Brex

Finally got around to testing the new IWBUMS. I didn't get too far but I did notice two major bugs in particular: 1) The "radio sounds" are way too loud. My character can hear the static from a radio inside a house FROM ACROSS THE STREET. Unless that radio has some serious volume and bass, there's no way that's possible. 2) Bloodstains remain visible on top floors even when standing a floor below, making it look like the bloodstains are hovering in midair. Very distracting. There was probably more to catalog, but I didn't get a whole lot of time to test it. Hopefully the bugs I did notice will be fixed.

Are cars in IWBUMS now?

Thanks. I looked over it all, and it looks kinda complicated.

Hey y'all. It's BIT (Brex Idea Time) again! One of my favorite places to fortify during the fall of Knox County is the Muldraugh Police Station, as I often RP as the last surviving police officer in Muldraugh and make it my mission to reclaim the police station and turn it into a functioning safehouse. Problem is, it's not the most defensible location. Lots of smashable windows in the front, and a waist-high fence around the perimeter of the station that does f**k all to keep out the zeds. Now, usually, I just board up/sheet up the windows and proceed to either A) tear down the useless waist-high fence and replace them with walls, B) simply build the wall in front of or behind the fence, or C) just say "f**k the fence" and leave it as is, dealing with any zombies that enter the perimeter as they come. As you can imagine, none of those options are particularly viable. Option A is time-consuming, Option B is awkward, and Option C is a death sentence. That got me thinking about how to improve and expand the available defenses that can be built and utilized to protect your safehouse, wherever it may be. So here are a few suggestions I came up with: 1) Plywood boards. As anyone who lives near a coastline in America can tell you, plywood is the cheapest and most readily available material to use in order to board up the windows of your home in the event of a hurricane. In-game, plywood boards would be an alternative form of barricading windows, slightly stronger than simple planks but much weaker than metal sheets. All you'd need is a hammer, nails, and a sheet of plywood (which could be scavenged from any warehouse or hardware store.) It would also solve one of my biggest peeves in-game: barricading over broken windows, because wooden planks (and sometimes even metal sheets) tend to "float" in the air when placed in certain types of broken windows, especially if the windows are cleared of glass. A plywood board covering up the hole would be a viable solution, covering up the hole in the window while also serving as a decent barricade. It could also work for certain doors too: 2) Traps. While there are a few trap-like tools that experienced survivors can craft in the base game, they're not the best at keeping out zombies from your base. So instead of flame traps made of bottles of vodka or pipe bombs crafted from cans of hairspray, lets keep it simple. How about bear traps? A ditch filled with wooden spikes? Trip wires? A highly-skilled carpenter or engineer could go full-out Home Alone and create a whole host of booby traps to kill Zombie Harry and Zombie Marv. 3) More perimeter defenses. Like I mentioned above, the ridiculously short fence around the police station in Muldraugh is a bit of a peeve of mine. So instead of tearing it down or trying to build around it, why not include certain ways to improve perimeter defenses? How about some wooden spikes surrounding the perimeter? Piles of barbed wire in front of the fencing, a la Rainbow Six: Siege? Maybe with certain fences you can even build on top of the fence, such as adding wooden barricades or barbed wire to keep zombies from climbing over as seen here in my second favorite zombie game of all time, State of Decay: Now I know that some players use crates and boxes as barricades to block zombies from climbing over waist-high fences, but that to me seems more like an exploit of the zombie's pathfinding AI rather than a legitimate strategy to keep enemies at bay. I mean, they're just f**king boxes. There should be an option to construct additional defenses on top of or around waist-high fences in order to keep zombies from climbing over without having to waste time and effort building an entire damn wall. 4) Junk walls. For that perfect post-apocalyptic look, just cobble together whatever scrap 'n crap you can carry and construct a shoddy makeshift wall that, while not particularly strong, serves as a cheap temporary barrier between you and the zombies until you can create your real walls. It can be made of practically anything: logs, metal sheets, planks, siding, plywood boards, scrap metal, you name it. One or two zombies against a junk wall isn't much of a problem, but be warned: a horde of those f*ckers will tear it down like it was made of tissue paper. It's only meant to serve as a temporary barrier until you gain the supplies to build actual walls. For a decent idea of what I'm talking about, take a look at the junk walls from the game Fallout 4: 5) Using furniture to barricade...properly. The addition of movable furniture to the game allowed for players to use everyday objects as measures of protecting their safehouse from the zombie hordes, as seen here by a player barricading the