't have to host you being an asshole. 
Criticize the game or its development. Don't insult the people making it. Common courtesy.
Edit: Saw your post history. Take care.
 
As for the topic, thanks for the good intentions but we don't need a Patreon or the like. The game is funded pretty securely. We have the people from General Arcade on board to help us out with development, too.
Hiring another java developer would be awesome but they aren't exactly easy to come by. It's not like additional people speed up development exponentially
 
 

I'm definitely less hyped, but like most modern medicine it has a dastardly side effect--now I need more 1980's music.
 
 
In all seriousness, thanks for the update. Looking forward to vehicles.

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Then don't get hyped. Please, for the love of all that is good in this world, stop even trying to get  hyped up about things.
 
Hype is bad. Expecting things to come imminently and desperately waiting for them does no favors.

Not every dev blog is going to be sexy. Development is therefore accurately portrayed.

Some people don't have the aptitude to code, even in Lua. Don't call them lazy.
 
Don't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree.

If the devs don't  want there to be lots of fuel in the gas stations. Then they could find a way of writing it into the lore. Things like people panic buying fuel and limited supplies. This way the gas stations could only have a bit of fuel left or non at all. 

DEFINITELY agree, even if in the short term it's just a super large door we need to manually open and close (which is good for when the power goes out).

DEFINITELY agree, even if in the short term it's just a super large door we need to manually open and close (which is good for when the power goes out).

DEFINITELY agree, even if in the short term it's just a super large door we need to manually open and close (which is good for when the power goes out).

Well, that's far more progress than I was expecting to see in such a short time; it's not far from being ''Grand Theft Zed: Knox County'' and I'm really liking the great variety of vehicles. But, there are a few important things I see conspicuously absent from the big list:
 
1- Trunks
 
Will we be able to load stuff on our car's trunks and/or backseats? Or find stuff on them beforehand? This might be one of the most important uses they will have.
 
 
2- Keys & Bypasses
 
Perhaps this is the best way to prevent them from being the ''Indestructanks of Zed Squashing'', make it so we have to either find their keys (if there's a car parked outside a house or office, it would make sense to have at least a 50/50 chance to find its keys on some drawer, on in the pockets of some Zed that might be there) or have the Electrical know-how to hot-wire them, but even then, these hot-wired cars would be a bit slower to start than the ones with keys.
 
 
3- Garages WITH WORKING SHUTTERS
 
This is probably the 2nd most important one. What's the point of getting a car if the Zeds are just gonna head-thump it into scrap metal every time you leave it outside your base? We need to have all those still non-functional shutters everywhere working. And also, as seen on 0:39 of the video, some the garages we have right know are a wee bit too small to fit the cars inside, and that could be a problem.
 
 
4- Sirens
 
Can the Police Cars/Ambulances have a siren function (like they did in State of Decay )? This one might sound cosmetic, but it could be very useful, specially how sound-sensible are PZ's Zed. This could make it worth to have either of them around to use them as lures-on-wheels to remove large quantities of Zeds from a location.
 
 
I think that would be all. I saw on the new dial that the cars already have radio, headlights and what might even be a SoD-esque Door-Hits-Zed function so things are looking pretty good. What does the big red hot H do btw?
 
And btw, I just LOVE that BGM that plays at the start of the video. It's hands down PZ's best music.