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MadDan

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  1. I'm not sure why you've linked a Reddit post that seems completely borked to even look at, I'm not even sure what it is.

    Edit: It didn't load on mobile, now I see.

     

    But we've blogged on NPCs maybe a year ago and went in depth about them. The first instance of human NPCs is currently planned for Build 43.

    Technically the first instance of NPCs is Build 42 with animals.

     

     

  2. 5 minutes ago, Vic Charlie said:

    From your website:

    OPTIMIZATION

    We’ve made huge optimizations to the rendering of the map that should have a huge impact for most lower-midrange and upwards systems. We are now easily able to get a solid framerate even on 4K, or on furthest zoom. The difference in performance is honestly surprising, and extremely satisfying.

    For full disclosure, however, we’ve discovered that a few of the absolutely lowest end systems capable of running our game are still adversely affected. This is because the solution for such large FPS optimization comes at the expense of GPU memory usage for the caching textures used. Cards with extremely low dedicated GPU memory may run into problems.

    We’re investigating and trying to optimize this further to make sure as many systems as possible can benefit, and worst case scenario these optimizations will be disabled on systems where they would do more harm than good.

    However, it’s still entirely possible that we’ll be able to resolve this completely and provide a large boost to even the most potato systems. More likely, we’ll provide some kind of automatic detection to provide as large a portion of the optimizations as possible for a GPU’s available memory. This will be our next task post visual-bug clear out.

    Generally we estimate that a huge majority of our playerbase will benefit greatly from the optimizations. Since most of the optimization frustrations we hear come from players who feel their machine should be able to run PZ at a solid framerate, we feel this work will ease the vast majority of performance sadness we see in the community."

     

    This is talking about Build 42, which isn't out yet. There hasn't been a public update to the game since when Beard said. If you're using mods it may be causing the issue.

  3. 5 hours ago, aof1. said:

    hi, can i ask if i can get UB from discord server ?
    my dc: aof1.
    thank you for checking my request.

    Go to this Discord server, there doesn't appear to be anyone by that name banned on our main server.

  4. 10 hours ago, odizzido said:

    I am an occasional player of this game. I enjoy it when I play, though my last run was cut short because steam decided W7 wasn't good enough anymore so I lost access to all my steam games on my main PC.

     

    Anyways, this game has come along pretty well I think. I will probably start a game up when 42 comes out whenever that is. No rush.

     

    As to learning from EA?...geez, I hope not. The person who started TIS would need to start sending death threats to their employees, punching people, sexually assaulting people, and generally start being human garbage that stays above the law since they're rich because they've managed to scam an enormous number of people with their "games". That's EA. I hope TIS stays away from all of that.

    That "learning from EA" post above was purely facetious. Thankfully.

  5. Personally, I gotta address this thing because it irks me always seeing stuff like it thrown out as fact:

     

    "I can say without exaggeration that the entire game is driven by the community, and that the game is not becoming less popular due to the lack of attention from the developers to Build 41."

     

    I've explained this myself numerous times and frankly it sickens me seeing it. It's looking at it through a narrow scope, obviously people are going to play with mods, or at least most of them, at some point when we support them as we do, and every game will have mods that outweigh ANY development team by absolutely any standard and that is straight fact. We intentionally support them to allow people to play in different experience that we aren't going to, or don't want to do. They don't require testing, they don't require support, they don't require care so sure, anyone can cobble them together and then forget about them and take their time with it with no consequences. Development teams can't do that, not that we would or ever want to. Pitching them against each other frankly is what makes me sick. We are damn fucking proud of our modders and that's the reason we continually support them with more accessibility in modding, but we're also damn proud of our own team taking their time, testing and focusing on getting it right as we have done despite belief of failure, or the next zombie survival game killing us, or the time making people "move on".

     

    We get it all takes time, and I personally get how frustrating it is waiting and have been on the other side of this many many years ago so it's equally as frustrating being on the other side and knowing how much effort gets shoved aside when we take our time, as we always do, to deliver something that surpasses the last build, as we always do.

  6. On 11/30/2023 at 8:00 PM, Bullet_Magnate said:

    For the most part this all sounds great.  However ...

     

    I can't say I am super excited about a crafting system that, at its roots, relies on a resource / harvesting system that is (at least I think) seriously unrealistic.  Easily harvestable iron ore deposits just lying around 1993 Kentucky seems ... unlikely, in a word.  Seems to confirm some of my fears about the game morphing into "Minecraft with zombies."  I know the game is to some extent inspired by Minecraft, but what sets PZ apart to me is its substantial commitment to realism. 