wide-open plaza of the Sunstar Motel: That's a good start and is definitely what most people would use to barricade their homes in the likely event that they don't have access to wooden planks, a hammer, and some nails. But it's still rudimentary; furniture and objects can only be moved from their original position to a new position. I think it should go a little further than that. How about overturning sofas and beds to block hallways and act as cover from gunfire? Bookcases and refrigerators that can be pushed in front of windows? Chairs that can be wedged into doors to keep them from opening? The possibilities are endless, but I recognize that this particular suggestion may not be entirely possible, given the nature of sprites and object manipulation within the game. It's not a huge deal, but the devs did say they want to implement the ability to use furniture as barricades...well, I'm just trying to expand on that idea a little. 6) Concertina wire. Often mistaken for barbed wire, this can be used a form of fencing or other barricade, and is actually much harder to penetrate than barbed wire. Stick a ring of it on the walls and fences around your safehouse or set it up just outside your front step and watch any unfortunate bastard who wanders into it get caught and bleed like a stuck pig: I believe the item "Razor Wire" is in the game, but it doesn't really have much use at the moment. Well, razor wire could be used to construct razor wire fences such as the one in the picture above, keeping out (or at the very least slowing down) and intruders. 7) Tire-stack fences and barricades. Players who have been experimenting with the recent vehicles test may have noticed that, for all the benefits of finally having a car in Project Zomboid, they don't really make for the best fortifications. Being physics-enabled objects, they can be hard to manipulate into proper positions and can experience glitches when used to seal off a doorway from the outside. Besides, good luck finding enough workable vehicles to build a proper perimeter out of. You can't even use the vehicle wrecks as there are no tow trucks in game. But you should be able to use something else: the tires. We've seen dozens of eco-friendly aficionados do all sorts of crazy things with tires, but one of the most common uses for old tires outside of recycling is for holding back earth or water in retaining walls like these: Now, I don't know about you, but a ring of tire stacks filled with earth sounds like it would form a damn-near impenetrable barricade against both zombies AND gun-toting survivors. Hell, as seen in the photo, they may even be used as miniature growing plots! Instead of retaining water or earth, these tire walls would retain the undead. 8) Turrets. What's that? You found a Humvee on the highway with the Browning still attached? And it still has ammo? Well how about you relieve that vehicle of its precious cargo, set it up on top of some sandbags, and lay waste to any zombie hordes that step within a hundred-foot radius of your safehouse. But be warned, zombies are attracted to noise, and a .50 caliber machine gun is LOUD. 9) Noisemakers. Got a horde on your tail and don't want to lead them back to your safehouse? Getting royally f*cked by an unfortunate house alarm or by some d*ckhead flying overhead in an Apache? Well why not make some noise of your own? Set up anything from fireworks to remote-controlled explosives in specific areas, and trigger them in order to get the zombies off you. With proper planning, you could even control the movements of the horde and perpetually keep them away from your safehouse, barring any unfortunate circumstances beyond your control. Just be careful: noise carries in Knox County, and you may end up attracting a lot more danger than you intended if you're not careful. 10) Body walls. Yeah, you read that right. Body walls. Piles of corpses stacked thirty feet high around your base. A scene straight out of 300 or Game of Thrones. You've slaughtered so many zombies and now their decaying corpses litter the ground around your safehouse. Now you could do the smart-but-boring thing of burning and burying the bodies, or you can do the dumb-but-awesome thing of literally stacking their bodies on top of each other to form a barricade around your safehouse. Not only is it a testament to your zombie-killing achievements, but it has one more practical purpose: masking your smell. Now this would NOT work like in The Walking Dead, where covering yourself in zombie guts or keeping de-jawed zeds on chains close to you would make the zombies think you're one of them and not attack you. The zombies of Project Zomboid operate on sight, hearing, AND smell, so if they see your ass or hear your f*cking around, they're gonna come after you. But having a wall of rotting corpses potentially robs the zombies of one of their keenest remaining senses, tricking them into thinking that the only thing in the area is smelly rotten death. And zombies can't eat smelly rotten death. Again, if they see or hear you, they'll be on you like white on rice on a sheet of paper in a snowstorm. But otherwise, they might just pass you by...provided you don't stink even worse than a literal pile of walking corpses. Well, there you have it. Ten ideas for improvements to base defense in PZ. Have you guys got any other ideas for stuff that can be implemented to assist in defense?

