Wolf_22

I submitted a suggestion, and since the onset of these little back-and-forths, you've done nothing but either push back against good ideas, blame the player, or just choose not to care. Your example gave me what I wanted: an explanation for the plethora of problems this game has. To that end, I actually got what I wanted. Running into walls, tripping over nonexistent obstacles, being bitten through vehicles, and so much more... It all comes from people like you (well, you and that other doofus above).

Next time, just type out, "It's the player's fault; don't care." Your input never mattered anyway. ;.)

Right, but what I also don't find myself doing is colliding with walls when running, tripping over invisible obstacles out in the woods, breaking windows with my bare hands despite having crowbars in backpacks, or seeing your zombies somehow pass through my vehicle's windshields to bite my neck that's protected by multiple layers of military-grade protective clothing causing instant death without a single ounce of time given to at least raise a hand in protest, either, but lo-and-behold, here we are! But I get it: you're an Indie Stone roadie fanboy acolyte who always sides with their developers even when common sense is biting your neck. You must do really well with the Minecraft cult. What you don't realize is that you glossed over the word reasonable when remarking about what you believe the players believe to be fun about this game. Because it's one thing to deliberately incorporate controlled difficulty contexts into the mechanics for players to play through, but it's another to punt usability dysfunction off onto the player base by absolving yourself from it via claims of "it's part of the game." That's just lazy design. I mean, you can do that if you want--it's not like I'm going to be able to stop you--but you're not fooling anyone. At least, not me, and I guess we'll see how long you get away with it.

Are you the guy who added mandatory tripping when running in the woods regardless of circumstances? Because if so, then you contradict yourself because the cause of that effect is what, the invisible assortment of ant hills, squirrel poop, and crawdad holes littering the forest floor that we should be able to see well enough to dodge and not run "balls out" into? But I get it: it's the player's fault for foolishly depending on their ocular senses.

Really, we forfeit the rights to determine what's realistic and isn't, and to determine what's reasonable vs. unreasonable, the moment we accepted the fact that we're playing a zombie apocalypse game. Because of that, the best approach for any stalemates is to configure things to be controllable prior to a new game and or tying things to leveling. And with all due respect, you don't speak for me or anyone else when it comes to coordination, tripping, accidental falling downs, etc. For all you know, people could exist who never do that and in all honesty, during my 40-something years of life on Earth, I can't remember tripping more than maybe 2 times (all being during sporting events, too), so you can just as easily err on the side of nobody ever doing that or at least doing it less than we see in this game, or, by far the preferred approach and in effort of having the best of both worlds, having it all tied to skills. That way, the higher level the skill is, the less likely the character is to have it happen. The "low-hanging fruit approach" would be to simply make it enabled vs. disabled per-game settings prior to starting a new game. That'd probably be the easiest approach for the developers. It's not meant to be a life simulator, either. Constant tripping, running into walls and collapsing, etc. isn't what I'd say equates to being "factored in." Or, if it is, it needs refactored or the control of which diversified to include better mechanisms. And I hope you're not trying to find ways to excuse yourselves from the growing pains inherent to the deficient mechanics this game currently suffers from because I'd like to think you'd take this as an opportunity to consider ways to capitalize from the suggestions and use them to improve things even more. It's not a destination, it's a journey, right? And don't read anything I've written on here as if it's intended to destroy or hurt--I'm not really knocking the game--I love it! Play it all the time! And I want you guys to succeed with it. Heck, it's one of the funnest games I've ever played, to be honest. I'm just trying to suggest ways to make it even better and I know that my suggestions, however simple or difficult they may be to incorporate, would translate to that. Nobody on here is expecting anything to happen overnight. As a developer myself, I fully appreciate what all goes into these things. I'm just hoping you (or whoever) takes these suggestions and adds them to the pot for future considerations is all.

