Manuls

Hi,
 
I wanted to give my oppinion about the new Update:
 
After reading the Mondoid about 30.9 i thought: Nice its going to be harder already!
 
When i played it, the first 3-4 Death in like 20-40 minutes it felt like the update broke the game. That is because i just wanted to follow my standart procedure. Yeye find weapon, kill all Zombies bothering me and try out stuff from the late game ( farming, levelling up weapons etc.)
 
 
But at the 5th more careful start it dawned on me. Now i actually get the satisfaction and excitement i had when i was approaching the mall for the first time(the most crowded place in the world) from just trying to get to the next building to find some food and water. I started again to close curtains, sneak around try to plan my day(the stuff another person posted before me), feeling really scared again even of a group of 5 Zombies.
 
I Fucking Love It! I feel like i have forgotten how this game felt at the beginning, but now it feels like it again. Awesome Job Devs!
 
And that doesnt even involve the Awesome new Overgrowth of the map with all the new plants, the new ,medical system TENSE!
 
And the new desaturated Colours! Nice nice nice. What a wonderful upgrade!
 
Great Work guys much Apreciated!
 
 
One negative: Stuttering after like 20 mins every 20 secs. Even worse in splitscreen (EVEN HERE NICE UPDATE!)
 
Sum it up: Love the devs, love the community, love the game. Thanks.

Hi,
 
I wanted to give my oppinion about the new Update:
 
After reading the Mondoid about 30.9 i thought: Nice its going to be harder already!
 
When i played it, the first 3-4 Death in like 20-40 minutes it felt like the update broke the game. That is because i just wanted to follow my standart procedure. Yeye find weapon, kill all Zombies bothering me and try out stuff from the late game ( farming, levelling up weapons etc.)
 
 
But at the 5th more careful start it dawned on me. Now i actually get the satisfaction and excitement i had when i was approaching the mall for the first time(the most crowded place in the world) from just trying to get to the next building to find some food and water. I started again to close curtains, sneak around try to plan my day(the stuff another person posted before me), feeling really scared again even of a group of 5 Zombies.
 
I Fucking Love It! I feel like i have forgotten how this game felt at the beginning, but now it feels like it again. Awesome Job Devs!
 
And that doesnt even involve the Awesome new Overgrowth of the map with all the new plants, the new ,medical system TENSE!
 
And the new desaturated Colours! Nice nice nice. What a wonderful upgrade!
 
Great Work guys much Apreciated!
 
 
One negative: Stuttering after like 20 mins every 20 secs. Even worse in splitscreen (EVEN HERE NICE UPDATE!)
 
Sum it up: Love the devs, love the community, love the game. Thanks.

Hi,
 
I wanted to give my oppinion about the new Update:
 
After reading the Mondoid about 30.9 i thought: Nice its going to be harder already!
 
When i played it, the first 3-4 Death in like 20-40 minutes it felt like the update broke the game. That is because i just wanted to follow my standart procedure. Yeye find weapon, kill all Zombies bothering me and try out stuff from the late game ( farming, levelling up weapons etc.)
 
 
But at the 5th more careful start it dawned on me. Now i actually get the satisfaction and excitement i had when i was approaching the mall for the first time(the most crowded place in the world) from just trying to get to the next building to find some food and water. I started again to close curtains, sneak around try to plan my day(the stuff another person posted before me), feeling really scared again even of a group of 5 Zombies.
 
I Fucking Love It! I feel like i have forgotten how this game felt at the beginning, but now it feels like it again. Awesome Job Devs!
 
And that doesnt even involve the Awesome new Overgrowth of the map with all the new plants, the new ,medical system TENSE!
 
And the new desaturated Colours! Nice nice nice. What a wonderful upgrade!
 
Great Work guys much Apreciated!
 
 
One negative: Stuttering after like 20 mins every 20 secs. Even worse in splitscreen (EVEN HERE NICE UPDATE!)
 
Sum it up: Love the devs, love the community, love the game. Thanks.

Hi,
 
I wanted to give my oppinion about the new Update:
 
After reading the Mondoid about 30.9 i thought: Nice its going to be harder already!
 
When i played it, the first 3-4 Death in like 20-40 minutes it felt like the update broke the game. That is because i just wanted to follow my standart procedure. Yeye find weapon, kill all Zombies bothering me and try out stuff from the late game ( farming, levelling up weapons etc.)
 
 
But at the 5th more careful start it dawned on me. Now i actually get the satisfaction and excitement i had when i was approaching the mall for the first time(the most crowded place in the world) from just trying to get to the next building to find some food and water. I started again to close curtains, sneak around try to plan my day(the stuff another person posted before me), feeling really scared again even of a group of 5 Zombies.
 
