Brex

Hmmm, undead zombies with multiple speeds that are more active at night...that sounds a lot like "The Last Stand", and that's not a bad thing at all.

So here's a little glitch that happened: I was driving a van up the highway and tried to turn, but the van flipped and ended up on its back, skidding to a stop next to a chain-link fence outside the auto mechanic shop (ironic?). And that's when I became trapped. For some reason, the upside-down van had an invisible barrier around it, so when I got out of the van I could move around a little, but couldn't escape. The crash obviously attracted zombies, who swarmed me. But for some reason, while they were able to reach me and attack me, they couldn't do any significant damage to me. They managed to injure me but didn't scratch or bite or do anything permanent/long-lasting to me, and I managed to kill them with ease. I honestly should have been torn apart, but I don't know why I wasn't. I only managed to escape the invisible box around the upside-down van by sprinting north, which somehow broke me free of the van. Here's a screenshot for reference:

Maybe there should be a gameplay mechanic to remove the tires from cars and use the chassis as a makeshift barricade.

I had the same problem with the freezing and crashing. I disabled all the mods I was using and tried again, haven't encountered any freezes or crashes since.

Hate to change the subject fellas, but I've been encountering new bugs: 1) Many interiors are now partially visible despite not being in my character's direct line of sight, and despite having windows covered, doors closed, etcetera. Basically, I can see into rooms that I shouldn't be able to see into, even when I'm outside the building. 2) A lot of doors are now perma-locked for some reason. Usually you can automatically unlock a door if you open it from the inside, but many of the doors I've encountered remain locked even when I try opening them from the inside. 3) The walls of the Muldraugh police station go invisible sometimes 4) Light switches have stopped working again Hopefully these can be fixed sooner than later. (Also I'm playing unmodded so I know it's not mods that are causing the bugs this time)

From what I understand, there are currently four major police departments in Knox County, i.e. the current game: - Muldraugh Police Department - West Point Police Department - Knox County Sheriff's Department - Kentucky State Police (Due to its huge size compared to the size of the actual town, I consider the Rosewood station to be the headquarters of the Knox County Sheriff's Department rather than something like "Rosewood Police Department". It makes more sense that the Rosewood station is actually headquarters for a sheriff's department that would have jurisdiction over the entire county, including March Ridge, which doesn't even have a station.) Muldraugh PD's cars would probably be white. WP's should be blue and gold based on actual WP police I've seen. The sheriff's department would probably be a combination of white and blue, while the State Police would, as you said, be dark blue.

http://www.policecarwebsite.net/st17.html Here's a good reference for both current and old designs of police cars in Kentucky

Hey, if immunity is a no-go, why do the radio broadcasts mention it, and why is the chance of zombification from a bite only 96%?

Okay so no more freezes and crashing, but now I can see into some buildings even if the windows are covered up and all the doors are closed. LOS is a bit screwy now

I think I figured out the problem. I still had a mod enabled so I disabled it and started a new game. Played for nearly two hours straight, no freezes and no crash.

Did your game ever freeze and crash? Mine's been doing that since Mash's new textures were implemented.

Is anyone else getting the freeze/crash problem after about half an hour of gameplay? Or is it just me?

Alright, I'm back. Game crashed again. Here's what I noticed: Driving optimization has definitely improved. There's an occasional lag spike or loss of frames, usually in the presence of a horde of zombies but otherwise driving seems to have been streamlined, at least somewhat. It's a superb improvement and makes driving much more fun and fulfilling. There seems to have been a small reduction in the number of zombies that are attracted to the sound of your engine. Granted, if you drive into a huge swarm they'll all converge on you, but they seem to lose interest faster when driving by and don't seem to follow you as much. I accumulated hordes that were large, but tolerable, during my driving test. I still wouldn't recommend driving cars back to your safehouse, especially if its in an urban area, but driving is now more practical and zombies won't harass you as much. There seem to be some leftover textures from the old vehicle branch before Mash's update, mainly with the vans. Definitely some clipping issues (characters walking through stationary furniture, etc.) Once again I encountered the "freeze & crash" problem, this time while on foot. It occurred after about 25 minutes of play (I had to restart due to character death at one point, but otherwise it was uninterrupted). The same thing happened: the game started to freeze at regularly decreasing intervals until the whole thing crashed. All in all, I'd say this was a nice update, but I hope the devs figure out what's causing the freezing and the crashing.

