Dryke

As suggestions go - this one, too, falls into the category of realism vs. gameplay. Is it realistic that eventually a zombie would decay to the point that it was no longer a threat? Absolutely. You can come up with any number of scientific facts that simply cannot be ignored or explained away even with a magic zombie virus. However...we all have to admit that to even begin to imagine a true zombie apocalypse there has to be some suspension of disbelief. So if we accept that a corpse can, under any circumstance, become ambulatory and start attacking the living then it's not a very far step to say that whatever animates the corpse can keep it going for at least a few years. And once you reach that point...well, how many of us have ever lasted one year in PZ, let alone several? At the end of the line, I personally think there's no reason to implement any type of 'zombie death from decay' system because the lore itself already provides enough justification to say that no one in the game is likely to live long enough to see it actually happen

To be fair to the OP, it isn't really necessary to think of this as a strict suggestion for medieval style chain mail - and thus it isn't really important whether or not you could find such a thing in Kentucky. I can guarantee you that if the zombie apocalypse happened, the citizens of Kentucky are familiar enough with the idea of personal protection to imagine some type of body armor to defeat or at least address the idea of being scratched or bitten. Think about the movie World War Z (and forget for a moment how horribly they butchered Max Brook's story, because in the end it was still a decent zombie apocalypse movie...but I digress). Remember Brad Pitt's character 'armoring' his extremities with magazines? Same idea. Body armor could range from something as simple as that - and we already have magazines and duct tape in the game! - to something far more extravagant. After all, while chain mail itself was eventually something made by highly skilled armorsmiths, there are plenty of types of body armor that would suit the simple purpose of stopping bites or scratches that can be made with far less skill. So the real issue here is evaluating whether or not body armor of any type can be implemented without being game breaking. It's not possible to make a solid argument that some type of body armor response is unlikely even in rural Kentucky. In fact, the opposite is true - to be realistic, rudimentary body armor WOULD appear fairly quickly and if any society could actually establish itself post-apocalypse then far more advanced forms would eventually appear. This is just one of those things where the developers have to decide if realism would lead to more or less fun gameplay.

If it IS possible, something that would be helpful is if there is a way to identify how the chunks correspond to the map. I'm not at home right now so I can't look at the files, but is it something pretty obvious (like the files are named according to the chunk #) or is it some other method?

I think if people want to get a flavor for what NPCs could/should be like, they should play on a PVP enabled server. Some of the people you meet are the nicest folks you can ever imagine and would give you their last fish if you were hungry, or race across an infested zone to help you if you were in trouble. Others will kill you for a bag of chips, or maybe because they are just bored. Some will group up with other survivors and take direction from a player that takes charge; others prefer to either work in a loose group or even go it alone. Sometimes even two nice people have personalities that don't mesh and they end up being quite unfriendly with each other. Ideally, NPC's should be as close to 'real people' as it is possible (and practical) to code them. Read any apocalypse story, watch any apocalypse movie - the theme is constant: Often times the event that caused the apocalypse takes a back seat to the story of how people interact with each other when there is no authority to which they can be held accountable. This isn't just based upon our sci-fi fantasies, either; human history is replete with stories of how humanity behaves when they think no one is watching.

As development continues, I imagine the whole respawn issue will continue to get more attention and the options will become more complex. For instance, one thing that would be nice to be able to do (but I have no clue if it's practical) would be to give the option to completely redraw/reset specific cells - erasing any player manipulation entirely and respawning zombies and loot accordingly. This way a server admin could designate some areas of the map as 'free construction' zones and other zones would be subject to a complete reset. If this ends up being possible, it would also allow server admins to fine tune things according to their server capabilities since I am guessing the more player manipulation you try to retain on the map, the more load you are likely to have on the server.

Whitelisting is a good solution if the main goal is to keep this user off the server - particularly since he's just switching IP's at will and making it impossible to lock him out with an individual ban. Unfortunately the server as it is currently set up is based on an 'open community' model rather than a dedicated group of specific players, so committing to a whitelist system means changing that As others have said here, though...it is early in MP development yet and at some point in the future things will likely change. I really only brought all of this up as a way of identifying an issue that can be put on the list of things to take care of...eventually For now, it seems that those who play MP will either have to accept a closed/whitelisted group of players, OR accept the possibility that some random person could show up at any time and destroy everything they've worked for over and above the mechanics already in place in game (such as zombie death or PVP).

There's something out there that is allowing people to log into a MP server in some type of god mode. Unkillable, spawn anything at will, see/find anyone, etc. Just had to leave a MP server that was under assault by someone running this. Even with the admins working in the background to stop them, all they could really do was ban him and then he was just switching IP's and returning. While the two admins are some pretty sharp guys, it might be worth looking into how secure the program is against people giving themselves god mode.