I Fucking Love It! I feel like i have forgotten how this game felt at the beginning, but now it feels like it again. Awesome Job Devs!
 
And that doesnt even involve the Awesome new Overgrowth of the map with all the new plants, the new ,medical system TENSE!
 
And the new desaturated Colours! Nice nice nice. What a wonderful upgrade!
 
Great Work guys much Apreciated!
 
 
One negative: Stuttering after like 20 mins every 20 secs. Even worse in splitscreen (EVEN HERE NICE UPDATE!)
 
Sum it up: Love the devs, love the community, love the game. Thanks.

Hi,
 
I wanted to give my oppinion about the new Update:
 
After reading the Mondoid about 30.9 i thought: Nice its going to be harder already!
 
When i played it, the first 3-4 Death in like 20-40 minutes it felt like the update broke the game. That is because i just wanted to follow my standart procedure. Yeye find weapon, kill all Zombies bothering me and try out stuff from the late game ( farming, levelling up weapons etc.)
 
 
But at the 5th more careful start it dawned on me. Now i actually get the satisfaction and excitement i had when i was approaching the mall for the first time(the most crowded place in the world) from just trying to get to the next building to find some food and water. I started again to close curtains, sneak around try to plan my day(the stuff another person posted before me), feeling really scared again even of a group of 5 Zombies.
 
I Fucking Love It! I feel like i have forgotten how this game felt at the beginning, but now it feels like it again. Awesome Job Devs!
 
And that doesnt even involve the Awesome new Overgrowth of the map with all the new plants, the new ,medical system TENSE!
 
And the new desaturated Colours! Nice nice nice. What a wonderful upgrade!
 
Great Work guys much Apreciated!
 
 
One negative: Stuttering after like 20 mins every 20 secs. Even worse in splitscreen (EVEN HERE NICE UPDATE!)
 
Sum it up: Love the devs, love the community, love the game. Thanks.

"I had to stop to eat, drink, change my clothes, and read other books to cure boredom while I was getting it done, and was able to pick it back up at the correct spot each time. But you do have to see the irony there that it took so long that I had to stop reading one book to read another book to cure my character's boredom at having to stand around so long to read the first book."
 
Sounds like any approach of learning in my Academic Studies.
 
Awesome update by the way works like a charm!

Audio feedback.
(pun intended, ha ha) ..
 
TL;DR: I put some stuff in bold
I assume the new sounds to be a step away from placeholders and the first step towards decent sound in Zomboid, so I've held back until now actually!
First of all, vast improvement from previous version and overal a step away from placeholders and extremely varying levels of quality, both in terms of actual (percieved) quality and file (sample rates, formats, etc). They're also all interleaved stereo files, some of the old ones are still mono. Of course, when projecting sound from a source in-game, this isn't cruical, but you can always project a stereo file from a singular direction should you chose to, but once a file IS mono, it doesn't matter if you pan it out - it's the same god damn audio so you won't get any impression of width. So you want to have the option. Regardless, all sound files within the game should naturally be on the same level of (at least) technical quality. So my impression is that it's "done" the right way.
HOWEVER, if it's recorded the right way is an other matter, I'm sure NJ-Apostol is no amateur, but listening through the files I actually percieved no feeling of width, to such an extent that I wonder if these were infact stereo recordings at all! Recording a sound effect in mono (practical or actual) and producing a stereo file seems to me to be a bit of a waste. Of course, I can understand that budget limits the recorder to avoid A-B pattern stereo recordings - but IF able, I think any future new sounds in Zomboid deserve more width to them, especially when/if ambience gets reworked. An other aspect is that while 44100 is a decent sample rate for the finished exported sound product, there's little or no reason not to record at a higher samplerate if you can. People won't really notice a difference though, I think one of the old sounds has a sample rate of something like 11000-something, which is witty because it still works, no one minds!
Some observations:
 
The overal volume output between sound "groups" (ie; female zombies, splat, male zombies) are good within a given group, but between groups they need to be smoothed out.This in particular applies to the difference between male and female zombie groans. One COULD argue that perhaps the male voice contains more energy, but let's savor that discussion for an other day and let's just say the difference is too significant. Pretty sure girl zombies can groan with some amounts of low frequency anyway, they don't all have to just hiss and squeek! The audio ouput (volume) should be adjusted accordingly assuming the devs don't want to apply anything themselves (they should though!). Regardless it's convinient to have relatively comperative level of output between files, although whenever you're dealing with voice or anything mimicking it, this is difficult.
 