Just finished a test run with the new update. Here are the pros and cons I encountered: Pros The game no longer crashes upon exit. Definite improvement. I'm liking Mash's new textures, they blend into the overall aesthetic without being too cartoony. Driving has been streamlined with much less frame loss, though frame loss is still present at times. There's definitely been some optimization. Cons Some of the overall textures are a bit wonky now. Zombies and players are drawn certain over pieces of furniture and other items, and it looks rather awkward. About ten minutes into the new update, my game started freezing up at times. It got worse when I got into a car and started driving. It wasn't lag, it was a full screen freeze. When I got to the highway the game ground to a halt, freezing and unfreezing until the whole thing crashed. I've never encountered this particular bug before, not even on earlier versions of the vehicles build. TBD Whether or not zombie attraction has been altered What's causing the freezing and crashing I'm going back in for a vehicle-oriented test. If it crashes again I'll probably be back shortly.

I know what you're thinking. "Is this guy f##king nuts? He wants MORE meta events?! MORE helicopters to ruin your perfectly good safehouse? MORE screams and gunshots to make you leap out of your seat after it's been relatively quiet for almost half a g#ddamn hour?!" Well, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about more variety. Currently, there are four "meta events" in the form of ambient sounds: screams, gunshots, dogs barking, and the infamous helicopters. Those all make sense, but shouldn't there be more? Even for a zombie-filled wasteland, Knox County is just too quiet sometimes. Here are some additional ambient sounds that might liven up the environment a little: 1) Distant explosions. Maybe somebody left the stove on, or an engineer got creative with a can of hair spray. 2) Jets flying overhead. Military jets dropping bombs or napalm on the Exclusion Zone. Makes sense, right? We've seen that sort of thing in countless zombie movies and video games. Why let the helicopters have all the fun in destroying all the hard work you put into your safehouse? 3) Sirens. Maybe this'll be a thing when NPCs make a return, but I'd have to imagine that in the early days of the outbreak, there'd be a LOT of calls to 911 about bites, violence, sickness, that sort of thing. So it would stand to reason that, for at least the first few days and nights of July, the Kentucky air would be ringing with Hi/Los and other sirens of the Knox County Emergency Services. 4) Emergency Broadcast System. Not to be confused with the far-better-known Emergency Alert System, which didn't enter service until 1997. Still, it stands to reason that some of the TVs and radios left on during the Knox Event should be playing some kind of alert tone at some point, particularly when the nationwide curfews begin and sh#t really starts to hit the fan. 5) BRRRT I dunno. Just a thought.

4th test. Framerate is better, but could still be improved. Light switches are now working. I wanted to barricade the Muldraugh police station and also find a squad car (I like to RP as a police officer). Upon finding a squad car (miles away in a roadblock of wrecked vehicles) I tried to drive it back to the station. Two hundred zombies swarmed the place, smashed every window, broke down every door, and tore me to shreds within the span of a minute. Cars. Are. Too. Loud.

Light switches aren't working

Yeah, i know, sorry. Basically I found two dressers stacked on top of each other in Sunstar.

Found a bug (sorry for the small size, problem uploading the screenshot)

Sorry to be "that guy" but I notice that a lot of the guns you have listed are anachronistic for 1993, the year that PZ takes place in (for example, the Px4 Storm, which didn't begin production until 2004) I can appreciate the amount of effort you're putting into this, but if you wanna strive for total realism, I suggest only implementing firearms that were made before or during 1993.

So, this is either gonna sound really cool or really stupid. You know how certain fast food chains have costumed mascots to advertise their products? Like the Chik-Fil-A Cow, or Ronald McDonald, etcetera? Well, one would think that with a chain like Spiffo's being popular enough to warrant its own feature-length film, it would stand to reason that the restaurants would have a Spiffo suit lying around for some hapless employee to climb into and sweat his balls off while holding a picture of chicken and waffles on the side of the highway. Thus, I suggest a Spiffo mascot outfit as form of clothing/armor (at least, for when the animation update finally drops). I know what you're thinking: a mascot costume as armor? Is that realistic or practical? Well, yes and no. I used to be a college mascot, and let me tell you, the fur on that costume was THICK. It wouldn't be easy to bite through that, especially if the person wearing the suit was resisting and fighting back. Plus the mascot head would have full protection at the cost of limited visibility. With that in mind, a thick, fluffy Spiffo suit could protect against bites and scratches on the arms, legs, and torso, as well as pretty much negating all damage to the head and neck area. The downside would be the heat. Again, from experience, I can tell you that it gets REALLY hot in those things. I've even passed out on one occasion from the heat. Thus the character wearing the suit would be much more susceptible to overheating and thirst. Plus you can't easily drink water while wearing the mascot head, so you'd have to remove it in order to drink from a bottle or water source. I dunno. I just think it'd be both hilarious and badass to slaughter zombies across Kentucky while dressed as an adorable raccoon. Spiffo IS the official mascot of both PZ and Indie Stone, after all. Why not take that to a whole new level?

