DresdenBBQ

I 100% agree with the whole need more medical uses and what you said about the pills and being able to saw off your arm or a buddies arm would make for great RP and say like you trying to saw off your buddies arm and you have a really low first aid skill and what happens is you rupture and artery and he dies from it! And the things with pills like say if someones character had a heart problem and they needed to take pills to keep their heart going and you tamper with their pills and mix in a capsule of cyanide to kill them incognito style. But if i kept this going i could get into like purposely infecting someone like an enemy with a dangerous pathogen like influenza (when not treated) or some highly infectious disease to go wipe out their colony/group.

Well i am American and i for 1 am very offended, why on Earth would i know pounds, but i know us and our silly pounds/weight system and i know how to talk KG bro.
(not actually offended)

We should take all the people who complain about NPCs and put them in a sweatshop. In the sweatshop they each have a small room, with a bucket and a computer.
 
Installed on the computer is PZ (and ticktacktoe for some reason), they are then forced to act as NPCs on other PZ players Single Player worlds.
 
 
This is the most obvious solution, two birds with one stone! Complainers disappear, and they also get a free bucket!
Meanwhile everyone else gets to play with NPCs, albeit NPCs who complain about some evil Indie Stone conspiracy where they're trying to enslave people for cheap labor (wait, isn't that what game development is?).

Welcome. This is another one of my many LONG posts as you may know. So as normal I would like to thank you for taking a look at this and warning you, it will be a long post. Now I would like to get to the post so here we go.
 
            Let’s jump right into the list of new illnesses and injuries:
·       Headaches- This minor effect causes pain and strain when hearing noise or moving a lot. This is a symptom of dehydration, a fever, or head injuries.
·       Bruises- This is caused from blunt damage, and collision with things. It just causes minor pain when moving, hit, or damaged.
·       Sunburns- This is caused from being out over a long period of time without being covered or having sunscreen on. It will leave a lasting burn over exposed surfaces, and cause pain when touched or exposed to hot water as well as the sun.
·       Sweaty- This effect as described in my clothing ideas will cause clothes to become wet as well as dirty making zombies able to smell you from a short distance. It over time will also speed up the process of a rash forming.
·       Rash- This is caused when uncomfortable and wet over periods of time or caused be reactions to things. It will just simply make your character unhappy, move and work slower, as well as pain if not taken care of.
·       Wilts- These are like bruises but come from other sources.
·       Splinters- This is something that causes minor pain from working with wood bare handed. Removed by tweezers.
·       Sore- This is a Moodle caused by running or working for long periods. It makes you weaker and slower as well as pain whenever moving.
·       Toothaches- this is caused by eating junky food repeatedly for long periods.
·       Discomfort- this is another cause of rashes from being wet, multiple layers of clothing, and other things.
·       Cramps- These are caused by having too much junk, alcohol, or symptoms of illnesses.
·       Streep throat- This illness is caused randomly and causes pain whenever eating or drinking. It heals over time and with antibiotics.
·       Pink eye- This is caused randomly and fixed by eye drops. It causes a lower visibility arc and spreads faster if exposed to others with it.
·       Athlete’s foot- This is caused by being barefoot often or having dirty shoes mentioned in my clothing ideas. It causes discomfort and slight pain.
·       Fever- This is caught from being in cold temperatures, exposed to illness, or randomly. It causes you to feel hot and cold randomly, not be hungry or thirsty but still need it, and be tired constantly.
·       Cold- Caused by the same things as fevers but has different symptoms. With colds you feel tired, not hungry or thirsty, you sneeze often, have blurred vision, and sometimes a sore throat.
·       Sprains/tears- this is caused by pushing yourself past sore or exhausted and still going. It causes pain when moving, if walked on can lead to permanent damage in legs, getting more severe. It takes only about a week to recover and you require rest.
·       Flu- this is caused randomly like the cold and flu but makes you feel nauseous, tired, not hungry or thirsty, and sneeze often.
·       Ammonia- this comes from being wet and cold. It is like a really bad cold and fever but you need medical attention urgently.
·       Hypothermia- this is from being in the cold. It causes slowness in speed and working; you lose feeling of arms and legs, as well as start to lose your vision.
·       Heat stroke- much like hypothermia this is from the heat. It makes you thirsty and tired as well as sweaty. As time passes your vision blurs and fades until you black out.
·       Concussion- caused by blunt trauma this causes nausea and headaches.
·       Scrapes- these are caused by damage and do very little but cause pain and doo bleed slowly. Caused from minor damage sources.
·       Minor cuts- Like scrapes but these are a little bit worse and bleed a bit faster while causing more pain.
 
