Strats

Yeah, it looks kinda weird. I wonder if it might have something to do with how viewing/moving through different height levels of the game works? For instance, how wonky things get when you go up and down stairs in the mall or other areas.

When the character or zombies fall from upper stories, the falling process looks weird where the model almost "t-poses" straight down to the ground. It tends to look a little janky. Would it be possible to have an animation for the character/zombies falling from an extended height or making it look more smooth? If this is in the works or has already been suggested, my apologies; I could not find this in the suggestions forum or Build 41 change list.

With the addition of the hand torches and visible light sources in the hands of the player in the latest IWBUMS build, it would be interesting if we could construct throwable/placeable light sources from electrical lights using the Electrical skill. Given the latest Thursdoid about darker nights, I think that this would provide some additional functionality for the Electrical skill. They would run off batteries, but their duration/the ability to craft would depend on your Electrical skill. These would also be useful for fighting at night without having to reserve a hand for a flashlight.

Ah did not know that. Thanks!

With the new Spiffo's Special Sauce and the increased grabbing capabilities of zombies in the latest build, I think that the Nimble skill could have some added functionality. Perhaps your level in Nimble could influence your ability to avoid being grabbed and tripped as well as your ability to turn quickly?

Hi Indie Stone devs, enjoying the update! I have noticed a bug where if you have a molotov and a lighter equipped, then run, the lighter gets deleted from your inventory. Thanks for the fix!

1085 Rework existing professions to account for new skills being added. For instance, it would make sense for the repairman profession to have a level in electrical, metalworking, and/or mechanics, for mechanic to have a level in metalworking, etc.

As far as I have been able to tell with ranged weapons and ammunition set to abundant in the Sandbox setting. I could also be very unlucky.

Hello Indie Stone devs, the IWBUMS branch has been great so far! A bug that I have noticed is that when looting firearms from locations like the gun store, the shooting range, or police stations, those guns that require magazines never have them. This bug does not appear to extend to weapons found on zombies that one has killed as guns obtained by these means do have magazines. Thanks again guys and happy holidays!

- Overall, the experience seems to be very good! I had no problems with the shaders, although the morning shader could use a little more depth perhaps. After the fog evaporates, it makes everything feel too bleached. On the full moon nights, it would be nice if the shader was a little darker as well. - In terms of rain/fog overlapping buildings, that system seems to be working nicely. I tested it out in larger buildings and I did not see any overlap there. Something that I did not anticipate, but that was annoying is how fog/rain/snow overlaps any rooms that you are looking into through a window from outside the building (mainly when you are right up against the window). It makes it harder to discern what is inside a room which, from the character's perspective, has no snow/rain/fog. - One glaring bug that I did run into is that no matter the setting, the game starts with the power and water already off. - Otherwise, however, I did not run into any gamebreaking bugs in my first hour. My props to Turbo, this all looks amazing!

(Copied over from General Discussions) Hey guys and devs! I was just pondering the game that is Project Zomboid when I thought about smoke bombs and Turbo's new fog and weather mechanics. Currently, the smoke bomb animation has weird columns of smoke that obscure vision, but with the new fog that is coming, that effect will be in sharp contrast. Would it be possible for Turbo's fog mechanics to be translated to smoke bombs? The smoke bomb could create heavy smoke like fog in a certain area and with the wind drift mechanics that fog currently has, we could even see the smoke drift off as the smoke bomb effect dissipates. Thoughts? With love, Strats.

If there was a massive fire going on close to the player, would it be possible to see a smoke overlay? It would make sense that if many buildings burned or a massive forest fire was going on, obscuring smoke would cover the area? Looks great by the way!

Heads up for whoever does the street lights and stuff; none of the street lamps give off light in the new map area.

