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NPC's and vehicles?


DarkSideDK

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1 hour ago, Kim Jong Un said:

The main reason NPCs are kept in the dark was because the developers worked on them and then threw them on the backburner until they were ready to be worked on again. However since they spoke about what they coded and created, people just read the abstract and missed the part about them being nowhere near ready and the posts were mearly projected concepts to be included later.

 

Thanks to that in factually every single Mondoid released on the steam forum there are people throwing fits and tantrums about the fact that a massive update that "should be ready by now" is not out the door yet even though it is nowhere near done. The staff here have tried to say numerous times that if there's a chance it's coming next week, they'll be the first to notify you, but it's not what's on the chopping block at the moment. 

 

Now as for you saying the graphics update, map and VOIP are useless updates... the reasons you gave for that are very poor and I'll tell you why.

 

Graphics: The graphics update was a while ago and was necessary in order to move everything up to the 2x tiles (or whatever it was, I'll tell you right now it's not as pixelated as before) and they were smart about it and got it out of the way so not everything else was drawn and designed in order to be re-drawn later. Trust me, it is easier to update the graphics and sprites resolution beforehand rather than having to re-do 100 new things down the line.

 

The map: You said that the community was doing this... which even if that was totally true (a lot of community maps are very low quality and there are only a few as thorough and properly designed as the one the developers put work into), it's not a reason for them to not develop the main stock map (since it is the one most people play on and will continue to hold that title). The map is projected to be a lot bigger than it already is down the line and building onto this map is important for creating new content in the world (like basements and terrain). They certainly don't develop those things just to be modder assets. 

 

VOIP: This was not a minor update. Come on now, you know this was important to multiplayer. Having actual voice chat is not a stupid novelty, it's staple for a lot of this kind of MP and gives people the ability to send a message without having to stop mid-combat to type something.

 

You are also disregarding the other updates that got thrown in here regarding content, and there are quite a few of them.

Right, so I'll take it from the top and I'll elaborate on my opinions.

Graphics - I don't care about them - still. It can be 2D. I'm here for the gameplay, not looks. I don't care how pixelated it looks.

 

Map - The map is already gigantic. In my opinion, there is absolutely no need to expand it further, before core mechanics has been taken care of. Let the modding community add extra parts for that if necessary. It takes 20-30 minutes to run/walk between the two cities. Even if you start to put things in between, it'll just suffer from the same problem as Skyrim, seeing that a larger map does not equal more content. (Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle.)

VOIP - Why are so few people able to argue for their own point of view on this site? It's ridiculous how many of you think you can speak on other peoples behalf. I DON'T think this is important at all, because I play the game with friends over Skype.
Having played Day-Z with VOIP, I can tell you that most people don't care, it's a deathmatch simulator anyway.
The only thing VOIP was used for in both versions of Day-Z was for 12 year olds to tell me to suck their balls after they RDM'ed me. 

And you're right, there were a lot of updates in between I didn't give credit for - like the wilderness update (which was contributed by a modder, if I'm not mistaken) but again, that's not why I'm here.
I'm here for the main selling point - NPC's. How difficult is this to understand?

And btw., don't twist my words - I called the updates unnecessary, not useless. There is a clear distinction between the two.
 

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28 minutes ago, DarkSideDK said:

And you're right, there were a lot of updates in between I didn't give credit for - like the wilderness update (which was contributed by a modder, if I'm not mistaken) but again, that's not why I'm here.
I'm here for the main selling point - NPC's. How difficult is this to understand?
 

Not aware of a modder working on a wilderness mod for the game, though there's been several wilderness additions, so I'm not sure which one you're referring to.

I'd argue the main selling point of PZ is "a realistic survival game with Romero/Brooks zombies" rather than NPCs.

 

Most other survival and zombie games already have NPCs to varying degrees of success (and failure). They're only a selling point if TIS can somehow one-up the traditional fair, or the buggy/simpler type they already produced. While they may be on the store page, it's only a single mention among dozens of items. Though you might have followed along with the earlier blogs when they more avidly discussed design and philosophy, it's understandable if that's what made you buy choose to buy it.

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I'm a bit confused here.

 

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Even if you start to put things in between, it'll just suffer from the same problem as Skyrim, seeing that a larger map does not equal more content. (Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle.)