Now for a list of new medical items and some with updated uses:
·       Weak pain killer- This is a pain killer found in houses that can stop minor pain
·       Strong pain killer- This is a painkiller that will kill almost any pain but can only be found in medical centers.
·       Aloe Vera- This is used to heal sunburns faster.
·       Sunscreen- this makes sunburns takes longer to occur.
·       Rash ointment- used to heal rashes or soothe them for the time.
·       Ice pack- Used to cool down
·       Heat pack- Used to warm up.
·       Toothpaste- helps prevent toothaches.
·       Allergy pill- used to stop allergies or sneezing.
·       Cold medicine- helps heal colds and makes you tired.
·       Medical braces- This helps you heal from sprains and strains faster.
·       Super glue- helps heals small cuts and scrapes.
·       Cough syrup-This helps heal colds, flu’s, and fevers.
·       Tongue depressant- This is possibly used for crafting?
·       Q-tips- like cotton balls, for disinfecting but more precise and does better for deep wounds.
·       Stethoscope- helps diagnose medical problems.
·       Eye drops- soothes pink eye.
·       Fungal killer- kills athlete’s foot.
·       Deodorant- his helps stop you sweating for a certain time.
·       Scalpel- this is used to cut and remove objects in the body with precision. It also could be a weapon.
·       Rubber gloves- These gloves can be worn during medical procedures so you don’t spread any illnesses or cause an infection that could prove fatal.
·       Crutch- This could be used as a weapon but also as a way to move with injured legs.
·       Syringe- possibly for stronger medical things or used for other things.
Now for the new occupations and ETC:
·       Diagnosis system- This system proposes that doctors can make a flawed diagnosis on both the living and dead. The higher the skill the more accurate the diagnosis. It will be able to tell whether he is stabbed when low leveled to what tool was used, at higher levels. This skill also has a variation where it is the diagnosis of the mental state of people.  (Proposed by Jericoshost. Link down below.)
·       Psychiatrist- This job costs -6 but in return gives +2 to the skill of Observant and the trait analytic.
·       Doctors- Now can tell the different wounds at a higher chance then an average player. (1.2X boost)
·       Observant skill- This skill is the skill of observing you surroundings and understanding players/people better. The higher it is the better you can read NPC’s and observe little details around you.
·       Analytic trait- This trait boosts the speed the observant skill levels up and increases its effectiveness.
Now as always this post has to end so I would like to thank you for taking the time to look at this and enjoy.
Links:
1)     Injuries revamp idea by Jericoshost.
http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/15628-diagnosis-and-injury-re-vamp/
2)     Clothing ideas.
http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/14771-clothing/
3)     Animal and pets idea.
http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/15926-animals-pets-and-hunting/

Also I believe the devs are considering amputations, perhaps as a one time cure for a bite or scratch.
 
I assume high level doctor skill would be necessary for 'SAWING YOUR FREAKEN' ARM OFF™', also it provides a solution to the "doctor is useless for bite or scratch".

What can I say? I'm a lickable likeable guy.
 
The joke was that I was being extremely ruthless and intolerant to the issue. What you said wasn't badly worded.
 
That said, you're above regulation brain activity for a slav- happy camper! Yes camper. Please take this inject of liquid loveliness. 
 
