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Dryke

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About Dryke

  • Birthday 07/07/1969

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    I play on Zeek's Haven server! Join me - http://zeekshaven.freeforums.net/

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  1. Sounds just about right for a PvP server to me NPCs are nice, but to be honest playing multiplayer will give you a much more immersive 'other survivors' feel. No AI will ever be able to truly mimic the experience of having to interact with a real player and try and decide if he's going to trade with you...or blow your face off
  2. It would be nice to be able to shoot at the helicopter. All's fair, right? Either they are trying to kill you (in which case you have the right to defend yourself) or alternatively they are so incredibly stupid that the world would be better off without their genetics being passed on
  3. Watching and understanding zombie behavior is perhaps the biggest survival trait there is in the game, even moreso than learning how to get food and water IMO. I use a tactic very similar to EnigmaGrey's. If I have a large group of zombies after me, I'll go completely through one building and I don't start thinking about hiding until I've broken all contact with the zombies behind me. They tend to get caught up climbing through windows and things in the building I just ran through, or at worst trying to go around them; this gives me chance to go stealthy and sneak into another building further away. When returning to my home base, I will never run straight to it if I'm being followed. I cut off at an angle and make sure the zombies are following me, and then I keep going along that line until I'm sure I've lost contact with them before turning back towards the base. The zombies will tend to keep heading in that direction of last contact - and if it's towards your hideout, that's the direction they will also go.
  4. After the server wipe (to move from IWBUMS to the stable branch), I began a new project I figured out how to surround crates with walls (although most of the time you only need a wall on two sides) so now the walls are wall -> 3 crate stack -> wall, all condensed into the space of a single tile
  5. Sometimes idiots are job security. Like with my job; it literally depends on stupid people doing stupid things to other people. If that wasn't such an absolute certainty, my job would not exist. Even if you are not lucky enough to be able to say that the idiots actually support your lifestyle, you CAN say that idiots are an occupational hazard for almost every other job out there. Particularly jobs like yours that are oriented towards creating and providing a product for consumers. You can never make the idiots happy because they are too dumb to realize when they should be happy and they are highly likely to overrate any disappointment they encounter. Short story: Focus on the smart people, or at least the middle of the road folks; don't sweat the idiots. They aren't worth your time.
  6. I'm not sure it's accurate to say 'its straight up not true', since EnigmaGrey is in a strong position to know what has and has not been done, and there is absolutely no benefit to him to lie about something such as this. It might be more accurate to say 'something is possibly affecting pathing in an unanticipated way', which would make both EnigmaGrey's declaration that they have not changed pathing AND your declaration that somehow pathing has changed potentially true at the same time. Being careful about how you say something can go a long way towards not having your concerns simply dismissed as a rant Aside from that, however, as a previous poster mentioned whatever changes may have occurred, you can still change zombie behavior with the range of choices provided for server settings that would result in zombies as dumb (or as smart) as you want them to be. Given that option, there is very little room for complaint since the choice is entirely up to the players.
  7. The Gigamart makes for an excellent base. The huge upper roof gives you plenty of room to expand, and the proximity of the shops in downtown West Point makes it easy to find supplies. Did you sledge down the stairs coming up from below?
  8. Two ways I used the crates: As Walls - I build a normal wall, and then a stack of 3 crates in front of it. A zombie trying to travel through a tile first has to break all three crates and then the wall to get through. Think of it as a 4x wall but only taking up one tile. If I could double side the stack with walls I would - (wall)(3crates)(wall) - but it will normally only let you build a wall on one side of the stack. I choose to build the wall on the inside of the stack so that the zombies hit the crates first. As a crate pattern - zombies LIKE to beat on destructible items. A destructible item is anything a player builds as well as the 'native' doors and windows. A horde of zombies approaching my defenses will break up as it tries to pass through the crate pattern and 99.9% of the time they will stop to beat on those crates instead of making it to the wall. This gives me time to kill them before they hit the actual wall. It's also useful if I am being chased; I run through the pattern and lose all the zombies chasing me. I've found that it's best if the lines of crates are offset as you approach in the direction of the wall; sometimes the zombies will travel freely if they can move in a straight line without bumping into a crate, but if they are offset so that the zombie has to path around them, they almost always stop at the crate to attack it.
  9. Here's my latest creation. Everything was built in vanilla PZ (no mods or admin tools):
  10. General thoughts on survival: Sheet ropes are your friend. Zombies can't climb sheet ropes, but you can; this is a powerful advantage. As an earlier poster noted, if you destroy all the stairways on the ground floor you render it impossible for zombies to get to the upper stories. Place sheet ropes at several points around a building and then sledge down the stairs and you will create a zone of absolute safety. Again, as noted in an earlier post you don't want to be surrounded by a horde and out of supplies in the 'safety' of your second floor redoubt, so try to pick a larger building with multiple second or third story exits. Finding food and water is good; producing them for yourself is better. Initially you may need to scavenge to survive; as a long term strategy, though, scavenging is a bad plan because you need to be out where the zombies are to scavenge. Water collection is easy once you can build rain barrels - but remember you'll need a way to sterilize the water; a campfire and a kettle or cooking pot will do. Food is somewhat trickier, but there are several means provided - fishing, farming, trapping, and foraging. Of these, Farming is most suited to the life of a survivor; you can carry bags of dirt up to a rooftop area and set up a rooftop garden. Using the 'knock down the stairs' strategy described above, you