sprkng

Personally I think early game is fine as it is, just trying to survive while looting for basic items is a full time job already. I agree with your reasoning that early game is important since it's the first impression for new gamers. But there's no downtime where the game gets boring during the first couple of days, so I don't think this part needs that much more content. For me this is the most fun part of the game I also think NPCs will bring more towards endgame content, not just from the rebuilding society perspective, but as in having built your zombie-proof base and filled it with loot, you might attract gangs of looters etc. which would provide more powerful opponents.

Share away! I like talking about game design and theorycrafting And since you mentioned game progression in another comment, I might mention that I've written a suggestion regarding that too Pretty sure the devs have said that when everything else is done they're going to add stories (i.e. mini campaigns) that you play through, similar to how the first demos were. Of course things may change, but I don't think sandbox mode is meant to be the main game mode for PZ.

1177. Have sound events cause a bit of anxiety in the player character. Different amounts depending on the sound, i.e. dog bark = low, gunfire = medium, human death scream = high

I wrote a similar post a while ago. No proposed solution, just some discussion in case you're interested in what was said then.

Shouldn't need nutritionist to see stats on canned food, it's literally printed on the can Well, at least today it is, not sure if food had energy info labels in USA in 1993

Change the helicopter event to be recurring by default, though with different effects each time they occur: * First time it moves semi-randomly and follows you around if they can see you (i.e. they might circle and move away if you go into a building). * Second time they use a megaphone to shout things at you, e.g. "this zone has been evacuated, no civilians allowed", "looting is a federal crime" etc. * Third time they escalate the threats, e.g. "this is your final warning", "looters will be shot on sight", etc. * Fourth time and on they shoot at you with a rifle. Nothing would suck more than being instantly killed by an off-screen invincible enemy, so I think they need to be pretty bad at aiming. You should probably be safe as long as you keep running around, though the noise would have course attract zombies to your location. If you drive they shoot at the car and damage it, but still with low probability of hitting players inside as long as it is moving. Maybe there could be a red dot laser sight following you around, and bit of dust thrown up when they miss and hit the ground, to better communicate what is going on. Currently the helicopter event can easily be dodged by driving away from a town and just sitting in your car until they go away. I think this suggestion would make the events more fun, and it could force the player into interesting scenarios (e.g. having to run into a building that hasn't been cleared from zombies). Also it would make late game more difficult, which is something I think is needed.

Just to clarify so that we're talking about the same things: Vitamins and dietary minerals are considered micronutrients, as opposed to fat, protein, carbs, water and fiber that are macronutrients. The reason I suggested the system should be simplified to just 2 different values (+the existing macronutrients ofc) is to keep it easy enough to be playable for people with minimal nutrition knowledge, and I think 2 values could be enough to force the player to diversify their food intake. For example cabbage should be low on calories (making it a pretty inefficient food source), low on protein (protein intake ought to be connected with strength gain IMHO) and with the proposed simplified system it could be low on minerals. As long as all the easily obtainable foodstuffs lack at least one nutrient I think you have a good start. Not sure I'd count on the majority of the PZ player base would be able to recognize them. I've read a bit about nutrition, though with focus on the macros, so I think I probably know a little more about it than the average Swede (or at least I'm sure I know more about nutrition than all my coworkers ). I knew the cause and symptoms for scurvy, I had heard of goitre but didn't know exactly what caused it, and I don't think I had ever heard about beriberi before I googled it now.. "Eat iodine when your throat swells up" is much less intuitive than for example "put on gloves when your hands are cold" (comparing with the body heat system which is a fairly complex and accurate model of the human body). But I don't know, maybe throwing up a "malnutritioned" moodlet will be enough for anyone to get that they need to vary their diet, even if they don't understand the mechanics behind it. And it's your game, so if you want to model more micronutrients I'm definitely not going to complain about it, I just wanted to explain my reasoning behind the suggestion. Options/sandbox are great, but having good default settings is also nice. Also don't underestimate what people will complain about I've seen a couple of threads with people saying some aspect of the game "must" be changed, just because they refuse to use the sandbox mode

I thought about that too, but I keep remembering how it turned out in ATLAS (they had 3 different vitamins that you needed to manage IIRC, though the number of them wasn't the only issue) What some fans thought about that: The risk is that managing your vitamins isn't a *fun* mechanic, it's not something that you're looking forward to doing and I'm sure many players will hate it if it becomes too present. What I hope it would do is to add a little flavor to the game and break the monotony a bit, not for it to become a chore. Depending on how you balance it, having more different micro-nutrients would either force the player to diversify their food sources even more (e.g. seek out specific items to fill each need) or you'd get enough of everything from just eating normally. I'm just not convinced the former would make the game more fun for the majority of the player base, and the latter would make it feel unnecessary. Perhaps it would make a great addition as a mod? Another problem is that it would be massively unrealistic to show the vitamin/mineral levels to the player, so if their character suddenly got sick they would have no idea what caused it. I was thinking there could be a new moodlet, for example "lethargic" and it says something like "you might be low on vitamins or minerals" if you hover it, but with more micro-nutrients it would be impossible to know what you were missing. Normally you wouldn't know what kind of deficiency you have without doing a blood analysis

