In-Game Mappage

[nasKo]

Howdy survivor. Hope your apocalyptic nightmare scenario is going well. Here’s some news from the land of zeds…

IN-GAME MAPS

For many PZ players the alt-tab to Blindcoder’s map has become something of a ritual, but for a long time we’ve needed a way for players to get their bearings in-game. Using the power of Turbo’s CartoZed tool we now have the power to create top-down maps, which means that we can now also feed them to our resident artist Mash to create lootable in-game items like this. [Still somewhat work in progress – town slogan to change!]

These maps won’t track your position, but you will be able to get you bearings and make markings on them. After all, what’s a map if you can’t mark safehouses, the homes you’ve looted and whatever other vital survival locations on it? Using this initial March Ridge template map RJ has been implementing mouse zoom, the ability to mark notes and also a ‘symbol stamping’ system that will let you annotate the maps that you find with skulls, house images, crosses etc. You can even choose your own text and icon colours. Please note that the following video is a work-in-progress!

Importantly, too, the work has been done to make sure that these are transferable between co-op and MP players. This is a fully moddable system too, and the .png files could be expanded to faction leaflets, community maps and various other world-building materials.

Right now the system is in place, but it’ll take a little while for maps of each major town area to be produced – West Point and Muldraugh are sizeably bigger than the March Ridge test case after all. At first, meanwhile, we will only be concentrating on urban areas and avoiding any areas that are still in-flux or could potentially change in the main game.

IN OTHER NEWS

• Turbo’s development and modding tool ItemZed has just been released in beta form for community testing. It lets you easily play around with loot locations, item attributes, recipe contents, spawn rates and all that jazz. For further information please go here.
• Work at the anims coalface continues, as mentioned last week we’re turning our focus back to getting an SP build out in a Steam beta branch.
• We have General Arcade on the case with improving PZ’s netcode and map streaming to pave the way for EasyPickins’ vehicles work, again as discussed last week, but now also have an extra body from the Russian Mothership in the form of Eugene for the next few months. He’ll be working on engine and quality of life stuff and we’re super-excited to have him with us for the next little while.
• Our apologies for the delay of the recent build releases on GOG. The new versions are with the GOG guys, and should be going live very soon, if not already.

COMMUNITY MAPPAGE

A quick shout out to Z3759xy on our forums who has had to step away from some, quite frankly, incredible PZ map-making projects due to the amount of spare time he has on his hands – and we dearly hope that someone else picks up his .tbx baton, or performs a team-up operation. Some really great stuff in here!

The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter right here! Our Discord is now open for chat and hijinks too. A general overview of the content of PZ builds past, in testing and upcoming can be found here. Today’s image of desolation and destruction from .exe. 

[Icy Motto]

Sounds like some real meaty updates are coming. I am so excited. So much progress being made! My goodness! 

[miked79]

This pleases me. Im glad to see focus has shifted to SP animation build. #PatienceRestored.

[thrandisher]

Awesome.  I know there is a mod out already that you have to find a gps, then when in a town you connect up to a satellite and it had a map of that town, but this is alot nicer since you can actually place notes which is much needed.

[Zorak]

can we have that symbols for paint-made too ?

 

[Scriblerias]

In regards to the in-game maps made via CartoZed:

It looks like map notes have a "handwriting"-style font - but, if they're meant to be handwritten notes, why do they scale as you zoom in and out? Looks a little wonky.

[justcrow]

Good work

[Kuren]

Really excited about the maps

I know it's still a WIP version but I think it might be more intuitive to have the mouse pointer turn into the symbols when you select one. I feel like it would be more clear where you're placing it that way.

Anyway, great Mondoid as always! Excited to hear about all the things in the works right now

[trombonaught]

So glad to see the map feature developing like this! This game walks on the right side of the real/too real gameplay line. 

 

Another thought for maps: can writing on maps be tied to pencil and pen consumption? I would sacrifice those 100000 colour options (beautiful though they are) for that extra bit of realism.

Edited January 24, 2017 by trombonaught

[ProjectSky]

Can players share the same map data?

[Trojan_Turps]

Will we have the option to rotate the map to match the isometric north direction? This might help people understand which ways north etc. 

(Although it might seem obvious where north is?)

 

looks awesome anyway.  

[Keshash]

The mondoids are getting more and more interesting...

 

Do you plan adding an option to mark zones (like that) on the map? All those colours would really come in handy for marking factions' territories, infested areas, etc.

[Blasted_Taco]

10 hours ago, nasKo said:

Howdy survivor. Hope your apocalyptic nightmare scenario is going well. Here’s some news from the land of zeds…

IN OTHER NEWS

• Work at the anims coalface continues, as mentioned last week we’re turning our focus back to getting an SP build out in a Steam beta branch.

 

Hold the phone, what happen?

 

I thought that the SP side of the animations were already done?

First we have this mondoid back in November 21 saying this:

https://projectzomboid.com/blog/2016/11/launch-procedures/

Quote

Okay, so! Where we’re at is: we’ve filled in the yawning chasm that opened up before us in terms of getting the new game logic state machine system. So all the existing internal game messages to itself like (to choose three of a bazillion) ‘the zombie is attacking!’, ‘survivor health damaged!’ and ‘oh no, a bite!’ now work comfortably within the new animations. So, hurrah for that.

The vast majority of combat code is ported over, and right now we’re rewriting the lua bullet-reloading system that was so expertly contributed by Stormy in the early days.

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. Then we fix them up (could be a big job, could be a small job) and a test version will finally (finally!) emerge. Finally.

 

Fast forward to November 28 and we got this mondoid:

https://projectzomboid.com/blog/2016/11/megatestin/ 

 

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.

