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Released: Vehicle Tech Test build


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4 hours ago, Drama_Setter said:

 

Electric cars was invented before 90's. Okay,we still can see some kind of butleg rare models,made by genial rednecks.

Unfortunately this is barely a possibility. They would be so out of place. The closest remote possibility would be the general motors EV1 and that didn't come to the public until 96 if my memory serves correct. Oh, not to mention that there was barely any following for the car and it didn't sell, and the rarity of the battery packs made them super inconvenient. In the end all of them got crushed.

 

And I have no idea where you are getting that these cars would last longer. There's no specialized mechanic shops in the setting that would make sense for working on an electric motor, let alone the likelihood (see: impossible) finding the needed parts would make replacing anything near impossible. 

 

This also means that driving them isn't free either, charging these uses a lot of power to the point where owning would would hamper a town's power grid if it's already facing power shortages.

 

If the game took place 20 years in the future I'd say you got a great idea here but one of the core problems with this is that the modules in EVs are inherently less repairable so work on them means replacing things as opposed to being able to actually fix issues.

Edited by Kim Jong Un
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Why not add it as a possibility? when you start a sandbox or server you can set the start date, if the start date is > 2010 or whatever, add electric vehicles in the spawn tables. Same goes for some other goodies that could be included, solar panels etc.

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1 hour ago, Colin said:

Why not add it as a possibility? when you start a sandbox or server you can set the start date, if the start date is > 2010 or whatever, add electric vehicles in the spawn tables. Same goes for some other goodies that could be included, solar panels etc.

Or set the game in 2169 and shoot zombies with LAZER GUNZZZ ;-)

 

 

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1 hour ago, Colin said:

Why not add it as a possibility? when you start a sandbox or server you can set the start date, if the start date is > 2010 or whatever, add electric vehicles in the spawn tables. Same goes for some other goodies that could be included, solar panels etc.

You would see a hundred solar panels before you even found an ad for an electronic car in the 90s, so that's different. Solar panels have been around much longer than conventional EVs that we know today. We are talking about a difference of 20 years here for the sake of including something that wouldn't be viable for long in a zombie apocalypse anyways.

 

Creating an entirely different setting for a different space in time just doesn't seem worth it for electric cars. This isn't an "option". 20+ years into the future is a different setting entirely.

Edited by Kim Jong Un
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That comparison is a bit over the top.... I think there is nothing wrong with a bit modern realism. Personally I'm not fond of cars in the game, since 90% of cars would have been taken out of the cities to escape, and most would be drained of fuel by the time u even find them.... bicycles would have been a better form of transport.

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I think it most definitely would be worth it (much more than vehicles), and it would not take much extra work to add in some additional items that are only spawned when the start date was > than item "introduction" date.

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I'm pretty sure the cars that you already see ingame take into account the amount people that have left in them already, since there is only a chance of vehicles appearing in the spawn points and they aren't guaranteed every time. There are highway pile-ups and the parking lots are already fairly bare, so having cars in the game in their current spawn implementation is not unrealistic in the slightest. Especially in a country where the average middle class household has two vehicles and almost everybody is dead. There have already been enough natural disasters stateside to speak for itself regarding how many vehicles are left behind in the case of flood, forest fire, tornado etc.

 

You seem to underestimate the setting difference 20 years makes, and I'm fairly confident the developers aren't going to do this because it's not as simple as you make it sound. In 20 years time, new buildings have been made, new roadways have been constructed, new laws and restrictions are introduced, fads have faded and been created. It's just not a simple change whatsoever and it is probably not something they are looking to do at this time.

 

You also have to ask the question, "In this rural town, how many people own electric vehicles?" The answer isn't as generous as you'd think.

 

Bicycles are a good idea and are probably the only true alternative transportation I could see them adding apart from boats and motorcycles.

Edited by Kim Jong Un
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5 minutes ago, Kim Jong Un said:

Bicycles are a good idea and are probably the only true alternative transportation I could see them adding apart from boats and motorcycles.

