OffitMan

"Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit."
 
Molière

Looks like you're playing the new game mode, Project Tron-boid.

Exactly. I always thought it was my guy using the side and rear view mirrors.

Exactly. I always thought it was my guy using the side and rear view mirrors.

Exactly. I always thought it was my guy using the side and rear view mirrors.

"Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit."
 
Molière

"Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit."
 
Molière

I think we would all agree that we would prefer it if the text we wrote about the game, its current state, its planned features, and all the other stuff - text which we were deliberately open about to attempt to prevent issues precisely like this one - did not require clicking "read more" on a box in order to see. But that's the way the Steam Store page is set up, so that's the way it is. Levelling this specific criticism at us as opposed to Valve and the way they designed the store for early access games is a little unfair on this particular point imo.

Further if people want NPCs to be funded to completion it would probably be wise for us not to use all our available visible store space to prospective buyers, that pass through and who we need to attract their attention, talking about the features we don't have in the game, and instead trying to sell the features that *are* in the game.
 
Once those customers are interested and aren't clicking 'next' its up to them to read more to get a more complete picture but we HAVE to put our best wares out front or sales will dissapear and no NPCs for anyone.

At no point anywhere in any of the store page do we suggest that there are NPCs present in the game. While we apologize that development of them has been delayed long further than we expected and understand the frustration of those waiting for it, you can't hold us to task for a feature you assumed to be in the game that is not, when we not only never once claim is in the game, in fact explicitly state is not, on our store page. The whole point of the store page and Early Access blurb is for us to inform potential customers to the features and state of development of the game. It's hard to know what further we could have done to prevent getting this complaint post beyond development of the game having gone differently and the focuses and requirements of the game's development to have been different, and unlike all the early purchasers who bought the game with the understanding of NPCs down the road, you had nothing to stop you waiting or voting with your wallet except your own lack of investigation into the game's state of development. 
 
If it's useful for you to blow off steam and get your frustrations at not investigating what was in the game before purchasing out of your system then fair enough, but otherwise this post has no other useful purpose and there is nothing we can do beyond recommend you put the game aside and return to it once the features you want are present, or request a refund if you are still within the window. If we'd have focused on NPCs at the expense of the other areas of the game, there is a very good chance that the game would have died and ceased development by now. We've taken the path we've needed to to ensure the game reaches completion and features are added in an order that doesn't cause severe development issues down the road. That's the fact of the situation and one we make great pains to express clearly on our store page. If you think that the estimated sales numbers you quoted are either an accurate representation of the revenue we've earnt, or enough to mean we can just throw as much money and bodies at the development as we'd like, then unfortunately you've underestimated how expensive running a business and a development team over years can be.
 
The dark side of Early Access, or alpha-funding as it was when we started, is you have to lay out the big picture of development, get people excited about planned features and so on, long before you have the knowledge of what obstacles you will face, what the pressures of development will drive your focus on, what skillset you will have in the team down the road or what other priorities will emerge to keep the game afloat and keep people purchasing to continue to fund it. All of these factor have a huge impact on development, and it's just a sucky thing about Early Access that it forces developers to make promises they can't possibly have all the information without hindsight. The developers 5+ years ago who made the promises they did were much greener, and much naiver to the challenges they would face and would have been wiser never to mention NPCs in the first place. With vehicles going in, we've delivered on every single other promise we made, but are always instead held to account over the one we have not yet. The irony being, since most of our negative reviews are about features like NPCs not being present yet - if we never promised them in the first place our review scores would be higher, not lower, and we'd have probably at this point called it 1.0 and would, ironically, be ourselves used as an example of developers who 'did it right' and finished their game in a reasonable time, perhaps even by yourself when complaining to someone other developer about their Early Access game missing a feature, despite our game's content being identical in that scenario to how it is now minus the expectation of promised NPCs.
 
