Marinus

I think of you guys as the George R.R. Martin of indie game devs. It's a bit of a waiting game, but the stuff you deliver is totally worth it.
 
And there is a lot of unexpected death in the process
 
And zombies
 
Please don't hire GRRM to do the NPC programming for you

I think of you guys as the George R.R. Martin of indie game devs. It's a bit of a waiting game, but the stuff you deliver is totally worth it.
 
And there is a lot of unexpected death in the process
 
And zombies
 
Please don't hire GRRM to do the NPC programming for you

I think of you guys as the George R.R. Martin of indie game devs. It's a bit of a waiting game, but the stuff you deliver is totally worth it.
 
And there is a lot of unexpected death in the process
 
And zombies
 
Please don't hire GRRM to do the NPC programming for you

And the Dragons that we never see?

Ha it's a comparison I like to use, except I feel a bit weird as if saying 'I'm just like that dude who wrote all those amazing books everyone loves' but yeah, my heart BLEEDS for GRR Martin, cause he has a billion times the pressure we do, very much for the same reasons (do we want a rushed and shitty Winds of Winter? NO take ALL the time you need George), but also has to deal with people going on about him dying into the bargain at least I don't have that to deal with.

Well, boredom levels drop if you go outside, which I choose to believe is a joke aimed at the players.

Edit: Just to be clear, Boredom can easily be killed if the character is outside of a building. That being said, sure, I think items like Video Game etc. should be usable to kill boredom, so It's a nice suggestion.

Floating fortress?
Meanwhile my character is still holed up in the church.

This is something I've wanted to say for a while, and something everyone should remember when getting frustrated by the delay to the NPCs.
 
We started development of this game in early 2011. It's our baby and has literally consumed some 80%+ of my waking life (probably similar for the others) since 2011. We've had our lows (and some lows at that) and we've had our highs. The community we've built is incredible, and the love and pride we have for the game and community is immense. But...
 
This game has been in development for over four years now, and that is a long time for your life to be consumed by one thing (This goes way beyond 9-5 job levels). We'd never ever abandon PZ before it's the game we set out to make, but that's not to say we're not tired, worn out, and missing that feeling of working on something new. As well as the rewards, of which we are very grateful, PZ has taken its toll. Even when the day finally comes that some of us move on, as we've said before, we'd continue to support development of PZ for as long as it makes the money to support itself, and likely even some time after that. But there is that ache there for the truly fun and exciting feeling of exploring new ideas and the potential and wonder of a new game, an ache that strikes every developer and truth be told is years old at this point. I hope we score points for resisting it.
 
But we won't and can't even think about other projects seriously, even if we dabble in our spare time. It's too dangerous to even think about because we can't have any distractions as we need to deliver the full map, the vehicles, the NPCs, before we can hit 1.0. At the point PZ goes 1.0, a few of us will likely finally be able to explore what's next after PZ, and we hope our community is looking forward to whatever we do next too. As I said before, to reiterate, we'd make sure PZ was well supported as we don't want the day to come when PZ stops getting new content. I don't want to presume what the devs we've taken in from the community would like to do post 1.0, but I imagine PZ would continue with long standing devs the community knows and trusts to steer the ship straight, and of course even if working on something else we'd still be heavily involved.
 
So I guess around to my point: I know waiting for NPCs is hard. I know they keep getting pushed back, seem vapourware at this point, and trust me I want NPCs out there more than any single one of you, by a factor of like 10000000. I know many of you are patient, I know a few aren't, but I also know their impatience is a good sign as to how much people care. I also know that these NPCs are one of the most ambitious NPC systems in the history of games. It feels arrogant to say as much but I can't really argue against that statement. I'm aware of what we're biting off here. I'm totally confident we can do it, but the fact is after this huge delay we HAVE to deliver, and we HAVE to deliver something brilliant. So that's ironically the reason for the delay. They won't be released until they are brilliant. It's as simple as that. I don't want to say NPC development is a nightmare, because it is also wonderful and exciting in equal measure, but it's a shit ton of pressure that is on around the clock. It only makes me want to weep with sympathy imagining what GRR Martin is going through with the sheer monstrous scale of pressure on his shoulders compared to ours. 
 
