Jjoncm1

That sounds amazing if we could use attachment. Also I think the .22 would be the better choice than the .223. Many people own a ruger 10/22 due to cheap (well before obama) ammo cost. That would be my primary casual zed hunting rifle. Only a headshot would do anything though.

Back when my line of work was a lot more journalist-y I’d do a lot of interviews with Executive Producers, Senior Marketing Vice Presidents and all other manner of other glorified mouth-pieces for the big publishers. Whenever they brought out the old “of course, we’re doing this for the community – they’re who matter!” line I’d start to roll my eyes. I wouldn’t stop rolling them until I’d asked my killer ‘DLC plans?’ question.
 
I don’t want to be like that guy – the guy who talks about the value of a game’s community without once visiting it, and praises it as a part of some bullshit boardroom checklist.
 
Without Project Zomboid’s community (without you - the person reading this – whether you’re a lurker or a regular) times could’ve been so much darker. We owe you a ‘thank you’ so massive it’s almost impossible to deliver. Your testing, your enthusiasm, your friendship, your shared passion for the game… it means more than I can convey in a simple forum post.
 
I’m not going to whitewash the bad stuff. Two years ago TIS self-inflicted some wounds from which it took an age to recover and gave ruffians ample room to play, and I know that the fabled ‘winter of no content’ was tough on us all. (I don’t think we ever answered the question of what constitutes a ‘white knight’ and what constitutes a ‘troll’, but we certainly seemed to get closer to the answer than most…)
 
So, before the Steam Early Access launch potentially stirs things up, I wanted to say thank you. To our moderators, to our regulars, to our lurkers, to our critics, to our fans, to those who dip in and out… everyone. Thanks for giving a shit about our zombie game.
 
Speaking on behalf of all of the Indie Stone, all of our contributors and anyone else who’ve found themselves strapped onto this rollercoaster for the past couple of years – it wouldn’t have been the same without you, and it’s entirely possible that it couldn’t have happened at all.
 
We’re really appreciative, and we’ll always do our best to do right by you – however we can.
 
You started this. You incubated the PZ infection.  You'll forever have our thanks.
 
LOVE Y'ALL

There is, however, a fourth option. It's that Pancakez is wrong. It's the right option.

It's one of those things they've wanted to do for a very long time now. We'll likely see it one day.
 

Moved discussion of snow to http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/2381-snow/
Please refer there for all of your winter-wonderland needs.
Good discussions on seasons, in general:
http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/2242-seasons-affecting-both-players-and-zombies-in-a-different-way/
 
http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/2366-seasonal-offerings-food-preservation/?

It also all depends on things like your size, height, average healthy weight, metabolism, etc. All kinds of things. There's no set caloric number that people absolutely must have each day. As long as you're drinking fluids you can live on practically no food at all for a really long time. I watch a lot of survival shows, on like Discovery and Nat Geo, and what have you. I'm not sure if you guys would be familiar with the show "I Shouldn't Be Alive" or not. Essentially the premise is that people who have been in disaster survival situations and lived tell their story in an interview and narrate a reinactment of what happened. Anyway I saw an episode a while back where this guy survived on something like 4 small fish for something like 76 days on a life raft in the Pacific. He got super sick and almost died, but was still able to do it, and still get the things done he needed to get done for survival, and eventually make it. Real world survival situations are almost always about enduring hunger.

Seems as if zombies now has gained the ability to teleport. Yesterday I saved a game outside a bedroom (second story, one entrance, one window) The bedroom was empty when I saved the game. When I reloaded the game and entered the bedrom, two zombies suprised me (i almost shat my pants!) and quickly turned me into zombie-food...
 
... I guess they Heard about my "kick in the groin" proposal...

Your time will come

absolutely something similar to this would help. The point of PZ is to let the player survive in their own way. If you can't build a base then that rules out half the game right there. I understand it's a WIP but I agree that their migrations should be based on other noises or random and if they get at the player base, they should keep moving along unless they notice the player, hear him, etc (me cowaring upstairs under the covers with my baseball bat until they leave). I haven't noticed the teleporting zombies, it always seemed to me that I would go out around day 2-3 and just have a massive horde near me that looked like it had just walked up (seemed spread out)

Well these sound events shouldn't be based on where the player is, they should be random as to where they happen (a gun shot goes off miles away from you and the zombies that heard it all head that way) a helicopter cycles over the police station (an example) but your no where near the police station. At the moment everything has been coded to kill the player, there is surviving and then trying to survive and as it is now its more like trying to survive. The player shouldn't be punished for setting up a base, he shouldn't be the focus of attention to bring the zombies to him. The player can do that on his/her own. Example of this is cooking, you cook something in the oven any zombies near (and they would need to be very close) would come to investigate the strange smell (but not every single zombie on the map). Might be 2 could be 8, but those who are close enough would pay you a visit.
 
