King-Salomon

guess it is REALLY time to get the washing mashines running (as long as power/water supply is on)
 
with all the dirty clothes/bandages features it's time for that

The Collision Update Video is REALLY great - very nice!! 
 
Will you chance the mailbox so that it will be destroyed (and the car REALLY damaged)  if you drive "through" it instead of blocking the car?
 
can't wait to get the vehicle in IWBUMS and 38.26 out in the open (shouldn't that have happened last monday already?)
 
really nice stuff

The Collision Update Video is REALLY great - very nice!! 
 
Will you chance the mailbox so that it will be destroyed (and the car REALLY damaged)  if you drive "through" it instead of blocking the car?
 
can't wait to get the vehicle in IWBUMS and 38.26 out in the open (shouldn't that have happened last monday already?)
 
really nice stuff

Thursday: it’s back. Back from the dead. Back with the zeds.
VEHICLES
RJ and Yuri have been hard at work on Vehicles Build 25 – much of which has involved scrubbing up and polishing features added over the past few iterations. So you can expect optimization, UI improvements and general groundwork for the final ‘top down diagram’ vehicle UI screen – while Yuri is currently cracking down on a rogue memory leak and various aspects of non-syncing on MP servers.
Also in Vehicles Build 39.25 will come the end of drive-through streetlights and road furniture…
We’ve also added in the ‘random spawn’ car/wreck collisions on the Exclusion Zone’s roads to accompany the ‘lore’ wreck congestion , some new wreck models and map fixes – and have balanced a lot of aspects of the new Mechanic skills/profession and related car parts. We anticipate starting work on a better ‘dashboard’ UI once vehicles build 25 is out.
OPTIMIZATION
One of the biggest issues with the current Vehicles build is that driving through built-up areas results in performance hiccups – the game is being forced to draw too many tiles, too quickly. Currently, however, PZ draws *everything* – even when the player character can’t see it.
Stuff on higher floors, stuff in buildings you have no line of sight into and everywhere with doors and windows shut – it’s all being conjured up needlessly and chewing up unnecessary processor power. Enter stage left, then, our good friend Chris Wood.
“I’m culling squares inside the levels of buildings that are covered by the floors and walls so we don’t draw them”, he explains. “This is being done very simply, using building bounding rectangles that can hide about 20% of the scene in busy areas with lots of buildings, and thereby reducing what’s rendered by 20%. This does, however, leave window interiors looking a bit strange – as in these screenshots ”


“My current task is to make this work more intelligently: by hiding all squares behind solid walls and floors by projecting back onto them. This will hopefully draw even less, as it won’t draw anything when a square is totally hidden – including the ground behind buildings. It won’t have the same visual artefacts and it’ll hide more squares.”
“The idea is that by the time I’ll have finished it will all look identical to the current public build – but behind the scenes it’ll be drawing a lot fewer tiles which will make a huge difference to performance since tile drawing is the biggest bottleneck in the game.”
On top of this we’re talking to General Arcade about picking up the reins on our LWJGL upgrade, which will also have optimization benefits, and have best friend genius BitBaboon Steve prodding a vehicles memory issue that will hopefully help out people with slower systems. So, all in all, performance improvement should be on the way.
COMMUNITY MEGATEST
Everything seems in place for a public release of the Build 38 megapatch that we’ve been building up over the last few weeks, but we want to be sure it’s run through enough of your machines – and specifically on online servers – before release.
As such we’ll be running a Community Megatest in the coming days on a fresh server, and as ever there’ll be free PZ codes for a bunch of the people who turn up to help out.
We’ve just released IWBUMS 38.26 (link) which is the build the server will be running on. Details on how to access the IWBUMS public beta can be found here, and info on the event itself will appear on the TIS forum over the next few days.
This week’s well-kept safehouse from RyuVladimir over on Steam. A general list of stuff added to PZ, and vids of features being worked on, is kept here – so you don’t have to plough through endless dev blogs for info. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too.