BUT. This is a good thing. Not for us, but for you. Why? Right now, EVERY member of the Indie Stone is working full time on PZ. We need to provide you with stuff, meaty content, to keep you happy, interested, and to improve the game in the meantime while we get our shit together with the NPCs and whatnot. We can't have 6 months or a year of no updates while we tick off our last remaining big bullet point planned features. We can't go 1.0 until NPCs are in. If that took a gazillion years that means a gazillion years of updates and support for PZ. If you think of all the many many great features that have been added into the game in the past couple of years since NPCs were removed. A lot of them would have made it in anyway, of course, but many of them may not have been.
 
As we say, we don't plan on abandoning PZ at any point in the forseeable future. But the fact still remains, that when NPCs, or Vehicles, or the completed map, go into the game, the longer they took, and the more delays and frustrations they had in getting here, they WILL go in. And if they take a long time: The game they will be dropped into will end up better, more feature rich and deep because of it. All the while having the entire Indie Stone dev team dedicated to the game with zero distractions.
 
So yeah. Brain dump, but its a point of view I wanted to share with you all. hope you don't hate us for dreaming of new adventures at some point in the future.

In case this could help, a really nice spawn mod exists.

I hate you guys! I have hardly any free time at the moment and you have just taken it all away from me... What about my wife and children! Why won't you think of the children???

No more time to post here, I need to start planning out my home town.

I read through the suggestions about new consequences of having the sadness moodle, and I mostly saw suggestions to make your character weaker as you get depressed. But I think it would feel more natural if instead, your happiness is linked to your rate of exp gain, with your exp either slowing to a crawl or stopping completely when you reach maximum depression.
 
From a role-playing perspective, I just figure our survivors are badasses who survived for a good reason. No matter how bummed out we get, we never lose our will to live. The adrenaline rush of fighting the walking dead trumps the bad mood you got from eating stale food for the past month. But a crappy mood would have a crappy effect on your motivation, so depression would make you lose interest in anything other than just surviving.
 
Likewise, we could also introduce a positive happiness moddle similar to the positive fed moodle. While you have a positive happiness moodle, you gain exp a little faster, but the moodle slowly fades away until you get back to a neutral state of happiness. I think this would give happiness a nice function in the game, making you actually want to manage your happiness in the long term, but allowing you to ignore the happiness mechanic during times where you are just trying to survive. For the record, I'm okay with how depression currently slows down your inventory actions; I would like to see that stay in the game as well.
 
Thoughts?

Today we come to you with an awesome new mode for Build 33 that should have an explosive impact on the Project Zomboid modding and mapping scene, as well as providing a fun new way to play the game.

 

Creative Mode is something we first experimented with in the dim and distant past, but came back to mind when we were looking at the speed of our own map production and the tools that we use. The Louisville map we’re building is very ambitious so, alongside EasyPickins’ awesome existing mapping systems, we started to think about ways we could populate our world more quickly.

 

At the same time in development, meanwhile, TurboTuTone's awesome furniture decoration system arrived on the scene for Build 33 – while General Arcade and EP’s work on Steam Integration meant that Steam Workshop was also suddenly in the offing.

 

Put them together, and what have you got?

 



 

When we started Zomboid, and agreed upon a static map for the game, we (perhaps optimistically) anticipated hundreds of maps for players to download to provide almost unlimited amount of exploration. Despite there been some amazing map projects already released, this didn’t quite happen. The learning curve for the toolset, the drudge of copying files, the exporting and all the rest made it an intimidating process.

 

Creative Mode, we hope, takes all that away. It lets you build maps faster, have fun and work as a team. In essence, it lets you edit the map in any way you can imagine. You can use any buildings or other map pieces available: whether you’re subscribed to them on Steam Workshop, copying and pasting them from the existing PZ map or creating them yourself.

