makkenhoff

I'ma say sometime around 2021 to 2024 Why?
 
the devs still have ALOT TO ADD Also i'd like npc to be fine tuned 

The question now is, will they remain unbreakable? Because having indestructible garage doors can make for a pretty OP safehouse

WOW you can't just spring that on a guy like it's nothing!! That's huge!!

Hey all, let’s go for a quick trip around the various continents of PZ development and see what’s been done in this, the week commencing 18th March.
Romain has been busy continuing work on adding new zones and costumes, adding work costumes for various franchises and shops found in the game, from Gas2Go, Fossoil, PileOCrepe and many more, as well as integrating more of Martin’s anims, including 3 new variations of zombies thumping on objects.
He’s also added support for characters to lower and raise hoods on hooded clothing, for example hoodies and certain coats, and several new idle animations used when the character has injuries. Please note we will likely add more variation in future, as well as anims specifically for more serious injuries as the one shown..

EP has been doing a lot of work on zombie behaviour, stopping the zombies all piling up when moving toward sounds, and various other pathfinding issues that have existed for a long time but now look and feel more problematic now we have the shiny new animations.
Zac has been continuing work on expanding the toolset and systems to provide more functionality to the rest of the team. His work on masking out different parts of clothing items has resulted in several extremely useful features.
First, it now allows us to wear pieces of geometry clothing on top of other geometry clothing – as opposed to being a texture drawn over the character’s skin. This used to be impossible: the clothing worn underneath would always poke through the geometry of the clothing on top, especially when moving.
Our old solution to that was to only draw underclothing as textures directly on the character model, which unfortunately led to the side effect of them looking like body paint and lacking the bulk of real clothing. Now we can easily turn off areas of the clothing that are covered, so we are provided with many more options.
Zac has also used this masking support to allow for rips and holes in clothing. This said, it’s not quite finished yet, as he needs to apply the inverted mask to the underclothing and to make it visible inside the hole. As such, at the moment, we have a kind of Invisible Man effect when holes are used.
In the meantime he’s also fixed the bug that was causing several of our weapon textures to draw incorrectly, which was down to pesky non ‘power of two’ sized (256×256, 512×512 etc) textures causing issues, so now support for those have been added.
This picture sums up all of the aforementioned things.
(Please note: the trousers used in this instance are still of the skin-tight texture variety!)
Mark meanwhile has been at work smacking down a few of the low level blending issues, and it looks like he’s finally tracked down the cause, which was an old optimization that wasn’t sitting well with the animation system overhaul. It’s been removed now so we will be discussing other TEA approved optimizations to help keep us running at a decent speed in potato land. Now the blending issues are fixed, we’ve gotten rid of all the little snaps and jumps in the character’s movement, which should make things look all the better!
Finally, ChrisW’s Sims-style cutaways have been merged into the main build and have been working really nicely – and EP has also smuggled in some oft-requested niceness in that garage doors can now be opened.
(Cars don’t fit in them yet, and the sound is not quite right yet, but that’s a battle for another week!)
This week’s pic is by Vampel!! A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here– so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.

Suggestion Description : Additional Options in the Sandbox setup menu to provide more varied game-play to those who want it.
 
Suggestion Reasoning : How you choose to play says a lot about you as a player... and then there are people who create lets plays of self made challenges.
The best way to enhance play for everyone who uses the sandbox mode is to expand on the options available to them for more variety and interesting game-play variants.
 
Suggested Additions Sorted By Sandbox Category Sections
 
Population -
Zombie Distribution should be split into the following multiple options to allow for more varied zombie spread.
Urban - very high, high, normal, low, very low, random
Rural - very high, high, normal, low, very low, random
Wilderness - very high, high, normal, low, very low, random

 
World
Change Power and Electric Shutoff options from drop downs to text input and allow range (#-#) inputs to allow for random day ranges. So 5-10 would have water shutting off between 5 and 10 days, 0-100 could happen at any time from day 1 to day 100. And allow single number non-ranges to set an exact date for shutoffs.
 
Nature
Add the following weather options. Multiple weathers set to 100 percent will just have then cycle per day. Weather will still only occur in the correct season.
Chance of Fog - 0-100
Chance Of Rain - 0-100
Chance of Thunderstorm - 0-100
Chance of Snow - 0-100

Sadistic AI Director -
Helicopter, Meta and Sleeping Events should all add a "rare" option for in between the sometimes and never options.
 