That's...That's Spiffo. That's f**king Spiffo. The car is textured with f**king Spiffo.

Like the title says, I want to start creating my own map and buildings. I've never done it before, but I've got the time and I've got a decent enough computer, as well as some ideas for a town or two that I've been wanting to bring to life. Unfortunately, I have no idea where to begin. Thuztor's supposedly tell-all mapping guide is no longer accessible for some reason, so I'm not quite sure how to go about doing ANYTHING in relation to mapping. Does anyone have another guide available, or perhaps a link to Thuztor's guide that actually works? Is mapping easy or hard? I'm an utter noob when it comes to mapping, so forgive me for being so confused.

Wow, thank you. I just wanna support this game as much as I can. Heck if I knew anything about coding or graphic design I'd offer my services in that field. But for now I'm happy to provide ideas for the development team and the community.

Exactly, there needs to be a sprite for charred remains. Even if it's just a blackened corpse model, it's more realistic than simply leaving behind ashes. It's gasoline, not laser beams.

Everyone knows that Build 38 is introducing the gameplay mechanic of digging graves to dispose of rotting corpses as an alternative to burning them. A good idea, but one that I think can be improved in the following ways: 1. More grave types/models. The current model of the grave is a single rectangle of dirt. To me, that model looks too smooth and clean. I have a hard time believing that a ragged survivor under duress who may or may not have done any hard work in his life would dig a hole that pretty. In my opinion, graves dug by amateur survivors should look like they were dug quickly and haphazardly, with ragged edges, uneven dirt, and other details that make it look like it wasn't dug by a professional digger. Something like this: 2. Funeral pyres/more realistic body burning. One of the things nobody else seems to have noticed is just how effective cremation via gasoline is. I mean, you dump a little gas on a corpse, light a match, and boom, he's ashes in a few seconds. While that may be for gameplay purposes, that's simply not realistic. It takes a LOT of heat and fire to completely destroy a human body, and a simple gasoline fire won't reach ANYWHERE near the temperatures required for cremation. It's one of the most unrealistic things in this otherwise punishingly realistic game. The solution? Rather than simply leaving behind ashes, perhaps corpses can become charred and partially destroyed to the point where, though not completely gone, they at least won't be a source of disease and infection anymore. Also, funeral pyres. Stack a few logs on top of one another and throw the bodies on top. I was gonna suggest having a separate model for corpse piles, but that's probably redundant. 3. Body bags. We know the military and the scientists were performing experiments within the Exclusion Zone, so it'd make sense that they'd have at least a few dozen corpses lying around wrapped up in a plastic body bag. So why not utilize some of what they left behind, or even make your own out of stuff like bedsheets? It would make transporting corpses far more sanitary, because I don't think anyone in real life would be comfortable carrying a rotting corpse with their bare hands. Which leads me to my next idea: 4. Corpse disposal equipment. Latex gloves, respirators, cloth breathing masks, hazmat suits, anything that will make the transportation and disposal of corpses more sanitary. Again, you don't wanna be touching that stuff with your bare hands. 5. Mass graves. Instead of just taking up a few tiles, these graves take up several tiles in both length and width, and can hold a ton of bodies. Takes longer to dig than a regular grave. I'm all for the introduction of grave digging to the world of Project Zomboid. I just think it could be improved and expanded upon. What do you think?