 

Then 2 mondoids after that we have a complete void of lack of info regarding the MP side of animations, so in between those months, what happen to the SP side of the animations? Has it been updated and then broken again trying to fix them from MP side? The MP made progress and broke stuff from the SP side? 

 

2 months ago they were ready to be tested and that was when the whole discussion we had on those mondoids saying that there could be a SP branch to test the animations out first and get a solid lead for the MP side later came from but that it was better to wait for the MP side to be completed and all that jazz.

 

Is there going to be again a wait of months before they get to the state to be tested again? I know that i sound like nipicking but when i try to discus this game with other people, it becomes harder to defend it sometimes and that made me go on this little rant here, but i just want to know what happen to that SP progress that was ready to launch almost 3 months ago, i am sure that it improved more but if it is improved, then why is not ready for testing? And if not then what happen? 

Edited January 24, 2017 by Blasted_Taco

[Marinus]

4 hours ago, trombonaught said:

Another thought for maps: can writing on maps be tied to pencil and pen consumption? I would sacrifice those 100000 colour options (beautiful though they are) for that extra bit of realism.

Of course it can be, but would it be worth it? Pencils and modern pens are rather efficient and last a long time. Unless you role play writing a novel or a diary or something, actually running out of ink won't be a issue for most play throughs. And even with heavy pen use it would be rare. You can have them running out of ink/graphite unrealistically quickly so it would somewhat noticeable finite ink is a thing, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of the idea of realistic pens. And it would probably more annoying than anything else, unless you make pens extremely rare, which would also be unrealistic.

 

Anyway, I've no problem with pens running out of ink, I just don't think it's worth the development time.

 

 

 

Edited January 24, 2017 by Marinus

[Kuren]

22 minutes ago, Blasted_Taco said:

i just want to know what happen to that SP progress that was ready to launch almost 3 months ago, i am sure that it improved more but if it is improved, then why is not ready for testing? And if not then what happen? 

As it was stated a few Mondoids ago, the animation build has been in the works for a while now and the "preview" you saw a few months ago was just that, a preview. These things take time and we'll see them come to fruition (there's a million things that can come into play). I've not only been dying for animations but I've been dying to have my friends play with me too, so I understand where you're coming from.

[Z3759xy]

Thank you for "the quick shout out", I really appreciate it. When I started following PZ, I noticed that the people behind, and around TIS are skillful and determined to buid a quality product. Today, with 20+ years of gaming, I still believe this is true.

[Blasted_Taco]

3 minutes ago, Kuren said:

As it was stated a few Mondoids ago, the animation build has been in the works for a while now and the "preview" you saw a few months ago was just that, a preview. These things take time and we'll see them come to fruition (there's a million things that can come into play). I've not only been dying for animations but I've been dying to have my friends play with me too, so I understand where you're coming from.

 

I know about the previews, but i mean like it was stated a few Mondoids ago, that work has been on the MP side since it went all haywire on their side (at least that is what i think, because the network sync and all that), but aside from the previews, they did say that the SP side was ready to go into testing, they got the reloading system in place and they decided to go and hook it up into MP instead of doing the SP branch like they planned months before it.

 

So if the system was ready to go 3 months ago, at least from the SP side, what happen that broke it again and it needs to be work on it again?  

I been dying to play seriously too, but when i recommended people to buy into the game and then those people come back at me saying "dude where are the animations, i got an update but everything is the same" or things like that i just keep saying "they coming man, for real this time", so they kinda lose trust in me, they dont see the small changes that pile up into something great as a good thing, they just want to see the big fancy updates.

 

 

[EnigmaGrey]

If it were ready three months ago, it would have been released regardless of whether it was SP or MP only.

 

 Either you're reading too much into the Mondoids or the devs are doing  a poor job communicating what's going on. I'm betting it's a bit of both.

[tommysticks]

7 hours ago, Trojan_Turps said:

Will we have the option to rotate the map to match the isometric north direction? This might help people understand which ways north etc. 

(Although it might seem obvious where north is?)

If you look on google maps then it'd give you a better idea which way north is, however, there has never been any in-game confirmation of this, aside from some functions that don't seem to be used other than in mods. So whenever someone would try to give directions you both had to be on the same page as to which North they were talking about. This should alleviate that.

 

I like the idea of being able to rotate the map. It seems like they've done extra work as it is, like in the challenge game with a mini-map. Game is in locked ISO, map is North oriented up, you move one way and your dot on the mini-map moves another. No sir, I don't like it.

[trombonaught]

5 hours ago, Marinus said:

Anyway, I've no problem with pens running out of ink, I just don't think it's worth the development time.

I think pens already run out of ink! I heard somewhere that writing alleviates boredom and that's why writing tools have limited use. If the same boredom-alleviation went into writing on maps, it could help prevent the (anticipated) problem of workig on your map only to return to a super bored character.

[DresdenBBQ]

I already made a map of the only place i spawn

[Marinus]

1 hour ago, trombonaught said:

I think pens already run out of ink! 

Really? I never noticed it, but I've to admit i didn't play the game a whole lot in recent time. 

[lordixi]

23 hours ago, trombonaught said:

Another thought for maps: can writing on maps be tied to pencil and pen consumption?

First thing i think about when I watched video. It's right idea.

[Strats]

Would we be able to find different kinds of maps? For example, maybe there is a common tourist road map in gas stations, a map for customers at the Crossroads Mall, a map used by the military to maintain the border of the Exclusion Zone, a map drawn by a dead survivor with markings about certain houses, etc. Maybe it's just fanciful, but I think it'd add some more depth to the maps and such.

[Icy Motto]

Love this idea!