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Vehicle mechanics in PZ is absolutely outstanding, and in my opinion, one of the most fun aspects of the whole game. I've observed a certain detail about it and came up with this suggestion. Removing "Engine Quality" and adding a car part named "Starter Motor" Like in real life, the starter motor would be a car part located underneath the hood. With a proper level of mechanics skill and the correct tools, it could be replaced or fixed, and it should obey the car categories (Standard/Heavy-duty/Sports). Engine quality would no longer exist, and chances of successfully starting the car's engine would be determined by two factors: the starter motor health and the remaining charge of the car battery. This would provide a more immersive experience in car mechanics, without making it excessively realistic and fun-spoiling. I always enjoyed the way emergency vehicles often have higher chances of reliably starting the engine, as I assume these vehicles are regularly maintained in real life, but on the other hand, I see no reason why civilian vehicles cannot have engine qualities higher than a 60. If a player is s mechanic, it should be fun and rewarding to have the possibility to excel at maintaining your civilian vehicle, making it as reliable as any police cruiser. Please tell me any thoughts about my suggestion!

The vehicles in the game all have the some looking dashboard HUD so I was thinking different vehicles should have different dashboard HUDs. You know with differently arranged and shaped odometers, fuel gauges, rev counter etc. Makes the game more realistic and authentic.

I am here today as an everyday real life bicycle commuter and a new fan of Project Zomboid to advocate for Bicycles. In short, my claim is that bicycles would be a great addition to the game because they are 1) realistic, 2) fill a good spot in the game's difficulty curve, 3) have a good risk/reward gameplay mechanic, and 4) have their own depth. I'll detail each below. 1) realistic I understand a primary goal of PZ is to be a realistic simulation. In a real zombie apocolypse, I believe a bicycle would absolutely, certainly, without doubt be my #1 form of transportation. A human in reasonable fitness level can travel about 40-80 miles in a day depending on slope and average speed. 1. Efficient mode of human transportation (see Steve Jobs quote on locomotion per km, humans as tool makers) 2. Few moving parts, serviceable with common tools 3. Tolerant of parts failure (eg: brakes fail? can still slow down in other ways. Chain fails? can still scoot/coast. Tire fails? can still roll, slowly, damages wheel hub.) 4. Few external world dependencies (plenty of inner tubes and chains in the world to last my natural lifespan) 2) Fits well into the game's difficulty progression My first couple play throughs, I thought cars were impossible. Keys, skills, gas, noise, broken parts. Bikes fill a gap in between walking and driving (+1 from axiomatic) -- they aren't as safe or high capacity, but it's easier to get one going. I would guess that fewer than 5% of players have seen more than 5% of the map's buildings. (not sure if you have stats like that) -- it's really hard for a new player like me to get out and see some of the amazing and detailed locations that have been modeled out. 3) Good risk/reward gameplay mechanics. Bikes are fast, long range, and easy -- but the tradeoff is they're incredibly exposed. Similar to a "glass cannon" build in an RPG. Crashing on a bike is more dangerous (exposure, injury) than crashing on car Good to get around, but carrying cargo is a real pain (drop stuff, slower, no free hands, turn slower) Inverse relationship between cargo weight and safety/stability -- could even model high center of mass penalty (backpacks) if wanted. mountain bike tires are loud on a road at speed. road bike tires are terrible on bumpy/grassy terrain long legged pants protect from scratches but get caught in chain 😂 4) They have their own depth Depending on how deep you'd like each skill tree, bikes have this option. Bikes can have trailers and other bolt on parts (lights, baskets, etc) Big range of bike types Skill with riding could be distinct from fitness/finesse/lightfootedness Other support on the forum: mrtrololo thiago marco7 etsamaru roach extrema Implementation details: Lots of new animations needed here. Mount, dismount, go, turn, crash, wobble, bump, attack. This is tough. Maybe there's a way to test the gameplay mechanic without going all-in on animations. Eg, in a beta build; just represent the bicycle and a shadow of the person, but not your specific character. If it takes off in beta and seems fun, then you know the animations are worth funding. Physics. Hard to say without seeing how it feels, but it could be that vehicle physics are good enough with added visual feedback for falling down, bumpy terrain, and wobbling/about to fall down. I wouldn't want to build a whole two wheel balance thing, instead just assume if the player slows they are walking over the bike. Summary Really amazing (and long term!) project, you've done incredible work here. I am advocating for bikes. I know it has been asked before. I know it's been asked for years before. But still. It's such a realistic apocalypse option and fits the game so freakin' well. And think of the FUN! Zombie-slaying knights on bikes 🚴‍♂️ 🐉. Bikes at night 🚴‍♀️ 🌙. Bike with friends 🚵‍♂️ 🚴‍♀️ 🚴‍♂️. It's not my right to have bikes, but I sure would like bikes. Thanks!

