laramsche

I'm LOVING what's being done with vehicles so far! Being able to make big looting runs and travel more easily to other parts of the map is SO USEFUL.  I see a few texture overlap issues sometimes, such as driving on a railroad and having the road on top of the car (specifically, I've seen this on the railroad between West Point and Valley Station), but no game breaking bugs. My biggest issue is the vehicle capacity, though. I understand not wanting to get too crazy with it (and that this is a discussion that never seems to die (sorry)), but here's where the current capacities don't make sense to me:
 
A standard car seat holds 20 (kg? I've never seen a unit attached to the weight, but that seems to make sense in terms of character weights). An average person in PZ weighs about 80. How is a person able to sit in a car seat if it can't hold them? Obviously getting literal here would be a problem: your character weighs 81 and the seat holds 80 so you can't drive the car--that would be ridiculous.  But a capacity that's at least in the ballpark of the average human would make more sense. This also applies to trunk capacity. If four people can sit comfortably in the bed of a pickup, it should be able to hold more than 85-90. Also, the entire purpose of a pickup or other large vehicle is to be able to move very heavy loads. I'm not saying I should be able to move all of my possessions into a new safe house in one trip, but something around 320 would make more sense using the weight-of-a-person method of measurement.
 
Or maybe I just have too much stuff. That's also totally possible.  Maybe if increasing capacity is a little too game-breaky, we could have detachable trailers? Maybe you have to have a certain Mechanics skill to use them and they slow you down some/affect your braking/etc. Or perhaps vehicle capacity could work the way your own inventory does: you can hold more than your capacity, but it starts to slow you down and wear you out. It could slow you down/affect your braking/damage your suspension and trunk over time. (I'm mostly just throwing thoughts into the wind here at this point.)

Second road and I quickly checked again on other save to be sure. Well, I crashed again. Looks like I kinda got lucky and missed it last time...  I guess.
But an invisible tree on a road is technically still a bug, right?
 
So, here are the exact coordinates of an invisible tree: 6294,10920,0
 
Should have grabbed a coord mod sooner, lesson learned...

Now that I slept over it for a night, I think I got a better Idea for vehicle capacities:
 
Vehicle trunks and seat should be able to be overloaded.

The player character already has such a feature. Characters have a standard carry capacity of around 12 to 14, but have actually a capacity of 50 (if I am not mistaken). Everything above the standard capacity slows down the character. You know, "You're carrying too much!"
 
For a vehicle it could say "Trunk capacity 50", as recommended load limit, but with the possibility to actually load up to 100 which then would overload the vehicle. That means reduced acceleration, damage to trunk/seats (depending which is overloaded), suspensions and tires.
 
Would also be hilarious if the vehicle would have an appropiate animation, like in the picture, so that the front goes up while the rear goes down. And with a nice scratching sound if the rear is touching the ground, to make it more then obvious to the player that he is torturing his car

So, about the invisible object I crashed into on my little roadtrip, I didn't found a post with similar issue, so here the bug:
 
I returned to the spot where it was, on the same save. It's still there. Checked same location on different save, object was not there, so probably something that spawnes at game start.
 
It stops cars, but not caracter on foot.
It has the size of one tile.
It blockes sight of line, and to all direction when standing on same tile.
 
This occured on Soloplay, pictures posted as spoilers...
 

Second road and I quickly checked again on other save to be sure. Well, I crashed again. Looks like I kinda got lucky and missed it last time...  I guess.
But an invisible tree on a road is technically still a bug, right?
 
So, here are the exact coordinates of an invisible tree: 6294,10920,0
 
Should have grabbed a coord mod sooner, lesson learned...

Second road and I quickly checked again on other save to be sure. Well, I crashed again. Looks like I kinda got lucky and missed it last time...  I guess.
But an invisible tree on a road is technically still a bug, right?
 
So, here are the exact coordinates of an invisible tree: 6294,10920,0
 
Should have grabbed a coord mod sooner, lesson learned...