 
 
 
Not complaints, these are what people want addressed. If the game was released right now then you would start to see complaints. People want the zombie game where they can do what they want and not feel punished for doing something they decided to do by having herds of zombies appear for no reason other than the player has been staying at the same house for a few days or a week. Zombies don't exists we all know this and because of that we can make them as intelligent or dumb as we want, we could make it so zombies walk on all fours. Just because there is no rule stating a zombie must behave like this doesn't mean we should change the principle way we see a zombie.
 
 
@ All those working on this game.
What we want is a game where zombie's behave the way we see in your normal zombie move, and this from what I can see is fine. Ok zombies can climb through windows in this game, this however I see as been acceptable to the fact. What I don't agree with is seeing a player setup a base and then been over run a day or 2 later. We just want to have zombies do and behave as we expect them to, we could go into sandbox and play the game the way we want, that's not a big deal But if survival mode has things in it that sandbox doesn't the its obvious that people will want to play that mode and then start to complain.
 
Perfect example to this is the Formula 1 2012 game by code masters, a lot of the people who want a true simulator won't touch any F1 game made by this company because their focus is on trying to make a game the fits all. Setups that are pre made so the player doesn't need to learn how to set the car up, the handling so the player can race around the track and not be punished to harshly for getting on the power a little to early or not punishing the player for running on the curbs all the time damaging their tyres. In stead the curbs are just an extension to the track and you are free to run over those curbs all the time with no increase in tyre degradation. So the sim like players play RFactor for a more true to life feel.
 
Another example is Rome total war, it was not perfect but it was balanced enough to be seen as good and because of how popular Rome TW was, the developers released Rome 2 TW and have now had many complaints because the units are not balanced enough. Many great games fall at the waste, this is because people are more willing to voice their opinions be it on a forum via a video on you tube, etc. Some people here might never have worked on a sandbox game before, but many could have worked on mods for games. These are the people that transform a poor game into a game that everyone wanted (again look at Rome 1 and 2 or many other games like Pirates Of The Caribbean aka Sea Dogs 2).
 
All i'm trying to say is I understand that as a developer its frustrating seeing people making demands or picking faults with things that have had many hours, weeks or months of work put into them. But in todays world this will happen and many people who are not happy will not only focus their attention on what annoys them but will start to look for other reasons to pick apart features within the game.

A small town like this would probably not even had a swat team, my city of 125k doens't even have a true swat team, only officers that double up on swat if needed. I don't really thing swat should be a thing but maybe a rare officer zombie that has a bullet proof vest that has higher resistance to bullets but near normal resistance to physical weapons. I would love to see half eaten zombies though haha

Saw a dev saying that he didnt see many people reporting about this problem so here i am.
 
I kinda took a break from project zomboid because of this, it was actually at the same place as OP's picture, the place with the barn and everything and its very far out, i thought it was an already known issue so i never voiced up about it.
 
Hope to be back soon, i'm missing it

Actually, I'm afraid that right now you get the price for instantiation for every zombie anyway, whether you take it from an aggregated zombie or from a real stored zombie would make very little difference. The game would use more memory, but would not be slower because of it.
 
Working with 100 thousand simple records is not an issue for java. The price really is in the instantiation and simulation of the zombies, not in their memory storage and access. Getting them on screen is a thousand times more cpu and memory intensive than simply storing the coordinates.
 
I'm not sure how many zombies we're talking about here. But if you store only x,y coordinates per zombie  and you have 100 thousand zombies I doubt you'd hit 4 megabyte of ram. And that's a very broad guess, you could probably fit the zombies visuals, and direction into that same memory.
 
We're talking modern computers here. Juggling those amounts of data is peanuts. Even if you had a million zombies in the game you could probably squeeze them into 64mb. And even the 32 bit version of zomboid has at least 1.5gb of memory available to it. So the storage isn't the problem, trying to simulating them all, including pathfinding and visuals would instagib your performance. But that's an entirely different story

Right so:
 
1) Zombie spawning is the next thing we're looking at. 
 