I think it'd be nice if tow trucks were added to the game for the following reasons. 1. You could tow a car with the crane in the rear of the truck without having to get out of your car to hook it up. 2. Tow trucks would have high horse power by default so they'd be especially good for towing vehicles. 3. The crane in the back could lift the car upwards creating less drag since only 2 tires would be making contact with the road. 4. They'd be a great way of sorting vehicles out rather than have to drive each one individually to put into place or have each be towed manually by another car. 5. You could clear the road of any accident obstructions of too wrecked to even get into cars or just regular cars. I was thinking the tow crane could be controlled like raised or lowed by the v menu from flat to a predetermined height/angle. Also you could set from the menu whether to hook up to a car or release it from the tow hook. I was thinking they could be found around at tow garages or along the road at accident events.

For example, if you remove a door from a green car and install it on a red car, it should have a green colored door instead of the same color as the rest of the vehicle. I think this would give vehicles a more post-apocalyptic look.

What if in Project Zomboid you could find a tool called a Slim Jim (which is basically a fancy metal stick or wire) to open up locked car doors without having to break them? I was thinking you could find the tool in some houses, auto shops and maybe even the burglar occupation could spawn with it by default. The V menu for a car could have a "use Slim Jim" option for the Slim Jim to lockpick it. Might take a couple tries though like hotwiring the car does.

I think it'd be nice to be able to lock pick in the game like for car doors as well as regular doors. I think this mechanic could be some kind of lock picking skill that you'd improve from picking locks as well as boost through lock picking books. Maybe there could even be a locksmith occupation that gets you started on the functional capabilities of said skill. Perhaps the skill could also be in the burglar occupation. I think for the tools needed it'd be standard lock picks or maybe you could even make some out of the paperclips you find in the game. For starters, It'd be nice to be able to unlock a car without having to find the key or smash the window in addition to hotwiring it. As for doors it'd be nice being able to get in the building without having to find the key or bash my way in through said door or other entrance. For padlocks it'd be nice to get through those too. I guess for the mechanic to work, with all the proper items and skills in hand you'd right click the you want to lock pick and select "pick lock" and the progress meter would fill up as you pick the lock. It will take a few tries until success and fewer tries and faster ones as you level up.

Okay so get this, the guy on the cover of Project Zomboid is a on car and yet we can't climb vehicles in the game? I mean if we could climb up cars that would add some protection from the zombies. You know, in a "I have the high ground!" kind of sense. The zombies would either not be able to climb up making you completely safe but surrounded; not able to climb up but able to pull you down if you're too close to the edge making it so you should go inwards on top of the car as much as possible; or they can climb up and maul you to death in addition to pulling you down. If they can't climb up but you're surrounded it would give you the opportunity to pick them off with your gun or strike them dead downwards with a melee weapon. Same thing if they could pull you down which is a bit more challenging. It the most extreme case they can climb up or pull you down making it so you have to attack the most immediately threatening zombie. Like the one that gets up first, that's who you kill. The most extreme case would force you to fight quickly and sequentially to at least endure a bit longer. Might want to add some kind of move to knock off climbing zombies or swat away zombies trying to pull you down. Personally I prefer it if they couldn't climb or grab you down. The balancing factor would still be that if you're out of gun(s) rounds you got to pull out your melee weapon. If your melee weapon(s) breaks then you could very well be screwed. Screwed because you'd essentially be stranded on your car which would eventually lead to your death due to hunger and dehydration not to mention you probably could sleep too well. I mean a horde of zombies growling at me inches away while I'm on a hard cold car roof ain't exactly a sleep number bed experience. The car could also serve as a temporary barrier between you and the zombies. For example, they're chasing you, you quickly vault over a car (or climb it and jump off the other end) and now the zombies have to go around rather than just making a beeline for you. That could buy you some time which is always of the essence in the game in every conceivable way! So yeah I want to be able to use a car roof to my advantage as well as be like the chad on the cover!