That was my first thought too as I read the DD some days ago...
 
all the ideas I read are great but...  sometimes I think there is too much focus on making the cars unnessessary complicated/detailed for the time now
 
the game is about zombie apocalypse not "sim mechanic 2018"... (with all respect to all mechanic sim fans) I would be VERY happy to have a simple but working car system which can be make more detailed later
 
The level of detail the devs are trying to get is great (!!) but when I compare it with the level of detail in your other game machanics it is simply not consistent :/  (farming could be WAY more detailed, as well as diagnostics, tool usage, carpentry, metallworking etc pp - clothing system I will not add as I think it will be made new from the scratch with the anomation system)
 
I can understand that you want to get the cars realistic as possible but that whould not be the goal at this point.. just to make it "work great"... 
 
I think you are doing great - no doubt about that - but please don't let yourself get stock in microdetailing the cars at the moment...
 
f.ex. it would be much more logical to add detail to the carpentry system with screws as more robust nails etc instead of all 128 parts of the engine to be simulated real time ... I just don't know...
 
(if I use the same level of details on the "make a plank" action you would have to a) chop down the tree and survive the fall (!! without any knowlage/skill you will most likly just crash yourself under it one way or another) ) b) chop the trunk to logs (or not if you want to build a wall instead of a fence !) and remove all branches c) dry the wood for days/weeks/months ! d) remove the bark e) grind the log smooth f) saw some planks out of the wood g) impregnate the plank to make it weather proof ... and I am sure I am missing some important points... now we have 2 clicks with 2 tools and from tree to plank in nearly no time at all AND IT IS WORKING)
 
there are a lot of thinks that are great for itself but not consistent around the game - like the new vehicle weel-UI (created for gamepad users only) and the TV/Radio device UI with is GREAT for mouse-users and looking great too imo... each is working in it's own way but they just don't belong together imo
 
PS sorry about the confusing post.. not much time and it was really bothering me for days now so I had to give it a try :/
 
long story short meening: you are doing great per se, but try to be more consistent all in all
 
 

Hello everyone - a shorter Thurdoid this week, just a few announcements.
 
Build 38
We've just released what will hopefully be the last IWBUMS of build 38 before we finally put it to bed. You can find the changelist for 38.25 here. We'll probably aim to go public with it on Monday, at which point the vehicle build will become the prime build and all hands will move onto it.
We've pretty much got the dedicated server system set up on the new build system, so will have updated that soon and will announce it when that happens with hopefully a good chunk of the weekend left to assure no issues remain with online play for a Monday release. At which point we'll upload to GOG and finally put this version to bed! Speaking of GOG:
 
GOG Builds
In the past, due to the difficulty of how we've handled builds it meant we haven't given GOG users as speedy or regular updates and we're sorry about that, it's clearly not been good enough. However part of the focus on revamping our build system means that we should be able to investigate IWBUMS support for the vehicles build once build 38 is out the door, at which point both versions will retain parity as much as possible. (It may be however GOG Linux will lag behind a bit since it requires a zip file upload to ftp, and is not directly uploadable via the GOG backend, but it will still be a lot faster and IWBUMS compatible).
 
Build 39
A few interesting updates here. ChrisW has been working on the new cutaway system for some time, which as you know provides sexier cutaways allowing for more buildings to appear in full without the entire world being cut away at once. He's now moved onto a rather huge optimisation in the same arena of code that should allow us to address the severe FPS loss we've been experiencing, particularly on the vehicle build. By removing unseen furniture and other tiles from inside building levels above the player that are hidden, it should massively reduce the amount that the game needs to draw, and should have a noticeable improvement on FPS particularly on a zoomed out view and in towns. As well as this Steve from BitBaboon has turned his optimisation sights onto the vehicle build, and we'll hopefully make some big gains to FPS in the vehicle build.
Meanwhile RJ and Yuri continue to expand on the various vehicle systems required for release, this week with a particular focus on balancing, while Mash has been doing major work on the damage and other overlay textures. Next on the list from RJ is more work on the mechanics UI. Yuri and Martin will be looking into visibly opening trunks/hoods/doors to make interacting with vehicles much more realistic.
That's all for this week, apologies its a bit of a short one this week normal Thursdoid will resume next week!

Suggestion about single-player:

Each task has a certain 'required time' value (for example 60 - 100 for crafting -> see crafting menu). Is it possible to include a multiplicator for the required time in sandbox menu?