I think the thing that people should keep in mind when considering this 'discrepancy' is that we are talking about two entirely different levels of significance. The zombies are an immediate threat and their significance is immense, so coming up with some way to accurately model LOS issues is important. So far they have chosen to model absolute LOS and it is up to the player's human brain to provide the memory regarding where they saw a zombie, how fast it was moving, etc.; personally I find this to be very realistic. While it is true that your in-game stress level impacts LOS, it is your personal stress that affects your ability to remember things...so if you are bugged out fighting some zombie and you forget the zombie sneaking up behind you...or misjudge the distance or speed...well, that's how it goes. Buildings? Trees? Roads? These are generally speaking no threat at all. They don't move. They are essentially insignificant. So while it is true that it is not 'realistic' for the game to remember the map for you, it also has a negligible impact on gameplay. After all, you could easily justify it by assuming that your character picked up a map of the town, or perhaps drew one on a piece of paper as he/she went along.

To whom? The taliban? Who would care? In any event, goats are a commodity in that area of the world and goatherds are common. Therefore if you are going to do a mock-up of someone from that region, including a goat is just being accurate. It's offensive to people. Just because i'm not Chinese, doesn't mean I suddenly don't get offended at racism toward Chinese people. Same goes with a Afghani Taliban mock-up, it just doesn't make sense to defend that sort of caricature. It does nothing good at all, perhaps a victimless crime, but makes me embarrassed as a citizen of this great country. Agreed - you don't have to be a member of a particular group to be offended by something racist towards that group. I suspect where you and I would differ is whether or not this particular 'caricature' is in fact racist (in the sense that most Americans understand that word) and beyond that whether or not the fact that anyone finds it offensive is really relevant.

To whom? The taliban? Who would care? In any event, goats are a commodity in that area of the world and goatherds are common. Therefore if you are going to do a mock-up of someone from that region, including a goat is just being accurate.

If you are going for realism, you are going to have to introduce vehicles at some point - including driveable vehicles. It's simply not realistic to think that every vehicle everywhere would be completely out of gas or broken down immediately following an apocalypse. Besides, if the map is going to get much larger at all then vehicle travel becomes increasingly important. At the same time you can balance the benefit with the realistic hazards. Disabled vehicles in the roadway, for one. You can also track vehicle durability and have it drop every time you hit anything (including a human body - you'd be very surprised at the damage a body can do to a car, even a very large and sturdy car). You could also simulate damage to a vehicle from driving it offroad - the overwhelming majority of vehicles just aren't designed to run on anything but pavement. You could even track vehicle deterioration over time if you wanted to get detailed enough. Finally you would certainly want to include some hazard to the occupant should you have a big enough collision - some way of modeling damage to the driver. All of this said...yeah, I can't imagine this is nearly as important as other things that can be added to the game. So as long as development is ongoing I don't think it would be appropriate to say 'no vehicles ever' - but I can certainly see where they might keep getting pushed to the bottom of a list of more useful and important things and never getting added because development time will eventually stop.

Yeah, nails...that's my main problem. This pic is from single player and I've completely scoured all of Muldraugh and the Dixie Trailer Park as well as the hardware store (and the nearby warehouse) in West Point. In MP I can see that nails will be a hot commodity, at least until they either introduce a way to craft them or until there is some other agreed upon way to introduce new nails into the resource 'economy'.

Here's the latest update on my safehouse/fortress. I'd really like to do a few more things but I'm running low on nails again (having already used several thousand). You can see where this is located (and a good 'before' picture) at http://pzmap.crash-override.net/#0.5724919623804372,0.18156724255390497,64.25454752610602 (courtesy of the Project Zomboid Map Project page, credit to 'blindcoder').

Survival is as simple as hiding somewhere remote. You can survive nearly indefinitely that way. However in most cases I think it very unlikely that you would be unable to find danger after only 2-3 months. Again, you could surely clear a small area and stay in that area if you like - but if you decide instead to venture out you'll find plenty of zombies. I just can't see killing 10,000 zombies in 2-3 months so that means if you can't find 'enough' zombies you just aren't going to where the zombies are.

Once they up zombie spawning and add migrating hordes it will probably be a lot harder to survive as you are now Mmmm, possibly. It would depend on whether they put in 'magic' spawning zombies (that just appear in the middle of cleared areas) or if the spawned zombies actually migrate in from some unexplored zone. If it's magic zombies, then yeah, who can defend against that? If however they migrate in 'rationally' then my main fortress is surrounded by a thick forest so it will have the tendency to break up any incoming hordes. Beyond that I have a gargantuan supply of shotgun shells/9mm rounds as well as numerous melee weapons so I can probably weather quite a few hordes. Not to mention, currently all of Muldraugh (including McCoy, the rail yard, and that remote set of warehouses) are effectively zombie free, as well as the Dixie trailer park and the road leading all the way to the edge of West Point. My safehouse is the farm just outside of Muldraugh (without the well) which means I've killed every zombie I've been able to find within a full day's running distance from my fortress. So, again, without magic zombies I'm not sure where a horde would come from to threaten me in the first place