 
Edit: Also you didn't seem to bother reading Lemmy's wall of text which explained the issue. (Although I admit to giving up after the first few)

I think this pretty much sums up the Indie Stone NPC thread experience, and by extension this thread and the strange reactions and frustrations, perfectly:
 
 

stick around for a month (we're not like this all the time ;)) and you'll before long understand fully why such a thing would never work unfortunately. I'd love to be able to release a simpler NPC system to expand on along with the community, and the community itself you're exactly right, it would be great. But it's not the community that's the issue, its those outside of it, that still participate in the internet, are perhaps disgruntled by the delay and went off and forgot about the game, or wait on the fringes for news to reach them of the game. Sadly there's so much expectation at this point, even a mention of NPCs in the mondoid fanning the flames and brings these people back with supreme anger and prejudice. There are so many who've gone away and plan to come back when they hear NPCs are in, and the actual promises and goals for the NPCs so lofty, having simple versions in there, even stating in a blog post 'THIS ISN'T ALL WE'VE DONE' would have twenty responses saying 'THIS IS ALL YOU'VE DONE?!' it would just.... seriously it wouldn't go down well and we'd probably be looking at hundreds of negative reviews and miserable forums for weeks.
 
We once made a joke in a mondoid in response to the Mojang sale to Microsoft,  that we'd sold our company to Sony for $2bil and were flying around in golden helicopters, and for months after were getting accused by some of being sell outs or congratulated on it was remarkable. The community are wonderful, but a lot of those outside the immediate community who just keep tabs on the game. who don't pay close attention, it's impossible to convey the situation to many or even most of them, to remotely set or temper their expectations in advance. As soon as NPCs go in in any form, even in a beta branch, those NPCs will be judged as 'the npcs we've been waiting for for YEARS', they won't ever be able to be made to understand that 90% of the code may be on another branch, and us moving finished bits into testing. The assumption will be 'that's what's been done in the YEARS we've been waiting' and there will be blood in the streets. Everyone whose been here long enough knows it in their bones and in their blood. It's just very difficult to get a message out there to people who often just see an update in steam, run the game, and pass their judgements without ever reading a word. We obviously know that everyone in the community, everyone who keeps full track of development, will know and understand. They aren't the ones making the constant complaints and queries about NPC progress though.
 
This is where the frustration comes from, because people here have no sooner explained, or disarmed, or in worse cases banned, the last person, when the next person comes with almost the exact same post. Like you put the fire out and immediately notice the curtains catch on fire, and you're running around putting out flames all day, despite it only being a tiny fraction of people in comparison to the number of players of the game, it just feels it never ends and nothing you can say can 'get the word out' there and get everyone on the same page. This is more an issue on the steam forums than here, which is probably why the npc info isn't as prominent as it should be, though I'm still convinced its here somewhere I think it may have lost visibility in the forum upgrade recently.  not that that makes any substantial difference to the posts it just gives you something to point at when they don't read it and post anyway ,
 
The community has gone through a lot in the past, with a burglary and various other things that have given us somewhat of a spidey sense about exactly what kind of response we'll get from any action from the wider fringe of the community.
 
You'll understand in time, and probably start wincing at every NPC mention yourself one day.

PZ! Now with 1000% more Wall o' Text!
 
Lemmy, my dear lemmy. Please do not pander so eagerly to us mere mortals, or we may begin to take you for granted.
 
You need a day off. Infact, you need all the days off.
 
Don't worry, I've called the Contractor, the Forced Labor camp should be done by next week. He assured me that forum goers indeed have no rights and we can classify the prison as a mandatory Summer Camp.

HeyI
 
As I said in the post I'm going to finish it  that's not in question.
 
The point is at a game studio, doing a day job for money, some crunch aside, people don't work 12-16 hour days, they work 7.5, 9 till 5 until the end of a project when the crunch begins. You'd also likely have a team of 3-4 in a studio doing AI as extensive as this.  Say 3 people, that's a 21 man hour day.
 
So what happens when one of them gets stuck, has a problem they can't get by? They walk over to the desk of their team mates and say 'hey can you give me a hand'. You go to the technical director of the studio and say you're having a problem with something, and you have meetings with 8 programmers and discuss how to get by the problem. You contact the publisher and see if they have a solution to the problem. Or more likely, you don't have that problem in the first place because you've got the AI from the first 4 games the studio made to draw from, or you have the behaviour system from the AAA engine you've licensed.
 
When you're a small indie company, working remotely from home, with only one person to do all this, the difference between 'doing it for fun' for 12-16 hours a day,  which is about 2 people worth of 9-5ing, the moment that becomes something, as I say, you have to 'tie yourself to your desk' to do instead of doing it because you enjoy or are interested in it, you CANNOT maintain those kinds of work hours when it's work, or you'll make yourself ill. Imagine working 14 hour days at something you hate, 7 days a week. Every waking moment. No that's not acceptable and I'd be concerned at anyone who thought it was.
 