PZ_FootSteps_Concrete_02.wav and 02, does not sound too much like footsteps on concrete;It's partially because, some of them are too "raspy" (02 and 03) maybe it's fine because zombies drag their feet - although it might not be ideal for the player character.
However, applying to ALL of the footsteps files - it's a byproduct of the file having no leeway before playing, thus the first initial transients are clipped by the processing playing it (be it VLC, quicktime or whatever, and probably Zomboid). Usually this is fine, as when you're working with audio your DAW takes care of that and I'm sure there's ways to deal with it from a programming standpoint as well - but if simply played as a sound in-game the same effect might take place and you end up with footsteps that sound minecraft-esque low-fi and not at all "hard" like they should on concrete. Make note that ALL of the other new audio files DO have some leeway infront of them before actual sound. You're working with 44100 samples a second so even less than a milisecond actually helps mitigate this issue. I've had this issue before though, as footstep sounds need to be short and quick, and I'm sure it's a potential easy-fix for the programming side.
 
PZ_HeadSmash_01 and 02 sound too "wet", "moist" or "mushy". Heads have bone in them.A bit morbid and I must confess I don't know what smashing someones head sounds like, but I think the old sounds splat1 and splat2, while poor in terms of quality and obvious in terms of origin, had a certain charm to them. Regardless, these news ones are very "mushy" in their character, where was the old ones were more crisp. A bit of bone in there might make it better. I did a quick google to fetch an example of what I think we could be better off having; http://youtu.be/i5ufgkJ-uVE?t=2m18s (from the movie drive, and perhaps a bit brutal and not suitable to the faint of heart.)
An other issue is that 02 contains an initial impact noise, 01 doesn't. Perhaps this was intended to give the programmer options. Obviously a combined impact + smash noise creates the best result; but perhaps you don't have time to make an impact noise for every impact item (weapons) and thus need a generic one in addition to blunt and stab - and indeed PZ_HeadStab_02 suggests that's the intention, but perhaps relabel 02 to avoid it being mixed up as generic as it contains a very clear "whiff" sound and (relatively) high pitched whack sound. Both of the headsmash files contain sound from the impact item, but it's very prominent in 02.
Perhaps it would just be better and easier to have the "whack" noise and "smash" nosie played to the player clearly seperated seeing as how the smashes are the killing blows anyway, and the whack noise should always be played when you hit a zombie, regardless - and then perhaps a "whiff/swing" noise should always be played, regardless of if you hit, kill or miss a zombie.
 
The fact that zombie death sounds are compound sounds is apparent and obvious to the playerObviously it is preferable that one zombie does indeed sound like one zombie. In almost all of the zombie death sounds (example; PZ_MaleDeath_03 or PZ_MaleDeath_07) it's apparent to the listener and player that there are two "parts" to the sound, two parts which can be easily be percieved and distinguished from each other and thus percieved as the sound of two zombies.
When creating sound effects the actual sound can sometimes be composed of many, many recordings, and perhaps the goal here of the death noises is to distinguish them between regular zombie groans - this is good, even if it's a cheesy "last exhale" kind of thing, and regardless the impression is highly subjective, but in most of them the player could get the impression of it being the sound of "two" zombies. It's nit picking to some regard, would anyone noticed in the thick of a zombie horde? Well, no - but it could be clearly noticable and even annoying if you're hitting a single zombie in a house, it could leave the player confused enough to think there are more in the house, which doesn't make any sense if there was indeed just one zombie, because one zombie wouldn't sound like two zombies now would it? One percieved source of audio should be projected as such.
 
PZ_MaleZombie_08.wav is too boomy and too long, PZ_MaleZombie_06.wav is too long, a few of the PZ_FemaleZombie sounds as well.In particular when compared to the old sounds, these are significantly longer when it comes to duration. This could present itself as a problem when a groaning horde comes along. Sure, some zombie groans are indeed long, and perhaps the longer groans are not at all intended to be used from the same general "pool" as the rest. However, if they're intended for special cases in-game; then the pool is limited to 3-5 generic groans between genders, which is actually quite few considering the amount of zombies you could have on-screen at any given moment. It's worth noting that you only need to play a few of these at the same time before clipping occours and something needs to be done to limit and reduce the volume output much sooner than with the old sounds. This again, because the volume of the PZ_MaleZombie group is significantly louder and contains more energy over a wider frequency range. I'm sure Lemmy has an easy time adjusting volume output if the amount of zombie groans become too many - but simply playing the same voice many times doesn't at all make it sound like a choir, so a bigger pool of lower output sounds for horde encounters would certainly be ideal.
PZ_MaleZombie_08.wav in particular seems to have a bit too much bass to it. It's a bit boomy. The first second in particular. Almost as if there's a bit of air hitting the microphone membrane or (more likely) as if it's just been given a bit too much EQ, be it actively or indirectly by whatever effects are used in the process of making a zombie groan. Most home setups and headsets add a little bass these days and I imagine that if this file is pulled randomly to be played at the same time with itself or an other of the more bassy groans (highly probably given its length and the fact that there's just 8 files to chose from) you could get way too much wall-shake from a single pair of zombies....
 
