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nasKo

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Hey all, hope you’re good and that US folk enjoyed their thanks-giving.

BUILD 35 AND THURSDAY MEGATEST

As discussed last week, we’re currently polishing the current IWBUMS public beta build of PZ’s Build 35 to a point at which it’s at release quality – and we should be releasing a new test version mid-week. Overall there’s a bunch of new/updated features in 35 at the moment that feel ready to get out into the wider community. It seems daft to keep it all in IWBUMS beta, and anything additional put in will only add to the inevitable bug cascade for RJ after the public release.

To this end, we need to stress-test both the new VOIP functions and the full set of MP improvements like the extended Admin powers and Factions. So… if you’re a server admin, a habitual PZ player online or just someone with a spare evening who fancies some desperate survival: you are cordially invited to ‘The Great Big Build 35 IWBUMS MP Megatest’ at 5pm GMT this Thursday 1st December.

This will carry on for as long as people want to play, and will have fun activities like clearing Rosewood Prison of the zed horde en-masse over VOIP, and a climactic Last Man Standing competition. There’ll also be PZ codes given out as prizes, and we’ll get a few devs and community people online too. (Just be warned that, by its very nature, this will be still be a test version so a few bumps in the road are to be expected.)

The details will be found here, and as always information on how to download the public beta build can be found here.

ANIMS

Work on recoding Stormy’s ‘reloading’ mod is now complete, and we’re now running through PZ’s MP side to make sure our online and co-op components are all correctly synced up with the new animation system.  Since it’s the animations themselves that now drive the states of survivor and zombie characters it could cause issues if they differ even slightly between servers and the clients talking to them. We need to make sure that all state changes (Bitten! Hit! Shot! Burnt! Bleached!) are synchronised, to keep the visuals and logic of the game consistent between clients no matter what precise animation frame you might be seeing yourself.

While we’re in there, meanwhile, we’re making a few improvements to make the overall system better suited for the weapon mods we’re hoping will be unleashed by the overall combat/anims/models update. As such we’re working on getting the swing, hit and reaction animations for the combat working from the easily accessed items.txt script files, instead of them being hard coded deep within the game files.

This will allow the new regime to play nicely with both modded weapons and items alike, and should allow plenty of cool new stuff to spring up on the Workshop.

MAP

Work on the new areas of the map (playable in the current IWBUMS beta) is continuing with a bit of life being added between the new towns of Rosewood and March Ridge in terms of farms, isolated homes, smaller roads and general rural buildings.

This will make the journey between the Rosewood spawn point and March Ridge a more varied and pleasant one, with a few more places to rest overnight. The following is a WIP image of that coming to fruition. Rosewood can be seen to the top of the image, and March Ridge at the bottom.

rosewoody-stuff.jpg

MOVABLES

One extra thing we think we can sneak into Build 35, as bugs will fall on Turbo’s shoulders, is an update to the movable items system. Currently any furniture that’s larger than a tile can’t be picked up and carried – so with this we’re talking about items like beds, tables and arcade cabinets.

In the new system, however, players with the relevant tools and skills will be able to deconstruct these into specific (heavy) kit parts. These must then be carried to their eventual destination, most likely piece by piece. Some of this work has already been done code-wise, so it should go into the build fairly soon.

CHARACTER CREATION COMMUNITY QUERY

Looking forward to Build 36, in the next version we’ll be introducing specific characters you can spawn as – each with individual start locations, back-stories, inventories and characteristics. Our initial intent of this will be to make it less like people you’re playing as have just materialised five days into a full zombie apocalypse, but clearly will also fall neatly into line with our plans for survivor radio voices and other key features that we need for version 1.0.

With this in mind, then, seeing as we need a selection of new archetypes from all over Zomboid’s character creation it would be really handy to know what the favoured character build from our players is. In fact, this would just be good to know for us in general – as we don’t have any of the Big Brother telemetry systems that big publisher games have at their command!

As such, if you fancy helping us out, then please give us some examples of your favourite skill/trait/profession load-outs in the following thread. What doesn’t appear in peoples’ submissions will likely help us just as much as what does. Many thanks!