There should be motorcycles in the game that can be filled with gas like cars. They'd be more maneuverable than cars and can even fit in the player's home/base through a normal door. Disadvantages would be less protection against zombies (and soon to be hostile NPCs) as well as the potential to be flung off the vehicle in a crash. There are already motorcycle helmets in the game but no motorcycle to go with them btw!

I noticed in project zomboid you can't see the inside of your vehicle. The windows are opaque and when they get broken there's this weird gray shade that shows up in the window frame. I was thinking windows should be transparent and show the inside of the vehicle like the seats and the player driving of course. Useful for seeing the player as well as their condition. Transparent windows are possible for buildings so I figure they'd be possible for vehicles. They gray shading where the window used to be could be mistaken for a window since it's opaque like the windows are just gray.

I noticed when you hook up cars to cars the towing chain is invisible. So I think the chain should be visible as in actually modeled and textured. If you have an invisible chain then it looks like the cars are just floating together which doesn't look right.

I think it'd be awesome to be able to customize makeshift weaponry for your vehicles in the game. Like weld some armor plates main body of the vehicular particularly the doors. That'd be nice protection. Some reinforced bumpers with spikes to slice up the zombies as you ram into them would be great! Some open/closeable gun ports would allow the player to shoot out of the car and be protected. They wouldn't overpowered since they'd still be damageable plus they'd take a lot of resources to make the protection for.

Hi! How often do survivors drive cars? Personally, I can't imagine the early days of the game without a car. This is a means of protection, transportation of your person and other good you need in this or that case. I would like to suggest making trips even more comfortable, correct, in my opinion. I noticed that if you get into the car while aiming, the player will be able to independently control the camera - I found it very convenient! You can see what is in the distance in front/ behind /on the side of the car without speeding up. Or move the camera much farther, which will help at high speeds. And everything is smooth and fast, without some “jitter” in contrast to the automatic mode (with disabled vertical synchronization) It would be great if the player, sitting in the car, could independently control the camera. Just the same as he does it on his own two feet - looking around and gazing into any distance. Perhaps it would be possible to add a separate toggle switch in the control settings for this...? All these screenshots were taken from the car. (Edited) You can assign a button to pan the camera and use it while driving. Go to settings, then key bindings, UI section and set a key to "pan the camera".

While it would likely be game-breaking to have an invulnerable vehicle you could rampage with, there is absolutely a sensible path to up-armoring a car. I used to play the tabletop game Car Wars which dealt, in less detail actually, with vehicular combat, but a significant portion of that is adding armor (and weapons) to a vehicle. Given how the current vehicle UI is so detailed, with all of its parts-- except it appears that quarter-panels don't exist, nor do bumpers or a front grill-- it would be logical to add new vehicle slots for welded attachments. The slots could be used for armor of various types (even cloth would prevent your being seen inside a car, while limiting your view, of course). The trade-off (just as it is in Car Wars) would be weight-- good armor is quite heavy and would affect every aspect of vehicle handling. As for weapons, it's also not that out of the question to either mount certain kinds of weapons (e.g., a flamethrower) to a vehicle, or to provide for the ability of the character to fire their handheld weapons both from stationary and moving vehicles in any direction, if the vehicle configuration allows (e.g., I remove all the glass and replace it with metal that has firing slots in it). I'm not so hot on the mounted weapons thing, but it seems logical that someone would/could do that in the "real-world" situation. The armoring is much more sensible, particularly on the front of the vehicle. You all have done such a great job with the vehicles-- I'd love to see that extended further.