2) This is how the system works. There is a zombie density map over the entire map, high to low zombie population. The first time you load a chunk of the map (10x10) it works out the density of that square and populates it with that many zombies. this can be anywhere from about  10 to about 1/100 (there's only a zombie on every 100 of them) to 0.
 
When you leave the area and the chunk unloads, it creates a virtual zombie object with that # of zombies. Any zombies within a distance will all aggregate into the same virtual zombie, but this distance is quite small.
 
When you reapproach, it turns virtual zombies back into real zombies (of that #)
 
The 'tileyness' is because we are placing zombies within the context of a single chunk, so a high density will eventually fill out that 10x10 chunk.
 
The only time a zombie is ever 'spawned' is when a meta event (inc alarms) occur. All zombies in the vicinity (streamed in area) are lured to the sound, but also a horde is created as a virtual zombie at the nearest high density zombie grid square, if in range, such as the west of town, and slowly moves toward the source of the sound. If at any point the player comes across the virtual zombie (aka the chunk streams into memory, it will turn into X zombies all walking toward their target)
 
This is how it works, though I've disabled the meta horde stuff for now since it's the only possible cause of the issues people are experiencing, and I think it's more a case of virtual zombies moving too fast or something.

I'm surprised by everyone speaking of intended behavior. If you walk away and then back like regularx does there shouldn't be a packed horde. Maybe it's an artefact of the current system but it's also game breaking behavior and that can't be as intended. An unintended negative side effect counts as a bug where I work! 
 
Thanks everyone though, you're putting mighty amounts of experimentation and testing into the subject. I could not have wished for a better reaction to my original post. I wanted to draw attention to the way the zombies spawn at your doorstep seemingly out of nowhere. That certainly worked. No matter what the outcome, it will be a thoroughly researched topic  And I'm sure things will get all the better for it! I hope one of you gentlemods will tip the devs so they know about the topic and can peruse it at their leasure.
 
I'm going to stop playing for a bit. I want to take the next step and do the mid game base building/farming but zomboid is just not quite there yet. I realize this is an alpha game, bugs are to be expected and will be fixed eventually. I fully accept that, so I'll be following the development with eagle eyes! The first chance I get I'll be right there in the front with you other survivors! I love this game, it really kicks ass. It's the best game out there at the moment. Devs are truly doing a stellar job (Keep spanking that code guys!). And the community is awesome to boot. So a big thumbs up to all of you! 

A small town like this would probably not even had a swat team, my city of 125k doens't even have a true swat team, only officers that double up on swat if needed. I don't really thing swat should be a thing but maybe a rare officer zombie that has a bullet proof vest that has higher resistance to bullets but near normal resistance to physical weapons. I would love to see half eaten zombies though haha

I'm going to be streaming the game and see what I can muster up, besides there being tins of zombies everywhere, which is normal until they fix the low density option, I did notice some odd spawning of a few zombies. I was at the normal wooden fenced in house and had the front barricaded. Zombies found my back entrance I had and kept banging at my door, I went out to clear them and noticed some zombies coming at me from inside my base, from near the house even though there was no way for them to get there without me noticing, ill check my stream to see if I got the video but it isn't exactly evidence of anything horde sized. Will update if I see anything odd later.

Note again and again the square block formations in the screenshots!
 
I'm not sure why you need hard evidence Rathlord. I work in software development. If a customer calls with undesirable behavior of our product we take it serious, we never ever tell them that they're imagining things. What we're seeing easily explains what the others are seeing. There's at least 4 people reporting the problem in this thread alone. The rest just notices large amounts of zombies around their safe house. Maybe they don't notice the block formations or the blocks had time to break up before they spotted them.
 
I'm not saying I'm entitled to a fix or your special attention. I'm just saying you've got some unwanted behavior in your product in the hope that you fix it, not just for my sake, but for everyones sake. This might be a small group semi amateur operation. But you're on steam dude I'd pat your shoulder congratulate you and wish you strength. I realize it can be maddening. But I have the best intentions and I think the others who chimed in on the topic feel the same. I am pretty sure that all of us have the best intentions for the game, and it's community  And zomboid really deserves it. Triple a games rarely draw me in like Zomboid does. It's really a brilliant concept.
 
I haven't seen them spawn directly behind my back, once was when I went to sleep, the other two times I had been on a looting run. But from the block formations it's clear that they've been placed by a spawning/streaming mechanism and not by the natural zombie migration behavior.
 
