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nasKo

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Hey everyone! A brief Mondoid this week given that its Easter Monday, with everyone picking up tools proper after the Easter weekend tomorrow. A few updates on the current goings on:

VEHICLES

The first major closed test of the vehicles went really well, and we harvested a lot of cool feedback to help get them on their way toward release. General Arcade have just done another major update to the code, and we’ll be getting this into testing either today or tomorrow. Some highlights include more vehicles, Walking Deadesque traffic jams along city roads, and increasing the zombie attraction to the car engines, as well as continuing the Zomboid tradition of us being evil and sadistic developers, by adding the classic 90s era / horror movie reliability of starting engines in stressful situations, so players can squirm in the driver seat turning the key trying to start the engine while the undead begin to crowd around the car. There have been a whole bunch of bug fixes too, and we’ll see how it gets on in testing!

ANIMS

As we mentioned last week, we now have Mark enter the Zomboid development fray, and he’s currently getting familiar with the Zomboid codebase and he will be using his animation development experience to help us push the animations out the door as soon as we can! As a way of familiarising himself with the animation code-base, he’s currently in the process of implementing a third party asset loader that will make the file export process much easier and hopefully ferret out a few remaining issues with the system, and into the bargain allow modders to load a wide range of 3D model formats directly into the game, which will make it much easier for modders to add character models, vehicles, weapons and the works.

 

There’s probably other stuff going on, progress on build 37 etc, but we’ll leave that until next week when full post-holiday communications have been restored!

 

Happy Easter everyone!

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Nice to see vehicles being added, just wish 37 hadn't been stuck in IWBUMS for over 4 months. Is there even an actual 1.0 release date ETA yet? It's been like.. awhile... I have faith in the team but I backed this game in 2012. Thought it'd a little farther along after over 4 years.

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2 minutes ago, zoeyflower said:

they dont provide ETAs cause that went south several times before 

 

I realize this but 4-5 years for a game like this? I feel even with the progress that has been made the game has been pretty stagnant the last year. I guess with all other Zombie/Survival games letting me down I'd just like something to play that is actually finished. We'll probably see State of Decay 2 before this gets even near release.. maybe even Dead Island 2 which would almost be sad considering what they have been through to make that game. DayZ is a pile of steaming sh*t. Miscreated is even slower to develop than PZ but it's MP so you have to deal with constant cheaters/exploiters ruining the game. H1Z1 is a joke, so is WarZ and ALL its spin-offs. Dying Light and State of Decay 1 were the only decent ones and they've long been played with little to no replay value.

 

There's a whole that needs filling and whoever can do it will be big winners.

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A big whole indeed. 


 

I want the devs to continue working on zomboid until they're done, and the things that you seem to feel are so important are far less so to me than they are to you. That doesn't make your opinions invalid, but if you want to play games that are finished, don't buy early access games.

 

Edited by thiosk
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1 hour ago, thiosk said:

A big whole indeed. 


 

I want the devs to continue working on zomboid until they're done, and the things that you seem to feel are so important are far less so to me than they are to you. That doesn't make your opinions invalid, but if you want to play games that are finished, don't buy early access games.

 

 

This was a small niche team that started as a first time product and has been extraordinarily successful. Comparisons to SoD, DI, and DayZ + etc are completely irrelevant because those are entirely different games. The only comparison is that they involve zombies. Those games are not simulations. Most of them are driven by scripted events. The NPCs in zomboid are more challenging than in SoD, for instance, because the NPCs are expected to move in and navigate the world. They don't get to move from "follow player animation" to "i'm in a pickle, player! help!" animation to "i'm going to rumage in this cabinet for 24 hours because I'm working, heres the voice clip to prove it" animation.

 

Thats why those games blow. They're games set in a zombie theme. They aren't zombie sims. 

 

This is the only zombie sim on the market. If you want a finished product, buy it when it releases.

 
 
 
 

 

Really well-written comment. My only concern is that I won't have time to play the Vehicle, Animation, and/or NPC updates when they come out because I'm 17 now and who knows how busy I'll be as a college student and beyond. I have been playing this game since 2014 and I used to joke back in 2014 and 15 that some of the features they announced that year "wouldn't make it in until 2017", thinking it would be funny because they would likely come out before then. The joke isn't so funny now considering it's 2017 and some of them still haven't come out (which, now that I think about it, is a whole new joke itself). To be honest, I hope the vehicles and animations will be out by the end of summer, but I don't trust that they will release NPC's before I have to go to college.

Edited by BayCon
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4 hours ago, thiosk said:

I want the devs to continue working on zomboid until they're done, and the things that you seem to feel are so important are far less so to me than they are to you. That doesn't make your opinions invalid, but if you want to play games that are finished, don't buy early access games.

And I want the same but that is not my point. I will continue to buy EA games to SUPPORT games/devs/indies because I believe in their vision. I know they will most likely not be ready for a few years but PZ is going on 5 years. Yes we're finally seeing some decent progression but there is still a LONG ways to go. As I said in my original post I support the devs and believe they will actually get there but am I gonna be waiting another 3-5 years? I used to play Zomboid a decent bit several years ago, even would hop on to check out the new stables, but I jump in to play now and it seems like very little has changed in those years of development.

 

I don't mean for this to sound like a rant, I've followed PZ since I before I purchased in 2012, it just seems like they could have done some things to speed up development without hurting the final game.