1112. Reduce field-of-view when wearing a helmet that covers your face. A small reduction for mc helmet and a big reduction for welding mask

How vitamins currently work has been bothering me more than it should, it's just ridiculous that you can chug them for an instant energy boost. So I was thinking how it could be made more realistic in an interesting way. * Add two internal values (similar to how the game keeps track of hunger and thirst) for the player: vitamins and minerals. * Add vitamin and mineral content to all food items: Vegetables have high vitamins, meat has high minerals, junk food is low on both, etc. * If the player doesn't get enough of either vitamins or minerals for an extended time (e.g. eating nothing but chips and soda for weeks) they get tired, weak and more prone to illness. * If the player gets too much of either by munching vitamin tablets they could get queasy, but this shouldn't be possible by eating normal food. The goal is to give the player a reason to seek out more healthy food, which is also more difficult to find than the candy and snacks that is everywhere and never goes bad. I'm not trying to take a stance against junk food, I just think the game is more fun when you have to go questing * Add caffeine tablets as a game item. Eat these to get instant energy boost * Eating more than 3 starts making the player anxious, eat 10 and you get queasy, eat 50 and you die

I'll add a disclaimer in case my previous post appeared to endorse WWZ style zombie physics: IMO World War Z looks ridiculous, but I think it some variation of this idea could be realistic. If you have a large horde of zombies pushing towards a building, and you keep killing the ones in the front, it would eventually result in a pile of corpses. Maybe it depends a little on your zombie lore, but I don't see why the rest of the horde wouldn't try to climb over the fallen to get to their goal. Zombies in PZ already walk over corpses, except the corpses are paper thin

It could (maybe) be implemented as adding a Y-offset to characters/zombies based on how many corpses there is on a tile, and if this gets high enough let them climb up to second floor. It's obviously just a guess but I think it could be doable without making large changes to the engine.

Maybe they should add this item to the game

Lots of zombies using tools in Romero's Land of the Dead (example) but that movie also has an intelligent zombie who even appears to be capable of feeling emotions.

I'm pretty sure that article was talking about baked potatoes when they said that. Raw potatoes are around 70kcal/100g And if you search that database and find cooked potatoes that has magically gotten a significantly higher energy density (i.e. more calories per 100g) it's probably because they think "boiled potatoes" has butter in it. For reference a 25 year old male who's 180cm tall and weighs 75kg needs 2700kcal/day to maintain weight if they exercise daily (which I think is an appropriate exercise level for a PZ character who runs around, fights zombies and chops lumber regularly). He would need to eat 3.9 kg potatoes every day to get that energy. That's a lot of potatoes. The USDA database has a slice of apple pie as 363kcal, but this does of course depend on the size of the slice and exact ingredients. Your number of 67kcal for a slice is extremely low, I think you need to check your sources.

That's a good idea! But since the suggestion is so short and non-controversial (I mean it likely won't start a heated debate ) you could have posted it as a comment in this thread: https://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php?/topic/20738-build-38-and-beyond-small-but-important-suggestions-thread/

1100. Different types of makeup allowing different patterns: Theater face paint (for clown, warrior, etc. Found in toy stores), camo face paint (found in army base and hunting stores) and makeup (smoky eyes, rosy cheeks etc.) 1101. New equipment: clown wig and clown clothes. Found in toy stores. And a rare clown zombie of course.

There are definitely some interesting ideas in there, like different sets of starting points based on profession, but then it sounds a lot like you're playing in a certain way and you want to remake the game to fit your play style. So correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you want to pick the "best" profession when you create a character, and you don't think there's any point in picking a profession with less useful traits? Well, there are also people that don't play like you, and even if you haven't seen someone pick fireman they still exist. Why would this be better? This isn't a competitive multiplayer game so professions/classes don't need to be perfectly balanced against each other. It's not bad for an open world sandbox game if there exists a profession that only get picked 1 out of 1000 games. If you wanted to force all professions to have equal utility you'd sacrifice realism, because in an actual zombie apocalypse all professions wouldn't be equally useful. And for what purpose, to make it more like a generic computer game? What movies have you seen where someone survives a zombie bite by treating it? I can't remember having seen any. Where do you get this information form? How many different people have you observed playing PZ in order to claim that you know how everybody plays the game? Again, why do they have to do this? I think this would definitely lead to people only picking the best perks because it would be impossible to make them all equally useful. I agree, the weight related perks give a lot of points and don't hinder they player much. But there's an easy solution to that, either reduce the amount of points you get for picking them, or make the under/over weight have more impact on the game. No need to rewrite the entire character creation system.