Oh. Well, if you don't mind my asking here, what's gonna happen to the fields where the corn used to be? Because right now they're just big swaths of dirt; they look pretty ugly, to be honest.

Just completed my third test, this time focusing much more on the vehicles themselves and how they handle. And I have three major problems with the vehicles. First, while the framerate remains relatively steady with few stutters on foot, the game still slows to a crawl when driving. It couldn't have been more than 20 FPS while driving around. I hope you guys work on optimizing vehicles for lower-end machines. I've given my specs before and I know they're not great, but I've still been able to run PZ up until now with little incident. Second, after driving and driving, the cars just don't feel like cars. They feel like bumper cars, or tanks. They all feel too heavy, they start up too slow, and they all feel like they handle the same way. A postal truck should not handle the same way as a sports car. While they don't spin out as much as they used to, they still feel very slow, very tank-like, and very awkward. Third, and most important, THE FACT THAT DRIVING ATTRACTS SO MANY ZOMBIES RENDERS VEHICLES ALL BUT POINTLESS. I mean, seriously, it's ridiculous. Driving just ONE car can attract HUNDREDS of zombies, all who seem to follow you with pinpoint accuracy and never give you a damn break. It's the same issue with guns, only amplified and intensified. You certainly can't drive to and from your main base without attracting a massive horde that will overrun you within seconds of returning to your base. There NEEDS to be a fix of how "loud" the vehicles are, because like I said, even in 1993, cars weren't that loud. Certainly not loud enough to attract hundreds and hundreds of zombies. And even if the devs think otherwise, there still needs to be a tweak because if driving a single car attracts massive hordes that hunt you down like sharks, then 9 out of 10 gamers are gonna avoid driving altogether. As a side note, all the corn in the cornfields of the farm north of Muldraugh has disappeared. I'm not sure if that's related to the vehicles build or if that's a bug from a previous build, but literally every stalk of corn that used to be there is gone. It's unnerving. I'm not saying I don't like the vehicles. Far from it. I think there's a lot of potential here. But it needs some serious work, both with optimization and with rebalancing.

Round 2, post-update: 1) FPS seems to have improved slightly. There were a few stutters near the beginning but definitely an improvement. Ironically I didn't drive as much during this test as I did before, but the FPS during driving seemed to also have improved, if only a little. 2) Cars still feel too tank-like and turn too wide. 3) Game still crashes upon exit. 4) I've been finding "Car Key" items randomly on the ground. Not quite sure what their purpose is. 5) Total error count: 18 Unfortunately I didn't spend enough time in this session actually testing the vehicles. I might go back in later and just drive around. Or I might wait for another update.

My specs (I play on a laptop): Processor - AMD A8-7410 APU with AMD Radeon R5 Graphics Video Card - AMD Radeon(TM) R5 Graphics RAM - 6.0 GB I know these aren't the best specs, but I've always managed to play PZ with few problems. I spent about an hour in the tech build and here are my notes: 1) HUGE frame drop, both when driving vehicles and when not driving at all. I don't know if this is because my specs are too low, or if it's just the vehicles. I've never had such a massive loss of frames when playing PZ before the vehicle test branch, even with mods (like Hydrocraft, ORGM, etc.) 2) The cars attract WAY too many zombies. I mean, I get it, zombies would be attracted to the noise, but not only is it absurd that a single car's engine can attract hundreds of zombies at once, it's also impractical. Who is gonna wanna drive cars anywhere if they always have a massive horde following in their wake? I drove a single car back to my campsite across the river from West Point and the zombies overran me in minutes. Real cars aren't that loud; hell, even cars in 1993 wouldn't be that loud. 3) This might be related to the frame drop I mentioned in #1, but the cars feel very slow, especially when turning. I feel like I'm maneuvering a tank, not driving a sedan. A speed gauge would be nice, so I can tell if the car's just not going that fast, if its a design flaw, or if its just my computer. Also... 4) The cars slide, fishtail, and spin out of control too much. It's like they're driving on ice and their tires are coated in butter. For such bulky, hard-to-maneuver vehicles, I'm surprised they slide and lose control so much. This is especially apparent when turning, as it is very easy to completely spin out when making a simple turn, even at low speed. 5) The car's engines kept cutting out at random times without warning. I'm not sure if this is related to vehicle damage or if its just a bug. The cars would start up fine after I pressed the "start car" button again, but still, the engine cutting out was quite annoying. 6) When I quit the game to return to the menu, it crashed. First time PZ has crashed on me in a LONG time. All in all, I'm still optimistic. Hopefully these bugs will be ironed out before a public release.