Loot Rarity -
Add a new section for - 'Recipe Books' , so you can have books that teach you something be more rare, but still allow basic books that help with boredom be found commonly.
Add new section for Tools
Add new section for Clothes
Add new section for Meds

Character
Add dropdown options for...
Starting Hunger - Starving, Hungry, Sated, Full, Random
Starting Thirst - Dehydrated, Parched, Sated, Hydrated, Random
Starting Health - Almost Dead, Low, Medium, High, Full, Random
Starting Wounds - Lots, Many, Some, A Few, None, Random
Starting Wounds Type Allowed Checkboxes for, Bleeding, Scratched, Bandaged, Burned, Dirty Bandage
Starting Panic - Insane, Terrified, Scared, Panicked, Fin, Random
Starting Tiredness - Walking Dead, Extremely Tired, Tired, Drowsy, Fine, Random
Add a Start Drunk Checkbox
Add a Re-spawn Rules Drop down. Will contain the follow options.
Hardcore - World is reset completely on your death. New Survivor - Re-spawn somewhere in same world as a new survivor and be able to return to your old base. Re-spawn - Player re-spawns at the last bed they slept. All of their gear is on their corpse but they retain all of their skills/recipes. Re-spawn (Penalty) - Same as re-spawn but player can not gain xp for one full game day.
 
Zombie Lore
Separate Cognition into multiple options.
Zombies Open Doors (Per Zombie) - Very Rarely, Rarely, Sometimes, Always, Never
Zombies Navigation Intelligence - Verly low, Low, Normal, High, Super Smart
New setting for Chance of Zombies spawning in "crawler" state - Very Low, Low, Never.

Add a "New Zombie Lore Modifiers" section. Section allowing for changes to Zombie lore based on environmental effects. These of course will not allow such settings to go over a hard cap so that even with multipliers they don't move at paces the engine can't handle, or make super hearing zombies that always know where you are, etc.

Base Zombie Speed
Base Zombie Sight
Base Zombie Hearing
Base Zombie Smell

Night Multipliers
Zombie Speed at Night - Multiplier
Zombie Sight at Night - Multiplier
Zombie Smell at Night - Multiplier
Zombie Hearing at Night - Multiplier

Day Multipliers
Zombie Hearing at Day - Multiplier
Zombie Speed at Day - Multiplier
Zombie Smell at Day - Multiplier
Zombie Sight at Day - Multiplier

Weather Multipliers
Zombie Speed in Rain - Multiplier
Zombie Hearing in Rain - Multiplier
Zombie Sight in Rain - Multiplier
Zombie Smell in Rain - Multiplier

Zombie Speed in Fog - Multiplier
Zombie Hearing in Fog - Multiplier
Zombie Sight in Fog - Multiplier
Zombie Smell in Fog - Multiplier

Zombie Speed In Thunder Storms - Multiplier
Zombie Hearing In Thunder Storms - Multiplier
Zombie Sight In Thunder Storms - Multiplier
Zombie Smell In Thunder Storms - Multiplier

Zombie Smell in Snowstorm - Multiplier
Zombie Speed in Snowstorm - Multiplier
Zombie Hearing in Snowstorm - Multiplier
Zombie Sight in Snowstorm - Multiplier

Time Passed Multipliers
Every X Hours Passed add 0.01 to Zombie Speed Multiplier - Default 0 = off
Subtract instead of add speed checkbox
Every X Hours Passed to add 0.01 to Zombie Sight Multiplier - Default 0 = off
Subtract instead of add sight checkbox
Every X Hours Passed to add 0.01 to Zombie Hearing Multiplier - Default 0 = off
Subtract instead of add hearing checkbox
Every X Hours Passed add 0.01 to Zombie Smell Multiplier - Default 0 = off
Subtract instead of add smell checkbox

Zombie Reactions to Environment
Zombies Find Shelter In Rain Checkbox
Zombies Find Shelter In Sunlight Checkbox
Zombies Find Shelter In Fog Checkbox
Zombies Find Shelter in Snow
 
Advanced Zombies Options
Zombie Corpse Re-spawn Multiplier (Increases or decreases the chance of zombies to be spawned in the area based on the number of zombie corpses around. IE they are attracted to the scent of bodies.)
 
 
 
 
So what do you think? Add your own to this thread!!!

Oh, I'd love that. Some people have a great deal of trouble getting the various console outputs (err_pid in the install directory, server_, coop_, and console files in the user directory) and often don't know that if they re-launch the game, the useful information for a crash will be lost. There's also issues with getting things like the specific version of a graphics card or the model of a CPU that many users have issue with -- sometimes they're well hidden. Having some analytics (the amount of people playing each branch .etc) would be wonderful for making decisions.
 