Interesting ideas in here. Of course one has to realize that with the amount of rainfall in Knox County you could almost assuredly get enough water just by standing outside with your mouth open...but if we're going to take this topic seriously, then I would say: As has been mentioned before, you would not filter urine, you would distill it. Filtering urine is very difficult to do properly and as a side effect your filtering material will become less effective as time goes on, whereas the equipment used for distillation never really gets 'used up'. If the temperature is high enough (say on a warm day) it is remarkably easy to do even if all you have is a couple of containers (one larger than the other so that you can put the smaller one inside the larger one), a piece of plastic, and a small pebble. All things you could easily find during the apocalypse. The more equipment and resources you get the easier it gets - by the time you have the equipment necessary to make a cup of tea and the ability to create fire you also have what you need for a more functional distillation process. Also: You CAN drink your own urine directly and derive some useful moisture from it, but as has also been pointed out there are diminishing returns; the more dehydrated you are (or the more often you have been drinking your own urine) the less benefit you will receive. Even the distillation process is not indefinite; each time you use it you will come away with less and less distilled liquid, and the less efficient your distiller is the less liquid you will recover each time. In other words without a secondary source of water you can't plan on surviving on urine alone for more than a couple of days no matter which method you use. As far as filtering/distilling zombie blood...not going to happen. You'd never be able to filter or distill safe, useable water from regular blood outside of a laboratory setting; zombie blood is going to be a nasty congealed infectuous nightmare and you'd be insane to even make the attempt. As I mentioned earlier you'd do better to just stand outside at a random time of day with your mouth open and wait for water to fall into it.

Absolutely! Burning the corpses has to be right in there along with cleaning up the blood. I wouldn't be surprised though if that's already on the menu. With respect to getting ill from the corpses...I'm hoping that at the same time you implement that you also implement a counter, such as letting players use improvised 'gas masks' or something to help them avoid the exposure, particularly if they are hauling bodies to some central disposal location.

I took this screenshot a little while ago - That was during my expedition to West Point to get more nails; in that picture I'm at the trailer park between the two towns (also another good place to get nails!). Since then I've added I think another month or two of survival and I'm up to just over 5k zombie kills. Now I'm back at my safehouse/fortress to finish it off and I don't really 'need' to leave for anything so at this point I think I could survive indefinitely. I've killed every zombie I could find in greater Muldraugh and the Dixie trailer park so without magically appearing zombies there isn't a horde anywhere near me.

Hey there! Long time stalker, first time poster I've just started getting into this game on steam and by gosh its just the best zombie survival game out there. Its my dream game. Anyway, hello I was wondering if there were any plans to implement this sort of graveyard idea into the final game? Like a screen (or an actual in-game graveyard) that displays info about all your lost survivors, how long they survived, how many zeds they dispatched, that sorta thing. I'm CERTAIN this must have been mentioned somewhere else at some other point, but I just wanted to know if anyone knew if that idea was something they were looking at? I miss all my survivors dearly and I learnt the hard way not to name one after yourself, poor little 'me' died in a record low of about 3 days. Betty Harris, Maria Cox, Ernest Miller, you will be missed. This is a nice post to transition from lurker to poster Two things about your post caught my attention. The first was when you were describing your 'dream game'. I was introduced to PZ by my 15 year old son because about three months before I had described to him what my ideal zombie survival game would look like...and he had found this game, and he thought it was exactly what I was looking for, and wouldn't I like to take a look? And he was right The second thing was your idea...I like that idea. Sort of a roguelike history of past games

Happy Anniversary to me!

I didn't see too many large hordes pre-23; maybe a couple where I had some exciting time with my fire axe and sawed off shotgun while I cleared Muldraugh. Post-23, however...I ran out of nails and since Muldraugh was cleared I headed down the road to the trailer park along the road to West Point, thinking I would set up a safehouse there as a midway point before going to West point to scavenge. Just in that trailer park so far I have had two major horde battles and I suspect there is at least a third battle waiting; the hordes have been much larger and more aggressive (more fast zombies and much more determined to follow me, etc). In all I would say hordes big enough to make fire weapons practical are already here.

Here's my main safehouse as it stands so far. I don't have the beta 'Iwillbackupmysave' branch running so I don't have the second story fix. When I do, I plan for some improvements - the corner towers you see so far are just the base level and I plan to build second stories that I can shoot from and perhaps third stories for fun; also the two exterior entrances will be fortified and 'sheet rope access only' rather than doors.

I have one spiffo that I collected for my main safehouse, and I've probably seen three or four others since that I didn't bother to pick up. As far as being 'lucky', they didn't seem all that lucky for the person that used to own them so....

Long term I wouldn't count on existing wooden/chain link fencing of any kind being unbreakable. It's just not realistic and I can see that changing at some point

Mmm, I think 'lucky' would be better