When your firearm runs out of ammo, it would make more sense to assume the character wants to grab whatever appropriate ammo is available in his or her inventory to reload with if the player is still pressing the fire key or button instead of forcing the player to have go through all the context menu leg work needed to unpack ammo from an equipped backpack or other store, then find it in your unpacked inventory to then unbox it, then be forced to find and specify which firearm he or she wants to reload with the unboxed ammo shells or bullets. The game needs to make the educated assumption that, if the player is pressing the fire key or button with the firearm having no shells or bullets in the firearm, that the player will want to reload with whatever ammo exists in the inventory regardless of whether it's packed or unpacked, boxed or otherwise. Also, the jostling of items in your inventory needs to stop. At one point, your shotgun (as an example item) might be at the top of your inventory list, but the moment you reload a gun, it suddenly gets moved somewhere else in the list if beforehand, you had something else in your hand, causing major problems for game play when you're in the middle of a fight and need to find the shotgun to right-click on it for things like reloading purposes. A middle ground to this issue would be to enable sorting by item name... Since you've incorporated sorting features by subjects like "Type" and "Category," it makes sense to extend that sort by functionality to include "Item Name," too. That way, you can alphabetize your item list with the sort resulting in fewer jostled moments when you're in the middle of fighting and need to find something quick. I mean, it's one thing to set the players up for difficult situations, which we all expect, but it's another to set them up for outright failure by resorting to mechanics like "automatic tripping" when running through the woods or forcing constant legwork in situations where common sense assumptions can be made as is the case with someone who's using a shotgun only to use all the shells in the gun and assume that the character will want to automatically reload with whatever is available whenever they continue to press the fire keys or buttons. As for breaking windshield, and in lieu to the aforementioned educated assumption concept, is it within the realm of possibility that a player who has a tool one can use to break windows with won't instead decide to break a windshield using their elbow? I just had this happen despite having an axe AND a crowbar in my inventory and the idiot still used his elbow, which resulted in some cuts, etc.

If you can't tie motor-coordination clumsiness effects to character levels, leave them out entirely or at least make them controllable from something like the game settings one configures when starting a new game. At present, the game has too many arbitrary clumsiness issues... Things like always tripping in the woods when running, or running into walls and falling down, or running and stopping with that weird awkward scoot effect where it looks like the character almost falls off a ledge... And now, talks are increasing about incorporating some sort of random "fall down effect" when walking backwards? No thanks. That'd be a horrible addition. If you think it's something that's needed for entertainment purposes, then your idea of what comprises "fun" is extremely flawed because all those things do is increase levels of frustration one goes through when trying to play a game, and since games are supposed to be fun, well, you can do the math with that. Call me crazy, but I doubt the majority of the players playing this game find those things fun. However, if you're absolutely adamant about adding this kind of mechanic, then at least tie it to the player's ongoing progress with the skills. Agility comes to mind, with said situations of clumsiness never happening when maxed-out on the respective skill. Maybe add a new passive skill, like "Coordination" and tie it to that. But I still vote for just leaving it out entirely or making it a controllable setting prior to starting the game. If you want to incorporate something that's actually fun, refine how your zombie models work by incorporating limb damage. For example, it'd be great to see a pack of zombies heading your way and after taking a double-barrel shotgun to those in the front of the pack, you see some of their arms or heads fly off all over the place after unloading a few shells. It'd add a new level of gore, and if mechanics could be tied to this effect, it'd increase levels of micro-strategy in the sense that an arm-less zombie would be less dangerous as one which is fully intact. The same could then be said about the player's character, too: imagine the challenges of someone in a world like this who loses an arm or leg... Yikes. Seeing a leg-less zombie using its arms to crawl towards you during a fight would be both hilarious and terrifying. And again, like the first points above about clumsiness, this one about limb damage could also be a setting you could control prior to starting a game as some people might not want this. Last but not least suggestion, I hope you'll work on explosions... And in tandem to the limb damage idea, imagine a pipe bomb explosion. Ha.

One thing I'd love to see get incorporated into PZ is a new form of customization layers which all come with their own interfaces to allow customization whenever said customization dips into specific character disciplines. This all coincides with the recent work being done to accommodate sub-dialogues that was recently in one of the monthly update blog entries... Take vehicle customization as a perfect example: it'd be great to see a respective UI for characters who reach a minimum level in welding to allows specific tailoring for automotive fabrication customization. Just imagine a new dialogue that allows you to choose where you can install spikes on your truck, how long they cold be, what they're made from (i.e. - wood w/ metal fasteners, steel pikes with spike-on-body welds, etc.), or maybe increase the length of the truck's bed to hold more cargo, maybe fabricate a cover for the bed to camp in, etc... It'd be awesome to be able to pick where on the body to do things like this, in what ways to shape the body work, what it could be made from, etc. This would also give incentive to get and use things like the ball-peen hammer and other discipline-specific tools, too). Imagine being able to re-route your vehicle's exhaust system for more speed efficiencies or reinforce frames for better safety and impact resistance. The same discipline systems could be implemented for characters who have a minimum level of other disciplines like electrical, too. For example, let's say you want to install a HAM system to your vehicle and if it's ever implemented, solar panels, too... You'd need to know how to install everything, right? You'd have to wire the components up, correctly mount it into your dash or onto your hood or truck bed. And if you'd want to avoid depending on things like batteries, you'd need to know how to either connect it all to your battery wiring harness or else wire the systems to your alternator. Enter the wiring dialogue that would give you a wiring layout in your truck's cab along with the spaces in the cab which you could use to mount the HAM system into. This could also introduce new tools like multi-meters or soldering tools to check for things like voltages, amps, and solder wires and circuitry. Same concepts / system for carpentry (build specific kinds of roofs like gables or other different more refined forms of buildings that could have sun rooms or greenhouses), hunting (i.e. - field dressing a deer to prevent meat corruption from their glands and bladder or once you get it to your base, string it up to skin the hide and use it for blanket or even teepee material). The point is that with the recent introduction or efforts of incorporating sub-dialogue menu UIs, it'd be awesome to also incorporate or just expand on preexisting discipline systems to increase the levels of customization for things like automotive tailoring, building, hunting, and other stuff.