The main downside is then you have to debug the reporter, prevent the upload of malicious files, get people's permission, and the game has to be loaded in such a way that the reporter won't crash with the game itself.  (The last one isn't necessarily that hard, since the game does dump files to specific locations and you could simply monitor them instead of the game itself.)

It could happen some day.

How about implementing a way to report errors or crashes straight to the game devs via a background running buit-in system that will pop-up and say something along the lines of: "The game has encountered a crash or mutiple errors where found. Would you like to send this report to the devs?" With an 'OK' button. A prompt I guess is the proper way to say it.
 
The system would automatically grab the error logs that ocurred and send them to... idk a error logging server? I've seen this system be used by devs like Ubisoft, Gaijin, and even old Minecraft. But of course I would assume this would take money and a lot of programming work to get something like this done.
 
Just thought I'd share some suggestions.

So far, limited testing about 2 hours LAN play, the vehicles work well in gameplay and from my technical viewpoint. I'm able to drive without any significant lag, the few times we had lag it was network congestion on our LAN. It has admittedly had a major effect on gameplay for me. I'm more willing to take long distance travel as an option instead of a last resort. I was cruising around until I found a place I felt like I wanted to live in, in Rosewood (which I had never been to) and we ended up basing there. That trip would have taken in prior builds too long to even consider given my limited (and divided) playtime. So that will be interesting, I could imagine a mechanic using the vehicle as a mobile base, instead of the usual carpentry/garden/forage path I've grown to love.  Water collection in such a situation is something I'd have to test, but I think it could be done.  Fuel concerns would be next highest on that list.  
 
I do think trying to train mechanic from scratch might be too hard, yet. Perhaps intentionally for multiplayer component?
 
Brief: Great job! Looking forward to the next time family can sit down and play together again.

I wonder if you might want to edit this to add some bullet points in there. It was a tough read, but might get more attention if you format it a bit to emphasize your points.

They don't give ETAs, not since they had one backfire, lesson learned.
 
I've been around a bit, I've seen the question asked a lot.  In fact, asked so much that in the general discussions section, on the FAQ that few seem to read, it even gives you the answer you seek.
 
 
ETA! When will . . . 
TIS has a strict no-ETAs policy, while they may have their own internal timeframes. Only features in a playable (and fun state) will be released to the stable branch. For those looking to live dangerously, there's IWBUMS.

Where're the NPCS?
tl;dr Perpetually slaved over by our dedicated founders, NPCs are in the works and likely won't be out for quite a while yet.  More information will likely be provided after the animation update.
 

They don't give ETAs, not since they had one backfire, lesson learned.
 
I've been around a bit, I've seen the question asked a lot.  In fact, asked so much that in the general discussions section, on the FAQ that few seem to read, it even gives you the answer you seek.
 
 
ETA! When will . . . 
TIS has a strict no-ETAs policy, while they may have their own internal timeframes. Only features in a playable (and fun state) will be released to the stable branch. For those looking to live dangerously, there's IWBUMS.

Where're the NPCS?
tl;dr Perpetually slaved over by our dedicated founders, NPCs are in the works and likely won't be out for quite a while yet.  More information will likely be provided after the animation update.
 

August 29, 1997.
 
I don't like multiplayer ( beyond providing an experience for others ), so I want a crafted sp experience, even if the NPCs don't ultimately rise up against mankind.
 
They just have to be better than what's on the market today (about equivalent to the 2012 iteration). Though I'll reserve judgement until they're back in, if anyone can do it, it'll be the TIS team. Deity love them for actually caring enough to try to be better.
 

Hello, here’s the zed latest from in/around the Knox Event.
 
VEHICLES
The general plan with vehicles is for Yuri to continue fixing up bugs/issues in SP and MP, work on gamepad support for them (and simultaneously other areas of the game that need gamepad attention) and then create an ‘experimental vehicles’ toggle on the difficulty setting menu so the current vehicles branch is ready to become a Build 39 IWBUMS beta as soon as Build 38 releases to the public. Once all this in place then Yuri can again turn to look at optimization when it comes to vehicles turning impacting on FPS etc.
 
Last week Yuri released a build that made engines feel more natural – both in terms of keeping them revving once the player leaves the car (perhaps making them useful as a distraction), and creating more of an ‘acceleration curve’ that will allow us to put in simulated gear changes. It also had a speedometer and engine gauge to help things out.
 
We’re also currently working on the sound of vehicles and (while not perfect currently – this is slightly ‘angry racing lawnmower’) in this video you can hear the aforementioned gear shifts pretty well.
 