 
I'm still hoping they eventually add horses down the line too :) I feel like it could be done pretty simply (without even using the new car physics) once animations and animals are out and would really add to the world and the farmland we come across. I'm a little biased though, as animals (wild, domestic and farm) are my most desired feature for PZ in general :P lol

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11 minutes ago, Kuren said:

 
I'm still hoping they eventually add horses down the line too :) I feel like it could be done pretty simply (without even using the new car physics) once animations and animals are out and would really add to the world and the farmland we come across. I'm a little biased though, as animals (wild, domestic and farm) are my most desired feature for PZ in general :P lol

Oh, I remember when I used to ride horses myself. Yah, I've always hoped for horses myself. I don't see it coming anytime soon though, but it's on my list of wants. It fits Kentucky quite well.

 

--

 

OT,

 

My own little qualm with the vehicle design is the lack of wood panels on the station wagon and the fact that the van's ride height seems way too low (the wheels clip through the fenders sometimes)

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1 hour ago, Kuren said:

 
I'm still hoping they eventually add horses down the line too :) I feel like it could be done pretty simply (without even using the new car physics) once animations and animals are out and would really add to the world and the farmland we come across. I'm a little biased though, as animals (wild, domestic and farm) are my most desired feature for PZ in general :P lol

 

Yeah, horses would be super cool, but it's actually not simple at all. Here is a quick rundown our of my head for what you will likely need:
 

Spoiler

 

- Horse 3d model and textures in PZ style

- Horse animations

 - Idle,

 -  player riding

 - Walk,

 - Run,

 - rotate left,

 - rotate right,

 - backwards(?),

 - "bumping into something",

 - getting hit,

 - getting killed.

 - getting hit with player ontop

 - getting killed with player ontop

 - throw down the player

 - maybe additional "player on horse attacking stuff"-animations

- Fitting horse SFX

- Basic horse ai for when the player isn't riding it

- Gameplay mechanic to "gain" a horse (find one, do something to make it "belong to you")

- Feeding mechanic (not that hard, already exists in form of car refuel)

- Assign a programmer to make that stuff happen

- Fix bugs

- Playtest

- Fix more bugs

- Gamebalance

 

 

I probably forgot some things. :>

While I'd really love to see horses, I guess having dogs first sounds way more realistic at that point. Did they ever mention stuff like adding dogs or other animals anyway?

 

Edited by Lexx2k
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2 minutes ago, Lexx2k said:

 

Yeah, horses would be super cool, but it's actually not simple at all. Here is a quick rundown our of my head for what you will likely need:
 

  Hide contents

 

- Horse 3d model and textures in PZ style

- Horse animations

 - Idle,

 -  player riding

 - Walk,

 - Run,

 - rotate left,

 - rotate right,

 - backwards(?),

 - "bumping into something",

 - getting hit,

 - getting killed.

- Fitting horse SFX

- Basic horse ai for when the player isn't riding it

- Gameplay mechanic to "gain" a horse (find one, do something to make it "belong to you")

- Feeding mechanic (not that hard, already exists in form of car refuel)

- Assign a programmer to make that stuff happen

- Fix bugs

- Playtest

- Fix more bugs

- Gamebalance

 

 

I probably forgot some things. :>

While I'd really love to see horses, I guess having dogs first sounds way more realistic at that point.

 


I'm talking simple by comparison... Nothing is truly simple in game development...
 

Edited by Kuren
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Just now, Lexx2k said:

It's still not more simple than cars. :>


What are you talking about? The backbone for all the things you listed involving the horse exist or will exist once animations are in. Over half of what you listed was the obvious animations and artwork for it too. Cars have required a ton of work on a new physics system and lots of engine optimization just so they can be implemented in the tech test and that doesn't include all the same types of things you just listed for horses. Horses would be a tack-on to existing features already used by the game at that point. Yeah there's still work to be done there, but it's not like the work that's been needed just to get vehicles/cars in.

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2 hours ago, Colin said:

I think it most definitely would be worth it (much more than vehicles), and it would not take much extra work to add in some additional items that are only spawned when the start date was > than item "introduction" date.

 
 

 

Oh yes it would, dude, yes it would...

