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Moloch Horridus

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Everything posted by Moloch Horridus

  1. Peeking: As the multiplayer gaming in PZ approaches I think we need more functional stealth mechanics. This would also be useful in single player when NPCs eventually drop. Maybe little less useful with zombies, but advantageous with them also. How does being able to peek from beyond closed curtains or doors sound like? I'm talking about animationless way of implementing this, right click a closed curtain or a door and get an action called a peek to choose. Choosing this action would grant you a second or two view outside, only a very narrow view mind you. Implementing this with its own key/button would let the player to press and hold to peek at long as they wish, all the while increasing the chances of being spotted. You could also peek into an inside of a building. Peek through a door before entering a suspicious building or take a look through barricaded windows when scoping out enemy base. This would let you assess a situation outside without revealing yourself. If a character, be it a zombie, NPC or another human player, looks directly at the player peeking the game could have some light indication that signals said character to take notice. With zombies or NPCs this of course would be handled by the programming and AI but in multiplayer this could maybe be indicated by quick glimmer like animation in the window or door area. Indicators: As briefly described in the above paragrah I'd like to suggest small visible indicators to things currently presented as huge graphics or noticeable actions like peeking. A quick animation like glimmer mentioned above could indicate car keys on the ground for instance. Now we see a huge key on the ground and immediately know what it is. All small objects on the ground could have same kind of glimmer to them and only when the player is examining the ground container would the see what is actually there. A simple animation would suit many different use cases where a blown up graphic seems out of place in otherwise graphically well laid out world and would also let developers quickly implement new features like peeking without creating animations at least right away.
  2. Please make it an option to have only already crawling zombies to be able to crawl under the cars by default. I feel like any normal shambling zombie suddenly gaining enough wits to start crawling under obstacles is not very realistic. Perhaps this whole thing should be tied to the cognition options since it clearly a concious choise the zombies make. Also, player should be able to do the same, unless carrying a backpack. And we should be able to climb over the furniture and cars. I know this is much harder to implement, but it really bothers me that a simple sofa or chair is an obstacle that might end up killing me.
  3. I feel like the roleplaying aspect on PZ would benefit from adding more ways for agility based skills to manifest in gameplay. You can already fall in various situations, but not in some that would be very probable in real life. How this could be done is to make movement through various special terrains more hazardous and demanding. First that comes to mind is of course the piles of zombies you've killed, isn't it kind of obvious you'd have harder time stepping on corpses. Add a bit of a RNG and pair it with player stats to create more dynamic, challenging and realistic gameplay. The more speedily you move, more exhausted you are and less skill points in nimble you have, more likely you are to trip and fall on obstacles on the ground. Adding a some sort of ease of traversal status for terrain types and then layering optional negative or positive modifiers to it would make everyday life just a little bit more interesting. Instead of running through rotting corpses of slain undead you'd need to slow down a bit - unless you're nimble sprinter. If you're clumsy enough you might trip on a sidewalk when backing onto it for example. My point is not to make all movements more hazardous, most of the time you would be fine and be able to play just like you can today, but sometimes you'd had move more carefully. This could be part of the erosion system also. Longer the undergrowth more chances you have to trip on something or just get tangeld up in the weeds. You'd need to think before you take risks, I think thats what the Project Zomboid is after. Falling down would have a probability of injuries, that promotes of using and upgrading your first aid skills. Proper shambling zombies are clumsy and dull minded creatures, so they'd suffer the consequenses too. All and all I feel like this could be a well balanced add on that also contributes to skill usage.
  4. Nice idea! Maybe some kind of watch and learn activity so you couldn’t gain skill points by just hanging around other players and NPCs. The player could watch others build things, use generators, take a part electronics and gain some small amount of xp through the action. That way it would require some patience and planning like reading and wouldn’t nullify the punishing aspect of not being able to read at all. Maybe even put a cap on skill advances to level 2 or 4 depending on the skill level of the character you’re learning from. Just a way to get started.
  5. I've always thought that in the game windows that won't open and eventually play the "you broke it" sound are latched shut and you just broke the mechanism trying to force it open. Rest of the windows are just slid down casually without latching them. Any time used by the PC fumbling them open might be just about trying to get a good grip on the outside parts where there are no handles. I like the idea of making later gameplay more demanding, but early gameplay don't need it that much. Maybe make doors stronger and require a crowbar to pry them open from the outside. Metal doors and especially secure doors should require more force or tools and skills.