This week’s featured image from Muscular Beaver. 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 blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right hereOur Discord is now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can now be found here. Oh and hey, if you think we’re half okay then there’s this Steam Game Award thing still happening. We haven’t got a hope in hell of getting anything, but still

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I thought there was a chance for a SP animation testing branch, they mentioned it before in some other Mondoid saying that they could give us a SP testing while checking MP.

 

And god knows that testing MP with the new animations is just asking for trouble, we probably wont see the animations branch till the end of December because holidays and whatnot.

 

To put everything into retrospective, the first time we saw anything related to the animation system was 15 of January 2015.
https://projectzomboid.com/blog/2015/09/re-re-animated/

We probably are going to see and play with the new backpacks 1 year after we first saw them.

 

Times goes out the window and slips like sand though our hands gentlemen.  Iron focken patience my friends.  

 

Also good to see the new additions to the map, when i went though it, it felt like...to clean of anything and the rural side was empty.

And in the Movables section, that means that the bug of the Wood stove will be fixed to give it function after moving it for the first time too?

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18 minutes ago, xXSly_WolfyXx said:

Yeah I don't get why they cant give a single player animations build to us while they test MP. Hopefully that won't take ten years.

 

Probably because something about merging them together and complications down the line, but before this mondoid i had hopes of "Well we fixed the reloading code, we saw a few hicks here and there but it shouldn't take long" and then testing around the 5th or 12th of December.

 

But now with the MP in the way it probably will be"We found dysncs, nightmare fuel when X thing happens breaking the animation, lag, crashes if X thing happens, another bug came up, the gun code is not ready yet" type of delays all along December until the end of the year. 

 

I am still a sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe they will get a SP testing branch, but that hope is just dying quickly. 

 

It was so close for SP,  i knew no good would come from MP folk and their network for multiple clients machines! 

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23 minutes ago, Blasted_Taco said:

 

Probably because something about merging them together and complications down the line, but before this mondoid i had hopes of "Well we fixed the reloading code, we saw a few hicks here and there but it shouldn't take long" and then testing around the 5th or 12th of December.

 

But now with the MP in the way it probably will be"We found dysncs, nightmare fuel when X thing happens breaking the animation, lag, crashes if X thing happens, another bug came up, the gun code is not ready yet" type of delays all along December until the end of the year. 

 

I am still a sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe they will get a SP testing branch, but that hope is just dying quickly. 

 

It was so close for SP,  i knew no good would come from MP folk and their network for multiple clients machines! 

:c

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21 minutes ago, hunger john said:

If the animations are just having mp/modding compatibility worked on, then where's the SP branch? Are we actually going to just have these pushed straight into a stable branch or something?

 

From the looks of it, it sure does look like it.

 

Last week the gap of all the animations were filled in, and they said:

Quote

After that we get it all running together, and then we spot any forgotten mechanics/states from PZ’s vast repertoire that appear during the gameplay. 

 And then we have:

Quote

Work on recoding Stormy’s ‘reloading’ mod is now complete, and we’re now running through PZ’s MP side to make sure our online and co-op components are all correctly synced up with the new animation system.  

 

From so much polishing they did to the SP side, they hopped over to the MP side to fix things.

 

How much damage could it be to give us the SP side of the animations to play around with while waiting for the MP side to be finished? We could even find stuff they didnt find in the SP when they were doing all the states of animations. 

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Builds have to be cleaned up and merged to be released. As we can see by how few play the IWBUMS even now, very few would even play a SP-only animations build locked away in its own beta, making the week or so of effort (at the expense of the rest) to make just it presentable kind of pointless. Had TIS been able to release it back in September, as we hoped, I'd assume this would be less of an issue.

 

Now? Better just to actually get the damn thing done, once.

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31 minutes ago, EnigmaGrey said:

Builds have to be cleaned up and merged to be released. As we can see by how few play the IWBUMS even now

 

I agree with what you said, but i think that part of why so few people play IWBUMS is because the animations themselves, i am pretty sure that i am not the only one waiting for the animations to come out in any shape to merge once again into the game, i seen some post here and in the Steam forum saying how they have been waiting on them to play the game again.