In some situations it is really hard to hit the enter-vehicle-zone. Depending on the angle where you come from and related to the car type, size and how it was parked it's nearly impossible to enter without using the radial menu (too many clicks in a dangerous situation). I would prefer larger zones and automatic assignment to the driver seat. On MP this could work also just by entering from the side of the car (with larger enter-zones) and you get assigned to the first free seat of the car in order. That would make entering a car on the run way easier

Hi all! Here I would like to give some small wishes that would not greatly change the existing mechanics of the game. Also, I don't think it's very hard to implement. Nevertheless, with it, without it, nothing fundamentally should change. I will touch on the topic of cars and a little on the topic of weapons. What I would like to see in the near future in Project Zomboid and what I think would be really useful (Important): Just one thing - a quick exit from the car, without closing the door. It seems to me, but this will save a couple of “milliseconds” so that after the character appears at the door from which he left, he could immediately move, without delay. And besides, it's just realistic, if, for example, you need to run out of the car, take / throw something away, do something very quickly, then why close the door with these loud sounds? No, the sounds are great, I have nothing against it, but that's not about it now. How do I propose to implement this? Well, you can make a keyboard shortcut, for example Shift + E. Like if the character is given the action to drain / fill up the car with gasoline - holding the Shift key will make him hurry up ;P What I would like to see in Project Zomboid someday (Doesn't matter too much): Just 5 things: Then, when the rendered states of open/closed doors/trunks and other things are added, make the windows of the cars transparent by half or so. So that the characters and the interior inside could be seen without opening/dismantling the doors. Possibility to switch high/low beam. The state of the brakes/suspension could be understood through the sounds of road bumps/braking/cornering. There was a decal of a tire track on the road during sharp turns with a handbrake at speed. With the same way, for example, how blood is displayed. The side lights of the car illuminate everything around them with red light within a radius of 1-2 cells when braking. And now I would like to talk about firearms. I will not talk about something global. I want to touch on the topic of "repulsion" with firearms. For example, I never considered pushing off with a pistol in my hands as something effective. It's slow and doesn't stun zombies at all. My suggestion is to make it maybe a little faster and add a stun effect to the zombie, like getting hit with a blunt weapon. So that, at least, a melee fight, when you only have a gun in your hands, does not end with an endless repulsion and the hope that the zombie will fall. It is necessary to give the character a head start in order, for example, to take a step / jerk after successfully repulsing a zombie with a pistol. Or, for example, the animation of hitting the back of the head with a butt of a zombie is too good to be left on stealth. Here, too, you can think of something. For example, to enable the player and the character to perform this technique even in a normal fight. I am not a developer, not a modder, but I know for sure that the game has already implemented a system of “interaction areas” in combat. If the zombie is too close - the character repels it, if it is at a sufficient distance, then it produces a normal blow. I hope you understand what I mean. So, why not use this “technology” in the moment, for example, close combat with a shotgun / rifle in your hands? If, for example, the zombie is out of the character's reach, he swings, starts hitting with the butt, and at the moment the zombie enters the combat area of the character's interaction, the character hits the zombie with the butt, stunning him and causing some amount of damage. And if the zombie is already in the character's combat area, then the character simply pushes him away, because this is the fastest and most logical way to move the zombie away from himself, but without stunning and damage. In my opinion, this should not be something effective in combat with large groups of zombies, but should be very effective, for example, in the case of a fight in a closed room with only a shotgun in hand. Well, or against single zombies, when you need to save ammo. That's all I wanted to offer. I think these are really small things and I don’t expect to see them in the next patches, but I think that just the same small things bring pleasure and immersion in the game itself. With love from Milove for Big Love (The Indie Stone)

Every now and then (maybe 1 in every 10) vehicles, when I enter the maintenance menu (by pressing E at their bonnets), I cannot right click on the "engine" component. Nothing happens. I can always right click on the muffler, wheels, windows, gas tank, etc, everything else, just not the engine. Even if the engine is in great condition/green. I get no feedback/sound, as well as no context menu opening up. If I right click on a red <10% engine I can usually get a menu saying it needs to be ">10% to take engine parts" or whatever it says, but randomly I just cannot right click on the engine. I do this because I want to take the engine parts, I mean.