Using your mouse and keyboard to fight zombies, shoot a firearm, build bases, or drive vehicles around the map weaving in and out of obstructions and zombie herds also depends on the player's skill. And since nothing would be forcing the player to use magazines, newspapers, etc. in this specific use-case way, its sole purpose is to simply incentivize better ways to use and enjoy these mediums. The character's ongoing development would never have to be dependent upon using these things in these ways--it'd only be an optional form of use that could add to the world's lore and information exposure (i.e. - reading a newspaper could yield information about store inventories, building locations, outbreak information, military planning and responses, etc. with the same being applicable for magazines centering on specific disciplines which would show the player how to do specific things with tools or materials, etc.). If ways exist for the character to be developed in correlation to the player's skill, then you're not experiencing "a break of the game." If anything, you're just playing the game.

It'd be great to give the HAM radios more use and purpose, and after thinking about it, one possibility would be to incorporate a form of actual player-to-player communications where the respective HAM station's frequency could be found by inspecting it in-game with other players from their own games being able to tune into your frequency (and vice-versa) to chat. You could tune into other frequencies from your HAM radio to listen to others "chewing the rag," too. This would give players a reason to snoop the bands and find frequencies worth listening to. It'd also give players a reason to leave the HAM station on so that they could hear it while they work around their bases. This would require a client-to-client implementation unless the option might exist to instead use an Indie Stone centralized server for client-to-server in-game data queries (which would be ideal as this would have other purposes for additional layers of in-game data injections making things more dynamic in real-time; see my other suggestion about dynamic newspapers, magazines, etc.). Here's what I envision with this suggestion: You go out to the woods and find a shack that has a HAM radio in it. You inspect it to find that HAM station's frequency. It's 101.5 MHz. You then go do some stuff but come back after a few minutes and eventually hear something coming from your HAM system's speakers: "CQ, CQ... This is 91.3 calling 101.5. Respond." (Of course, people being how they are in games, it'd likely be something else like, "Anyone on the line?" or "Hey morons! Anyone hear me?" But either way, you'd hear someone on the other end.) From there, you could communicate with whoever the stranger might be as long as you have a mic on your PC, or just listen in on other ongoing discussions between other players. The frequencies would have to be procedural from the point of HAM or game world spawn with the procedurally-generated frequency codes needing to be sustained across multiple ongoing game sessions (synced between each), so there would have to be some kind of way to record these so that each person's computer or client could query the frequencies to know which ones might already be taken for the period of someone's game. This goes back to the client-to-server paradigm where the frequencies would be stored on the server with clients querying for unused frequencies so that PZ would know what frequency to assign a respective HAM radio system. This would be useful not only for multiplayer game modes, but also any potential procedurally-generated game mode type where players interact with each other in a world where individual spawn points and game world locations merge with other player locations from other players' world generations.

If you feel that way, chances are the "minigame" you're whining about wasn't implemented very well.