For me it feels a little strange to be able to dig like 20 graves or build up walls in a few seconds for example. With the multiplicator players would be able to generate more/less time-consume per task and make gameplay a more realistic factor, or more arcade-style. For example: If you go with realistic values you'll need 10-20 mins to build up a wall and you have to secure the environment for zombies first. Its about time planning and strategy.

I'll try and answer some of the ones I have insight on but be aware I'm not privy to all the discussion that goes on around features and design!  
 
Box trucks and eighteen-wheelers -in a previous Thursdoid we previewed a WIP Fire Engine which is part of a larger pool of WIP vehicles. Balance is key if these larger vehicles were to be introduced, once we're happy with how the current crop of vehicles work and are integrated into the base game, the guys can make a judgement call on how larger, potentially over powered, trucks et al could be added. Tanks and military vehicles -I will say straight away that I have not yet modelled a tank but there are some WIP military vehicles. Like with trucks, military vehicles have the ability to be game breaking and change the tone of PZ if they're introduced willy nilly. The Military are an important part of PZ lore so military vehicles will make an appearance at some point, I'm just not sure to what extent. Motorcycles/Bicycles - I'll answer these two together. It would be great to add motorcycles and bikes however they introduce a side of things we've yet to tackle which is attaching player characters to vehicles and have them animate. At the moment, when a player gets into a car their  model vanishes, this would look all wrong with bikes and motorbikes and also be visually inaccurate. You also have the quandary of dealing with the player potentially getting knocked/falling off the bike. It opens a can of worms that can't be tackled until the anim system is working. Vehicle deformation -I don't know how "expensive" vehicle deformation would be in the PZ engine, my gut feeling would be "high" but I'm no coder . From a model point of view I've tried to keep the models as low poly as I could whilst still trying to give the cars decent and distinctive shapes, I'm not sure they have enough poly's in them to start deforming them and still have them look ok. We could try but I think for the time being, our efforts are best directed elsewhere imo.   Construction vehicles -Similar points to box trucks etc. I did look at construction vehicles when I was looking for ideas, they have a couple of challenges (tracks, moving parts), perhaps one for later down the line when we have other things sorted. Armored cars -like The Presidents car "The Beast" or do you mean player made, reinforced cars? (or both!?) I haven't modelled a limousine as I've been concentrating on more "everyday" cars but I did wonder about something like that but that might be for later. Again I think the plan is to have the ability to modify your car with suitable car parts (last weeks Thursdoid) but to also add zombie protection stuff at a later date. That needs to be worked out once people are happy with the base mechanic stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with people liking The Walking Dead. I have the graphic novels and watch the series (not as much recently, certainly the first 4 seasons). I just don't understand why people want to turn PZ in to The Walking Dead game, where you reenact the series.
 
It's been done. Think of something new and original people, rather than just copying the show.

Hiding cars "out of sight" I don't understand -.-
 
atm only Zombies are hidden out of sight wich makes sense and is needed for a game like this - but all enviroment pieces are and should be visible (as they are) - so why hiding cars? looks kind of ... well.. not good to see them pop up again and again...
 
if it is because of MP I would really be glad if you could make them only "get out of sight" in MP as for me in SP it would be really ennoying am immersion breaking :/
I know there is a car, it is not moving so I know it is still there even if I turn my back on it...
 
the DD is great guys.. but this "feature" is not cool -.-

Aaaah thanks  you got me worried for a moment
 
looking forward to try the new build as soon as I get home again in a few days

Hiding cars "out of sight" I don't understand -.-
 
atm only Zombies are hidden out of sight wich makes sense and is needed for a game like this - but all enviroment pieces are and should be visible (as they are) - so why hiding cars? looks kind of ... well.. not good to see them pop up again and again...
 
if it is because of MP I would really be glad if you could make them only "get out of sight" in MP as for me in SP it would be really ennoying am immersion breaking :/
I know there is a car, it is not moving so I know it is still there even if I turn my back on it...
 
the DD is great guys.. but this "feature" is not cool -.-

This is being included more as a 'see what people think' as opposed to a rock solid 'this will be a final feature'.