     

    That said, I will be perfectly fine going that direction as long as some provision is made for those who don't want unrealistic resource harvesting options available.  If such deposits can be made vanishingly rare or non-existent in sandbox settings, that's fine.  However, I'd want to see some viable alternatives then -- such as a robust system for salvaging / scrapping existing metal from cars, furniture, etc. -- and maybe, late game, the possibility of interaction with NPC traders who can import rare / valuable items (like scrap metal) from off-map. 

     

    Overall, I like everything I'm seeing -- that's the only thing that gives me pause. 

     

     

    Copying this from Steam:

    Well, we agree lol.
    So this was definitely something we didn't explain in the blog well enough and caused quite a lot of "wtf" reactions but iron veins are something we're considering for "empty slate" kinds of maps, i.e. maps that are *NOTHING* but wilderness, without any sign of civilization. It's mainly something for a concept map we're working on as well as for modders, or MP admins, etc.
    We're not going to put iron veins between Muldraugh and Westpoint or the like.

  7. 51 minutes ago, doshskia said:

    i would not agree with, twd is a terrible show
    and the whole "the people you should fear the most are not the dead" is a rather baseless theory

    also npcs are hard to do in a flexible game like this

    That is what we are going for though. It's inevitable that if people survive for years, in a world with no rules - people will become the bigger threat. TWD and other zombie media similar to that, pretty much always ends up the same and that's why it's realistic in that regard. That's not to say that zombies won't be a threat, still, but with veteran survivors it'll be cockiness that gets them rather than inexperience. People are unpredictable, zombies are not.

     

    I can't link it now but we have two in depth blogs about the NPCs systems that have been worked on for B43, as of now.

  8. connectionblog.png

     

    Hey everyone. Jumping straight in with an update on the new and improved crafting system this time around if that’s okay with y’all.

    As we’ve talked about in previous Thursdoids, a large part of the crafting overhaul revolves around creating a unified, powerful and expansive system for machines, crafting stations and appliances. This covers all the different things you find around the world, and those crafted by yourself and your friends.

     

    A primary piece of this puzzle has been in the creation of dev systems and methodology that allow for the hugely swifter implementation of far more varied/interesting crafting and devices – which in turn is a big thing for modders, and for the nu-medieval post apocalyptic society gameplay we will now cater for.

    This has also been built, however, with a framework that will allow for a wide variety of other gameplay aspects – some of which will be a part of the initial 42 release, while others will be drip-fed into future 42 builds, and more still in the mainline builds beyond that. (The underlying systems will be available for modders from the word go, however.)

     

    One of the advantages that the crafting revamp brings with it is the opportunity to provide engineering and electronics gameplay with a ton more depth. This system revolves around the concept of components.

     

    An example of this would be a ‘power input’ component, which provides electrical power to a machine from an external wire. Another would be a crafting component, which would undertake a crafting recipe that can make use of any liquid or item within a machine’s resource component, that can store items, liquid or power. Importantly, every component also has an associated UI that’s been designed for player interaction.

     

    This will mean as our library (and the community’s library) of components grows, we can quickly put them together to create all sorts of in-game machines and appliances. It’s also relatively easy to slap a UI skin on to each component (perhaps something already existing from the game, perhaps something new) to make them appear in the most appropriate way.

    Components will also be moddable, so modders will be able to add new components that could then be used as parts of a machine’s in-game functionality and UI.

     

    The end goal is to open this up to the player in-game, having these components as items obtainable through disassembly.

    A burglar alarm for example will be comprised of a speaker component, as well as a battery input component and a motion sensor component. A player could feasibly go around collecting the components, removing the motion sensors and installing them around their base, wiring each of them up to lights to act as an early warning system.

     

    Meanwhile the speaker component of the burglar alarm could be similarly wired up to a switch to allow people in the base to create a distraction sound to lure zombies away or into a trap.

    These are just two potential gameplay moments plucked from the air, but good examples of a believable utility of scavenging components from real world items.

     

    Putting aside all the new professions and skills coming to B42, this will finally provide engineering and electronic skills with a lot of cool utility – and make anyone with these skills a valuable asset to any survivor group.

    This system will also be the bedrock for the crafting tree, providing functionality for the various profession workbenches, crafting stations and more primitive machines. For example, for the more medieval constructions, one form of power input available is rotational energy, allowing for mills and other contraptions to power machines and stations.

     

    Ultimately our hope would be any machine or appliance on the map would simply be a combination of these components. Someone skilled enough would be able to remove them and put them together in any way they made sense: each component will have simple item, power, liquid or logic inputs and outputs.