 

Map: How does this relate it to skyrim's map? Map locations are there for the sake of providing varied loot locations, environments and potential base spots. Having a balanced map that doesn't condense things to just one or two locations is necessary to give people more options on how to live. The map may feel large now, but it will feel a lot smaller when other modes of transportation come into play. It's not like the areas they are adding don't have content. I think this update added a few lakes near Muldraugh (which ultimately gave fishing a use for people who live in that area - this goes back to balancing the map) and the prison, (and other unique structures) which gave players who spawn somewhere in that area a reason to go to both sides of Muldraugh rather than having it continue to be a one-sided bias to draw more players towards the mall/West point area. The map will continue to grow, kind of because it's the game's main map - It's supposed to include a much larger city down the line as well as Fort Knox and quite a few military installations - so regardless of whether you think it's unnecessary because it takes half an hour to switch cities or not, this is totally necessary for the fact that the game would both become stale and not have a place to draw in the military (or skyscrapers) for sticking with the same thing forever.

 

And by the way, the map borders are expanding, not just adding things between cities... I think you are misinformed about what was actually done to the map. Rosewood and March Ridge were the two big towns added (expanding the map massively), a smaller farm community was added in between before it was released because most people who tested it complained about the lack of stuff between the cities.

 

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Why are so few people able to argue for their own point of view on this site? It's ridiculous how many of you think you can speak on other peoples behalf.

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Having played Day-Z with VOIP, I can tell you that most people don't care,

 

 

VOIP: No, what's ridiculous is the fact that you think you are better to do the exact same thing - speaking on the behalf of "most people" and using that to formulate your own argument. *ahem* That's besides the point.

 

What's important here is that voice communication required a different voice communication software in order to use it - at no guarantee that the other person is on the same Discord server, or whatever people want to use. With VOIP there is universal guarantee that people you meet will hear you, and this prevents people from having to stop the fighting to type something. And no, most people most definitely do not "don't care". VOIP has been requested for quite some time, mind you - and you do not speak for everyone simply because you think isolating yourself to a Skype call would be just good enough to validate leaving such a useful feature out of multiplayer (which continues to grow in features to support large servers (factions, safe-houses, massive increase in admin/moderator features). Again, necessary stuff that has either proven to be entirely valuable to make the multiplayer respectable, or highly requested or discussed among the community as something worth doing.

 

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I don't care about them - still. It can be 2D. I'm here for the gameplay, not looks. I don't care how pixelated it looks.

 

Graphics: So would you rather the developers make all of the content stuff and then have to re-draw everything twice in the higher res because simply pushing it out there is more important? A graphics update was coming at some point whether you like it or not (and was a massive improvement over what was there before regarding the ability to include much smaller details into the sprites). Having the fact that they did one - a while ago, again - is not going to change the fact that doing it your way (where they either don't do it all or push out the content first) would have ultimately been a much shittier solution.

 

*shrugs* I'm not asking you to change your opinion, I'm probing you to be more reasonable about it.

 

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NPC's. How difficult is this to understand?

 

NPCS: What's difficult to understand is why you are asking them to rush NPCS, not why taking the time to read the mondoids would let you know why that's infinitely shittier. What I said earlier:

 

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The main reason NPCs are kept in the dark was because the developers worked on them and then threw them on the backburner until they were ready to be worked on again. However since they spoke about what they coded and created, people just read the abstract and missed the part about them being nowhere near ready and the posts were mearly projected concepts to be included later.

 

Thanks to that in factually every single Mondoid released on the steam forum there are people throwing fits and tantrums about the fact that a massive update that "should be ready by now" is not out the door yet even though it is nowhere near done. The staff here have tried to say numerous times that if there's a chance it's coming next week, they'll be the first to notify you, but it's not what's on the chopping block at the moment. 

So the answer to "why they aren't here yet" is that they simply do not have a place at the moment. They are building much more important groundwork to that - the graphics update is needed to include the animations update, the animations update are needed before NPCs for being able to show status/ability better - and then NPCs are at the end of a chain of a long list of things to do. NPCS already made an appearance in a much earlier beta. They were totally broken and for the most part just did not have a place in that level of development. If they just tossed that back in again, as people seem to think they can do (spoiler: they can't) I hope you enjoy a sub-par experience where NPCs run into crowds of zombies, shoot on sight and/or sabotage your base by screwing around.