I've got to say this upfront; kudos to Mash on this new urban area. It is fun to survive in and there is so much to explore. It's hard to believe that it is only the size of West Point! I didn't manage to snag a picture, but there is a bar that looks like a movie theater in the middle of Riverside that is missing a set of double doors. Other than that, it all looks great! Of course, I also added the obligatory screenshot of dusk falling over the unforgiving faces of stone-cold angels.

I've been loving the new features and agree with the previous speakers as to bugs. Additionally, there are three features that I think would work well. 1.) Just like there are random survivor houses, around the world are random graves made by previous survivors. These could appear on the annotated maps and along the various back roads/wilderness paths that populate the map. This leads to my second point... 2.) Lootable graves! Perhaps a deceased survivor was buried by his comrades with a favorite Spiffo doll or journal. Maybe a person had a dear baseball bat that got interred with them. Many graves would probably have nothing (and digging up a person's resting place would have an effect on sanity), but there are potential awards. 3.) Dirty and bloodied clothes attract flies whose sounds could distract the player from threats of the undead variety.

I like the new car handling with two notable exceptions. The vans turn at an extremely slow rate, which does not make sense given the tight turns of the roads of the PZ map. On the other extreme, the sports car turns excessive fast, so much so that if I do a very tight turn at relatively slow speeds, I will tip (or do an epic 180 degree turn). Its sensitivity could be lowered a tad. Besides the handling, I have to ask: do pickup trucks only spawn in Rosewood and March Ridge? Those are the only places I have ever seen pickup trucks in the numerous worlds I have loaded.

They said in an earlier post that the sounds are only temporary.

Does this mean that the existing map borders will be expanded or will another wilderness be turned into this? Will enhanced player/zombie physics be a part of this test build or the animations build? Technical question - will cars count as tile entities like zombies and so disappear when the player looks away? SO MANY QUESTIONS!

These things are being worked on simultaneously (animations are one part of the team, NPCs another). It doesn't matter if all the focus went into one thing because the dev team is divided into their specialties. Animators and people who code animations won't be as good with NPC code as animation stuff and vice versa. What we have now is probably best because people are divided by their skill set and instead of one item very far down the dev pipeline, we have three. Keep in mind as well that much of this stuff depends on each other and is easier to code at the same time. Animating driving stuff, animating crashes, teaching NPCs how to drive without the result being Carmaggedeon, etc. All of these have to be working at a reasonable enough standard that the IWBUMS doesn't destroy peoples' computers. These aren't half-finished old ideas being displaced by new ideas, but rather a logical progression of features so that they mesh together well. Hope that helps, -Strats

Does map expansion mean Louisville, Fort Knox, or some other map area? It's a little unclear to me. I was also wondering: given the implementation of cars, would the system being used to govern their movement be expandable into other modes of travel (bicycles, canoes, motorboats) and make their development more easy?

Just a thought for making the vehicles fit in more; could their graphics get put through a faded-out shader similar to what the devs did to the map textures when they took inspiration from "This War of Mine" and dulled the textures? This would help the vehicles look more natural in the PZ environs (in my opinion).

It'd be neat to see the horde strategies with this. I remember reading in Max Brooks's Zombie Survival Guide that you could lead zombies with a pickup truck and have people in the back shooting. Of course, ramming zombies probably messes up your engine. On another note, how loud are the cars (in comparison to other noises in game [noise maker, shotgun, pistol, shouting])? Will some cars be quieter than others? Otherwise, congrats on the child RJ!

I'm just imagining the moments at night where you're in your safe-house looking out at the darkened streets, seeing the hordes amble along. Maybe there's a gunshot, and some sound draws their attention and their heads all turn as one... *shivers.

Are we able to place the maps on a wall and see them by right clicking them?

Would we be able to find different kinds of maps? For example, maybe there is a common tourist road map in gas stations, a map for customers at the Crossroads Mall, a map used by the military to maintain the border of the Exclusion Zone, a map drawn by a dead survivor with markings about certain houses, etc. Maybe it's just fanciful, but I think it'd add some more depth to the maps and such.