My point is by turning NPCs into a horrible job one doesn't want to do, you're effectively instantly killing off one entire developer on the NPCs, one that knew everything the other developer did.
 
Now on top of that, you have a problem, you're stuck on something, a complete roadblock you can't figure your way past. Do you walk over to the other AI programmer? They don't exist. The technical director above you? Doesn't exist. Do I ask my collegues? They have never done any of the AI on the game, and beyond general suggestions are unlikely to know the way around a roadblock the person with all the NPC and AI experience is stuck on? So what then? Search the internet?
 
https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=behaviour%20trees
 
Oh. Seems the #1 search result is an article by... me. I'm in uncharted territory a lot of the time.
 
Nope, there's only one solution. Put it to one side, stop driving yourself crazy, and work on something else that you CAN progress with. Also something you'll be working as two people on, because you're into it and can work as two people due to having 'day job' you and 'after work hobby' you both working on the same thing. This is how I work, I hit a roadblock, and stew and try and rev my car over it for a while, until it becomes clear its not going anywhere. I can't see the wood for the trees, so I put it to one side and work on something for the game that IS being productive and come back later, where suddenly I have a fresh perspective, and within a bit more struggling will almost always find some new route past the roadblock. Then progress whirs along again.
 
This has been the way I've worked throughout the entire of my indie career, and it works and is the way it has to work for a lot of the time.
 
This is nothing to do with the fact that 'oh its not fun and I want my job to be fun' and feeling entitled to that, I'm not stacking boxes in a warehouse or putting labels on boxes on a conveyor belt. My job requires a great deal of mental discipline, creativity, and many other factors that control how capable I am of navigating through extremely complicated roadblocks, to make creative leaps of imagination to come up with solutions to problems that I have no colleagues or superiors to bail me out, or to collaborate with, that if I google to get an answer, often the answers I need aren't there on the internet. There's no one to turn to, and at the same time I'm having this onslaught on my motivation, mental well being, confidence and stress levels by having to read daily complaints and often insults, second guesses, suspicions, accusations. I can't avoid this, I NEED to read the communities feedback on the game, read problems people are having with the game and so on. Yes of course the NPCs are part of this, but I'm just being honest about how grueling the constant NPC complaining is, and the fact that it's literally hurting development of them severely. This isn't me throwing my toys out the pram and saying 'blergh I don't like that people are being mean so I'm cutting how much I work on them', or feeling entitled because its my own company and I'm not doing a day job, and therefore feel I can get away with doing less if I'm not enjoying it. I put 10x the effort into this company and game, part my own, than I ever did working for some big AAA corporation that didn't give a crap about me.
 
The difference is at a big AAA company, if I hit a roadblock I would have more routes around it that wouldn't necessitate some breathing room and a break from it. Also there'd be a PR guy, several marketing guys, countless other people whose responsibility it would be to read all the stressful and endless complaints that company may be receiving. It's kept away from the developers, its of no direct consequence to them, and they are not weighed down by them in the same way as an Early Access game on Steam where the people running the company and managing the community feedback, and reading the mondoid comments, are the same people sat there in front of a code IDE expected to solve problems and motivate themselves to write hugely complicated NPC systems single handedly.
 
I apologize again that you happened to get the full unload of all this stuff, it's just an unfortunate combination of wrong place, wrong time, and some frustrating comments in your OP but I'll admit you didn't deserve that level. That all aside, this all needed to be said, and you're right, we've put NPC information up in lights on the Steam board and that should be the same here and am a bit confused why this isn't the case, I'll look into it as I'm certain we've had one in the near past, FAQs and all sorts. 
 
Regarding your last quoting myself back at me, I fail to see the relevance. I know that many people want different things from the game, and that's why we're developing lots of different things for the game. I can't control the resources we have and what roadblocks we hit, or what particular team members have what particular specialities and what combination of the things that need doing happen to be suited to what developers. We get complaints for working on 'cosmetic stuff' instead of NPCs by people who seemingly don't understand that someone who does art has absolutely no way of helping in the development of AI behaviours. I've been in the industry including indie for 15-16 years, and I know who needs to be doing what, but we're not ARK we don't have several teams all working on this, there's just a few of us strewn around the planet. Even so we specifically enlisted the help of a third party company to do all the VOIP so that it would not effect any of the current game development whatsoever, but there is literally nothing I can do to get NPCs out faster than they are apart from putting myself in an early grave first, and as much as I'd find that non-preferable that's also a good way to ensure NPCs never come out.
 
