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Is PZ Ever going to get finished?


DizzyCrash

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5 minutes ago, TheGrifter said:

I suppose so. Still, the sentiments expressed in that thread, "mean" or not, are valid. There's a lot of things in this world that aren't nice.

 

We've been told to be patient, not to ask for deadlines, for seven years. What has that resulted in?

 

https://steamcommunity.com/app/108600/reviews/?browsefilter=trendyear&snr=1_5_reviews_&p=1

 

This is a list of the Most Helpful reviews for the last year of Project Zomboid. Some of those people recording those reviews have hundreds of hours on them. Most of them have around 40/50 hours. And the sentiment they are consistently expressing is the feeling of being led on. Of being told to be patient. Of being told to be patient for seven years...

 


You know what I used to do when I got tired of waiting for updates and got burned out? Found myself another game or thing to occupy time with.

It's just what... 15€? I hope to god people who are so beyond pissed off because they bought something for 15€ and years later it didn't bloom into their dream never make a bad investment on the market. I burn that kinda money a month in cigarettes. (Probably more)

Edited by Svarog
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1 minute ago, Svarog said:


You know what I used to do when I got tired of waiting for updates and got burned out? Found myself another game or thing to occupy time with.

It's just what... 15€? I hope to god people who are so beyond pissed off because they bought something for 15€ and years later it didn't bloom into their dream never make a bad investment on the market. I burn that kinda money a month in cigarettes.

That's a cop-out. You're trying to turn this discussion into an argument so it can be shut down.

 

Frustration is natural when you've been told for seven years that this promising little tech demo is going to be turned into an amazing zombie game.

 

But where's the end game? I read through the radio script. THAT'S the game I want to play. But the game doesn't feel undead, it just feels dead in single player.

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17 minutes ago, TheGrifter said:

That's a cop-out. You're trying to turn this discussion into an argument so it can be shut down.

 

Frustration is natural when you've been told for seven years that this promising little tech demo is going to be turned into an amazing zombie game.

 

But where's the end game? I read through the radio script. THAT'S the game I want to play. But the game doesn't feel undead, it just feels dead in single player.


You know, If I was still 16-18, had little pocket money and fck all to do, I'd be frustrated too but I'm too old to get annoyed at stuff like this precisely because I spend what I spent on this game on microwave dinners that barely have a taste alone over a typical week at my job. And that's without counting my rent, nicotine addiction, bus ticket costs etc. At least when i have a free moment I can enjoy this thing I bought for 15€ years ago and it's getting new features as time goes on so it remains kinda fresh all the time!

I'm just grateful the devs keep working on the game, slow as they might, because I know for a fact I would have dropped the project years ago due to burn out, maybe I'd pay off some modder for the right to integrate and MAAAAYBE improve their NPC/whatever mod before I slapped 1.0 on the thing, released it and moved on with my life because I wouldn't have been able to take one more second of looking at the same damn code day in and day out.

Call me an apologist if you want, I used to feel the frustration too, life goes on though and there are more important/real things to get pissed off at as it does :D

Edited by Svarog
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33 minutes ago, Svarog said:

"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad."

Shigeru Miyamoto

"Speed is not part of the true Way of strategy. Speed implies that things seem fast or slow, according to whether or not they are in rhythm. Whatever the Way, the master of strategy does not appear fast."
- Miyamoto Musashi

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5 minutes ago, Fenris_Wolf said:

"Speed is not part of the true Way of strategy. Speed implies that things seem fast or slow, according to whether or not they are in rhythm. Whatever the Way, the master of strategy does not appear fast."
- Miyamoto Musashi

PZ Will probably outlive most of it's EA rivals n terms of how long people actually care. (I'd edit random Z Surv Games onto gravestones but I'm laze and I don't have the software anyway)
 

 

Edited by Svarog
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4 minutes ago, Fenris_Wolf said:

Defiantly.

"Where are the NPCs damnit!" - PZ Players 10 years from now

"Neeeeeeeeeeew treeeeeeeeeeeendsssss..." - Every other zombie survival game player.

Edit: Thinking about it... it would be pretty easy to turn PZ into Battle Royale kinda game...