 

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don't twist my words

No twisting of your words was done. This was very much in reply to things you have not just said in your OP but in other posts as well. Saying that said updates aren't valuable to the development - "unnecessary" " DON'T think this is important at all" "most people don't care" " lack of the core elements" "no progress" - is not a neutral statement regarding them. Even if you acknowledge some use in what they've added, you still gave people grounds to argue against you - nobody has an issue with your opinion, but you can't just hide behind that you were "just asking a question" when your post was filled with stuff that are very presumptuous towards the development of the game.

 

Unfortunately NPCs were never the selling point of this game. Project Zomboid is a survival game, not a NPC game. NPCs is a core aspect to survival, but so is the other stuff. No promise was broken, no false advertisement. You are getting what you paid for, and if you bought this game because a super-early build of it years ago included NPCs, you should be more wary as to why you buy things. That's what it boils down to.

 

And even then, it's not like NPCs aren't coming. They probably won't be here for quite some time - that's the truth of it. If you hype them up to such a level where people just complain about the lack of them every week, all that is going to come of that is that people will never be pleased regardless of whatever comes when NPCs are released. This not only puts pressure to throw them out earlier (and possibly incomplete) but raises unreasonable expectations about them as well. Keeping a level head about it and focusing on the other things is the right way to go here.

 

And just to reiterate - the stuff they are adding are very much groundwork related things, not just random content patches - these things are significant enough to require a lot of playtesting and will ultimately serve as platforms for more things to come in the future. Not just talking about the new map, the graphics update (which again was some time ago), VOIP, but the massive update to the server features, animations and combat.

 

Edit: I apologize if this sounded rude or longwinded with the goal of being insulting

Edited by Kim Jong Un
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I was going to write about how far Project Zomboid has come since a year or two ago but this thread, it honestly just needs to be closed, people are getting way too upset on both sides. No one can singularly talk for the entirety of the consumer base, not Kim Jong, Not DarkSide, hell I doubt the freaking developers even know what the community wants because of shit threads like these. We say we want one thing, then someone says they want another, then people get mad and it becomes a giant shitfest. As much as we the community think we know whats best, we don't, neither does the developers. Each update is a gamble that will have praise and backlash no matter what they do. They could release full NPC's this moment and people would complain that they didn't add cars first. The Indie Stone are the only ones who know which direction this game is going, and they should be the ones to decide. I'm not saying feedback from the community is BAD, but people really need to chill. I'm all for constructive criticism, but so far i've seen VERY little of that. TIS is a small team, development is slow because of this, there is nothing you can do, get over it, end of story. Now stop posting hateful and spiteful comments.

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Can see why people get frustrated and start asking questions

 

They're on board with the idea

They don't mind the bugs

They want to support the game

 

But when we start worrying more about the nutritional value of a pie more than the sudden disappearance of every car and person in Kentucky then c'mon

 

Things take time. I get that. I've had lots of fun with the game as have people who have uploaded hundreds of videos covering 3,4 or 5 seasons of their game on YouTube. But people will get bored when progress is so slow. That's just a fact

 

Are some people "I want it and I want it now"? Yeah

But then some people are quick to label others as impatient and demanding when they are just voicing a frustration and questioning something they've paid for. 

 

When you buy Early Access games you can't start making demands all the time. You do have to accept game breaking bugs, glitches and that the game may take a while to get to its destination 

 

But that doesn't mean you should shut up and never question anything. When you buy an EA game you look at its direction, it's condition and then you decide whether to jump on board or not. You have every right to be angry when a developer lies or cheats you (some games have been abandoned by developers). It's not what you jumped on board with. 

 

That's not what's happening here. But people can question the game they've jumped on board with. It's alright telling them to shut up but if they're getting bored then they're going to stop playing. And in 3 years when today's new players are in that position then they'll stop playing too if in those 3 years there's still major features missing out while current features are tweaked or features that aren't really a priority to the majority of players are put to the front of the que. It's not what drew them to support the game.

 

And yeah, they've already supported the game and it is a case of "deal with it". But is that the attitude we need more of in the game industry. 

