Lumbo

Well... the title speaks for itself, so I'll keep the post pretty short, but...
 
I'm sure at least someone has probably suggested this at some point in the past, but if so I'd like to revive the possibility of this idea; Include an option in the server config to maybe override client settings to force hardcore reloading on a multiplayer server? 
 
I understand completely and fully that currently choice of reload is a decision for each player to make, and I can respect that... however arguably a huge difference can be drawn between those who use easy reload against those who use hardcore reloading, such in that the easy reloader will always have it easier...because well that's the point, but especially in the case of PvP.
 
Of course, I also understand the repercussions of taking such choice away from players, however I would like to point out that the decision to play on such a server with an option such as that enabled, is a decision in itself.... and as such, one does not have to join a server that is running the hardcore reload only option if they don't like the way it works or performs. On the other hand, on a server that doesn't run forced hardcore reloading, whether you use it or not would still be an option through your client settings just as it has always been, so in that case people would still have the choice. The only thing I'm going for here is a point of balance in which should the server host decide that all their players should be running on the same system as everyone else they can do that, where on the other hand if they choose not to then it's still entirely up to the player(s).
 
Again, this is entirely a sandbox option which I can't stress enough.. it's nothing forced on any player unless they choose themselves to join a certain server that has it enabled so by their own choice they are agreeing to use it if they wish to play there, which I believe is certainly fair.

Hm, yea, I guess if you want fog to behave dynamically (which sounds superb), a simple overlay wouldn't do. You'd need fog cloud objects or something. If you can't pull off something like that, I for my part would totally be happy with an overlay alternative.

I'm sure you don't need to feel bad for modding the game - it is explicitely desired I think. Do you think thick fog would be within your capabilities in modding the engine? The kind that doesn't let one see 5 tiles far? It probably would be harder than a simple overlay because the area around the player would have to be cut out in order to let one see something. But it would have a nice effect on gameplay I'm sure.

Ace suggestion!

This is an offshoot of the "Nerf Helicopter" thread by @mengvang04. 
 
How could the helicopter event be freshened up a bit? I thought this might warrant its own thread. Ideas so far on helicopter feautres that could be added (and one I've added at the bottom):
 
1. Hidden radio frequencies which detail when a heli is coming, and clues as to its purpose (see below).
2. Armed chopper. Guns, explosives, napalm, whatever. It has come to kill zeds and you with them. Late game and rare.
3. Observation chopper. It's come to follow you around to study how you engage the horde and survive (see present chopper event).
4. Flyover. Comes and goes quickly, perhaps several staggered passes in one direction.
5. Supply drop. A chopper is present long enough to drop a stash package.
 
6. My wish: "Extraction." Radio transmissions pointing to a secret location where a plucky survivor can be rescued. Could be randomly generated similar to safehouses/burnt houses and stash maps.
But if you get there, they kill you, assuming you're a carrier. An optional "end game" in which you die.
 
Thoughts? Comments? Additions?

yeah im all for it AS LONG AS you dont get scratches with clothing that properly covers you for example higher scratch chance when nude, lower when wearing t shirt or tanktop and no scratches when wearing a long sleeve top with pants and shoes for example

Hm, I guess you're right there, dropping inventory would be enough. I only involved the clothes because of RP reasons in multiplayer, so that a robber can see that one is not only dropping half of his inventory but everything. A little message alongside the dropping of the inventory or some other way of telling one dropped everything could do the job as well.

As an avid hiker, I know that just walking through the forest without proper clothing will get you scratched and covered in poison ivy/oak.  Now, I've never had to run for my life through a forest, but I would imagine that that would increase the chances of scratches significantly.  My suggestion, to help increase the medical portion of Zomboid, is that running through/into trees with an active panic moodle carries with it a chance for minor scratches.  The more severe the panic, the higher the scratch chance.   Nothing life threatening, just pain causing.
 
  It's just an idea, just something to add another realistic little wrinkle to a great game.

I like communication by letter on MP servers. Notes and journals get stolen most of the time though when you leave them somewhere. Now with the introdution of graves, engravings came to my mind. They are tough to make and take a long time, but they can barely be moved/stolen. Perfect for meaningful short messages.

I like communication by letter on MP servers. Notes and journals get stolen most of the time though when you leave them somewhere. Now with the introdution of graves, engravings came to my mind. They are tough to make and take a long time, but they can barely be moved/stolen. Perfect for meaningful short messages.