Ok, I understand now. You want cars to be so feature rich so that you can enjoy the game more with the challenges it will provide. I on the other hand see it as a side feature, something that is nice to have but not required, unless you plan to travel to other cities. I guess I'll be in the group that will have 0 mechanical level and just fuel the car and drive it when necessary. If the car breaks down I'll find another car. So you are right we do have different ideas about this new feature. What if the developers decide to add all the features I mentioned and also add a ton more features to cars. But here's the thing, what if they can't get everything working until winter 2018? Spring 2019? Summer 2019? Surely your patience must have a limit. I am sure most of us do. Given unlimited time game developers can do anything. The question is will the fans stick around until then.
 

That was my first thought too as I read the DD some days ago...
 
all the ideas I read are great but...  sometimes I think there is too much focus on making the cars unnessessary complicated/detailed for the time now
 
the game is about zombie apocalypse not "sim mechanic 2018"... (with all respect to all mechanic sim fans) I would be VERY happy to have a simple but working car system which can be make more detailed later
 
The level of detail the devs are trying to get is great (!!) but when I compare it with the level of detail in your other game machanics it is simply not consistent :/  (farming could be WAY more detailed, as well as diagnostics, tool usage, carpentry, metallworking etc pp - clothing system I will not add as I think it will be made new from the scratch with the anomation system)
 
I can understand that you want to get the cars realistic as possible but that whould not be the goal at this point.. just to make it "work great"... 
 
I think you are doing great - no doubt about that - but please don't let yourself get stock in microdetailing the cars at the moment...
 
f.ex. it would be much more logical to add detail to the carpentry system with screws as more robust nails etc instead of all 128 parts of the engine to be simulated real time ... I just don't know...
 
(if I use the same level of details on the "make a plank" action you would have to a) chop down the tree and survive the fall (!! without any knowlage/skill you will most likly just crash yourself under it one way or another) ) b) chop the trunk to logs (or not if you want to build a wall instead of a fence !) and remove all branches c) dry the wood for days/weeks/months ! d) remove the bark e) grind the log smooth f) saw some planks out of the wood g) impregnate the plank to make it weather proof ... and I am sure I am missing some important points... now we have 2 clicks with 2 tools and from tree to plank in nearly no time at all AND IT IS WORKING)
 
there are a lot of thinks that are great for itself but not consistent around the game - like the new vehicle weel-UI (created for gamepad users only) and the TV/Radio device UI with is GREAT for mouse-users and looking great too imo... each is working in it's own way but they just don't belong together imo
 
PS sorry about the confusing post.. not much time and it was really bothering me for days now so I had to give it a try :/
 
long story short meening: you are doing great per se, but try to be more consistent all in all
 
 

really great stuff guys  and mash of course 
 
one point after looking at the video: could you PLEASE make the time you need to install/uninstall components more realistic? (not 100% for gameplay reasons but..) ... it is bothering me with older stuff too that the time to build etc is too short, reading is much better to feel "somewhat realistic"
 
but seeing a whole car canibalised in 2 minutes is ... well... hope you will chance it somewhere in the dev progresss
 
 

really great stuff guys  and mash of course 
 
one point after looking at the video: could you PLEASE make the time you need to install/uninstall components more realistic? (not 100% for gameplay reasons but..) ... it is bothering me with older stuff too that the time to build etc is too short, reading is much better to feel "somewhat realistic"
 
but seeing a whole car canibalised in 2 minutes is ... well... hope you will chance it somewhere in the dev progresss
 
 

really great stuff guys  and mash of course 
 
one point after looking at the video: could you PLEASE make the time you need to install/uninstall components more realistic? (not 100% for gameplay reasons but..) ... it is bothering me with older stuff too that the time to build etc is too short, reading is much better to feel "somewhat realistic"
 
but seeing a whole car canibalised in 2 minutes is ... well... hope you will chance it somewhere in the dev progresss
 
 

This is the double edge sword we tread. If we mention anything about it, other than its released, we get lambasted for talking about "nothing". 
 
If we don't mention that work continues, people get sad or suspicious.
 