 

Some modders have made big strides with content so it shows what can be done. I know the devs want each step to be perfect but when you look at the progress over the years you will have people starting to wonder if they've not bitten off more than they can manage. 

 

The vehicle mod isn't perfect but it's pretty good BTW. And it's been a long time since that vehicle image in the mondoid. 

 

I bought this game a long time ago. And yeah it's changed quite a bit. But since I bought the game other games have been born and grown up, got old and died!! And not just ones with huge financial backing. 

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On 12/15/2016 at 9:47 AM, DarkSideDK said:

In the early 2014, I posted a topic (which has now been deleted) regarding when the NPC's and vehicles would be implemented, and it's now been two and a half years without any progress on that front at all. 
Instead, you've focused on graphical updates, VOIP - both of which seems completely unnecessary to me, and expanding the map - last part being something that the modding community was already doing. 

So, I come to ask you now; why are we not getting any progress on the two core mechanics you sold the game on in the beginning?

 

[EDIT: It has been deleted]

main reasons ...simple!

1. small team

2. they have lives... prolly hold full time jobs somewhere and dont have alotta time to deal with us whiners... and rightfully so

3. Go head...and eat it. lol

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At the very least, a simple Bicycle that is about 2-3x as fast as normal running speed would be a nice addition. I can do without cars as long as a Bicycle is in the game. You could even have one with a basket or two on it to carry extra loot. Also, Bicycles are quiet and wouldn't exactly attract Z's ;)

 

And what about Horses? A horse mount to ride around would be nice too.  Have horses been discussed? I smell another trait here with horse riding :)

Edited by Kelefane
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To OP and everyone waiting on NPCs,

 

First off, I don't think it's a ridiculous thing to ask about to see what the status is, esp as some people have said if they just hopped on the forums to check in after not playing a while, and I think the rest of the community would do good to just explain the status nicely, or link to a post that talks about it, and try to, you know, stay lovely. I have been playing since the pre-alpha, I super want NPCs back too and I think it's an important feature that will really flesh out the single player experience, and it makes sense that a lot of people are a bit frustrated at the wait.

 

That being said, to everyone making analogies about ordering a pizza and getting something half baked and not a pizza, and feeling like they aren't getting what they've paid for based on what was advertised, I would suggest you read the info in the steam store page for PZ. 

 

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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.

...

Project Zomboid is a much more ambitious game than we could ever have hoped to fund ourselves. It has grown massively over the years, and it’s been a rollercoaster, but we find ourselves in a stable financial situation with an overwhelmingly positive reaction from the Steam community. We hope you will join us, but if not we understand. If you're not ready to jump in yet, then please consider us when we break out of Early Access. 

...

There is a lot of content to enjoy in the game already and we firmly and proudly believe it worth its current price as it stands. Please consider reading some reviews if you are still unsure about the content of the game or the release frequency. 

 

It is made clear that you are buying the game as it currently is, and it's suggested if the current content isn't interesting to you you come back once it's finished. On a similar note, the early access version is cheaper then what they plan for 1.0 to cost, to factor in that it's incomplete. They even go into detail on the development costs for all the developers, and how income from the game goes towards that:

 

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Monthly development costs are currently recouped within approximately the first 1.5 weeks of the month on average, which means at present each month produces extra funds to further develop the game should sales dry up.

... 

The Indie Stone have made sufficient sales since launch on Early Access 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.

 

While they're making enough money from steam sales to save up, given how small their team is it sounds like from their summary that taking on more full-time developers would be a significant increase in costs and isn't sustainable with their current sales. (I had been wondering as well why they haven't just expanded their staff).

 

TLDR; It's fair to be frustrated about the wait for some of the major features, but I feel like the devs have been very open and clear about the what they are bringing to the table, and that when you purchase the early access version of the game you are paying for the game as-is. In regards to the actual original question, unfortunately we don't know when NPCs and vehicles will go into the game, but as some people previously stated some of these features like animations and such make more sense to do first so they don't end up redoing all of them later after adding in more content. I'd rather wait until after new animations to get NPCs, then to get unfinished NPCs that need to be removed later to be updated with the animation system intended for PZ v1.0. 

 

P.S. I'm not trying to come off as condescending or rude and I hope you guys don't interpret this this way, I just think this is important info to keep in mind. We're all in the same boat here. 

