OhmoebaTheGamer

I actually really approve this - especially the thermos part! 

Loving this patch! Especially the ability to use crowbars to take the barricades down, really helps out in early game when hammers are harder to find!

Hi again, folks!
So, I've logged close to 70 hours now since making the jump from the old build to the IWBUMS build and I thought I'd share my thoughts here instead of posting them to Reddit or to the Discord server. I've logged a bunch of hours (300+) in the old build because I'm in a fairly large gaming community that in particular plays lots of zombie-related titles. PZ is one of my favorites of the past 10 years or so, and I've managed to recruit lots of guys to play MP games with me (hence the 300+ hours in the old build, MP support is still there!) and wanted to give a few views based on the feedback I've gotten from the guys who play with me since this October we've decided to all try out the new IWBUMS version. 

3 Suggestions that I've got so far: 

1. Beginning difficulty is a bit high, late game difficulty is a bit too easy. The first few days, especially the first few minutes of starting are by far the most challenging. Finding a basic melee weapon, finding a vehicle, barricading up a house - it's all very rough starting off. I'm not suggesting that we have our starting-game simply served to us on a silver platter or anything, but the absolute volume of zombies in the very beginning is more than overwhelming to new guys (whether you're new from the old build, or new to the game in general) It so far (and again I'm strictly speaking about the IWBUMS version in saying this) seems to be going beyond just a challenging start for most, and ultimately is a frustrating start. I'll be the first to say that I'm having to convince a lot of the new guys that I've talked into buying it the past month to keep trying and not simply give up within their first 20-30 hours. What I think would help mitigate this some would be giving individuals the ability to choose which day the outbreak itself begins in 'Survival Mode'. (This may be something that devs have planned already for in the future, I'm not entirely sure though so I figured I'd mention either a comment in support of it, or a suggestion in support of it!) Allowing us to start on day 1 when the chaos is just beginning, and the initial, earliest numbers of zombies are still fairly thin to give players a chance to collect resources for the first 24 hours would greatly ease new players into the game itself. (Day 1, easy level, Day 2 Medium level, Day 3 Hard and so forth!)

2. Building off of the 1st suggestion, late game difficulty itself can become a bit of a breeze, and most problems we had before are no longer really that much of an issue for the most part. We can always set personal challenges for ourselves to help in confronting this problem (go and take over the mall, try to clear out an entire town etc.) is one way of off-setting some of the late game 'breeze' as I call it, once we've gotten some stats increased and sorta gotten established, but what I really think would be more fun to deal with is 'herds'. Somewhat similar to the helicopter attack events, I think it'd be SO fun to see a big wave of zombies hit a well established base of some kind that has seen a very mild 'trickling in' of zombies as the player(s) have established barricades. My all time favorite zombie flicks have always been Night of the Living Dead (and of course Dawn of the Dead - Day of the Dead, etc.! R.I.P. Romero!) and I'd love to see things gradually escalate at a house situation very similar to how things escalated in Night of the Living Dead. Finding available materials to barricade windows and doors with in the first initial days, having to fight off *slowly* increasing numbers as they gradually build up until you're well behind your walls is a great way to play survival mode imo! And finally, as more of a final crescendo, the player(s) then have to hold off the "herds" mentioned before, where they're hitting the base in massive waves and the odds become increasingly difficult to overcome (to the point that leaving the house for more resources even becomes a risky, almost impossible endeavor) 

3. Thirdly, and finally - to add on to the notion that early game is a bit too difficult, I think it'd be great if based on the profession you choose, your character will have a tendency to spawn in with the tools that reflect the profession you've chosen (and if you choose unemployed, it sticks with the more random house as it does in the current fashion where there's no telling what you'll find in the house you spawned in with). So if you're a mechanic, find a toolbox with a wrench, tire pump or screwdriver or jack, etc. Or if you're a chef, there's an abundance of food, if you're a medical worker there's plenty of medical supplies available and so forth. Starting off with a hammer and saw as a construction worker or carpenter would make a massive world of difference in the early phases of the game, giving the player a tool to barricade houses with and a blunt weapon to fight with, as well. Also - I would think most folks would have a vehicle as well. Maybe not all, and maybe many of them ended up parking their car when they got home without much gas in it, but it does seem odd that even when there's a car parked out in front of the house that I spawn in at, there's often no key for it lol. 