     

    Taking it a step further, it would also give us the option of making functional machines within the various industrial areas of the map – providing functional machines that could feasibly be utilized (perhaps even looted and taken back to base) and potentially making factory locations extremely high value targets for looting.

     

    This will also, ultimately, add far more interesting gameplay to base construction and generator usage. We would have pipes and wires to facilitate the wiring and plumbing of machines and home systems together – rather than fudging water collector positions to make operable sinks, or just placing a generator next to a building and instantly powering it.

     

    How far could this be pushed?

     

    Well, in testing the system’s flexibility, Turbo grabbed some existing sprites from around the map to make sure the system was working okay for both our needs, and those of the modding community.

     

    PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS VIDEO IS FROM A DEVELOPMENT TESTBED.

     

    There’s no guarantee any of this will make it into B42, and likewise they are all built from random tiles that Turbs has nicked from our industrial sprite collection. This is all a part of testing the speed and simplicity of creating new machines – and from that underline how powerful the new system is.

     

    Everything seen in this vid was put together with minimal specific code – and largely relied on existing components put together within the machines in the PZ script files along with new items and recipes.

     

     

     

    We’ve got enough on our plate, so we likely won’t have a full suite of replaced ‘existing machines and appliances’ by the time 42 unstable rolls around but we believe that these new foundations for PZ’s crafting system will provide great opportunities both for our existing gameplay, and the gameplay we have planned for the years ahead.

     

    This has certainly been the part of 42 that’s taken the longest to come together (not helped by dev illness and hospitalization in early development stages) but it’s also the stuff that we absolutely needed to nail to provide the huge boost in player and community creativity that we know it can provide. We’re at that point now, we feel, and look forward to showing off more applications in the near future.

    HELLO PATRICK

    A big Spiffo welcome to Patrick, an actual real American on the main dev team. Patrick is a software engineer who has been away working in academia on educational games for a fair while – but has his roots in more conventional gaming and has had his claws in various Tomb Raiders, Tony Hawk games, Ratchets, and Clanks over the years.

     

    His primary mission is the implementation of ragdolls into the game – although initial work and experimentation is still very much exploratory.

     

    We haven’t had an actual real American who remembers 1993 on the dev team for a while, so it also means he gets to answer a lot of questions about parking lots, drivethroughs and various other Americana. He is coping with this admirably.

    FOLLOW THAT DEER

    A quick check-in with our (still WIP) animal tracking system. This could probably look a little better in terms of visual variation when it comes to animal tracks and direction, but is shaping up to be pretty fun.

     

    HOLSTERS AND WEBBING

    dh-1-300x265.png

     

    lc-289x300.png

     

    some-bloke-dunno-296x300.png

     

    ij-300x283.png

    CHARITY SPIFF – PLZ BUY

    Just over a week left if you want to buy yourself a Steadfast Spiffo, and say ‘fuck cancer’ simultaneously.

     

    Tweet for further info.

     

    A changelist of all our pre-release and post-release patches since the 41 beta began can be found here. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send you update notifications once builds get released. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is open for chat and hijinks too. Experienced games industry gameplay coder and want to join Team Awesome? Jobs page here

  9. While I won't respond to all your points, I think you can find the spirit of PZ by reading these suggestions that we're not going for:

     

    The spirit of the game is the world is over, you're just an ordinary person and things only get worse as time goes on. No cures, no special zombies. Just NPCs becoming the bigger threat over time than zombies until you eventually die in some capacity.


    Zomboid is basically trying to not be what the majority of your points are - which tend to be similar among every other zombie game. This is what makes Zomboid far more unique.

  10. This is when games get too micromanage-y. There has to be limits to the complexity, and this is one of them. In terms of cosmetics, it would be fine like the makeup we have. Like adding scars to your character in character creation. Making an entire system around acne it is a bit much.

  11. 16 minutes ago, colten834 said:

    should add something like a outpost/safezone with survivors and like traders with quest givers and like a currency

    We will be adding NPCs in the future, however they won't be static like this or vendors like other games.

     

    They are extensively talked about in detail in these two blog posts:

    https://projectzomboid.com/blog/news/2022/04/lone-survivor/

    https://projectzomboid.com/blog/news/2022/03/the-zuckerverse/

  12. This is a lot to read, but from what I gathered in your post this is what we are aiming for with NPCs, and close to how some of their systems will work. Obviously there will be deviations with us making the NPCs how we would like, so I'd suggest reading these two blogs on NPCs to see what we are aiming for:

     

    https://projectzomboid.com/blog/news/2022/04/lone-survivor/

    https://projectzomboid.com/blog/news/2022/03/the-zuckerverse/

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