Yuri has also fiddled with stuff like increasing the chances of cars turning zeds into crawlers and made sure that players can only ‘shove’ at zombies if car windows are open. We’ll be releasing a new build tomorrow that addresses other issues like burnt out cars sometimes using a random texture. Our thanks to all our community testers, and especially to the efforts of Svarog, whose efforts have been greatly appreciated during this time.
 
38 IWBUMS
We’ve got a 38.6 IWBUMS running backstage that’s letting us guide ChrisW’s fixes for the new ‘see the rooftops’ engine tweaks when it comes to player-built constructions. He’s working on this right now, so it’s likely that we’ll have another 38.7 release internally before returning to the public channel. In the mean-time he’s also fixed a few annoying legacy bugs like hovering blood splats visible when you’re on a lower floor.
 
From this point RJ will be looking at bug tracker clearance and improvements to what’s already in the build rather than add new stuff, so as to get it all out of the door and experimental vehicles bumped into IWBUMS.
 
OTHER STUFF
As mentioned last week Mark R’s work (the Technical Director chap who rode into TIS town to help with the animations and is delivering a lot more besides) is currently being merged into the existing build. This means that dudes like this are an important step (of a multitude of assured steps, we know) closer to testing.
 

 
Finally, just a brief mention that as of the next IWBUMS we’ll be updating the credits to let people know that Project Zomboid is now dedicated to the memory of Romuald Dron – RJ’s brother – who sadly passed away in recent weeks. Our thoughts are with RJ’s family and friends at this time. RJ has also asked if we could share a little bit of his brother’s awesome artwork in today’s blog, so here you go:
 

 
Today’s featured image from Buttrix. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless Mondoids for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. The CBOIT likes to spread the zombie love – so if you like games like ours then the plans for Dead Matter might be right up your street as well. Its Kickstarter lives here!

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... 

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.

+1 for penalties to risks for low cooking skills!
For something we have to do every day, I would love to make it more interesting/risky/considered (do I want to risk cutting myself without med supplies handy, or should I just eat this lettuce as is?).

Hey pz crew, just your friendly real-world sous chef here,
 
Today at work I was sharpening my knives and it got me to thinking about how pz handles the knife/ cooking system. Basically I think the following changes could be made to add a little more interesting detail to a fairly mundane and oft-utilized skill set:
 
1) you don't need a knife or sharp object to "prep" your food, even though there's a definite 'chopping' noise when you add things to recipes. So with that, I think they should not be mandatory, but having a knife (specifically a sharp, kitchen one) should add bonuses to your meal. The sharper your knife, the more yield you should get (less waste from clumsy/ poor knife work) the faster it should be to prep/cook (smaller, evenly cut things cook better) and should provide more happiness (well prepared meals are nicer). 
 
2) the above bonuses should be tied to how sharp your knife is. To this end, whet/oil stones (for long term maintenance) and honing steels (for a temporary bonus that doesn't increase the overall edge quality) as well as cutting boards( to reduce wear) should be added. You should need at least one or 2 points in blade maintenance to be able to check the condition of a knife's edge also. 
 
3) dull knives are dangerous! One of the most common ways people injure themselves in the kitchen is because their knife is dull and the have to push harder on it to cut, couple that with most lay people not knowing how to properly hold food they are cutting and you can have serious injuries on your hands (pun not intended lol). So a character with low cooking skill and a dull knife should run the risk of cutting themselves, and also burning themselves while cooking. Higher cooking skill and sharper knives should lower this risk. 
 
This shouldn't be a priority project, but I feel it would add a lot of depth and realism to the game

Definitely looks like it belongs. 

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.

This is something people have been suggesting for a while, so I figured I'd make some special magic happen.
 
 

I wish that being outside while this event happens random zombies died to the tune of gunfire AND if outside netted a random "Lodged Bullet" wound and if still outside after that for a while, headshot.

It should be way worse than it is.

It was debated when the helicopter was spruced up, but some of us were concerned it'd ruin the fun of the game. That'd kill a lot of people.

I'm coming around, 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.

Variable chopper activity would be awesome.
 
- fly-by: one continuous line over your area. Quick and not too disruptive.
- observation: watches how you deal with zeds in the name of "science." This is our current jerk who is indirectly trying to kill you .
- care package: hovers in one spot within hearing range. If you get to its location, you find a care package (think annotated map stash).
 
Good things come in threes so I'll stop there. If I had to add a fourth though, an "extermination chopper" trying to take out potentially infected survivors (with guns and bombs) would be awesome in the late game.

I for one appreciate the challenge, but what gets me is the flavour. Why is this chopper here? Who is the jerk following me around? Are they observing me? Are they actively trying to kill me? Why not shoot me?
 
I find the lack of story behind it to be more frustrating than the hordes it brings.