 

You're looking at new models, new properties, new sounds, new sprites, new bugs, new glitches, and hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, and hours of man/woman power (can't forget about the artist Mash! ;D), and hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of lines of code. I don't think any one of us who have never developed a game can possibly understand how much work it is and how much time it takes.

Edited by BayCon
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32 minutes ago, RobertJohnson said:

New version!

Also now it has his own dedicated server branch, same password as for the client! :)

 

  • Changed vehicles textures.
  • Fixed trees that can be driven through.
  • Fixed floor items drawing over car.
 

 

Nice! I'll be testing it out when I get the chance (hopefully this evening). Can't wait to see Mash's new textures. I'm a fan of the art she's done for the game. :)

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50 minutes ago, RobertJohnson said:

New version!

Also now it has his own dedicated server branch, same password as for the client! :)

 

  • Changed vehicles textures.
  • Fixed trees that can be driven through.
  • Fixed floor items drawing over car.

 

Just finished a test run with the new update. Here are the pros and cons I encountered:

 

Pros

  • The game no longer crashes upon exit. Definite improvement.
  • I'm liking Mash's new textures, they blend into the overall aesthetic without being too cartoony. 
  • Driving has been streamlined with much less frame loss, though frame loss is still present at times. There's definitely been some optimization. 

Cons

  • Some of the overall textures are a bit wonky now. Zombies and players are drawn certain over pieces of furniture and other items, and it looks rather awkward. 
  • About ten minutes into the new update, my game started freezing up at times. It got worse when I got into a car and started driving. It wasn't lag, it was a full screen freeze. When I got to the highway the game ground to a halt, freezing and unfreezing until the whole thing crashed. I've never encountered this particular bug before, not even on earlier versions of the vehicles build. 

TBD

  • Whether or not zombie attraction has been altered
  • What's causing the freezing and crashing

I'm going back in for a vehicle-oriented test. If it crashes again I'll probably be back shortly.

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39 minutes ago, Brex said:

 

Just finished a test run with the new update. Here are the pros and cons I encountered:

 

Pros

  • The game no longer crashes upon exit. Definite improvement.
  • I'm liking Mash's new textures, they blend into the overall aesthetic without being too cartoony. 
  • Driving has been streamlined with much less frame loss, though frame loss is still present at times. There's definitely been some optimization. 

Cons

  • Some of the overall textures are a bit wonky now. Zombies and players are drawn certain over pieces of furniture and other items, and it looks rather awkward. 
  • About ten minutes into the new update, my game started freezing up at times. It got worse when I got into a car and started driving. It wasn't lag, it was a full screen freeze. When I got to the highway the game ground to a halt, freezing and unfreezing until the whole thing crashed. I've never encountered this particular bug before, not even on earlier versions of the vehicles build. 

TBD

  • Whether or not zombie attraction has been altered
  • What's causing the freezing and crashing

I'm going back in for a vehicle-oriented test. If it crashes again I'll probably be back shortly.

 

Alright, I'm back. Game crashed again. Here's what I noticed:

 

  • Driving optimization has definitely improved. There's an occasional lag spike or loss of frames, usually in the presence of a horde of zombies but otherwise driving seems to have been streamlined, at least somewhat. It's a superb improvement and makes driving much more fun and fulfilling. 
  • There seems to have been a small reduction in the number of zombies that are attracted to the sound of your engine. Granted, if you drive into a huge swarm they'll all converge on you, but they seem to lose interest faster when driving by and don't seem to follow you as much. I accumulated hordes that were large, but tolerable, during my driving test. I still wouldn't recommend driving cars back to your safehouse, especially if its in an urban area, but driving is now more practical and zombies won't harass you as much. 
  • There seem to be some leftover textures from the old vehicle branch before Mash's update, mainly with the vans.
  • Definitely some clipping issues (characters walking through stationary furniture, etc.)
  • Once again I encountered the "freeze & crash" problem, this time while on foot. It occurred after about 25 minutes of play (I had to restart due to character death at one point, but otherwise it was uninterrupted). The same thing happened: the game started to freeze at regularly decreasing intervals until the whole thing crashed. 