Issue : Vehicle teleport/disappear when leaving it Version 41.65 Multiplayer (Dedicated Server) Not any mod I'm playing with a friend on dedicated server I host myself. We're experiencing multiple issues with vehicles on our last(fifth) session (nothing like that before). I'm not sure about the reproduction steps but it seems like that : Start the dedicated server and join the server with a friend Hitch a trailer to car OR tow a car with another Get in the "main" car, drive a bit, stop the engine, leave the vehicle Leave the server (without unhooking the trailer/unhitching the towed car) Stop the server (quit command) correctly Start the dedicated server and join the server with a friend The trailer/towed car is disconnected ??!!?!?! Get in your "main" car and drive a couple of meters Get out of the car Vehicle fly back at the step 8 initial position, or if the distance is way bigger simply disappear (same for the "attachment") Here the logs (I'm not an expert but tons of "NullPointerException" when it happened). logs.zip

Vehicle spawn in fences at Riverside junkyard Version : Stable 41.65 Singleplayer No mods Just had a couple games in Riverside today when I encountered that at junkyard (see image below).

How to reproduce it: 1. Take any car, vanilla or mod 2. Do some damage to the front 3. Remove the hood, the whole frontal damage is gone, install the hood back on, the damage is back Same bug was observed by multiple users on different zomboid installations of b41.65. Also, the rear door of ambulance has a wrong mask so only break lights are removed when the door is uninstalled.

Typically glovebox and trunk have something spawned in them, and you can see it in car condition weight/out of max weight, but can't access it since doors aren't interactable. Also why not let player take like a decent seat out of it.. you can't do anything with door windows, doors or seats of a wrecked car, even if these parts are 80%+ condition.

I play on a vanilla map without mods. I drive cars often and a lot. I am driving at high speed on the highway, and I have problems with the viewing range in the direction of movement. It seems to me that the viewing range is extremely insufficient. I suggest developers to think: 1. when putting the character in the car, move the camera further away than it moves away, as far as possible when playing the character without a car, increasing the viewing range in all directions (this is not the best option) 2. When the speed increases, gradually move the car on the screen to the edge of the screen so that the viewing range in the direction of movement is greater. When braking, the car with the character should move back to the middle of the screen (it seems to me that this option is better)

Have the developers thought to add motorcycles (bikes) to the game?

I've run into this problem before, and it's always resolved itself when I quit to menu, or sometimes I'd have to quit to desktop. It's been a few hours and a few restarts later though and I still get errors when entering a car, accessing hood or trunk, or pressing V standing next to vehicle. The HUD for the dashboard, repair menu, and vehicle action scrollwheels won't open at all. I'm wondering if there's anything I can do to fix this? I started a new game and ran until I found a car, was able to see the HUD and drove it so it seems specific to my main save. I really love what you all are doing here by the way, thank you for this game. This game is a dream to fans of the genre, truly something special.

In real life, gasoline has a shelf life of only 3-6 months, and diesel 6-12 months (Source). In long-term games, gasoline spoiling and becoming unusable should be a concern. To counter this, a survivor should outfit their vehicle with LPG (A.K.A. autogas), which has no shelf life. The conversion should require a propane tank, the appropriate tools, and a high enough mechanics and metalwork skill. An amateur mechanic could install it in the trunk, at the cost of trunk capacity, while a master mechanic might manage to take out the gas tank and squeeze the LPG tank in its stead. As gas ages, it should degrade your engine faster, and lose mileage. Your engine could perhaps make weird sounds, your exhaust become darker, and your character should remark on it directly. Propane, in addition to being lootable like it is now, should be refillable at pumps at gas stations like gas is, with the caveat that only a few gas stations stock LPG, due to its low popularity in the US. You could have it be available at two or three stations in urban areas, which would give players incentive to occasionally leave their self-sufficient base in the woods and make a dangerous fuel run in a zombie-infested area. In addition, you could add the option to run cars and generators on biofuels like ethanol, which you can brew yourself.