Edited by Svarog
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2 minutes ago, Svarog said:

"Where are the NPCs damnit!" - PZ Players 10 years from now

There's very few game out there that get my attention for more then 30 minutes...ones that keep me entertained for a week are extremely rare. I haven't been playing PZ for as long as some people (since build 33), but the fact I still play says something. The fact that I'm actually active in the community says even more. This is my 255th post since mid last year...our own forums (for another project) that I've been active in for 11 years now, 253 posts :lol:

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Sometimes I just wish they'd fix a bunch of basic shit and release a patch. Doesn't have to be anything fancy. PZ needs redstone(Electricity) like in Minecraft.  The ability to trap your base so you can defend yourself against offline robbers and just basic stuff to give the game life. We don't need the next generation of NPC intelligence or cars or animations but we sure love features. The neutrition / injury updates were good examples of quality of life improvements that you don't have to remake the whole game to implement. 

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4 minutes ago, Fenris_Wolf said:

There's very few game out there that get my attention for more then 30 minutes...ones that keep me entertained for a week are extremely rare. I haven't been playing PZ for as long as some people (since build 33), but the fact I still play says something. The fact that I'm actually active in the community says even more. This is my 255th post since mid last year...our own forums (for another project) that I've been active in for 11 years now, 253 posts :lol:


Same here, i can barely keep a job for 3 months (Not because I suck at it, last job my CO told me "Why did You have to quit instead of one of those lazy assholes, you at least did your job well" and I've been here for over 3 years. I have a near zero attention span and yet this game has me for keeps.

It's kinda funny for me when I see these kinds of posts really, on one hand I get those people on the other... If I was them I would have been far too busy with another game to remember PZ exists.

Edited by Svarog
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5 minutes ago, Jack Bower said:

Sometimes I just wish they'd fix a bunch of basic shit and release a patch. Doesn't have to be anything fancy. PZ needs redstone(Electricity) like in Minecraft.  The ability to trap your base so you can defend yourself against offline robbers and just basic stuff to give the game life. We don't need the next generation of NPC intelligence or cars or animations but we sure love features. The neutrition / injury updates were good examples of quality of life improvements that you don't have to remake the whole game to implement. 


Yeah, lose the NPCs, improve the gunplay and let's have a zombie filled deathmatch in the mall.

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I mean, the servers and addons cover so much of the stuff that happens. New Dawn has heavily modified scenarios. We're a couple months away from probably launching a Fallout themed server. What the game needs is to deliver in small promises that allow for a modded community to grow and build the game. There is no reason that people are not in the market for a game similar to Space Station 13 that lasts longer than a couple hours of people randomly killing one another.

Like if the game added other monsters that are not in the base game that can attack players that you can mod in? Steller. Wouldn't be as much work as vehicles but adds the option to enable giant crabs that unburry from sand and chase you down. Like, they've got such a great game but they are being too ambitious.

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7 minutes ago, Jack Bower said:

I mean, the servers and addons cover so much of the stuff that happens. New Dawn has heavily modified scenarios. We're a couple months away from probably launching a Fallout themed server. What the game needs is to deliver in small promises that allow for a modded community to grow and build the game. There is no reason that people are not in the market for a game similar to Space Station 13 that lasts longer than a couple hours of people randomly killing one another.

Like if the game added other monsters that are not in the base game that can attack players that you can mod in? Steller. Wouldn't be as much work as vehicles but adds the option to enable giant crabs that unburry from sand and chase you down. Like, they've got such a great game but they are being too ambitious.


Yep, one thing that I would love far more than NPCs is just the ability to replace zombies with something else and ability to just edit it's basic AI.

PZ is a great game but with some modifications making it easier and even more open to mod it could serve as an INCREDIBLE platform for Total Conversions. Fck I can already imagine people doing fan versions of Fallout Fan Fiction on PZ engine.

The potential that's in it ALREADY is almost limitless, all we need is tools and if not access to the source then we just need it to be as moddable in lua as possible, which will take some work, a lot of stuff is still hard coded.

I can't wait to see a PZ: Medieval that will eventually exist as a mod.

Edited by Svarog
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2 minutes ago, Svarog said:

The potential that's in it ALREADY is almost limitless, all we need is tools and if not access to the source then we just need having as muchg as possible being open to mod in lua.

access to the source would be awesome (unlikely to happen though), having as much as possible in lua would be prime...except for the fact they went with kahlua and not pure lua. I'm of the opinion they should have ditched kahlua and used real lua. Use java only for graphics and sound output, possibly network, file and user input/outputs as well, and had all the actual game logic in real lua instead of the java/kahlua logic mix. We'd have 100% mod ability, and a faster engine to boot. Unfortunately too late to turn back the clock on that one.