 

Now, i know that the IWBUMS build 35 is all about polishing it to stable and we even going to have a big ol' party of testing on December 1 for all those neat MP features and bug fixin's, but after that if all goes well and smoothly and we get IWBUMS out of into the wild world of the stable build, what happens next?

 

I would like to hope that MP animation wise is not going to be a lot of trouble and we might get it 2 weeks into December, but we know that aint going happen (the devs are going to probably found out this week).

 

So if IWBUMS is hopefully out to the stable build next week, what could go wrong with just giving us a teaser for the animations on a SP branch while we wait for the whole package everyone has been waiting for almost 1 year? It wouldn't interfere with any further testing and i am sure that the numbers would spike up again to try it out.

 

 

 

Edited by Blasted_Taco
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It'll interfere with development  of the game itself, slowing down getting the "whole package" everyone has been waiting for for almost a year. This is because there's no barrier to entry to public builds; there's nothing anyone has to do to get them.

 

Most people who own the game only care about public releases, no  matter how much we advertise the IWBUMS builds. Delaying that even further just for a SP animations test, to then have to an MP test, doesn't seem to be worth it.

 

I'd rather they spent their time finalizing one build instead of two.

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2 hours ago, nasKo said:

 

CHARACTER CREATION COMMUNITY QUERY

Looking forward to Build 36, in the next version we’ll be introducing specific characters you can spawn as – each with individual start locations, back-stories, inventories and characteristics. Our initial intent of this will be to make it less like people you’re playing as have just materialised five days into a full zombie apocalypse, but clearly will also fall neatly into line with our plans for survivor radio voices and other key features that we need for version 1.0.

With this in mind, then, seeing as we need a selection of new archetypes from all over Zomboid’s character creation it would be really handy to know what the favoured character build from our players is. In fact, this would just be good to know for us in general – as we don’t have any of the Big Brother telemetry systems that big publisher games have at their command!

As such, if you fancy helping us out, then please give us some examples of your favourite skill/trait/profession load-outs in the following thread. What doesn’t appear in peoples’ submissions will likely help us just as much as what does. Many thanks!

This week’s featured image from Muscular Beaver. 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 blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right hereOur Discord is now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can now be found here. Oh and hey, if you think we’re half okay then there’s this Steam Game Award thing still happening. We haven’t got a hope in hell of getting anything, but still… 

 

 

 

The character things sound awesome, will there be random gen stories for new game's on survival and what not, or will it be something like a scenario?

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2 hours ago, Blasted_Taco said:

 

I agree with what you said, but i think that part of why so few people play IWBUMS is because the animations themselves, i am pretty sure that i am not the only one waiting for the animations to come out in any shape to merge once again into the game, i seen some post here and in the Steam forum saying how they have been waiting on them to play the game again.

 

 

 

 

 

I agree, I havent really been playing much since Ive been waiting for the animations. IWbums doesnt have to much to offer me right now. Im sure when that update finally comes, the numbers will really start picking up with the amount ppl playing. I know all my friends quit until then hehe.

Hope it comes sooner rather than later!

 

Edited by miked79
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5 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

Had TIS been able to release it back in September, as we hoped...

Or July!?   

Remember folks, when TIS say soon they mean next year.

 

2 hours ago, miked79 said:

Im sure when that update finally comes, the numbers will really start picking up with the amount ppl playing.

 

Going by how it looks on the recent Steam reviews, this game is not lookimg like a great purchase, even tho we know it is, it dont look good.

 Im sorry but you just can't promise things as 'soon' for over 6 months, or say that other features are 'always being worked on' for several years and not expect people to get bored of the whole idea and move on, loads more games to play....

https://projectzomboid.com/blog/2016/08/hello-ladies/

"This should stand as the last technological hurdle for the getting the anims out into testing, although there could possibly be some multiplayer sync issues to work out that would make us consider a single player anim branch initially if that were to turn out to be the case" August 22nd

Edited by NebNebber
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29 minutes ago, NebNebber said:

Or July!?   