All in all, I'd say this was a nice update, but I hope the devs figure out what's causing the freezing and the crashing. 

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1 hour ago, BayCon said:

I don't think any one of us who have never developed a game can possibly understand how much work it is and how much time it takes.


Speak for yourself, regardless, I am not specifically stating this for electric vehicles, but for other potential items that would exist outside the predefined date..... as a procedural game content creator, game developer and programming language developer, I know exactly how much work it is developing features that require procedural generation or replacement.... creating new layouts for buildings is not hundreds of hours of work but instead days of planning and coordination, with some ideas between the current devs, I'm pretty sure they can do it...... (whether they would want to is a complete different story) buildings already can be pre-burned, so placing "invisible plots" for buildings that did not exist before and replacement buildings would not be difficult at all since they have already built the necessary tools.....

Edited by Colin
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Hey everyone, I'm pretty new to the forum but I thought i'd report something I found recently.

Macbook Pro

Specs: 2.6 GHz Intel Core i5, Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB

 

I entered a police car in one of the pileups on the road out of Muldraugh, it wouldn't start and I could not get out either. Maybe something small but I thought I'd post it here.

 

Exiting and reentering the game seems to fix it, but I do not know if it will recur in the future

Edited by Doorsfan95
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2 hours ago, Colin said:

Speak for yourself, regardless, I am not specifically stating this for electric vehicles, but for other potential items that would exist outside the predefined date..... as a procedural game content creator, game developer and programming language developer, I know exactly how much work it is developing features that require procedural generation or replacement.... creating new layouts for buildings is not hundreds of hours of work but instead days of planning and coordination, with some ideas between the current devs, I'm pretty sure they can do it...... (whether they would want to is a complete different story) buildings already can be pre-burned, so placing "invisible plots" for buildings that did not exist before and replacement buildings would not be difficult at all since they have already built the necessary tools.....

 

Look man, you are asking for a feature for a gamemode that is totally optional so players can play the way they want, aka not the Devs vision.

 

Why would they go out of their way to add something like that where those resources could be spent on other stuff?

 

Also part of the whole "Oh man the world is going to shit and is going to spread out and no one can stop it" is because the lack of internet and all of that fancy stuff, imagine if you add laptops or cellphones, this event would have been contained more quickly in some other way.

 

Also i am 100% sure that when vehicles hit stable, one of the first mods are going to be something along the lines of making fuel or electric cars.

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Just now, Blasted_Taco said:

Look man, you are asking for a feature for a gamemode that is totally optional so players can play the way they want, aka not the Devs vision.

 

I am not asking for this feature, I just mentioned it would have been a good addition to the game ;)

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I'd say sound's been nerfed to the other extreme. Starting up a car seems to only attract the closet zombies. Driving past hordes, they often won't turn and notice  you until you're almost right on top of them. Zombies only follow until you out pace them by 20-30 tiles then just stop. If you shut off your engine, only the ones within 10-15 tiles seem to keep coming, though they sometimes lose focus and just stand there.

 

Now they're no longer useful  for distraction or moving hordes around unless you go really, really slowly - and even then it's debatable. Maybe the radio would help, but haven't bothered.

 

On the plus, performance in Six Months After is now good. Without having all those zombies path-finding to a single object, it's very playable. Just without this, it's now very easy to "win." Drive around / through hordes, go to a clear area. Live in peace and harmony. A damage model would, of course, change that since there's so many of them, but I genuinely found it much more fun trying to move them out of the way with the vehicle's noise mechanics, than shouting or carrying around a gun. It's hard to conceptualize how this'll play out.

 

This really does kill the enjoyment for me, though. I really did like the hustle and movement present in the prior build. It was fun thinking of how to mitigate the flood of zombies that'd come trying to start up an old beater, not to meant filling it with loot as quietly as possible before fleeing, and using other cars / noise makers as distractions to loot high-value targets. Losing the hordes by zigging and zagging complimented it nicely, realism be damnmed.

 

Sandbox options for sound radiuses changed would be very helpful.

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