In conclusion, I'm overall *highly* pleased with what the team has been putting together in this game, I've logged a lot of hours into it already, and have highly encouraged all of the guys in the gaming community I'm a part of to continue supporting it by buying copies of it as well. These are my own thoughts, but I'll say this much: For the price that I paid for this title, even though I've got suggestions, I've definitely gotten my money's worth out of it already. The 370ish hours that I've logged for just $15 so far, has basically been one of the best bang for buck that I've ever gotten out of an early access title, so once again (not to sound like I'm ass-kissing here) hats off to the Indie Stone guys! Thanks for reading!

Edit: P.S. - New fog effects? FKN BOSS!

So I've searched through the suggestions and planned features, and I can't find anyone else who had an idea like this, so... Here's my suggestion.
 
 
Skill Internships! That's right...
An internship is where one learns professional skills working at a company. So what the H would a Skill Internship be and how does it apply to Zomboid?
 

 
 
 
Okay, so now we know how it works... But...
We already have recipe mags. Why would this ever be useful?
 
 
Say you've searched Enigma Books and looted every house in West Point, and you still haven't found that darned How to operate generators magazine!
Or maybe you're late game and all of these magazines have been scattered or used as fuel for fires by other players!
Or you don't even know how to read in the FIRST place! Poor, illiterate child...
 
 
Well, you're just out of luck then survivor!
But not with internships!
 
Internships make co-operation in the apocalypse even more meaningful, and the late game more dynamic. This could even potentially apply to NPCs in the future!
 
 
That's my idea. Feel free to let me know what you think. It may not be much, but I think it's an interesting prospect. Thanks for reading!

NEW
 
- Allow crowbars to be used to remove wood barricades, and use animations for it
- Added context-menu commands for adding all fuel items, and all fuel items of a certain type, to barbecues, campfires and fireplaces.
- The warm-hands-by-a-fire now works with fireplaces.
- Added 'world' attachments to shotgun models.
- Added a shit ton of new male names, female names and surnames taken from 1994 US census so every other character isn't called Marina Hodgetts. (Thanks to Jam for putting these together.)
- The inspect-clothing command will transfer items to the player's inventory if needed.
- Inflating vehicle tires will stop at the maximum pressure instead of always adding 5. It was annoying having to cancel the action at the right time.
- Play the "craft" animation when adding patches to and removing patches from clothing.
- Updated translations.
- Display "Sleep on Ground" instead of "Sleep" in the context menu when no bed is selected.
- The "Sleep" tooltip displays the quality of the bed which can be Bad, Average or Good.
- Added cooler (can be worn in hands).
- Added satchel (3 variations, can be worn on back or in hands).
- Added briefcase spawns
- Added pistol case.
- Updated some textures for bags.
- Allow the player to shove (and stomp) sooner after attacking with a weapon.
- The crafting ui displays the the player's skill level for recipes with required skills (such as Make Trap Box).
 Required skills are displayed in red text if the player's level is below the required level.
- Added methods Recipe.getRequiredSkillCount() and Recipe.getRequiredSkill().
 Recipe.getRequiredSkill(int index) returns a RequiredSkill object with methods getPerk() and getLevel().
 
IMPROVED FOG SYSTEM
 
- brand new awesome fog now added
- added display option for new fog, can toggle between high quality, medium quality and legacy (build 40)
- changed fog generation, now variable duration based on day mean temperature.
- added chance of grey tinted fog effect to storms.
- added guaranteed strong tinted fog effect to tropical storm, now very distinctive.
- modified blizzard effects to work well with new fog.
- added new fog control panel to debug menu.

FITNESS
 
- Xp gain from exercises can now be different.
- Regularity will not drop until 24h after doing an exercise.
- Fixed some fitness animation weirdness.
- Remove the fitness UI when entering a car.
- Fixed NullPointerException in Fitness.decreaseRegularity().
- Fixed exception in Fitness.load().
- Moved fitness to health panel (new button) instead of right click menu.
 
BALANCE
 
- Allow washing dirty bandages from clean-water sources such as sinks.
- Dismantle Flashlight recipe is allowed if there is a battery in the flashlight.
- Renamed two Jackets to Leather Jacket. They were already leather.
- Increased antique stove weight from 20.0 to 40.0.
- Decreased gardening spray capacity
- Reduced size of zombies target outline by 20%.
- Reloading a gun will look for magazine in bags and not just main inventory.
- Toilet paper can now be used the same way as tissue (equip in main or secondary hands to reduce cough noise).
- Toilet paper can now be used to start and fuel a fire/BBQ.
- Slight bump in sneak skill (when in plain sight, will reduce the zed vision/footstep volume)
- MSR700/MSR788 now doesn't require magazines.
 