  6. Nice idea! I think it could be refined a bit more by giving a tool an "edge" value. "Edge = 0" means there is no edge, or the bladed item is too dull to do anything but be used as a rather useless blunt weapon. Bigger the value the sharper the tool. This would also mean the sharpness of a blade could deteriorate in use and require honing or resharpening. Accompanied with this there should be a "mass" value. For example an axe would have both high edge value and high mass value, thus making it a good tool to chop wood, whereas a kitchen knife with a low mass would be useless even though it's sharp. This could extend to damage value of blunt objects in general: a low mass hammer does obviously less damage than high mass sledgehammer. Couple these with a weapon wind up animation multiplier and one vs two handed multiplier and you should have rather nice way of getting base damage for all weapons, base game or modded. Then add buffs and debuffs like general condition and critical chance.
  7. I don't even suffer from motion sickness in real life or in any other game, but the rain in PZ is a bit disturbing. Haven't seen it in day time yet, but the stormy night I experienced was pretty bad. I guess it's that indoors you basically stare and concentrate at a smaller area and the rain animation on the edges of your vision cause this effect.
  8. Easy with PZ. Just make the murderer of another survivor suffer negative "karmic effect" that comes around when starting another mp character. Give the offender some amount of invisible plus modifiers which then has to be countered with negative traits. Of course this will only have any meaning when traits are properly implemented. These points could carry on to subsequent games, cumulating negative karma, until the offender starts behaving. This should lessen murderous behavior since excess negative traits could make surviving the next game pretty nasty. Given that griefers are pretty sorry bunch to begin with, I doubt they would continue harassing people for long. Circumstances shouldn't really matter since killing another human being in such scenario could always be considered immoral, after all its the whole human race at the stake here. Even better of course if the game could recognize who actually starts the confrontation, making self-defence a viable option. I'm not a multiplayer, and will never be, but thats my couple of, useless in post-apocalyptic scenario, cents.
  9. How about introducing scythes to the game? Could be used both as a rather cumbersome weapon as well as of keeping weeds and grass in order. Using one would require some skill and develop your characters physique. I'd also like to see both motorized and pushable lawn mowers... also drivable ones that could work as a very slow vehicles. Coupled with a little cart they could be pretty useful, if noisy, when moving large amount of stuff. Using any motorized ones would be pretty careless and require gasoline. I figure scythes ought to be pretty rare and driveable lawn mowers rather common, after all we're talking U.S.A. here Also:
  10. It's been 'reconsidered' time and again over the last three years. There's nothing anyone can say that adds anything new or unique to this discussion- we've seen it all. The reality is, there is no gameplay benefit for adding this. This is not the Sims. Further, we don't just add things because we're aiming for realism- there has to be a reason to spend coding time on it. For a game with accelerated time, we can just assume that you piss in the bushes every once in a while- there is no reason except "because" to add this. So, while everyone is more than welcome to discuss it, it's not going to happen, ever, and you should go into the discussion with that expectation. Except you can play PZ in real-time if you wish. I like to play on a very low time compression for one. Furthermore I don't think time compression is a good argument omitting a feature, since there are already other similar features like eating and sleeping. Similar as in related to real-life and time consumption of daily activities. Playing with time compression settings on low you end up with a lot of time on your hands. Following your argument there is no added gameplay value in eating for instance. It could be treated similarly as you suggest since the actual gameplay parts of staying fed are scavenging and farming. The eating action is just a progress bar that you have to sit through because the moodle told you so. We could just assume characters eat every once in a while if they have food available. If you think about this only based on coding time you're right. Eating and sleeping are implemented already and the hygiene is not. Of course the need for these actions are subjective and will wary on player preferences. I'm all for realism (well, not all for since zombies wouldn't really be a threat in real life), but not everybody is and therefore options have been invented. Of course devs have all the power to decide what they want to put their effort into, but since time and time again this feature is suggested maybe, just maybe they could reconsider. I'd argue that similar to eating and sleeping actions, bodily functions are one necessity we humans have in our daily lives and I'd argue its just as important - after all one of those two is actually contributing to this one. To some degree the weather is also contributing here once its implemented wholly. During hot summer days you'd need to drink more because you're sweating, but if you keep up the pace during winter you'd need to use "bodily functions" more often. So, going to the bushes couple of times a day maybe wouldn't be a gameplay feature itself, but combining it to other features already implemented or coming sometime in the future it certainly wouldn't be just a gimmick any more. In my opinion.
  11. Make tripping rare enough so players don't get into dire situations too often, but common enough to make them wary not to moonwalk all the time. I think PZ needs more mechanics that are available but not recommended. This creates atmosphere where player needs to pay attention plus weigh risks and rewards. Guns already are playing with this concept by being loud but effective. I don't know if they can jam, but that would be a very nice addition. We also have burglar alarms, seemingly locked windows that won't budge, ovens that easily burn down your safehouse, bleach we can drink and broken windows that scratch us. Life is a gamble, even more so in zombie apocalypse. Let's play! Its all a matter of balance. If all else fails give user options to turn these more controversial features on or off.