If this has already been suggested, please forgive me for posting about it again, but I think a new mechanic should be considered where you can not only actually see and read through the various magazines but also work the crossword and word search puzzles. For the puzzles, I think it'd add a new layer of experience if when you either successfully spell out the words or find the words, it contributes to your entertainment measure or boredom score. Taking it even further, it'd be great if by drawing on the magazines or puzzles could contribute to the same values, or filling in the words or circling the found words is possible with the game understanding whether what you circled or what you filled into the crossword is correct. I just think the magazine layer in this game--including the puzzles--has potential for additional immersion. It reminds me of the old Sim City 2000 newspapers you could read. I also think it'd be awesome if the newspapers or magazines could be comprised of content that gets received in-game from The Indie Stone thereby providing the developers a means of injecting news directly into newspapers, magazines, puzzles, etc. all in-game. It'd add a layer of experience to make the player feel like he or she is in an actual "living" world where events that unfold are being experienced by others throughout what remains of the civilized world. (I.e. - macro-level, ongoing world evolution.) The injected content would need to be temporally-categorized because you wouldn't want to come across a newspaper that had entries about the last standing city in the state on day one of a new game play. Just something to think about. I think it's worth adding to the docket of initiatives. Obviously low-priority, but I hope it's something you guys explore.

Hard to believe how awesome this game is turning out to be. I can't even imagine how fun it'll be once NPCs finally get in it, but just this newest effort for high-rise buildings and basements / lower-levels, is insane. I can't wait to see this. I just hope a way will exist to acquire a rocket launcher with a sniper scope. Ha.

One thing I've always wanted to see game developer shops incorporate is ongoing world evolution. PZ is a game that centers on a situation that, once happens, solidifies the journey of the player from the standpoint of direction, but I think one thing it would greatly benefit from is a form of ongoing "phone home for event updates" functionality where tie-ins to in-game TVs or radios could be fed news pieces or news host-provided stories of ongoing world event developments based on other player game session conclusions. For example, it'd be cool for your player to turn on the radio and see the broadcast narrate news pieces about things that happened to John Doe on day whatever when in reality, the piece is telling a story about other players and the ends they came to or the successes they may have had in their games. Of course, this would mean The Indie Stone would have to incorporate a form of in-game statistics database to store the content these feeds would depend on and periodically send those to an Indie Stone-managed central system to curate the feed data back to the world for players (call-and-response functionality). Adding to this "ongoing world evolution," the same Indie Stone-managed system could dual as a form of pushing various sub-world events. For example, PZ can sometimes get boring once you reach a specific point in the game. I mean, even in PZ, you only have so many buildings and places to explore, right? So wouldn't it be great--especially once you guys get to the point of incorporating NPCs--to have the capacity through the aforementioned call-and-response functionality to inject occasional world events for players? One idea that comes to mind are a rare gang injections where you'd have something like a biker gang or band of raiders come through Muldraugh ransacking things or trying to fight the player before driving on through if they're beat, or seeing the government try to install emergency militarization zones with some appearing to have medical staff on-site or other enclaves being focused solely on eradication efforts by employing a soldier-focused staff. It'd also add a new experience to see occasional "zombie herds" move through. Another idea that comes to mind is an effort to restore power by finding a power plant in the game, reconnecting / repairing whatever requires it, but then defending it from whatever through time with an established and functional power plant resulting in more friendly NPCs being in the area (giving the player incentive to do it as more friendly NPCs would translate to a stronger team, etc.). What comes to my mind in this is some kind of function that could perform the periodic check using an encrypted Indie Stone endpoint with returning payloads consisting of JSON or XML or some such data deliverable the game client would then use to evaluate whatever event-specifics the payload consists of. Has anything like this been discussed or considered? The point, regardless of whatever you think of my examples, is that PZ needs a way to continue being "alive." Yes, the world is filled with undead, har har, but that doesn't mean the world in general stops moving or that all the world consists of is just zombies. What's going on in other cities, states, or countries? What's the president / government planning on doing or trying to do to fix all of mess? How will his or her efforts affect the player? More antagonistic regimes or maybe some supply chains? New radio frequencies popping up? What about an interactive HAM functionality whre the same call-and-response functionality could queue HAM messages between player game clients? It'd be cool to use the HAM radio to send messages and have responses to those messages from other players without being in multiplayer or be able to tune into radio stations and get actual live updates about the world. Everything centers on the player character's first-person experience but it's awfully siloed when so much more would be happening in the wider world and somehow, "if just some of that other stuff" could be incorporated into the game in-game either through the injected actions and events idea I mentioned or else through some other means, it'd help the player feel as if the game "keeps going" and "keeps evolving," and therefore, keeps providing incentive to keep caring about it (and keep playing). Having a way for Indie Stone to be involved in that ongoing evolution, directly, and in-game and through a way for the player's game client to enjoy call-and-response activity feeds, would be an amazing way to achieve much of that wider ongoing worldly (macro-level) experience.