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11 hours ago, VitaminK said:

And I want the same but that is not my point. I will continue to buy EA games to SUPPORT games/devs/indies because I believe in their vision. I know they will most likely not be ready for a few years but PZ is going on 5 years. Yes we're finally seeing some decent progression but there is still a LONG ways to go. As I said in my original post I support the devs and believe they will actually get there but am I gonna be waiting another 3-5 years? I used to play Zomboid a decent bit several years ago, even would hop on to check out the new stables, but I jump in to play now and it seems like very little has changed in those years of development.

 

I don't mean for this to sound like a rant, I've followed PZ since I before I purchased in 2012, it just seems like they could have done some things to speed up development without hurting the final game.

All something we are well aware of.  

Hindsight is always 20/20 but there are also risks in investing in a sped up development. There any many factors to consider.

Better safe than sorry.

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14 hours ago, VitaminK said:

And I want the same but that is not my point. I will continue to buy EA games to SUPPORT games/devs/indies because I believe in their vision. I know they will most likely not be ready for a few years but PZ is going on 5 years. Yes we're finally seeing some decent progression but there is still a LONG ways to go. As I said in my original post I support the devs and believe they will actually get there but am I gonna be waiting another 3-5 years? I used to play Zomboid a decent bit several years ago, even would hop on to check out the new stables, but I jump in to play now and it seems like very little has changed in those years of development.

 

I don't mean for this to sound like a rant, I've followed PZ since I before I purchased in 2012, it just seems like they could have done some things to speed up development without hurting the final game.

From what I gathered what the devs did in 2016 was they did a lot, but their main problem was, they'd start one project (Anims for example) then move onto something else completely ditching the half worked project, which if you figure, doesn't put out a lot of content. But  in 2017 they've chosen something and stuck, kinda turnin' over a new leaf.

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2 hours ago, Queen Glory said:

From what I gathered what the devs did in 2016 was they did a lot, but their main problem was, they'd start one project (Anims for example) then move onto something else completely ditching the half worked project, which if you figure, doesn't put out a lot of content. But  in 2017 they've chosen something and stuck, kinda turnin' over a new leaf.

IKR. It's hard to put a puzzle together when the pieces keep changing shape. It's a super good thing that they are really manning the checklist, I think. When this puppy finally goes 1.0 it will bury imitators and clones in a shallow gravy.

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20 hours ago, VitaminK said:

I know they will most likely not be ready for a few years but PZ is going on 5 years.

to be fair

gta v had like more than 1000 people working on it according to benzies with a budget of about $250 million and the development went on for bout 3 years, most of those people had prob 5-10 or so years of experience on professional game making and are / were pretty much top tier professionals doing that for a living while pz started with like one or so devs on a crappy laptop and went through several major overhauls and its more indepth and enjoyable than 95% of the games currently on steam (at least in my opinion and im really picky about what i play in my freetime) and they have about 9 devs out of which 4 i think only joined in halfway into development and the coder theyve talked about whos joined a few weeks ago if im correct so if you put that into perspective you gotta give them that they did do a lot from the start on theyre the first people i know to replicate a big part of an entire real life state into a working isometric perspective with a whole lotta limitations, im from the midwest and the developers arent even american and yet they managed to make an us replica that makes me feel more at home than many us made games set in the states do and an engine they built from the ground up with this java thing which apparently is really limiting too

i know gta v is probably a world away from pz in many ways but you gotta think about the fact that about 330 game dev legends with a budget of about $250 million took 3 years to develop an open world game and these guys are 5 years in development starting with no real budget and a tiny team of like 4 people and nowadays its a giant indepth zombie survival simulator on a near 1:1 replica of a part of a real life state with a billion features and more to come including an npc system that fooled several watchers into thinking the npcs are actual human players

(not im not an expert on this so dont quote me on anything pls k thanks)

 

and compare that with the steaming pile of shit known as dayz for example which was just a mod for arma 2 adding a hunger and thirst script along with some bare bones survival elements and a crappy generic zombie face texture and its 5 years into development with pretty much no big game changes and its still running on a hybrid arma 2/3 engine

 

the devs did a whole lot of shit that you gotta respect wether you like this game and its current state / development speed or not

 

hold up heres some sources that are even more hardcore

Edited by zoeyflower
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5 hours ago, Queen Glory said:

From what I gathered what the devs did in 2016 was they did a lot, but their main problem was, they'd start one project (Anims for example) then move onto something else completely ditching the half worked project, which if you figure, doesn't put out a lot of content. But  in 2017 they've chosen something and stuck, kinda turnin' over a new leaf.

But that is not the case at all.

 

The only thing where work stopped was creative mode, because animations took priority. 

Work on animations hasn't stopped. Not sure what ditched half working projects you're referring to.
 

The error was holding back builds to make them meatier. Content could have been ready earlier instead of waiting for something else to finish up in order to release the two together.

 

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18 hours ago, nasKo said:

But that is not the case at all.

 

The only thing where work stopped was creative mode, because animations took priority. 

Work on animations hasn't stopped. Not sure what ditched half working projects you're referring to.
 

The error was holding back builds to make them meatier. Content could have been ready earlier instead of waiting for something else to finish up in order to release the two together.

 

Like i said it just what a i gathered and came to THINK what happened, not what actually happened :/, since things like obviously creative, anims, ect it would appear in the mondoids (at least to me) that you were constantly shifting focus. If it's not the case then awesome, it was just what i was led to believe.

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