What in-game effects did you want from the trait? Did you mean in should graphically blur the area around you, or more practical effects like preventing reading (without glasses) and making electronics crafting more difficult?

How do you know what is "realistic" for a zombie, since they aren't real? Different movies/books portrays zombies differently, and according to some zombie lore they are much stronger than humans. Project Zomboid is said to be heavily inspired by Romero's and Brooks' works and those aren't entirely realistic to start with. I assume you're talking about front doors btw, because interior doors are usually very flimsy and could be broken by even an unarmed human. Even side doors can be quite weak in modern houses so it's not that much of a stretch imagining a single zombie would eventually be able to break one. And looking at houses in Kentucky 1993 1 2 3 it seems like at least some had front doors that could realistically be broken without super human power. I'm not saying it's a bad suggestion though, I just don't think the only motivation should be realism. If you look at the how to write a good suggestion guidelines you'll see there are more important things than realism (or fitting the appropriate zombie lore). You'll also have to consider if it makes the game more fun to play, and that your proposed change doesn't make the game too easy. If you just make some exterior doors more durable I don't think it would have that much impact, since there are so many windows everywhere. But if you meant to make all doors more durable I think the game would be too easy unless you completely rebalance many other things. As for introducing different types of doors I actually made the same suggestion a few days ago.

I agree about the problem but I think a mini game to represent reading would feel incredibly out of place in PZ. Anything time consuming is problematic to implement in multiplayer. I think that you don't need to sleep in MP removes a pretty big part of the survival horror feeling (i.e. looking for a safe place to spend the night). As for reading, what if you could equip a book as "currently reading" and it would automatically progress 50 pages during a day? We pretend the character reads a few pages every now and then when they have time even if you don't see it happening (just like we pretend characters find time to go to the toilet even though we never see it in the game ). Equipping a non-skill book or comic could give a bit of happiness every day instead of the weird speed reading thing that the game currently does.

According to the common suggestions list suicide is implemented, I think they are referring to drinking bleach. 3. GPS, or at least a precursor to it, did exist in 1993 but the devices wouldn't be useful for street navigation. I wrote a comment about it yesterday, and since that topic is only about GPS you can post any followup there if you want, to make it easier for others to read the discussion.

I thought I replied this suggestion but maybe I forgot to press submit.. The game takes place in 1993 so even though a prototype to the GPS network would have been launched the actual GPS devices would be very far from the digital maps we have today. If you found a GPS it would look something like this I think what the game needs is more road signs, to make it easier to get around without using maps. Otherwise if you find a city map it's actually quite useful once you figure out where you are, especially if you have a pen and add your own markers as you go.

This has probably been suggested before but I can't remember seeing it.. 1097. More environmental sounds: Wind, rain, birds, etc. If you're indoors during a storm the howling of the wind could become less prominent while the smattering of rain on the roof gets louder. If the game knows what type of building you're inside they could add wood creaking during heavy wind in houses. Birds could go quiet if there's a zombie horde nearby, giving you that eerily quest feeling.

That's a good point, and if this "soft progression" should work you need to give players access to some houses so they can survive early game and find better tools to unlock other parts of the map. I also realized that I had only been thinking about the types of windows we have here in Sweden while I tried to come up with what you would semi-realistically need to break into a house. Our windows have solid frames and lock with a metal handle, so if one is closed you'd definitely need a crowbar unless you smash the glass. However all the windows in PZ are of the sliding type, which might be easier to force open without large tools. I assumed this was because they were easier to implement than windows that swing open, but maybe sliding windows were really common in USA in the 90's. If that's true, then maybe most houses, or at least the ones in poorer areas, should have windows that only require basic tools. One possible change to make early game easier could be to make some windows latched. You know how you usually can open a window a little bit and latch it with a piece of plastic or a small metal hook? These windows could be pulled open with a bit of force, making only a little noise. I think you'd need to represent this visually so the player can quickly identify what type of action/tool they need to open a window. I think it would also be realistic if you sometimes find a house with a fully open window. And you would also be able to get into houses where the door is unlocked or smashed by zombies. It might slightly change how you play early game, as you'd have to do more running around and trying to find a house you can get into, as opposed to immediately looting every building you see. So some people would probably hate it, but maybe it could be set in options as you said