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I'd like to add my 2¢ to this thread.

 

I purchased project zomboid after watching Robbaz's series of PZ, sometime late 2014 (build 27?). I honestly can't remember what I paid for the game at the time but the content was easily worth the asking price nowadays. ($17cad) Well worth the 200hours I've spent playing PZ.

 

However I haven't played much in the last year due to lack of updates in gameplay to keep my small mind interested (Less than 40h since 2x res update)

Now I know a lot of things have changed since early 2016 (nutrition, new traits, ECT.) But nothing that really grabs the attention of potentially new players. For TIS that's a new coustomer. (And yes I do enjoy a lot of the small changes that this has made that affects gameplay. even such a small thing as climbing through a broken window and getting cut. However I didn't see the point of making a 2x res pack if the game was going to overhauled to 3d models with animation)

 

I can't help but agree with the criticisms of TIS. The build team is larger than ever and it seems like the frequency of substantial new content has been slowing down. Sure there is some good content being released (Furniture moving system, metalworking) but also some content that IMO the game could've done without untill release (working TV, radio's. I only use it to distract Z's, if they even hear it at all).

Another problem I have with TIS development is that some especially important gameplay improvements (think errosion) were mods before they were implemented as part of the core game. Likely not very hard for them to absorb into base game coding. Now I don't mind if the dev's work with modders to make the game even more awesome but the dev's should be putting out at least a noticable effort.

Seriously how long was it that build 34 was the current stable build (until recently) that's right, almost a year.

Aside from having sweet barracaded zombie filled safehouses, freezers, movable furniture and a questionably usable TV's/radio's. what other gameplay changing improvements (not counting bug fixes, lighting improvements, or traits) were made since build 32? (Until recently) And a stable build 32 was released back in May 2015. Even the rosewood map expansion isn't that impressive when you consider that New Denver was made by one dude in his spare time in less than a year.

 

I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that I love this game. I've recommended it to everyone I know who plays PC. But I'm concerned that it will effectively die in development. Without new game-changing developments (NPC's, etc) it's hard to have a steady influx of new players and income for the dev's to continue improvements, And without TIS working on noticable improvements even long term loyal player will become bored with the snails pace dev speed (Seriously, how long has it been since new animations have been teased?)

 

 

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54 minutes ago, Zerfall2142 said:

However I haven't played much in the last year due to lack of updates in gameplay to keep my small mind interested (Less than 40h since 2x res update)

Now I know a lot of things have changed since early 2016 (nutrition, new traits, ECT.) But nothing that really grabs the attention of potentially new players. For TIS that's a new coustomer. (And yes I do enjoy a lot of the small changes that this has made that affects gameplay. even such a small thing as climbing through a broken window and getting cut. However I didn't see the point of making a 2x res pack if the game was going to overhauled to 3d models with animation)

 

 

 

I have limited time, so I'm only going to touch on 2x. 2x will not be replaced again, 2x is "it" for the game's tiles. Animation and 3d models are for players and NPCs, not static objects. Players may have animations that act on static objects (picking up something), but the object itself is not going to be turned into a 3d model.

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1 hour ago, Zerfall2142 said:

I'd like to add my 2¢ to this thread.

 

I purchased project zomboid after watching Robbaz's series of PZ, sometime late 2014 (build 27?). I honestly can't remember what I paid for the game at the time but the content was easily worth the asking price nowadays. ($17cad) Well worth the 200hours I've spent playing PZ.

 

However I haven't played much in the last year due to lack of updates in gameplay to keep my small mind interested (Less than 40h since 2x res update)

Now I know a lot of things have changed since early 2016 (nutrition, new traits, ECT.) But nothing that really grabs the attention of potentially new players. For TIS that's a new coustomer. (And yes I do enjoy a lot of the small changes that this has made that affects gameplay. even such a small thing as climbing through a broken window and getting cut. However I didn't see the point of making a 2x res pack if the game was going to overhauled to 3d models with animation)

 

I can't help but agree with the criticisms of TIS. The build team is larger than ever and it seems like the frequency of substantial new content has been slowing down. Sure there is some good content being released (Furniture moving system, metalworking) but also some content that IMO the game could've done without untill release (working TV, radio's. I only use it to distract Z's, if they even hear it at all).