What kind of sounds exactly? Static, emergency tones, broadcaster voices, musical jingles, anything like that?

Nice map, though I was hoping this would be a recreation of Union City from TLS. However, it still looks nice. That high school looks like it could be an epic base.

Completely understandable. I appreciate the work you've put into the animations so far and am really looking forward to seeing them in-game.

No, I'd like that too. It's actually EXTREMELY difficult to destroy a corpse with fire entirely. The average temperature used to cremate dead bodies in crematoriums ranges anywhere from 1400 to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, which is pretty much impossible to achieve with just a lighter and gasoline. Burning corpses shouldn't destroy the body entirely, but it should get rid of any infectious pathogens on the corpse and prevent flies from being attracted to it. I think there should be new sprites for burned corpses as well as funeral pyres and body piles. The graves are a nice touch, if a little too "clean", but I think there should be pyres as well.

Bicycles. I mean, come on. Bicycles.

That looks WAY better.

First off, I'm in the category of waiting until implementing animations/clothing to do the dirty/bloody clothing thing. Secondly, is it me, or do the grave sprites seem too "clean"? Too "smooth"? I dunno, I was thinking of something dug more haphazardly, but I'm not sure how well that would translate to an actual sprite. Third, if disease from corpses is gonna be a thing, there should at least be some way to combat it. Gas masks, latex gloves, hazmat suits, etcetera. They can be rare and not 100% effective, but there should at least be SOMETHING to help stave off an airborne infection.

Many of us have experienced the custom start scenarios and challenges that have been implemented in the game so far, from fending off waves of zombies at the mall to dealing with never-ending hordes in the middle of the woods. Well, with the announcement by devs that there would eventually be new player "stories" that set up custom characters, starting locations, etc., I thought it'd be interesting to take that one step further. So what I'm suggesting are some additional starting scenarios to the game, outside of merely spawning in a random location around Knox County. I think it would make gameplay much more interesting and add character to...well, your character. Here are five ideas of mine, complete with flashy custom titles: Lockdown You start in a cell in Knox Penitentiary with absolutely nothing to your name. Your cell door is unlocked. There are dozens of zombies around you, along with (eventually) prisoner and guard NPCs that are desperately trying to fight off the waves of the undead. You have to escape the prison unscathed with only your wits and maybe a set of keys dropped by an ill-fated guard. Stranded You start on the side of the highway outside Muldraugh and March Ridge with a random assortment of minor injuries. You've just crashed your car after hitting a zombie in the middle of the road. The car is totaled, and the sound of the crash has attracted a horde. You only have precious seconds to grab whatever random assortment of items you have in the trunk and hightail it outta there. 5150 This is only available if you choose the Police Officer occupation. You spawn in a police car with a fully-loaded pistol at your side and a shotgun in the trunk. You're outside a random house in Knox County responding to a report of unknown trouble. Upon investigating the house, you find that everyone inside is dead...or worse. Before you can call for backup, the radio goes dead. You're on your own, officer. Turbulence You spawn in the middle of the woods with mild to severe injuries next to a burning helicopter wreck. You're the only survivor of a helicopter crash after being shot down by an Army chopper. Apparently the pilot didn't get the message about the no-fly zone over Knox County. Now you're bleeding bad, the fire from the helicopter is spreading, and (of course) the zombies are coming to check out all the noise. There are a few supplies scattered around the crash site, but time isn't exactly on your side... Zechariah 14:12 You're the town pastor. Your congregation is dead and you've barricaded yourself in your house of worship. The End of Days is upon the world, but you have not been Raptured yet. Instead you have been chosen by God to be the Shepherd of Death, to lead and send your rotting flock to the afterlife via a bullet to the head or an ax to the face. Blessed are the peacemakers, after all. Anyone else have any ideas?