Remember folks, when TIS say soon they mean next year.

 

Going by how it looks on the recent Steam reviews, this game is not lookimg like a great purchase, even tho we know it is, it dont look good.

 Im sorry but you just can't promise things as 'soon' for over 6 months, or say that other features are 'always being worked on' for several years and not expect people to get bored of the whole idea and move on, loads more games to play....

https://projectzomboid.com/blog/2016/08/hello-ladies/

"This should stand as the last technological hurdle for the getting the anims out into testing, although there could possibly be some multiplayer sync issues to work out that would make us consider a single player anim branch initially if that were to turn out to be the case" August 22nd

Then get bored, move on, and go play other games. No one is forcing you to hang around here and it sounds as though you'd be happier stumbling upon PZ in a few years, when hopefully the waiting is over and a finished game is out, rather than waiting around week after week.

 

Animations, and any other features in progress, will take as along as they take. If that means talking about them for six months, being mistaken on the amount of work remaining, and getting felled from illness causes the timeframe to change from "soon" to "soon," then that's just the way it is.

 

(Some) of) it is beyond our control, Neb. We're, of course, (genuinely) sorry if we gave the impression animations would be out within six months, but understand we're in a rock and a hard place: we want to discuss the game and what we're working on and we want to be optimistic about our work.

 

We're going to continue talking about it  -- even if that means there's sometimes misunderstandings or mistakes in that process. This hasn't changed in five years. It's not going to change now.

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9 minutes ago, Sick Boy said:

It's things like this that lead to reviews that say this.

 

" the condescending attitude of the forum moderators have ruined it for me"

Would you rather I lied and tried to encourage you to stay on, be patient, and wait for next week? (Paraphrasing from Neb's post, btw: "people to get bored ...  move on, loads more games to play.")

 

To me, that would be condescending.

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Just now, EnigmaGrey said:

Would you rather I lied and tried to encourage you to stay on, be patient, and wait for next week?

 

No. Just don't be like that to people. ALL. THE. TIME. 

 

That'd be pretty cool. Maybe you need another vacation?

 

You don't have to encourage me to do anything. I come and go as I please with this game and the forums and rarely interact with you(for this very reason). But when other people have the misfortune of interacting with you, it leads to negative reviews and a "bad taste" for potential future customers. That's all I was saying. Although encouraging patience and understanding would work a whole hell of a lot better than condescension and snark. 

 

That's to say nothing of the whole "Be Lovely" policy. 

 

But you go ahead and do you, dude. I'm just pointing out why people might be reluctant to converse with TIS and leave bad reviews. 

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@Sick Boy I agree with you, obviously.  However keep in mind a "bad" moderator can make it even worse...

 

It's weird to read about people banned for telling the truth, especially because they were just (most of times, as far as I know) expressing their opinions politely, opinions, however, not in the directions some mods want, that's all. And that's a pity, because I think TIS are way better than that.

Sorry for the off-topic, this should be about this week's mondoid, but at this point...what was this mondoid's about? Buyin' time? I mean, I respect TIS, but let's call things with their names and well...let's move on.

 

I was unfortunately right in my previous posts about the fact that at this pace  this game will never be "complete" (unless, as I said, they'll just give up), but not because it could be moddable to infinity (good thing), but because it will take years (once again, at this pace) to DEVS to deliver tools for modding and a "complete" game to "mod".

 

Sure animations will be great, but when I imagine this same game with different animations and I remember there are so many other things needed, so we'll be back to square one with the next update.

Also, when you analyze all the updates from, let's say, steam release, well...that's not much, and that's a fact. Gameplay wise, not a single change in too many aspects, I don't even want to start about the non-existing end game.

So I understand people in negative steam reviews saying: "I love this game but..." and that's what Mods here (not sure about Devs) seem to not understand (or pretend not to).

You can deny the truth or say the horrible "you didn't pay much for this game, so you should be grateful it starts" (I'm obviously exaggerating here, but you know what I am talking about) or "go play another game if you're not happy", that doesn't change reality and, honestly, that's a pretty bad thing to say if you ask me.