 
As I wrote first though, it's all still improvements and Zomboid sure does need it. A lot of the small fine details of foley often go over-looked but they're subconciously critical and vital to make the game come across as a finished and decent product. Play one of the latest battlefields for instance and just think -only- about the sound, now sure, the budget isn't comperable, but have you actually thought about how amazing the soundwork in some of the triple A FPS'es are?
 
And I don't mean to step on anyone's toes here, but certain sounds in zomboid like the rain ambience and ambience in general is quite bad and very much coming across like placeholders that no-one had the time to replace or think about yet. What I'm talking about is stuff like that ambientOutsideDayWoods.ogg clearly has distant traffic noise (as if from a motorway in the far distance) and rain.ogg clearly records rain hitting a water-surface. Stuff like that doesn't work when you're walking around in a car-free zombie apocalypse and there's no god-damn pond anywhere near and those two are played many many times on each and every play session. Even my girlfriend non-audio nerd questioned some of it when she watched me play some Zomboid.
Yes. Yeeees.. I realize, there's more pressing issues, but there's a lot of room for audio work in Zomboid, and some of it is necessary for Zomboid not to come across as a half-assed product and I think it's wise to not consider all of it a finishing touch. It might not be as glamorous as Beaver's work, but it sure plays a part. I hope that sometime in the future of Zomboid, you can step into a relatively empty warehouse, and actually hear footsteps reverb and stuff. That'd be nice.
 
Kind of long post this. And my first since the new forums..

Ok,
 
I have seen lots and lots of confusion from new (and older) players who are coming to project zomboid and get mixed up with the versions and the state of the game. So I've decided to write a little segment about what's going on. Now I should be on top of this but if I make any mistakes please be kind and correct me via pm or just comment here! You can also give your knowledge and make your questions about the versions and things that you have figured out or don't have the slightest clue on to what's going on. I'll try to update this with big changes (such as the full steam release etc.)
 
Alpha
Project Zomboid is currently an alpha release game which broadly means that there are and will be bugs until time unknown. Also alpha means that the game is missing essential features that are planned (or maybe not even thought out yet) and will be added to the game in the future. The alpha phase usually ends with a feature lock which means new content will not be added. (although this can be debatable as many game developers add stuff even after release and will likely be the case with zomboid too) After alpha comes beta! Yayy!!
 
Beta
Firstly Project Zomboid is NOT a beta game as you probably figured this out by now. Beta game is considered feature ready and this is where the true bug squishing and tweaking begins. Now because Zomboid is an alpha release and there are lots of people playing it, the devs are doing some more bug fixes already to help with the playability of the game than maybe if it was just a closed alpha.
 
Build
The build is a version of the game (ie. 2.9.9.17) and atm is marked with numbers counting to 3.0 which will most likely see the release of NPCs. The build can be stable or unstable and the version number isn't dependent on changes (2.9.9.17 can have different versions of it).
 
Stable release
Stable release is a point where major bugs of a build have been fixed and the game is essentially playable. This does not mean that there won't be any bugs, it's just that the amount is minimal and not game breaking. All of the present and future Desura releases are planned to be stable releases. You can see the current progress with the releases from the downloads section of the forum.
 
Unstable release
This is mainly for bug squishing and features that are new, unstable and haven't been tested much. The unstable releases are atm handled through the Steam beta.
 
Steam beta
Now this is where things get interesting. Steam beta is an unstable version of the game that as you probably guessed, is unstable (Wow good job! ), which means that there might be some game breaking stuff or some major bugs. Back up ya saves! This is NOT a beta version of Project Zomboid as the name might suggest. It is more or less a beta of the alpha. You can choose this version from the steam library as follows:
 
Hopefully this will clear some of those misconceptions some people are having and also help you understand what's going on.
 
 

Thank you sir for bringing us the ideas of making fire with a lighter or matches, and that paper would burn?  
 
Just kiddin Good Job.