Another problem I have with TIS development is that some especially important gameplay improvements (think errosion) were mods before they were implemented as part of the core game. Likely not very hard for them to absorb into base game coding. Now I don't mind if the dev's work with modders to make the game even more awesome but the dev's should be putting out at least a noticable effort.

Seriously how long was it that build 34 was the current stable build (until recently) that's right, almost a year.

Aside from having sweet barracaded zombie filled safehouses, freezers, movable furniture and a questionably usable TV's/radio's. what other gameplay changing improvements (not counting bug fixes, lighting improvements, or traits) were made since build 32? (Until recently) And a stable build 32 was released back in May 2015. Even the rosewood map expansion isn't that impressive when you consider that New Denver was made by one dude in his spare time in less than a year.

 

I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that I love this game. I've recommended it to everyone I know who plays PC. But I'm concerned that it will effectively die in development. Without new game-changing developments (NPC's, etc) it's hard to have a steady influx of new players and income for the dev's to continue improvements, And without TIS working on noticable improvements even long term loyal player will become bored with the snails pace dev speed (Seriously, how long has it been since new animations have been teased?)

 

 

 

In addition to what Kirrus says, Mash is one of the founders of TIS and predominately a 2D artist. The 3D stuff doesn't really touch on her.

I don't think TIS has a problem with attracting new players as yet. Sales always go well, review trends improve while new players are coming into the community, and player numbers rise. Instead, It's retaining and keeping happy those that have spent hundreds of hours in the game that we have issues with.

 

Perhaps part of it is because, for those of us with so many hours played, very little is ever really new . . . most updates really iteratively add to existing systems or things that have been touched upon before. e.x. If smoke curing meats were added, for example, many would feel that's just an expansion of the current cooking system, not something new.

I don't know how you get that novelty back for long-time players, many of whom really just want NPCs or vehicles before they're willing to continue playing the game. The "little things" don't seem to do it. :/

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First of all happy new year too all :-D

 

Secondly i know I'm very rare around here but i have to say i do understand were the op is coming from.

i will try to not be as vocal as they/he/she are/is but this game has been in development a long time.

 

The game was first released on April 25, 2011 as a tech demo

then after a green light period released on steam November 8th, 2013 its is now 2017, so that is approximately 6 years of development.

I have been with this game since knox county demo and loved it and bought the game for 4 of my friends always at full price just to support the dev team

 

since then npc were removed and the engine has been upgraded and numerous features have crept in like integrated VoIP and nutrition which yes do add to the game

but were never promised from the get go.  

 

not so long ago in October 27, 2014  space base df 9 developed by Double Fine games had to terminate a whole bunch of promised features due to lack of funding and that generated a hell of a lot of hate towards the Indy dev community. as i was worried at the time about it i posted on these forums as did many  so much so that pzomboid team released a statement to the effect of we will not leave the game unfinished and will not abandon you and still have approximately 2 years of revenue in the bank even if no one buys another game and we can move to were its cheaper to dev.

which is admirable as the were saying that even if they ran out of funding they would move back to there apartments and continue to dev the game for as long as they could.

 

on the the main page is  a promised

 

"Here are some of the planned features – alongside more weapons, animations, recipes, locations, survival systems and the introduction of dogs. We like dogs. Oh, and maybe the military will turn up one day too. Who can say? "  

 

As well as npc and stories

But npcs is still not done

 

As for the story of not buying a game in development based on a promise of a feature is also not a viable option as the the entire indie fund market would not exist and if a dev promises a feature they have a moral obligation to attain that feature as they are accepting money based on what they promise to deliver.

 

I cant promise you a blue car take your money and give you a green tricycle and say sorry the car was to difficult to build, you would be angry and rightly so.

 

Now i understand also animations as a feature crept into the dev cycle and as a result npc had to be put on hold as you cant develop npc algorithms if the animations they rely on are not yet in the game.

 

what the op i think, is trying to get at is what was wrong with the original animations he is worried as am i that feature creep (yes that is an actual thing in game development) is going to send this game in the same directions double fine went in 2014 and he cares as do i that this does not happen.

i mean i know at one stage there was blogs about attempting to create a subterranean sewer system that too has died out and not much is heard about that feature.