  12. When the implementation of removing bodies from living areas to reduce infection risk is upon us, I think we at least need to be able to wash up. Think about it, you just killed several zombies and realized that the house all this happened in is perfect for your needs. So you carry the dead out and use bleach to scrub everything squeaky clean before moving in. Would you really not take a bath after all that? Would you just go on living your daily post-apocalyptic life, cooking and eating, sleeping and reading, farming and crafting with all the gore on you? No sir, I don't believe you would. You would get out of those filthy clothes (maybe even burn them) and then take a nice long bath, in a rain barrel if necessary. We already have toothbrush and toothpaste, comb, razor and various towels. All we need is soap. You would need a water source and several of above items to perform a "get clean" action that would take some time. As for those bodily functions, name the action "take care of business", just slap a progress bar on top of blurred/pixelated character and be done with it. Couple of moodles to prompt user to take action, nothing too descriptive or frequent. Since PZ is aiming for decent amount of realism, this should be reconsidered in my opinion.
  13. Nice idea. Couple of seconds long gif-animation of characters very last moments, along with the stats, that you could perhaps post to the forum or anywhere else would compliment the whole "This is how you died" premise nicely and could be used to promote Project Zomboid.
  14. Pacing of this game reminds me of the original Settlers-series (mainly played the first and second iterations) and I find it quite enjoyable.
  15. First heard of it today and backed immediately after reading through. It's already funded but a little more always helps if anyone is interested. There's still time.
  16. I've have a lot of crashes on the second day while accessing other survivors inventories on scavenging maps, so beware and save often.
  17. Well the zombies and npc's are pretty static right now, they only start moving after spotting you. But thats clearly still in development. I just came back to the shelter after first scavenging round (visited 3 different smallish maps) so I don't know if other survivors in the shelter are going to start moving either, nor do I know whats planned. Haven't met any non-hostile survivors yet, or any animals. It could be more clear what goes into the shelters main inventory (which is abstracted into few categories) when returning and what doesn't. I was pretty sure I had found a chocolate bars to boost other one survivors moral but those chocolate bars were not special enough and were put to the luxury category in shelter stock instead. Sure enough its labeled so if you look, but nonetheless this could be clearer. One gripe I have is that you can't unload weapons or medical satchels, at least I don't know how to do it. Interface can be a bit unintuitive so I'm not sure. Haven't roamed the dev forums either to see if this is about to change. EDIT: seems like its coming. Camera system could be either more flexible or not flexible at all, meaning that the tilt feature is pretty useless right now. Otherwise the freedom to rotate the camera is great. All in all minor stuff thats probably going to change for the better as the time goes by. Oh! You can't climb through windows is one thing I miss most from the PZ.
  18. I played survival instinct a few hours day before yesterday and in my opinion it's no way near as bad as reviews and "reviews" like to say it is. Didn't play it yesterday because Dead State came out, too many good to great zombie games around these days
  19. Bought and played for couple of hours, it seems to have right kind of mentality behind it. Combat is pretty close to old school Fallouts with debuffs. I really like it so far.
  20. Build 23. Cortman Medical, front facing 2nd story window can't handle sheet ropes properly. The rope goes straight through the first story extended roof and back into the buildings 1st floor. Absolute coordinates; X: 10879, Y; 10034 Images:1, 2, 3
  21. Build 23. This house has a bugged kitchen. I can't walk close to the cupboard near the sink, but can walk between the sink and the oven. Absolute coordinates; X:10879, Y:10077 The problem area highlighted in this image. Edit. Can't seem to be able to add images using img-tags.
  22. when the 3d stuff becomes available will we get a stop-drop-and-roll option?That please, and something else that's realistic; getting rid of the burning clothes. Stripping them to put it in another way. Pretty much any clothing material is more flammable than human skin, so getting rid of it greatly lowers the risk of being injured by fire. Does not apply if you're not already on fire. I think getting lit should be dangerous both to your health and to your equipment. So let the fire ruin your clothes and at least some of the stuff you're carrying. The chance of being left slightly burnt, naked and your stuff as pile of ash on the ground would teach survivors some healthy respect for the fire. Think of a possibility to get unlucky while tossing those molotovs. And if we ever get locational damage, it should be possible to have only your pants, or just the bottoms, burning, for example. Different flammability for different materials and so on. So much potential. Also, I don't normally eat the books I'm reading, but that's another subject regarding realism.
  23. Yes, please. More stuff there is, more immersion. The world is full of useless junk, yet most post apocalyptic games are lacking it. Drawers with one comb, kitchen cabinets with two plates, shelves with only cobwebs on them. Stuff doesn't just disappear when people die.
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