The developers you are chastising now are not those same people that made those promises at the start, we've grown, changed, as a long time has passed, and can only do what they can do to try and finish development of them as soon as we can. Yet still where many other developers would think 'we've worked on this enough' and stick a 1.0 sticker on it, all these years later we're still working toward that goal and sticking to our principles of delivering the missing features. Yet that same dedication, despite the fact many of us might enjoy working on something new, is then turned into something to attack us with. Our game is not one of the longest Early Access developments on Steam because we're the slowest (tho I won't deny we're slower than a fair few), it's one of the longest Early Access developments on Steam because we're principled in finishing what we promised. Many others have delivered far less in far less time, then hung up their spurs and moved onto pastures new, and then later down the line when the planned features they abandoned or couldn't do are forgotten, they are used as examples of developers that did a better job than us, and to be honest I'm tired of us having to apologise for not doing the same.

You made some good points in your post. They were said pretty arrogantly but good points nonetheless. However, as soon as you write a sentence like this, you lose all respect immediately.
 
As if writing this sentence will suddenly made the developers stop what they're doing, start grovelling and begin implementing the features you specifically want, in some desperate attempt to prevent a negative Steam review. To me, all that sentence says is that you're petulant and you (and others like you) shouldn't buy early access games.  You should stick to buying finished products.
 
Personally, I've really enjoyed watching PZ grow since purchasing in 2013 and count myself lucky to be semi-included in the development process. Sure, certain features I'm looking forward to have taken longer than I anticipated but so what? It's a video game. When I started gaming, public betas and demos were barely a thing. You'd read 2 paragraphs about an upcoming game in a magazine and maybe if you're lucky, you'd get a free demo disc or something closer to release date.
 
Once PZ is finished, that's it. It'll either be a great game or it won't, regardless of the time taken to make it.
 
After reading a great book, does the amount of time it took the author to write it affect your overall review of the book?
After eating a sandwich, does the amount of time it took you to make it affect your opinion of it?
 
Why should video games be any different?

Sorry to be that guy but seems like you're contradicting yourself a couple of time here.
 
 
That sounds really immersion breaking to be honest. Would instantly remind me I'm playing a game if a character just disappears and is replaced with a symbol like an exclamation point or something. Doesn't fit into realism.
 
 
Again, not very realistic. Plus, I don't understand how the "days survived is paused" thing would really work. Say I have 2 characters. On day 1, I take my 1st character to a house and then swap to 2nd character.  With 2nd character, I survive for months and months, erosion has gone mad on the map. What happens when I swap back to character 1? Does the world reset to day 1, including erosion effects and loot in buildings for example?
 
Also, I take character 2 to the same house character 1 was in and kill a load of zombies inside. When I change back to character 1, would all the zombies just appear on the floor?
 
 
 
If inactive characters are like statues then how are they taking care of your crops when you're out looting? Unless you're talking about just swapping back and forth between the 2, in which case, someone else isn't taking care of crops. It's still you. 
 
Don't get me wrong. I'm not against the idea of more than one playable character. It was one of the things State of Decay did it quite well. (Its a shame they spoiled it with daft special zombies. Sorry for digressing.). I just don't think it'll work the way you've described above. I think the only way it'd work effectively is once NPCs are in, you can just take control of one and your 1st character effectively becomes an NPC until you decide to swap back. 

1984 Ford Econoline Van. According to Wikipedia, "Prior to its discontinuation, the Ford E-Series cargo/passenger van was the best-selling full-size van in the United States since 1980". There must have been a few of these knocking around Muldraugh in 93, maybe in one of the pickup varieties.
 

 
The reason I want a 1984 version has nothing to do with the below, (even though the film came out in 94): 
 

 
 

1984 Ford Econoline Van. According to Wikipedia, "Prior to its discontinuation, the Ford E-Series cargo/passenger van was the best-selling full-size van in the United States since 1980". There must have been a few of these knocking around Muldraugh in 93, maybe in one of the pickup varieties.
 

 
The reason I want a 1984 version has nothing to do with the below, (even though the film came out in 94): 
 

 
 

Excellent work as always guys. The snow & fog looks great, can't wait to check it out in game when it's ready. Especially looking forward to creeping around in the fog once the stealth animations are in. 

Excellent work as always guys. The snow & fog looks great, can't wait to check it out in game when it's ready. Especially looking forward to creeping around in the fog once the stealth animations are in. 