can end up creating a zone safe from zombies with a limitless supply of food and water. The rest of the food gathering methods usually require you to leave your safe zone in order to get the food and water you need. Zombies are bad...flaming zombies are worse. This, of course, depends upon the game settings. With fire spread off, setting up campfire 'traps' for zombies is actually quite effective (if somewhat unrealistic) since the zombies will wander into them, begin to burn, and eventually die...all with little or no effort on your part. There are several tactics you can employ to take advantage of such a situation. With fire spread on, however...a flaming zombie can spread those flames into your safehouse, turning it into an inferno. For that matter, with fire spread on the fire itself is quite dangerous even without zombies; setting a campfire inside a safehouse is about as smart a plan in the game as it would be for you to light a campfire in your living room in real life. Know your settings and plan accordingly. The Axe Is Your Gift From God: Guns are flashy. With a bit of skill they kill things very quickly. Pipe bombs are glorious weapons against large hordes. If you are trying to rack up a huge kill count, these are good things; they kill quickly and are sure to draw every zombie within hearing distance to your location. If you are trying to survive, you want a melee weapon - and the best weapon out there, hands down, is the axe. Quiet, lethal, and utilitarian, the axe is the survivor's weapon of choice in the apocalypse. A single zombie is a trivial challenge with an axe, and even small groups can be managed. If there are too many zombies to take on with your axe, then you are in a situation where you should be running away anyway. When you're not chopping down zombies, you can chop down trees instead for your fortifications. Zombies love to destroy the things that you make: Zombies are attracted to player built constructions. If they wander near one they have a tendency to stop and beat on them. Conversely, outside of windows and doors zombies do not damage original structures. You can use both of these facts to your advantage. As an example of taking advantage of game structures, EniracY posted a location above that shows a house surrounded by a fence with a small opening in one area. The entire fence is essentially invulnerable to zombies, which means the only area you would need to fortify is the small opening. (The house only has one story - a negative, in my opinion, since you can't have a second story redoubt - but that's solveable with a little construction). On the flip side, a great example of utilizing the zombie's tendency to beat on anything YOU build is to build a 'crate pattern'. Build a bunch of crates in offset lines so that there are winding pathways between them. Zombies moving through this pattern will almost always stop to beat on the crates - even if they are chasing you. In the unlikely event that they don't stop, they won't navigate the pattern as quickly as you do anyway. You can even create a one crate high 'crate maze' entrance to your safehouse. The zombies WILL eventually break up all the crates if you let them - but they will almost never navigate the whole maze because they will stop to beat at the crates along the way.
  11. This is what the discussion boils down to. Yes; it is absolutely true that the fact that I have never seen remoulade does not mean it is uncommon. It's not proof - but it is evidence, and taken in conjunction with other evidence (such as the inability to find it in any grocery store in one's town, or never having seen it in any home one has ever been in) it is possible to formulate a reasonable theory: Remoulade is far less common in reality than it is in the game. By the same token, the fact that you as a chef are now very familiar with it does not mean it is as common as we find it here. So, yes, it's a theory - not proof. Knowing that...now what, if anything? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps, as you say, it is such a small thing that it isn't worth addressing at all. Or perhaps the theory itself can be disproven, and in reality remoulade can be found in many household cabinets in the real Knox County. Or perhaps the idea of local authenticity just needs to take a back seat here. Either way it's up to you folks. You've heard the feedback, and you will do with it what you will. You have a pretty good track record for making good decisions so I'm sure whatever you come up with here will be fine. On a side point, though...the whole 'fine dining' thing is still bothering me I eat very well, and I have eaten at many very exclusive restaraunts, and I'n not in my 20's...and I *still* haven't ever heard of remoulade. I suspect it's as you say - it's probably been in things I've eaten and I just never knew it - and I suppose that would be the technical definition of 'ignorance' if it's true. However, characterizing this as a mistake the young would make or those who probably haven't experienced 'fine dining' is definitely a zinger for people like myself, who are not young and do eat well
  12. Yeah, this whole thing took a turn for the worse, didn't it? If changing it to something else is too time consuming to be worthwhile, I get it. But as others have said, the fact that it might appear in a high end restaraunt somewhere doesn't make it something so common that it fills shelves everywhere. I also do not consider myself ignorant or anal, and the fact that I don't eat things that include remoulade doesn't make me 'less' cultured - just different. Point blank, every time I see a bottle of it in game I'm reminded that the game is made by a diverse international group of people. If you're okay with that, then I can be too; I only participated in this thread because it was a discussion about immersion, not because I particularly care if you set the game in a rural American area or not.
  13. In all honesty, I'd never even heard of the stuff until PZ. Didn't know what it was at all. In 45 years, the first time I ever heard of it was when I launched this game. That should hopefully give you some idea how unusual an item it is Also, 'Outback Steakhouse', while it is a large chain, is not that large and is a fairly latecomer to the American scene. And it derives its inspiration from Australia, which would make the things you find on its menu not necessarily representative of America
  14. Never heard of the stuff. I'll ask some of my friends tonight if they've heard of it. Lots of results for it, backing up Rathlord's previous claims about it being commonly used with fish: http://www.jeffruby.com/louisville/menu I must be bored. Mmm...sorry, but having it show up as an item on a menu here and there or as part of some specialty recipe does not make it 'common' in Kentucky. The point made by others here still stands: It's vastly overrepresented in the game to the detriment of things that are actually far more common (like Ketchup, for instance) in your average Kentucky household.
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