Is that on the second (or was it third?) dirt road west of Rosewood? If so, I also crashed into it. It's an invisible tree; I chopped it down and it gave me 1 log. I didn't have gps coord mod and the location isn't on the map yet so I didn't report it because I didn't have any helpful location information. I was lucky it didn't even hurt me because I was going really fast at the time.

Just lived 6 days purely in a car and never got bored/sad/depressed moodlets...
 
...but at day 4 and 5 i got slight damage with pain moodlet, seems reasonable since sitting/sleeping in a car for that long can get pretty painful.
On day 5 I also got panic moodlet, like when zeds are approaching, but I played with zeds on none.
 
I also noticed that the texture on the ranger car seemed mirrored, don't know if this was already posted, but here is a picture anyways.

So, since new locations can be found on the map, I decided to do a little road trip. 4h long days set in sanbox, Soloplay, fuel consumption on standard.

 
1. Found me a nice Franlin Valuline in a very good condition, all parts above 90%, many even at 100%. Got some supplies, inflated tires to max (40), filled the tank to max (65) and hit the road.
 
2. Run over a mailbox, front left door went to 44%
 
3. Stopped at a gas station at evening, tire pressure barely dropped below 35. Then I waited till midnight. Weirdly character never got bored, sad or depressed while just sitting in car.
 
4. Zeds had decided to parade the streets, a couple of them walked in front of my car... no car damage at all.
 
5. Drove along a country road and suddenly crashed into an invisible object, maybe an invisible car-wreck??? I could walk normally over/through the obstacle, seemed like an one tile room with invisible walls, but blocked sight when standing in it... Will check later if it still is there. Hood and front doors got damaged, all other parts got minor damage, if they even got any damage at all, it was difficult to see any difference.
 
6. Muffler dropped off, it was at 4%, I was unable to reinstall it so I continued without it. (I just don't know what negative effect it had...)
 
7. Checked tires, again barely below 35, inflated them back to max.
 
8. Decided to visit the golfclub, have never been there. Noticed I can drive/walk straight through the barriers at the check-point there. See pic below.

 
9. End of the Road... checked the cars condition one last time:
 
52 of 65 gasoline left, thats exactly 10% consumption. With four hour days in sandbox, I could drive around 10 more days before I have to refuel, would be really neat for real life, yes?
(I remember driving from germany to Paris in 2 or 3 days, around 600km [372miles] and we had to refuel 2 or 3 times, maybe more, I was a kid back then...)
 
Am I right, when I assume that the vehicle parts attrition is increased for testing purposes? My little Roadtrip showed me, that appropiate parts (like breaks and suspensions) drop quicker then other, which is reasonable, but its simply too fast. Only exception is the muffler. He surely doesn't like to be a muffler... I guess
 
I am not a mechanic, and never owned a car myself, but observing others showes me, that cars need repairs every 2/3/4 years. In a zombie apocalypse, I would say repairs once a year (if the car is driven carefully and was kept in a good condition) should be reasonable for a game. Vehicle parts condition should mainly decrease through crashing and damage from running over zeds.
And I guess that most gamers like to drive more "aggressive" and don't care when they take down lamp-posts, mailboxes and pedestrians.
 
I noticed that the bored, sad and/or depressed moodlets never popped up while driving or even while just sitting in the car. At marker 3 (on the first pic above) I just sat for at least 3 ingame hours in the car, doing nothing and waiting for midnight. Never got bored, sad or depressed.
Will test this by purely living in a car, only leaving it for repairs and looting...
 
Also, at one point I also ran around a little to explore on foot and got the moderate exertion moodlet. After I went back into the car, it stayed for the next 2 or 3 ingame hours of driving. I suspect it won't go away when sitting in a car, will test this further on the weekend.
 
The Franklin Valuline's top speed is around 35mph, with seems way too slow. I sat in similar small vans, that where capable of reaching 75mph... or is there some sort of speed limiter that I didn't noticed???
 
Concerning the performance issues, I mostly had the worst stutters when starting a new game or after loading an existing save. Inside towns it starts to stutter too, not as crazy like on a new game or after loading, but it makes it difficult to drive sometimes.
 