Are you playing the latest steam version? Why don't you try it? Load up the steam beta and play a few days,. if it's as common as I suggest you should be able to see it for yourself by day three? Do as I did, move to the fenced off house, on day two hang around that house, looting nearby houses and dragging home the spoils. Day three you go to the large warehouse try to find yourself an axe. Then when zombies move into the neigborhood. Look for the telltale block formations.
 
I'm guessing these blocks appear at certain areas only. The meta game runs on a grid, I'm expecting these zombies to appear on grid crossings, or in the dead center of those grid blocks. Every horde block appears in such an area. (Call em zombie ley lines)
 
Do you have a long term safehouse in the latest steam build Rath? Because if you do? I'd love to try my luck at that location... I really want to stop the scavenging games and move on to mid term base building and farming. Right now with this unfortunate spawning behavior that's just not possible.

absolutely something similar to this would help. The point of PZ is to let the player survive in their own way. If you can't build a base then that rules out half the game right there. I understand it's a WIP but I agree that their migrations should be based on other noises or random and if they get at the player base, they should keep moving along unless they notice the player, hear him, etc (me cowaring upstairs under the covers with my baseball bat until they leave). I haven't noticed the teleporting zombies, it always seemed to me that I would go out around day 2-3 and just have a massive horde near me that looked like it had just walked up (seemed spread out)

Not exactly how I expected to be treated by moderators. I am a paying customer who is highly interested in the game. I realize all the work they do and are super appreciative of all they do. Me posting something twice (2 times) is no where near reason for giving me that tone. I've had posts lost before so when I ask a simple question and it doesn't get answered, I will most definitely post it again. Nothing wrong with that and I can delete my ONE extra post then. If it annoys you just scroll over it. And yes I know it is a steam release but it is not just this release. If the devs read over all the posts on a daily basis and make no comment on a quite serious issue to a few of us here, how exactly am I supposed to get one? If bumping once gets you into a such a mood, what exactly am I supposed to do. This is a forum, expect things to get asked multiple times and bumped until they are answered. I've had to run forums before and this is NOT how a person who fully supports the game should be treated. I am very disappointed by the moderators at the moment. A verbal warning for just wanting an answer is quite unprofessional. "The Devs will answer your question as soon as they get the chance, please refrain from posting multiple times to cluster the forum, thanks!" Now doesn't that sound like a more appropriate response? Sorry if I am mad but where I work currently, I would get fired if I talked to a customer like that. Just because this is the internet doesn't mean customers shouldn't be treated with respect. I will refrain from posting unless my questions and those that others like me have asked have not been answered. I do not want to anger any one, I only want to be treated professionally and not a basic "shut up and keep quiet" remark. Thank you Devs for you time and moderators, I'm sure you are very nice people and I hope this is a fluke, I know you help out just as much as some of the big guys. Not trying to distract from that.

Not exactly how I expected to be treated by moderators. I am a paying customer who is highly interested in the game. I realize all the work they do and are super appreciative of all they do. Me posting something twice (2 times) is no where near reason for giving me that tone. I've had posts lost before so when I ask a simple question and it doesn't get answered, I will most definitely post it again. Nothing wrong with that and I can delete my ONE extra post then. If it annoys you just scroll over it. And yes I know it is a steam release but it is not just this release. If the devs read over all the posts on a daily basis and make no comment on a quite serious issue to a few of us here, how exactly am I supposed to get one? If bumping once gets you into a such a mood, what exactly am I supposed to do. This is a forum, expect things to get asked multiple times and bumped until they are answered. I've had to run forums before and this is NOT how a person who fully supports the game should be treated. I am very disappointed by the moderators at the moment. A verbal warning for just wanting an answer is quite unprofessional. "The Devs will answer your question as soon as they get the chance, please refrain from posting multiple times to cluster the forum, thanks!" Now doesn't that sound like a more appropriate response? Sorry if I am mad but where I work currently, I would get fired if I talked to a customer like that. Just because this is the internet doesn't mean customers shouldn't be treated with respect. I will refrain from posting unless my questions and those that others like me have asked have not been answered. I do not want to anger any one, I only want to be treated professionally and not a basic "shut up and keep quiet" remark. Thank you Devs for you time and moderators, I'm sure you are very nice people and I hope this is a fluke, I know you help out just as much as some of the big guys. Not trying to distract from that.

Wouldn't newer clothes help protect you more from scratches and maybe bites too (thick sweater) than a torn up one. Could have reduced chance of breaking skin with new clothes and increased with torn up clothes. Then there would be a point to grab clothes for other reasons than bandages.