Ohhh, so E is still the kill engine button but W just starts the car. I see, that actually makes more sense.

Wait, does that mean that 'W' is both the ignition key AND the accelerate key? I'm confused. Is 'E' still the "enter/exit" key? How can you drive a car if you're constantly pressing the button to kill the engine because it's the same button to move the car forward?

Agreed. The zombies are a definite threat, but they're also slow, dumb, and predictable. Humans are unpredictable. You never know if the survivor at your doorstep is an innocent soul seeking refuge or a starving cannibal who's just as hungry for flesh as the undead.

This isn't a forum for you to rant about how much you hate a TV show. A TV show I happen to like, for your information. However, your "answer" is duly noted regardless.

So we all know that NPCs are coming...eventually. And what zombie apocalypse would be complete without a few ragtag groups of survivors that, more often than not, end up being a bigger threat than the zombies? The Walking Dead has groups like the Saviors and the Whisperers. Fallout has raiders, super mutants, and all sorts of colorful groups. What groups will rise from the ashes of society in Project Zomboid? Here a few ideas I had for possible NPC factions for late-game: The West Point Militia A group of ragtag civilians with guns and ammo pilfered from the trusty West Point gun store, led by the former mayor of the town. They are initially camped out by the north bridge connected West Point to Valley Station, but their goal is to "take back" West Point from the undead and establish a safe zone by walling off the downtown area. Inspired by Walking Dead's Woodbury. The Inmates Following a bloody riot, the surviving prisoners of Knox Penitentiary stormed the prison's armory and wiped out the guards, establishing control over the entire facility. Once under lock and key by the state of Kentucky, they are now a formidable gang of thugs, murderers, rapists, and all forms of criminals with heavy weaponry and an impressive base of operations. The few guards and corrections staff left alive are little more than slaves to the Inmates, forced to help maintain the facility and often the target of abuse by the prisoners. Surprisingly (and thankfully), despite no longer languishing behind bars, the Inmates rarely venture outside the fences of the penitentiary. However, the food stockpile in the prison's kitchen won't last forever... The Faithkeepers Controversial pastor Dan Firebaugh leads a small group of heavily-armed right-wing religious cultists from his fortified church in March Ridge. The group, known as the Faithkeepers, believes the End Times are upon them, and that God is raising the dead to punish the world for its sins. During the day, they keep to themselves, holed up in their church chanting prayers and listening to hate-filled, ranting sermons from Pastor Firebaugh. But at night, they roam the streets of March Ridge and beyond, preying on helpless survivors (or as they like to call them, "sinners and heathens") and murdering anyone they deem a threat to their twisted, bloody ideology. Inspired by...well, I'm pretty sure you can guess. National Guard Remnants Unbeknownst to the news media, the establishment of the Exclusion Zone was not the first attempt by the military to contain the Knox outbreak. On July 7, 1993, the 238th Regiment of the Kentucky National Guard was deployed to Knox County on a clandestine mission authorized by the President himself. The troops thought they were being deployed for disaster relief and riot control due to the unconfirmed reports of a viral outbreak throughout the county. Instead, they walked into a slaughterhouse. The operation was a disaster, and the thousand-man-strong 238th was reduced to a few dozen Guardsmen within three days of deployment, prompting the military and the federal government to withdraw and set up the Knox Exclusion Zone. Now cut off from their commanding officers and stranded in the middle of a war zone, the few remaining soldiers of the 238th must regroup and form a plan to make it to the Exclusion Zone border, or die trying. These are just a few of the ideas that crossed my mind. What kind of NPC factions would you like to see?

Perfectly understandable, and honestly I dig the all-white for the PD, at least for the Muldraugh PD. Maybe there could be different liveries for West Point police and the Sheriff's Dept, but so far it's looking good.

Try sprinting. Worked for me.

Freeze and crash is back. I tried playing on survival and it crashed within a few minutes of driving.