 

I probably sound more down in my mournful walls of text than I am actually. I wear my heart on my sleeve and am quite open on such things, it gets to me a lot sometimes, but rest assured I'm not like depressed or anything I'm just grumpy and sad and stressed about it. I appreciate the lovely words just want to make it clear I wasn't fishing, I just like having the truth out there on how stuff is and how it affects people.

Most has been explained in the wall of text, but the reasons are primarily:
 
1) Small team where there isn't enough resources to have more than one person doing NPCs due to the rest of the team being needed to do other things to keep the game moving along during dev for everyone getting updates. Expanding team with AAA AI experts would soon diminish the 'pot of gold' and make the company less stable, potentially leading to no NPCS EVER, so slow and steady wins over 'fast but if anything goes wrong run out of money'. Them being slow and delayed is ironically due to responsibility to make sure they are finished at all. Even if there were many AAA AI experts out there who were java experts too, considering all of AAA uses C++ not java. In short it's a very very difficult role to advertise for.  
2) The dev doing them needing to do other things intermittently to cover things only that dev can do due to prior experience or proximity to animator IRL or as stated before because there aren't enough resources to cover everything.
3) The dev needing to do businessy things as MD of a company like taxes and other boring stuff.
4) the dev needing breaks due to incessant NPC complaints destroying all sense of fun and excitement of them, and making NPCs associated with lots of negative stuff, that results in NPCs being very much a 'day job' unlike other features being made at fast speeds due to being done in spare time as a 'hobby' as well as for work, often in 12-14 hours stretches, all nighters and over weekends. 'Willing perpetual crunch, for fun' when dev is enjoying it. NPCs are very much 9-5 maximum, and are no longer welcome of my free time for own personal health and mental well being.
5) We were over zealous in our initial ambitions and goals being a more naive company in the earlier days. Got a bit carried away imagining the future of PZ. We're also true to our word and therefore have commited to delivering those lofty goals. They are extremely complicated and difficult, requiring a lot of research, learning and experience building, rethinks, reorganizations, and at least one do over.  This massive requirement of research and experience adds to the difficulty of getting more developers from the team in on the work requiring a long 'ramp up' time until anyone else could be productive on it, even if we could spare anyone.
6) There is huge expectation to live up to so it would be suicide to put them in in progressive stages of completeness like we do other features. There'd be nothing in theory stopping us putting some npcs in in a more basic state and moving code and features over as its refined, building on what's there, but it would be 'THIS IS IT AFTER ALL THIS TIME?!?!' apocalypse soonafter. Therefore they have to deliver pretty much everything we promised in the first version. As a mental exercise, imagine we had to do the same with the map: people would be still saying 'when are we getting more than this 300x300 tile alpha map?! Why the delays?!' and Muldraugh and Westpoint would be nowhere to be seen since we'd have to get Louisville and other areas in before you saw any of it.
7) It became obvious that trying to develop them alongside animations was a fools errand, so much needs changing for movement / combat, they need to come out after, and be developed after, animation overhaul.
8) Dev is human and has a life that may occasionally be complicated and interfere with ability to work either practically or mentally. Nice example: Dev is getting married this year. There are less nice examples too.
 
That all said dev will get NPCs out eventually and 5 years of steadfast commitment to the game should show that dev is serious about that.
 

If you would sir. Please step into this small room containing a computer and bucket.
Pay no attention to me locking the door behind you, all is well.
 
 
On topic, I must admit that I am somewhat melancholic about this game's choice to further distance itself from i's original inspiration. Typing of the Dead. A true masterpiece.

It's not all bad - I still have a lot of love for a lot of stuff I do on Zomboid, still get excited like a kid about stuff I'm working on, I just miss having the NPC joy. I say all this but I'm sure I'll get NPC love back once anims are in and it can hit full stride again. And regarding breaks I do take breaks, but like keeping name out of the Mondoid I keep well shtum about it if I do
 
thanks all and sorry for the rather emotional outpouring I'm just very much in a 'get it all out there' mood lately.