Ha! You're a funny person Rocco, that's why I'm going to kill you last... err sorry, movie references! No worries at all =)
 
A bit of good news (for me at least), is that I'm now able to properly debug the code I write for the engine. This also means I can hot swap (within limits) the code during runtime. This is going to be really helpful because I felt naked without this
 

 
Importantly: I'll most likely require an artist to help with the art side of the weather. The snow art I put together is just a temporary placeholder.

Add a button that lets your character automatically tell things about him in local chat.
 
Interesting to know about other players:
- profession (like "Been a carpenter all my life.")
- stats (like "My friends call me grand chef of the cuisine. Running never was my style. etc.")
- traits ("Is that you Mom? Can't barely see anything without my glasses")
- wounds ("I tell ya my fractured foot hurts")
- until animations get added stuff one has equipped (like backpacks); even when it's visible by animations, items in main inventory are interesting to know for bandits
 
Bonus points if the mood and panic level one is in affect the enunciation.
 
 

Add a button that lets your character automatically tell things about him in local chat.
 
Interesting to know about other players:
- profession (like "Been a carpenter all my life.")
- stats (like "My friends call me grand chef of the cuisine. Running never was my style. etc.")
- traits ("Is that you Mom? Can't barely see anything without my glasses")
- wounds ("I tell ya my fractured foot hurts")
- until animations get added stuff one has equipped (like backpacks); even when it's visible by animations, items in main inventory are interesting to know for bandits
 
Bonus points if the mood and panic level one is in affect the enunciation.
 
 

Add a button that lets your character automatically tell things about him in local chat.
 
Interesting to know about other players:
- profession (like "Been a carpenter all my life.")
- stats (like "My friends call me grand chef of the cuisine. Running never was my style. etc.")
- traits ("Is that you Mom? Can't barely see anything without my glasses")
- wounds ("I tell ya my fractured foot hurts")
- until animations get added stuff one has equipped (like backpacks); even when it's visible by animations, items in main inventory are interesting to know for bandits
 
Bonus points if the mood and panic level one is in affect the enunciation.
 
 

Add a button that lets your character automatically tell things about him in local chat.
 
Interesting to know about other players:
- profession (like "Been a carpenter all my life.")
- stats (like "My friends call me grand chef of the cuisine. Running never was my style. etc.")
- traits ("Is that you Mom? Can't barely see anything without my glasses")
- wounds ("I tell ya my fractured foot hurts")
- until animations get added stuff one has equipped (like backpacks); even when it's visible by animations, items in main inventory are interesting to know for bandits
 
Bonus points if the mood and panic level one is in affect the enunciation.
 
 

Add a button that lets your character automatically tell things about him in local chat.
 
Interesting to know about other players:
- profession (like "Been a carpenter all my life.")
- stats (like "My friends call me grand chef of the cuisine. Running never was my style. etc.")
- traits ("Is that you Mom? Can't barely see anything without my glasses")
- wounds ("I tell ya my fractured foot hurts")
- until animations get added stuff one has equipped (like backpacks); even when it's visible by animations, items in main inventory are interesting to know for bandits
 
Bonus points if the mood and panic level one is in affect the enunciation.
 
 

Speed already is the most impactful in my opinion. I imagine strength would be similarly easy. Sensory abilities would only be a detail gameplaywise i think.
For me, a fourth speed with the same animation as sprint but a little slower would be great, fretless speed slides the optimum. Otherwise I'd say only worth it if easy to add.

I like where this is going.
 
Can we have a "random" option for the rest of zombie settings, pretty please?
 
EDIT:
 
Including the tick boxes
 

I third this because of priority reasons. The random options are way more important gameplay-wise for me. And fixing sprinters in MP. I asked on Redboid server today who would like random/sprinter zombies and whole server (maybe 20 players) agreed. On the other hand we will wait anyway... xD

The addition of random zombie speed is great! Hope it will work in MP, too. If it is easy to code in, making their ability to open doors random would be great, too.
Is it possible to make another speed level between sprinter and fast shambler to close the gap?

Hm, yea, I guess if you want fog to behave dynamically (which sounds superb), a simple overlay wouldn't do. You'd need fog cloud objects or something. If you can't pull off something like that, I for my part would totally be happy with an overlay alternative.

I'm sure you don't need to feel bad for modding the game - it is explicitely desired I think. Do you think thick fog would be within your capabilities in modding the engine? The kind that doesn't let one see 5 tiles far? It probably would be harder than a simple overlay because the area around the player would have to be cut out in order to let one see something. But it would have a nice effect on gameplay I'm sure.