 

You're lucky to have a good community with polite people willing to help and support this project,  believing in your project (more than you do?), somehow some of you manage to make them look like trolls that don't understand simple things.

In what position do you think "we warned you about slow development"  put you?

What's wrong about those paying customers reminding you the game still needs a lot of work every now and then? Often, let's remember, just reminding you what you "promised" a couple of years ago...

About me, well, I think about my crowbar and my crops, they remind me how much this game has changed over the years.

 

It's about being real and honest, if someone complaining is right, just admit it, that's a good start.

I refuse to believe things are like you're doing a favor finishing the game, because we paid only X money and we knew game was early access.

Unless this business has changed so much a finished game is something you should not expect and reminding someone to deliver is being rude.

By the way NO ETA, while I respect that (and in general I don't mind waiting), you're people, you're working, please remember it's a luxury you couldn't afford in a different line of business, well, without consequences on reputation of course, honestly I just consider that "buying time", let me know what you would think of you in "my" position.

 

Personally I would love to read a statement from Devs saying what, in their opinion, we should expect from this game, I mean what we should really expect, what will be its future.

Not saying a roadmap, something similar to this: https://projectzomboid.com/blog/2014/06/march-to-1-0  in terms of goals, because if I read the content...  :D

What do they think PZ will look like in 2018...And, why not, share with us some details (problems, ideas that never made it or something "interesting"/curious about the development).

It could be a nice Merry Christmas edition of Mondoid, if you like it.

I know there were a couple of post in that style, but I think it's needed now more than ever (my personal opinion)...

Edited by Marco1
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52 minutes ago, Marco1 said:

It's weird to read about people banned for telling the truth, especially because they were just (most of times, as far as I know) expressing their opinions politely, opinions, however, not in the directions some mods want, that's all. And that's a pity, because I think TIS are way better than that.

 

Anyone can write what they like in reviews. Just because someone says they've been banned for "telling the truth" doesn't mean that's what they're banned for. We've our fair share of trolls and caustic individuals, like any community -- and there've been times where we've banned people whom crossed the line from constructive criticism to outright abuse.

 

It's your choice to believe them, but I'd appreciate if you considered it from our perspective as well. We've no problem with people feeling the game is slow to develop or that there's a long period of time between updates (after all, with build 35 it's true -- this is the longest we've gone without a public build since releasing to Steam, and it's all due to the hope that animations could have been part of build 35). Calling us scammers, robbers, cunts and telling the devs that they're so incompetent that they should quit (despite having hundreds of hours in their game), and going after anyone that doesn't share their view, though? We're not required to give anyone a soap box to do so -- even if you choose to believe their narrative after the fact.

 

52 minutes ago, Marco1 said:

@Sick BoyIt's about being real and honest, if someone complaining is right, just admit it, that's a good start.

 

That's right -- and maybe if the wait is getting to you to the point where coming here week after week frustrates you and you feel you'd be better off playing another game,  why not do so? PZ will be here if you choose to come back, hopefully in a better state than when you left.

 

That's being real and honest. It may not be something you like to hear, but after seeing some people come back week after week and continue to escalate their behavior over it, expecting something different, perhaps they need to hear that it's OK to let go for a while.

 

It's just a game, in the end. It's meant to entertain you and, I hope it has, but being realistic, it won't provide infinite entertainment; you will get bored of it; you will move on to other games; and maybe, some of us will need to be told that when it's clear we're no longer having fun with it.

 

There's no disdain and I do not feel superior to anyone here, though I'll have to recognize that some feel my overly blunt style was aiming to wound. It wasn't intentional and I apologize.

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Looks like some of you have problem with early access games:

Here is a important part from steam store:

 

"Note: This Early Access game is not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development"

 

Its nothing new that TIS is rather slow in development. Team sieze, lack of skill dunno and dont care but the important part is that they dont own you anything.

The most important part when you buy EA game is "do I like it as it is now". Dont give a shit (or do just a little) about what devs promise you in future.

If you read forum etc you will know how often they update the game and what you can expect. They have Free DEMO of build 34 so you have 100% idea how the game looks.

 

 

 

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