For that matter I'm getting tired of a few people who aren't interested in a particular feature assuming that this preference applies to the entire playerbase and that development of the entire game should fit around their own personal wants. If we said 'right, NO MORE MP STUFF WILL BE DONE UNTIL NPCS ARE OUT' we'd just be doing a search and replace on the complaints we get on the forums and how we're focusing on NPCs too much, and this isn't fair to the MP communities, and how NPCs aren't really required when you have humans and humans are so much better to play with than dumb AI, and WHY IS THERE NO VOIP?! You CANNOT win.
 
FAO EVERYONE. NEWSFLASH: There are a lot of people who own this game. NOT EVERY ONE OF THEM WANTS THE SAME THING AS YOU DO AND STOP BEING SELFISH TRYING TO DENY THEM IT JUST TO MAKE YOURSELF HAPPY.
 
We're a tiny team, and we're hiring outside help to do the multiplayer stuff for this very reason (well not just this reason, they are also awesome and can do stuff we cannot), yet even when spending extra money on an external team to avoid it affecting your fabled NPCs in any way whatsoever, and making that clear mondoid after mondoid, we still put up with all these constant complaints and opinionings whenever we talk about ANYTHING non NPC (and yet, ABSURDLY, we get 10x the complaints when we DO talk about NPCS), we are pritoritizing the work that gets done to try and keep the most people happy we can, to provide regular updates to make people feel they are getting their moneys worth, and the reviews suggest we're doing the right thing.
 
If I have to read more whinging about NPCs its SO tempting just to stick static 'shopkeeper' characters in there, soak up the complaints, and never speak of them again. Sick to death of it.  YOU GUYS are the biggest risk to NPCs out there, I tell you. We GET it. We read complaints about NPCs ALL THE TIME. It amazes me so many seem to think by posting a comment on the forums or on an unrelated mondoid we're going to go 'oh what?! WAIT. PEOPLE WANT NPCS? I DIDN'T REALIZE! Sorry! Right, they will be out next week!' - We're so very obviously aware people want NPCs, its like the worst kept secret in the world. Why people can't understand after a certain point it becomes MASSIVELY detremental to a small team where the developers themselves, who are human and bound by such human traits as motivation and stress have to READ this endless stuff themselves, there is no PR guy soaking it up.
 
It's also tempting to put a complete ban on any versions until NPCs are out, and then direct all the huge anger at a list of email addresses I collect from NPC complaints, and see how they like it. Nope people excited for VOIP, you're NOT allowed it because the NPC gang want their NPCS and THEY are who matter, NOT YOU. Doesn't matter that we got extra external people to do all the work. If we talk about it, or god forbid release it, then that's unfair to NPC fans. They don't want other people having any enjoyment of new features if they aren't getting it themselves. Here's a list of people to go and harass about it every week.
 
We try to be good to our customers, we try and be on their side all the time, we bleed for this game, but it's bloody hard. So so so tired of it. You wonder why NPCS aren't out?  I used to love working on NPCs. Now it practically gives me ulcers, because of you lot. THAT is why. Thanks for taking something I loved, was obsessed with, had huge aspirations for,  looked forward to 'getting boring stuff out the way' so I could get back to them, and instead making me want to puke every time I think of them.  They'll still come, as we've said a bazillion times, but it'll be 1000x shittier working on them in the meantime, so thanks. And yeah, they'll come slower too when I have to nail myself to the desk to force myself to work to them, instead of gleefully thinking about them in bed and thinking 'screw it' and jumping up to quickly to my pc to do that cool thing I thought about and them realizing its 10am and I've worked all night.  That happens to this day but not on NPCs no longer I'll tell you that straight up.
 