You can be rest assured work continues on the new animations which are intrinsically linked to new clothes and weapons. Hopefully when that build goes into testing everyone's wait won't be a disappointment!

Yep, mechanics won't tho, it's still WIP, need to finish the UI & car scripting first
 
But this'll come once I finished to smash bugs on 38, prob next week! (NO ETA RJ! BAD RJ!)

Fair points, but I am not talking about "knowledge" I am talking about "skills" - if you understand the basics of electricity and metallworking (or maschine working) [Skill] you can repair an old car IF you have the knowledge  (not the new ones but the old ones) [Recpt/Knowledge]
 
The point is, you have more or less useless skills in the game - and combining them for SKILL (not knowledge) might help the game
 
your points are good but they can achived by getting the know-how with books, magazines etc rather that adding a new skill which is only usefull again in lvl 1-2 imo

not so sure about the need of an extra skill for Mechanic - why not use the Metal and Electro skill in combination?
 
Would be better to flesh out the skills we have than to create new skills which are also not sooo usefull...
 
I still believe the skillls should work together more and depend on each other...
 
other than that.. cool stuff guys  thanks

I REALLY don't get what you guys have with NPC's ...
 
really !! the main problem with NPC's is that you need a good and working AI (!!!) - which is a HELL of work - we are not talking about some 1000 animations which are "just a piece of work but nothing too complicated" - we are talking about adding an AI - which if done poorly will break the game !! 
 
Not an AI like the Zombie Ai - no, an AI which let's the NPC's act "almost player like" - not like the (great) MOD that includes some "NPCs" but a REAL NPC AI..
 
An AI most people have no idea how many work it will be to create but everyone will shitstorm if a "NPC" is ruining his playthrough, doing something stupid, gets the player killed, etcpp
 
NPCs are a REAL nightmare - why do you think most games today are going multiplayer instead singleplayer? You don't need so much AI ! Without so much AI the game will be much less costly... a bad AI breaks games...
 
PZ is great without NPCs, it COULD be better with NPCs I agree BUT most likly it will be the opposit as the NPC-AI will NEVER meet the quality the player expect - PZ is too complex a game for that IF you expect the NPC to survice more than 1h - it is NOT a simple shooter or a scripted RPG... you can't even include "savezones" were NPCs can live peacefull without Zeds - like the traders in 7DTD - as it would break the fluff of the game (but would be working to include NPCs as you wouldn't need too much AI for that) ...
 
So I am more than happy to play the game without any NPC as it would be a lot worse to have bad NPC-AI integrated !
 
 

I REALLY don't get what you guys have with NPC's ...
 
really !! the main problem with NPC's is that you need a good and working AI (!!!) - which is a HELL of work - we are not talking about some 1000 animations which are "just a piece of work but nothing too complicated" - we are talking about adding an AI - which if done poorly will break the game !! 
 
Not an AI like the Zombie Ai - no, an AI which let's the NPC's act "almost player like" - not like the (great) MOD that includes some "NPCs" but a REAL NPC AI..
 
An AI most people have no idea how many work it will be to create but everyone will shitstorm if a "NPC" is ruining his playthrough, doing something stupid, gets the player killed, etcpp
 
NPCs are a REAL nightmare - why do you think most games today are going multiplayer instead singleplayer? You don't need so much AI ! Without so much AI the game will be much less costly... a bad AI breaks games...
 
PZ is great without NPCs, it COULD be better with NPCs I agree BUT most likly it will be the opposit as the NPC-AI will NEVER meet the quality the player expect - PZ is too complex a game for that IF you expect the NPC to survice more than 1h - it is NOT a simple shooter or a scripted RPG... you can't even include "savezones" were NPCs can live peacefull without Zeds - like the traders in 7DTD - as it would break the fluff of the game (but would be working to include NPCs as you wouldn't need too much AI for that) ...
 
So I am more than happy to play the game without any NPC as it would be a lot worse to have bad NPC-AI integrated !
 
 

492:  (very) Heavy load and worse should you NOT allow to climb up sheet ropes (climb down could result in falling)
 
493: add a real "sheet ladder" (craftable from real robes not racks) which would allow to climb up and down even with (very) Heavy load