 

It’s a mode that lets you, as an in-game Zomboid character, create extra buildings, districts, even complete towns and cities. What’s more, absolutely anything can be shared to the Workshop - at the moment via an external app, but soon straight from the game itself. Coming back the other way, anything you’re subscribed to will automatically be available to place within Creative Mode.

 

Furthermore, Creative Mode works completely in online multiplayer, so players can join forces to build an entire town on their server - before using it as a fun and engaging place to die from zombies. Split screen support isn’t currently coded, but will certainly be something we look into as we refine the system.

 

In terms of Build 33 – the first version of Creative Mode will cover only the essentials: containing basic house construction, furniture population, landscaping and so on. As we roll it out further, however, we’ll provide additional tools that will let you create neat road systems, sidewalks, gardens, fences, levels of erosion and all that fun stuff.

 

It's our dearest hope that by empowering everyone and anyone to make map content and share it via the Steam Workshop, and in making the process of building as fun and as co-operative as we possibly can, we’ll foster a new community of building-obsessed doozer players and a flood of new map content. Every player’s game world could potentially be many orders of magnitude bigger than the current Zomboid map, and potentially completely unique to them, or their server and their community.

 

Then if all servers have their own unique maps, who's to say we couldn't see about giving them an option to have their borders connected one day? With Build 33 the Zomboid infection will be easier to spread than ever before. Exciting times!

 

OH, AND….

 

Before we go something else that happened last week and was a bit exciting was that Mike Laidlaw the Creative Director of the ace Dragon Age games at BioWare streamed some PZ – and provided what was an excellent guide and tutorial for the game. It seems Twiggy has some competition! You can view his butterknife and bacon adventures here. Byeee!

Okay, this one's for fun but...
 
I suggest changing the "Beginner" mode to a new name "Easy PZ".
 
My work here is done.
 
(if that pun has already been done, I shall never come back)

To be fair, to have survived for 8 months it does make sense to have built up some skills.

Last run with build 31 lasted for over 3 months before I got bored.
 
Tried built 32 for the first time. Was ded in 4 hours. 
 
The old ways don't work anymore apparently.

Last run with build 31 lasted for over 3 months before I got bored.
 
Tried built 32 for the first time. Was ded in 4 hours. 
 
The old ways don't work anymore apparently.

Last run with build 31 lasted for over 3 months before I got bored.
 
Tried built 32 for the first time. Was ded in 4 hours. 
 
The old ways don't work anymore apparently.

Or...you could be patient, and post your thoughts/opinions/criticisms in a slightly more positive way... This feature has only recently been added, to the IWBUMS branch, (which is for testing), so give it a chance to be balanced etc...
 
I'd suggest if you don't like some of the new features as they stand, or find it frustrating that new features added to this branch aren't completely working and/or balanced yet, that you might be best to stick to the Public release branch of PZ?

Yay I won't have to make my own wooden cars anymore to fill the streets.

Why? Of course I support bicycles. They make a lot more sense than most other vehicles in a zombocalypse. 

Why? Of course I support bicycles. They make a lot more sense than most other vehicles in a zombocalypse. 

If the NPC's are in, I want a mission to look for the cure. And when you finally find the cure, it turns out to be an eighties new-wave band, which is unfortunately zombiefied, and proceed to rip your head off.

idk about drivable cars but i would love to see cars littering the roadways forcing me to navigate through them or using them as a barrier between me and zombies with long range weapons. Also looting them or car alarms going off. 

love this mod! it makes sandbox far more challenging
but be sure to have starter pack on, i spawned in the woods and starved to death before
i could make it to town. You get more of a feeling of desperation when you are lost.
Thanks for making this mod, it's awesome!
 
 
Edit: hit post too soon >.<

I would secretely love to see a Miley cyrus zombie. She (of course) comes in like a wrecking ball, or rather on a wrecking ball that destroyed everything in its path in one hit. And then she gets off it and proceeds to make out with your sledge hammer. 
 
It would ruin the game, but I would laugh so hard.