Perhaps they would come faster if they weren't such a poisonous thing, a three letter acronym of the dark horrible side of PZ that makes most of the community groan and wince when they hear it, the cause of 99% of the stress and discord in the community, and maybe there'd be a lot more pep in development if the people who mention them so often didn't so often act so completely selfishly toward other features people are excited about or talk in such gross belittling terms about the work of other developers on the game. "Oh boy got to get those wonderful people their NPCs, don't want to let them down <3<3<3' If it weren't for all the wonderfully lovely and understanding people, and those who've never posted on the forums at all, nothing would give me more pleasure at this point than just canning them, tell you the truth. As it stands its all those I don't want to let down and why I'll work through the grime and muck and tears and get them out as promised. Sadly my lofty aspirations of them standing out as something special and unique has slowly been strangled over the past year or so, they are tainted and I just want them done and all that pleasure and love is long dead, so its only responsibility to those people that drives me now.  
 
To make matters worse, when I do anything that's not NPCs I have to omit my bloody name out of the Mondoid and take no credit whatsoever, for fear of people going 'WHAT HE'S NOT WORKING ON NPCS?' (I hope the above gives some indication of why working 100% on NPCs day in / day out is now an impossibility for me without some recharge time) I get no sense of satisfaction or recognition for what I do do on the game apart from the much delayed NPCs because I have to keep it quiet because I'm known to be doing NPCs, and the OPs post is proof that this is not done out of paranoia due to not understanding game development and the simplistic 'if this then not that' mentality that dominates these kind of NPC complaints. So basically, despite being one of two people who built the game from the ground up from day 1 before the team grew, writing the base of the entire multiplayer in my spare time within a month, as well as the animation overhaul, creative, professions and trait overhaul and numerous other things, often as a bit of refuge from NPCs or in my spare time,  and having to run the company to boot, all I ever get back in terms of personal accomplishment or recognition is complaints about lack of npcs, accusations of being slow, and comments like one on Mondoid yesterday that 'I wish I had lemmy101's job so I could do nothing for years and still get paid!' - so fucking draining and demoralizing and people wonder why they aren't hurtling out the door at a billion miles an hour.
 
Only in Early Access do you suffer the indignity of constantly having random people come in and start telling you how your team should be organized and what people should be working on what. We involve the community heavily with development but it only coincidentally seems to be people complaining about NPCs that seem entitled to that control over the development and team and start saying 'I don't think this person should be working on this, you should put them on that!'. And there are some people on the Steam boards right now wondering why we vowed never to do Early Access again. There's also a thread there right now saying 'are we the only people doing Early Access right?' yet that right ain't good enough as long as there's one thing on your list you've not gotten out the door. A lot of Early Access developers would have closed doors a year or two or three ago, NPCs or no, but the fact we're keeping at it, still updating the game, working on it 100%, and can't think of starting anything new or fresh or exciting, mainly down to our commitment to YOU means nothing because you still not got your NPCs.
 
VERY IMPORTANT TRIP IN THE TOTAL PERSPECTIVE VORTEX: The people who post on this forum, and the people who post on steam, and the people who post on reddit, represent probably 0.001% of the playerbase. Just because the NPC noise is so deafening, the majority of people out there just want the game updating with new features. Most who bought the game did so long after we shut the fuck up about NPCs and we're keeping quiet so they can be content and not become more NPC noise dragging us down. All those people probably want updates coming out with features added to the game, not some total FULL STOP on any development that's not NPCS that wouldn't come much sooner if we did that ANYWAY. (to those without development experience, just consider the adage: "Too many cooks". Add 100000 developers to NPCs will not make them come out in 0.2 seconds) Ask yourself if our review score wouldn't be somewhere in the 20% if the majority truly did align with your own opinion? We should be getting nothing but NPC delay complaints. Instead we get reviews about the game that's there, and praising regular updates of new features, because lack of NPC tunnel vision means they appreciate all the massive work we put into the game in general. Npc complaints are, gladly, in the minority exactly because we don't keep going on about them and just work on them quietly, yet the minority who do complain do so so constantly, at such a deafening volume and with such incredible laser focus it just make me MISERABLE. I've always stuck up for NPC complaining people, 'oh its just because they are frustrated' and 'its our fault for hyping it too soon', full of apologies and sympathy, but it becomes harder and harder with each passing day. I think I'm hitting a threshold.
 