Lastly, shouldn't most vehicles have cigarette lighters??? Back in the 90's, every car had one... at least here in germany.
 
Well, my roadtrip ended with a few bottles of bleach...
This is how I died!

if only we could enter the the van type vehicles   from the rear. 
 
List of vehicles that you should be allowed to enter from the back of the vehicle trunk area. (2 rear doors on the back)

-Ambulance
- Franklin Valuine 
- Chevalier stepvan
- Spiffo van
- Radio van 

So, two days ago I decided to try out the vehicle build and I am really hyped, awesome work so far.
 
But I have a little issue with trunk capacities. The first vehicle I found (on vehicle build 36) was a Franklin Valuline with six seats, a lot of loading capacity. While I was looting I spotted a Chevalier Step Van and instantly thought:
"Cool, with that thing I surely can loot a whole house with furniture!" Because such vans are designed to move a lot of stuff right? Sadly I was disappointed and here is why:
 
Cevalier Step Van: Trunk capacity 90, one additional big seat +30 capacity. Total capacity 120
Franklin Valuline: Trunk capacity 85, five additional big seats +150 capacity. Total capacity 235
 
Ambulance (just found on build 38): Trunk capacity 90, with additional five big seats it comes to a total capacity of 240...
...also, where do they put the injured? Can only be crammed into the trunk
 
Well, I guess you know what I am going with this. I would suggest to decrease the trunk capacity of the Franklin Valuline and changing the ambulance to a two seat vehicle, maybe with increased trunk.
The Cevalier Step Van could use more trunk capacity, I would say around 150 or even 200. It would also make sense when they spawn less, and mostly with parts in very bad condition and missing parts. At the outbreak, many people probably tried to get away with as much of their stuff as possible, so it would be realistic not to see a lot of the bigger vans.
 
But right now, the Franklin Valuline and the Ambulance are the MVP's for looting (at least as far as I found).

Now that I slept over it for a night, I think I got a better Idea for vehicle capacities:
 
Vehicle trunks and seat should be able to be overloaded.

The player character already has such a feature. Characters have a standard carry capacity of around 12 to 14, but have actually a capacity of 50 (if I am not mistaken). Everything above the standard capacity slows down the character. You know, "You're carrying too much!"
 
For a vehicle it could say "Trunk capacity 50", as recommended load limit, but with the possibility to actually load up to 100 which then would overload the vehicle. That means reduced acceleration, damage to trunk/seats (depending which is overloaded), suspensions and tires.
 
Would also be hilarious if the vehicle would have an appropiate animation, like in the picture, so that the front goes up while the rear goes down. And with a nice scratching sound if the rear is touching the ground, to make it more then obvious to the player that he is torturing his car

So, two days ago I decided to try out the vehicle build and I am really hyped, awesome work so far.
 
But I have a little issue with trunk capacities. The first vehicle I found (on vehicle build 36) was a Franklin Valuline with six seats, a lot of loading capacity. While I was looting I spotted a Chevalier Step Van and instantly thought:
"Cool, with that thing I surely can loot a whole house with furniture!" Because such vans are designed to move a lot of stuff right? Sadly I was disappointed and here is why:
 
Cevalier Step Van: Trunk capacity 90, one additional big seat +30 capacity. Total capacity 120
Franklin Valuline: Trunk capacity 85, five additional big seats +150 capacity. Total capacity 235
 
Ambulance (just found on build 38): Trunk capacity 90, with additional five big seats it comes to a total capacity of 240...
...also, where do they put the injured? Can only be crammed into the trunk
 
Well, I guess you know what I am going with this. I would suggest to decrease the trunk capacity of the Franklin Valuline and changing the ambulance to a two seat vehicle, maybe with increased trunk.
The Cevalier Step Van could use more trunk capacity, I would say around 150 or even 200. It would also make sense when they spawn less, and mostly with parts in very bad condition and missing parts. At the outbreak, many people probably tried to get away with as much of their stuff as possible, so it would be realistic not to see a lot of the bigger vans.
 
But right now, the Franklin Valuline and the Ambulance are the MVP's for looting (at least as far as I found).