 

hyp is great it generates sales but be aware that hype based on features that you team is not equipped to handle will generate hate and negative publicity and believe me the market can be cruel you can go from being no 1 to bottom of the log if you not super careful about what you promise and making sure that if you hit a problem you reassure and inform your user base.

 

Now in closing i would like to reiterate my support for this game and this dev team and say that they have a game with allot of potential

and lets not make any qualms some features they introduced like integrated server was and is a god send.

 

but i feel there are members of the community out there looking for a bit more of a company statement and affirmation that promised features will come and what is happening with said features hell even if you have to get technical and go into programming language the do it you'll be amassed how many of your audience will actually appreciate that.

 

 

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1 hour ago, hawk_za said:

i feel there are members of the community out there looking for a bit more of a company statement and affirmation that promised features will come and what is happening with said features hell even if you have to get technical and go into programming language the do it you'll be amassed how many of your audience will actually appreciate that.


This has been stated officially so many times...

Here's one of the early Mondoids I read about what 1.0 means and how TIS wont abandon the game: https://projectzomboid.com/blog/2014/06/march-to-1-0/

It's also been stated multiple times that TIS has enough sales on PZ to finish the development up to 1.0 without question.

It's really a shame impatient people complaining all the time (when buying an "Early Access" game) have made most of the team want to leave the project after 1.0... At least we'll get a fraction of the team sticking around to keep more content coming.

I'll never understand you little kids that complain about continued development and addition of new features. Only because a feature so complex you couldn't even begin to code it isn't in the game yet.

Also, along that point, getting technical was what Mondoids used to be all about. But then the comments became a whine fest about NPCs not being out yet instead of how amazing the development work that was being done on them was. People that love game design (and even went to college for it like me) got robbed of an amazing game dev blog because of whiny brats...
 

Edited by Kuren
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1 hour ago, hawk_za said:

As for the story of not buying a game in development based on a promise of a feature is also not a viable option as the the entire indie fund market would not exist and if a dev promises a feature they have a moral obligation to attain that feature as they are accepting money based on what they promise to deliver.


Welcome to early access, kid. I've been burned so many times (some times with games, sometimes with movies) mostly in early E.A./KickStarter days and still up to this day with things like No Mans Sky. PZ and early access games are like a pre-purchase at best. Never buy a pre-purchase game unless you already love what you know it has. Luckily unlike pre-purchase games, early access games let you play what's done from the get-go. You get the game right away! Everything else is a bonus! You got what you paid for and luckily you'll get more because TIS doesn't quit. You just need to calm down and be patience like the rest of us adults out here.

Short/Medium version: Don't buy an early access game (or Kick Starter type thing of any kind) if you expect to get the final product no mater what. Anyone that's done it more than one knows you can get burned and never see that promised final product. It's a gamble most of the time and luckily with PZ you get a product up front to begin with plus they never quit working their way towards 1.0 and adding new features along the way (making the game so much better).
 

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47 minutes ago, Kuren said:


Welcome to early access, kid. I've been burned so many times (some times with games, sometimes with movies) mostly in early E.A./KickStarter days and still up to this day with things like No Mans Sky. PZ and early access games are like a pre-purchase at best. Never buy a pre-purchase game unless you already love what you know it has. Luckily unlike pre-purchase games, early access games let you play what's done from the get-go. You get the game right away! Everything else is a bonus! You got what you paid for and luckily you'll get more because TIS doesn't quit. You just need to calm down and be patience like the rest of us adults out here.

Short/Medium version: Don't buy an early access game (or Kick Starter type thing of any kind) if you expect to get the final product no mater what. Anyone that's done it more than one knows you can get burned and never see that promised final product. It's a gamble most of the time and luckily with PZ you get a product up front to begin with plus they never quit working their way towards 1.0 and adding new features along the way (making the game so much better).
 

I feel i must say  Kuren you no nothing about me, and yet feel the need to antagonize me by accusing me of being an impatient child in your first response post and then again in the second post  insinuate and im new on the block with regard to pc platform development. (please read my post you'll see I've been with this game for a long time.) p.s also don't ever assume someone can not code yet another way you set yourself up for a nasty surprise in the long run.