We owe the majority their updates, and sorry that this makes NPCs take their time but that's the way it is. Apparently hiring external help to do MP stuff, and endlessly talking about how we're doing that in the Mondoids, isn't enough, so I'll just have to lay it out in black and white for you. I think I've done pretty much that. That's why NPCs are delayed, it has nothing to do with VOIP. or any other feature by any member of the team or even features I may myself work on instead of working on NPCs. If I'm not working on NPCs it's because I've hit a roadblock or am otherwise being unproductive, and my time is then better spent on something I'm making progress on. This constant NPC noise just makes that MUCH more frequent and MUCH more severe. The reason NPCs have been delayed is working on NPCs is now like working in a sewer, and when you work in a sewer you're only there as long as you have to be, you have to come up for regular breath to get the stink out of your nose and keep yourself from getting ill. And this is why I'm not being hyperbolic when I say if you'd all have shut up about them you'd probably be playing with them right now. This is perhaps a the most valuable thing to take away for future reference when talking directly to anyone relying on creativity to create something you want.
 
I'm sorry if this all comes over as harsh, its your first post and from your perspective the heated response may not seem appropriate for your question, you may not have seen the sea of people saying the exact same things day in and day out that have wore our nerves and patience to a nub. but they are still there from our perspective and after so long the camel's back snaps.. a lot of this is general and not directed at you, though a lot applies to your comments,
 
Have a nice day

You meant to use "queasy" but I think you misspelled it as "squeasy", which isn't really a word but makes you think of something that you can squeeze. So it was the idea that when infected the player would become mushy and easy to squish that I found funny.
 
Anyway I agree with your core idea, it would be neat I guess. Only real issue is that it might be confusing to new players. "Why did I feel so sick and then nothing happened?"
 
 
Edit: Turns out this is a Squeasy
 
 

His pineapples were rolling with a mamma dog attack helicopter. Then suddenly, a wild squirrel army and a squirrel commander demanded nuts. He only waited five squirrel seconds before he politely obliged. Before they ripped his pineapples away, they exploded, causing a squirrel massacre, while screaming, causing cancer, and destroying Sauron himself which caused the Apocalypse, leading to legitimate heterophobia. In the next nightmare of Bernie, the sky felt the need to defecate furiously. All umbrellas were utterly useless. The Sun then squealed and a Rainbow
 
 
EDIT: This story is giving me AIDs

xXx420ShadowDragonWarriorSquadxXx naming my server to this

We might post up some more fleshed out rules shortly.
 
For the time being, if you host a server and post it here, please name them as descriptive as you can by adding bracket-tags to the topic title.
 
Examples:
 
[24/7][Whitelist][PVP][DE] McLeisure's Shenannigans
 
[Free4all][No PVP][uK][weekly reset] xXx420ShadowDragonWarriorSquadxXx
 
[RP][PVP][uS/CA] KentuckyXtreme

Speaking of bookshelves, there is a little glitch in the game when you place a window frame, then place a bookshelf in front of it it allows you to right click on it and jump through and jump back, it hid my base for a whole Redboid wipe.

None of Your Business Tycoon

*Takes notes on clipboard.*

Edit: whoops, wrong stat, they do actually have different sound radius values...
no idea what 'soundvolume' does then...
 
Excellent mod, tricky to get started with, and I still run into errors all the time but nothing really game-breaking as far as i can tell.
One thing that really irks me though is the lack of effort put into sound-draw...something that could give all calibers a purpose within certain skill/danger ranges. It seems you just went and set all the pistols to 75 or 85, all the revolvers smgs and SNIPER/ASSAULT RIFLES to 75...and shotguns to 200.....
This doesn't seem very balanced at all, and starting out using a .22 caliber weapon if it draws less zombies seems sensible until you can handle the aggro without drawing the entire map towards you. I'm no gun expert, as much as i appreciate them, yet I'm sure a .22 round doesn't make as much noise as a 7.62 or a .45, right? (I just went to look it up, and apparantly shotguns actually make LESS noise than many pistol calibers out there...so if you're going for unrealism for the sake of balance, it'd be nice if weaksauce guns like .22 and such didn't make as much noise as everything else out there, so that they could be used for training/around bases more often).
Other than that, I'm having fun getting myself killed over and over in hardcore...seriously, guns are a death sentence in this game =P

You know every time some one says... *whispers* NPC's they set the release date back a day! Just say "The feature that may not be named"

If they would  that probably would be a thing way down the line, like probably not even close.