That's a different issue. That's more about leaving a door ajar. This, however, is about biting through closed, structurally-sound windows. Which they can do. Zombies can bite you through undamaged, closed windows of vehicles, even when they're moving... It's a bug. Needs fixed.

This is really awesome stuff. Hopefully one day, we'll see various capabilities added to the boat mod to allow visibility and functionality of on-deck activities. For example, it'd be more immersive and fun to see your character steering the boat from its wheel or maybe watch your character sitting down on a seat or bench fixing some stuff up for food from a grill, casting his fishing rod when fishing, etc. (I'm sure this request is an obvious desire by now, but even without this, this mod is awesome and shows what's possible through the community, which is amazing.) Keep up the awesome work!

That M16 sounds fantastic. Love seeing the everyday normal actions with the players, too (i.e. - sitting down, even cleaning! HA!). Great stuff!

Love this game! I can't imagine how fun it must be in a multiplayer context but I hope by focusing on all the multiplayer work you guys are doing that you don't let the single player experience be forgotten... I keep checking in hoping that at some point, you guys divert attention to NPCs or at least, animal hunting. I'd be so fun to go on hunting trips for things like deer or bear, etc. Having that as an additional source of food and raw materials would bump the survivability experiences up a few notches, too. Whenever I think about multiplayer contexts, I often think about how Minecraft does it vs. how I personally wish they would do it: it's one thing to have an openly-accessible server to log into and play with friends but it's another to have the capability to interlink servers in such a way as to allow groups to travel from one server to another all in-game. I refer to Minecraft in this case as to me, I always envisioned Minecraft multiplayer as being almost boring when it comes to the standard multiplayer experience where you have a constrained world where you've done everything at least once with a group of friends in the same world... But it's different if in Minecraft, you could build portals in the actual game and see through the portals to see what's on the other side where it would always be a randomized connection to a server selected from a central Mojang repository of registered server worlds. With a multiplayer model like this, you would eventually see player groups establish things like trade routes, wage wars between factions, etc. So it might be worth considering this from a Project Zomboid standpoint where "portals" in that sense would be something equivalent to reaching the map boundary whereby once you get there, a context menu might come up allowing the respective player to cross a border over into another continuation of the given map they're already on (but in essence, it's actually akin to traveling to a separate server that's registered to the Indie Stone server world database that gets selected for the "portalization" (or continuation) of the overall world map. Hopefully that all makes sense. It's just a fancy way of interconnecting server worlds using 1 singular world mapping grid where each grid segment would constitute a server registered to a centralized database, all security and operational considerations withstanding. Keep up the fantastic works guys. Looking forward to more updates.

Man, you guys do fantastic work... Love this game. As far as the ambience is concerned, I know you guys are still in the process of working on it but as you move forward with the sound group, I hope you'll decide to incorporate sounds of both crickets and tree frogs, especially during nighttime hours. I think that would really make things pop. The zoom-in vs. zoom-out effect is really neat, too. It reminds me of Sim City 4's effect where when you'd zoom out, the local sounds would dull to the point that you only heard wind or only the "biggest" noises of mother nature whereby when you zoomed back in, you heard again the local noises (cars honking, trains, etc.). So it might be worth modeling the zoom-in vs. zoom-out effect after as it blended / smoothed the ambience really well for the zooming transitions. In any event, keep doing what you're doing.

I know it's a dead subject because I know it's been discussed ad nausea and understand that it's in the works, etc., but any stagnancy one experiences after being alive for as long as we're thinking is where NPCs would be beneficial. Even just generic NPCs or even just animals you can hunt. From what I remember reading, I think that's the next big thing expected to be worked on. Fingers crossed. But yeah, otherwise, the goal is to simply see how long you can stay alive. I think that's always been the overall endgame. But if you try to liken this game to what one might experience in a situation like this zombie apocalypse, you'd be looking at a world where you'd see an entire collapse of government and social structures... So in an ideal scenario, once the zombies begin to show signs of extreme atrophy and die-or-kill-off, you'd likely begin to see the things we watched in "The Walking Dead" where marauders and various factions of social groups begin to move in to establish their own territories or raid existing people and factions to further secure their own holdings. I think that's probably the world that existed before humanity began to evolve into some semblance of civilized society, so I think you'd expect the same only in regression. These scenarios would pose more difficulty as you'd be combating and competing against a more intelligence opposition, but it would be great to see if this might come up when the game development one day gets to that kind of development. It'd probably be very difficult to add but if it could be done, it'd be awesome.