 

Just to clarify you ideas for you Ive been around since the days of the zx spectrum and am well versed on the structure of the modern capitalist society and and what you purpose is a slippery slope that will only further degenerate the already tenuous relationship between buyers and game studios with a vision but no capital to deliver. a slope that will end in the demise of the crowd funding industry that i care about and that has given rise to many games i love and enjoy ....games like kerbal space program, prodject zomboid, subnautica to name but a few.

BUT a promise is a promise in any language. and acceptance of money in Lew of a platform goal should be held sacrosanct by any game developer. (refer to recent scandal with Robert industry's and star citizen) if what a develop says off the bat as there goal can not be trusted it will only result in fewer people supporting crowd funding. once that's gone then we are stuck with what the big game company's telling us what we want which will be more cover based shooters with regenerating health and quick time events.(sarcastic yay)

Now i never said that i thought that indistone was not going to deliver in fact that's why i bought multiple copies of the game as i believe that they can as for impatiens ive had this game for six years but there's always a excuse or hurdle....when will the excuses end 6 years is a long time that's all but alas i fear this is already starting to turn into a mud slinging match and will concede the floor from this point going forth.

 

yours in faith and hope 

                                          hawk_za

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Okay, so.

 

I am going to close the thread after my reply because it's already gotten way too hostile. 
 

First, absolutely this:

 

On 12/30/2016 at 4:05 AM, Aoide said:

First off, I don't think it's a ridiculous thing to ask about to see what the status is, esp as some people have said if they just hopped on the forums to check in after not playing a while, and I think the rest of the community would do good to just explain the status nicely, or link to a post that talks about it, and try to, you know, stay lovely. I have been playing since the pre-alpha, I super want NPCs back too and I think it's an important feature that will really flesh out the single player experience, and it makes sense that a lot of people are a bit frustrated at the wait.

 

 

Every single thing in that paragraph. Everyone could do with less snark and sarcasm in response to topics like this.

 

We totally understand the frustration about the wait and silence, too. 

 

With the criticism about other features beeing released instead of NPCs/animations, that seems to come from the fact that people seem to think the whole team can work on one feature. That is not the case.

We're looking to expand the dev team, too, but we have to be selective with the candidates.


Right now, "our" focus is on the animation system.

Not because it's just another graphical update but because it is a necessary foundation. Animations are going to change a lot, not just how the game looks. It will change the combat and bring an actual aspect of stealth to the game.

If we were to start implementing the first step of NPCs before animations, the implementation of NPCs overall would be delayed each time we are iterating on them. This will become clearer once the animations are out.
The rest of the team that is not working on animations is doing what they can to keep the updates coming with little features while the other stuff is being worked on. Nothing they do takes time away from animations or NPCs.

Our big mistake in 2016 was not releasing the contents that made up Build 35 as individual updates whenever they were ready, though. Instead, we wanted to make the update as significant as possible, but every time we thought the animations were close,  something else in them crept up. It was essentially our unending ball of yarn, tying the tiniest nuance of the game's code into the animation system. "Hell yeah, we're close. Oh shit there's something that needs to tie into that...there goes another week"


Once the animation build has finally found its way out to the stable branch, we will explain our future schedule that will see pretty much all the so far promised yet unreleased features begin to drop into hopefully subsequent builds. 
It's the 5 step roadmap that we have mentioned before, which is currently covering 5 hopefully consecutive builds all containing things that people have been looking forward to (including THAT one).
Make no mistake, we are perfectly aware of the frustration the wait has caused and understand that it can also seem like no work has been done on NPCs when you as the players can't see the progress we are making.
In the background, we've had plenty of work carried out on the promised big features, though. 

As we've mentioned before, each and every step of the 5 stage roadmap provides big and meaningful features while simultaneously laying the foundation for the next stage. Animations are the first fundamental stage of this plan.
Also, each stage will allow us to release the stuff that's been piling up and that we’ve been constructing in the background for a long time, piece by piece instead of one huge mess, making it easier to manage, test, bug fix and polish them up one by one.

 

I am sorry that we are so silent on NPCs and other features people are waiting for, but after all these years, we have learned quite some lessons by mentioning them and we keep on learning. Keeping the NPC progress close to our chests has been the right decision, though, judging from how actually mentioning their status in the past has turned out.

The silence will have an end after animations.

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