Progress updates: 
Yesterday my computer caught a virus and i was certain id get screwed. Thankfully though i managed to fix it and i've got two new locations for you all to see. 


 
Up north we have the city of Irin and towards the bottom right we have the new Bridgewater.  As you can see I'm making shells so that i have an idea of what the buildings will be like. Irin will also be the medical area for this portion of the map, thus it has the biggest hospital. it will also have a community college, hotel/motel, highschool and elementary school and many shops and restaurants along with large office buildings. This will be a teaser to the larger and more dangerous cities youll come by. In Bridgewater we'll have a factory and a few stores but it will largely be a residential area.

Basically what I'm planning for the next couple of weeks is create towns with shells, then make the actual buildings with furniture, followed by making and adding POI's and then having a small release.

Intro.

I’d like to start off by saying that the updated tools by the dev team have allowed many people to join the ranks of mappers. I’m one of those that joined in on this new boon of mappers but I saw that the tutorials only went over the process of map making but not really a way to quickly create the base images. Thus, my process here is going to go in depth on the process and it’s a process that will give out many uniquely shaped maps.

Tools:
Paint.Net is the only program we’ll be needing and it’s entirely free for use. This tutorial is being developed with Paint.Net in mind but that does not mean that you couldn’t follow this process in Photoshop or other similar tools.


Results
Now you’re probably wondering what type of results you’ll be getting. Thus, here is the map of Southern Gaia, the map I’ve been working on.


Step 1: Terrain Generation

Let’s start by making a brand-new file and for now let’s stick to 300x300 pixels. If you feel like you’ll feel comfortable making a new map, then go ahead and make a larger file however make sure that its in intervals of 300px. Each cell is 300x300 pixels thus if you want a 3x3 cell map then you’re going to want to make it 900x900 pixels.

We’ll want to set our colors to black and white if they’re not already before we continue.


Now we’ll want to render clouds next. To do this you’ll go to Effects, then Render and finally Clouds. You’ll then get a popup for scale and roughness, just hit Ok for now. We’ve now got clouds that are black, gray and white.



In this next step, we’re going to be treating black as water and white as land.
We’ll want to go to Adjustments and then Levels. This will help you create landmasses or a single landmass with water.   On the pop up screen that appears called levels adjustment you have two histograms. The left one, the input histogram, is the one we care about, the output histogram we can leave alone. The values will need to be the same. The higher the value the more white you’ll have and inversely the lower it is the more black you’ll have. Try to find a balance you like and if you cant find a perfect one just find a close enough match as you’ll be able to change it a little more manually. If you have black or white spots you don’t like just grab brush and clean them off.


Step Two: Terrain

We’ll be using the magic wand tool next. First select it and then at the top change the flood mode to global and tolerance to 0. The click on the black. Now all the black on your map should be selected. Change the flood mode back to contiguous and use the fill tool next and use the following color values for the correct blue: 0, 138, 255. Your black has now turned blue and you’ve got water done.

You’ll want to choose your coast color next. By this I mean the color you want the land around your water to be. I’m going to choose the color for sand as I prefer that to be around my own water but dirt and light grass work well too. Let’s fill in the color values for sand which are 210 200 160. Lets get our magic wand tool again and make sure that our flood mode is changed to global and select the white. Now we’ll replace the white with the sand.

At this point you should not have any white or black on your map. The only two colors should be the sand and water colors.

Let’s now return to our default colors, black and white and create a new layer. This layer will be temporary so let’s head back to our land and water layer. This time select your sand, make sure that the flood mode is still global, and then go back to our temporary layer. We’ll want to head up to Effects -> Blurs -> Gaussian. The next popup window will ask what size radius you want. This will be how large you want your coast to be. For now let’s select 8. We should now have a slight blur going inland. Still using our magic wand tool select the portion of land that is not affected by the blurry rings. Now lets head back to previous water and sand layer and fill this new selection with a new color, 145 135 60 , which is used for light grass. We can now delete the temporary layer. Lets now select our new color and render clouds. This time we will not use levels, but rather posterize. A new screen will show up with three adjustments lines. Change the values to 3 and your image should have white, gray and black. No more than that. With that done select okay.

Using our magic wand friend, let’s select our white and replace that with the light grass color. Lets select the grey next and fill that with the new values of 117 117 47 which represents medium grass. Let’s then select our black and use the dark grass values, 90 100 35, to fill it in.

Congratulations, you now have the base image for your map. You can now follow RJ’s tutorial from here on out and place your dirt paths and roads to fit your wants and needs.

Awesome!