Build 30

[Dtrahan12]

Is anyone else waiting to play until build 30? I had never tried the Erosion mod, so it should be a treat!

 

Cheers!

[uberevan]

Playing Project Zomboid for me can never wait...

IT CAN NEVER WAIT

[Vonholtz]

The Erosion will be great. But I like the looks of the new sandbox settings to.

[Ohbal]

Are we there yet? (sorry, sorry, sorry...) 

[f3rret]

Yeah, I'm waiting. I'm going to turn the farming down to realistic levels, then see how I do from there. The rest of the sandbox is fine at default, for me.

[Shadewolf10]

Erosion looks like it's going to be amazing, I've seen a few streams with it on.

[ughughugh]

I don't want to create a new topic for this useless post of mine, but I just want PZ to be finally finished so badly. I only got it during the last steam sale by pure accident, because steam recommended it to me. After buying The Forest and The Long Dark steam knew of my interest in survival games. 

 

Every monday I eagerly wait for that little progress report. By now I have listened to every interview and watched every dev vid on youtube. I want version 1.0 and I want it now. Want, want, want! It better be here soon, because I am already stomping the ground and throwing a fit like a little kid.

 

It looks like it is going to take two more years till PZ is completed and it's just such a long period of time. The NPCs and the hordes hold so much promise, but I wonder if this game makes it through development because there seems to be so little interest in this game and hence poor sales and it is genuinely difficult to have even mediocre AI.

 

There are so much conflicting needs, which will be hard to balance for the player, that I just can't see any AI pulling such a feat like surviving of. Just think of the initial step of choosing a safe house. Without using the map you have to choose a temporary house and explore the surrounding. Do you want to build a house from scratch or fortify an existing one? Do you want to loot tools or craft them yourself? Do you want to loot or forage? Do you want minimal contact with the NPCs or be part of a community?

All of it has an impact on your decision and then there is just random chance that ruins your plans like an injury or an illness. This freedom is a big selling point and a huge problem at the same time just like the graphics are. There is lots of stat based gameplay, it is easy to implement many features with a poor visualisation and finally a survival game that deserves its name because it got emotions in and at the same time the poor graphics scare away many people.

 

After this post turned into rambling I just sit here and wait for the next mondoid.

[harakka]

The game has been in development for around three and half years at this point. So if it actually did take two more years to reach the fabled 1.0 (at which point the developers aren't planning to slow down), it wouldn't even double the current development time. However they're hoping to reach it sooner than in two years. The game is ambitious and the developers knew it from the start, so they were in this for the long haul from the beginning.

 

The devs have stated previously that they have enough sales to be financially secure. This is recently evidenced by being able to afford office space and to hire for production of additional animations.

[nasKo]

Every monday I eagerly wait for that little progress report. By now I have listened to every interview and watched every dev vid on youtube. I want version 1.0 and I want it now. Want, want, want! It better be here soon, because I am already stomping the ground and throwing a fit like a little kid.

I completely understand that feeling and it's a great thing. The developers feel great that the game, though fairly niche, has fans like you who want it so bad, eagerly awaiting every bit of news.

It's understandable to want something now but there is a long list of even AAA releases that have shown that wanting something sooner rather than later can lead to disappointment.

The Indie Stone is a small team and if they were to release something immensely disappointing, there might be no turning back. There is no multi-million dollar studio behind it, making it easier to recover from a fuck-up.

We might only have one try and we need to do it right. We are hoping that our fans understand this and continue to believe in the team and the project. Because the team sure does.

 

 

 

 

The NPCs and the hordes hold so much promise, but I wonder if this game makes it through development because there seems to be so little interest in this game and hence poor sales and it is genuinely difficult to have even mediocre AI.

Our Early Access "WHAT THE DEVELOPERS HAVE TO SAY"-blurb addresses this concern (and others).

There's a lot more to read but I'll quote the important bit:

 

What if PZ stopped making any money tomorrow?

The Indie Stone have made sufficient sales since November last year to ensure that if the game stopped selling any copies tomorrow, the entire PZ dev team could carry on funded development as at present, with no reduction in workforce, for at least the next two years, potentially longer. This would not be an ideal situation for us, of course, but we are committed to finishing every major planned feature before we consider moving the game to 1.0.

In the worst (and least likely) possible of financial cases that required the disbandment of all paid developers of the game, 4 of the listed developers are directors of The Indie Stone with an invested interest in the success of the game and company, who would cut their income significantly and/or supplement development of the game with other work to get through any financial difficulties. Despite this no doubt causing progress to slow significantly, the 4 directors hold all required skills to continue development of the game during this nightmare scenario.