OPTIMIZATION

- Optimized ScriptModule.getRecipe().
- Declared SpriteRenderer.instance and SpriteRenderer.ringBuffer 'final'.
- Avoid some string-related gc with cutaways (parsing sprite names).
- Big optimization to cutaway rendering - moved testing of TallHoppableW, WallWTrans, TallHoppableN and WallNTrans to IsoFlagTypes since they were doing lots of string comparisons and slowing rendering down

MODEL AND ANIM CHANGES
 
-adjusted geometry so the gas mask works better with hats.
-added another body location to BodyLocations.lua (MaskFull)
-made welding mask part of the MaskFull body location
- Changed the cough/sneeze/fidget animations (the 'ext' state) to play as a sub-state of the 'idle' state.
-re-exported TShirt_white to not have buttoned front
 
FIXES
 
- Fixed the wrong animation playing when putting on baseball caps.
- Fixed NullPointerException in IsoGridSquare.getPuddlesDir(). This happened with a fireplace.
- Fixed some missing translation files
- Fixed not being able to equip and unequip items while aiming.
- Fixed zombie fence-flop crawling attacks hitting the player through closed doors.
- Fixed recipes without required skills not working.
- Fixed items not being taken from bags when equipping a light source.
- Fixed equipping an item in one hand when it looked like it should be equipped two-handed when dragging an item onto the primary/secondary icons.
- Fixed being able to climb through closed windows sometimes.
- Fixed not being able to reload an empty magazine while aiming.
- Fixed gunshot sounds and muzzleflash effects while sitting on the ground.
- Fixed exception when lighting a barbecue or fireplace with gas.
- Fixed timed actions not working while the warm-hands-by-a-fire animation is playing.
- Fixed warm-hands-by-a-fire animation possibly continuing long after the fire goes out.
- Fixed being able to fish at long distance with spears. (also one of the problem was if you only had a spear and open the UI, it was considered as a fishing rod!)
- Fixed transition animation from standing to sitting on ground not playing.
- Fixed available hotbar slots not updating when using a controller.
- Fixed timed actions not starting while aiming in a vehicle.
- Fixed the player getting stuck exiting a vehicle if it was done while aiming.
- Fixed toggle aim on/off not working in vehicles.
- Fixed the aim-assist cursor not disappearig after the player dies.
- Fixed long lines of text extending outside the crafting and switch-vehicle-seat windows.
- Fixed the automatic moving of items on vehicle seats not moving an item if it used all the remaining space on a seat.
- Fixed regularity map being re-initlized if fitness instructor/fireman.
- Fixed regularity progress bar showing incorrect values (it could never be at 100%!)
- Fixed the info popup in the profession/traits ui not being hidden when going to the previous or next screen.
- Fixed containers with capacity 3 or less not getting extra capacity from the Organized trait. This affected Fanny Packs.
- Fixed corpse inventory capacity being affected by the Organized and Disorganized traits. Player inventory capacity has never been affected by these traits (only bags).
- Fixed issues with the "Campfire Info" command after right-clicking on a campfire that is behind a wall.
- Fixed being able to drive a vehicle forward in reverse gear.
- Fixed being unable to look around by holding the right mouse button while in a vehicle with the window closed. This worked when holding the Aim key, but not when holding the right mouse button. 
- Fixed "All All" not adding all charcoal to barbecues, campfires and fireplaces. It will add one unit of charcoal (30 minutes) at a time until all is used.
- Fixed zombies moving through walls after climbing over a fence sometimes. This was easy to reproduce north of the West Point police station when fast-forwarding.
- Fixed cough/sneeze/fidget animations playing more frequently at higher framerates.
- Fixed context-menu cooking translations for latest version of Translatoid
- Fixed clothing mod data being lost when reversing caps, putting hoods up/down, etc.
- Fixed not facing doors when locking and unlocking them via the context menu.
- Fixed not gaining only strength and not fitness exp when doing some fitness exercices.
- Fixed being able to open multiple fitness UI.
- Fixed double door and stick traps returning more than they took to craft.
- Fixed sleep traits not affecting how much a char sleeps
- Fixed not being able to disassemble large metal shelves
- Fixed not being able to remove tiredness with restless sleeper
- Fixed front strength not showing properly in debug climate plotter