Excellent work as always guys. The snow & fog looks great, can't wait to check it out in game when it's ready. Especially looking forward to creeping around in the fog once the stealth animations are in. 

Excellent work as always guys. The snow & fog looks great, can't wait to check it out in game when it's ready. Especially looking forward to creeping around in the fog once the stealth animations are in. 

No, this thread isn't here to boss the devs around and to make them feel like shit.

So keep it to feedback (it's totally fine to talk about the performance of the build) or just don't post / play these builds.

Going to just ask you not to post in this thread anymore, if you're just going to keep doing this . . .
 
This thread is for testing an unstable build of the game. It's not going to be perfect. In fact, it's regularly going to bounce between great and terrible.

This is happening to me too. Screen goes black apart from the HUD (screenshot provided)
 
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)
macOS Sierra 10.12.6
Processor: 2.9 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB
 
The first time was after crashing into a mail box. (console1.txt)
Second time, I don't think I hit anything. (console2.txt)
Third time, I brushed a couple of zombies. (console3.txt)
 
Same as @trombonaught, after its gone black, I can get out of the car but can't get back in and can hear the sound of the engine, me running around, the zombies etc. When I was driving, it felt great. Was a little choppy at times, like the game would stutter every now and again but was certainly better than the last build I was able to test (Build 15 I believe). No doubt this'll improve further once the guys have finished their respective optimisation work. I had a higher FPS more consistently. Stays at 30 FPS whilst driving fully zoomed out, whereas before it was around 14-19. All the games above were sandbox but the only setting I changed was enabling "Easy Use"  in the vehicles tab. 
 
Other none vehicle related bugs. Noticed some items not being on the right level, i.e trash in the road appear above the car and zombies "disappearing" through walls when pushed. They weren't actually going through the wall but the wall would appear above the zombie. Also, couldn't interact with curtains already spawned on windows, either by right clicking or shift +left click. It was almost like the game didn't recognise they were there and only after adding an additional sheet could I close curtains. (screenshot provided).
 
Keep up the good work guys. I loved the "reverse" sound when I was driving in a van. I'm "working" from home on Friday so will try a load of different vehicles/locations out and report my findings.
console1.txt
console2.txt
console3.txt

YES! Thank you RJ! I could kiss you! 
 
I've just testing it quickly and everything loaded up fine. Will do a more comprehensive test once work is finished.

Build Vehicle 25:
 
[New]
Added new burnt car. Added random 2 vehicles crash on roads (quite a low possibility of this) Added vehicle collision to maiboxes/lampposts. Added Mechanic profession & related traits(icons are placeholder). Vehicle Mechanic UI can now be closed by pressing escape. Vehicle Mechanic UI will now be closed if you go too far away from the car. You now gain Mechanic XP when uninstalling and installing a car part, this can only happen once per 24 hours on the same car, but XP will be gained again on a new car. Uninstalling/Installing parts now depends on the part and your Mechanic skill.  
[Balance]
Optimized Mechanic UI. Optimized some net code for vehicle. Optimized traffic jam spawning. Optimization in the Garbage Collection. Balanced car properties.  
[Bug Fix]
Added missing translations for car names. Added suspension for taxi2. Fixed small burnt car "flying". Fix (Debug only) for GC triggering every 2-3 seconds. Fixed vehicles Build starting issues on Mac. Fixed some missing MP sync stuff on vehicles. Fixed keys that spawn on the ground were only seen by one player. Fixed memory leaks on server. Fixed burnt car having wrong collision body. Fixed numerous of bugs in vehicle scripts.

There was mention of VHS tapes in a Mondoid back in July, under Turbo Devices. Hope this is still planned as it'd be an excellent way to relieve boredom and potentially learn new recipes etc. 
 
https://projectzomboid.com/blog/2017/07/hazmatters/
 
 

There was mention of VHS tapes in a Mondoid back in July, under Turbo Devices. Hope this is still planned as it'd be an excellent way to relieve boredom and potentially learn new recipes etc. 
 
https://projectzomboid.com/blog/2017/07/hazmatters/