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7 minutes ago, Fenris_Wolf said:

access to the source would be awesome (unlikely to happen though), having as much as possible in lua would be prime...except for the fact they went with kahlua and not pure lua. I'm of the opinion they should have ditched kahlua and used real lua. Use java only for graphics and sound output, possibly network, file and user input/outputs as well, and had all the actual game logic in real lua instead of the java/kahlua logic mix. We'd have 100% mod ability, and a faster engine to boot. Unfortunately too late to turn back the clock on that one.


Heh I learned basic programming thanks to PZ. I If it wasn't for modding PZ I would have failed at Technical IT school xD

Lua is awesome, it's awesome because it's simple and it's great as an introduction to coding. To give TIS credit most of the stuff that isn't modable is really old, take moodles or basic health stuff, that stuff was java side since before lua was used in PZ. Just wish someone opened as much as possible to lua.

Edit: Hell, I think we both see the insane amount of mods we could make (I wish I had the time to make em still :/) PZ is begging for a Fallout TC mod, me and my friend would love to get one going.

Edited by Svarog
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I don't really care for NPC's.  

Didn't need them in the long dark, ARK, or Subnautica, Myst, Osiris: New Dawn, Planet Nomads, 7 Days to Die . That's probably why i'm at peace here. 

 

Only NPC's I encountered that I had to actually outSMART were the ones in NeoScavenger. They can actually kill you in your sleep.  

 

I get my kicks from long term survival logistics and strategic mobility.  It's why i'm getting my kicks from the above mentioned games and PZ. 

 

Cauterizing wounds.  Why? You can bandage it. You can disinfect wounds with alcohol and cotton. Then drench a rag in disinfectant and use that as a bandage. That's better than taking a hunting knife and cauterizing one's wound. You'd sooner find rags than fire to heat up a knife. Especially with zombies everywhere. 

 

As for sanity.  The chances that a player will quit before the character itself quits is a nice measure of sanity.  

 

Lack of NPC's? The Zombie virus is an airborne transmitted disease. Your one of the lucky ones who are immune to the aerial element of it. 

 

So PZ promised NPC's?    Well get this.   and GET THIS GOOD:   

 

Wildcard promised variable length bridges for over 2 years, only to have REMOVED it off the list, after selling not one, but 2!!!! DLC!!!! during early access. 

 

The Indie Stone isn't gonna abandon NPC's, which BTW, was never promised to begin with by the same team. (different team working on PZ now)  

 

 

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35 minutes ago, Svarog said:

Heh I learned basic programming thanks to PZ. I If it wasn't for modding PZ I would have failed at Technical IT school xD

Thats actually kinda impressive, since NF is just about the only mod who's code I look at so far and didn't have a urge to recode the damn thing...

 

I figured a lot of the java was older, and the kahlua/lua component got thrown in after for mod support. The problem with it is that since its not actually lua, but java pretending to be lua it loses the main benefit of actually using lua, the speed of the code execution, and those parts will actually run slower then if it was done in java alone. Which is why I wished they had used real lua instead, performance and mod-ability.

Edited by Fenris_Wolf
editted due to typo correction
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Just now, Fenris_Wolf said:

Thats actually kinda impressive, since NF is just about the only mod who's code I look at so far and did have a urge to recode the damn thing...


I can give you the original NF code without my contributions... I learned as I went with it. Literally from Zero to What it is when it comes to my code. Original had ~1000 lines by @ExcentriCreation and that's what I worked with and learned from.

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Just now, Fenris_Wolf said:

Thats actually kinda impressive, since NF is just about the only mod who's code I look at so far and did have a urge to recode the damn thing...

 

I figured a lot of the java was older, and the kahlua/lua component got thrown in after for mod support. The problem with it is that since its not actually lua, but java pretending to be lua it loses the main benefit of actually using lua, the speed of the code execution, and those parts will actually run slower then if it was done in java alone. Which is why I wished they had used real lua instead, performance and mod-ability.

 

Yet going with a C implementation of Lua would also make it more difficult to support multiple platforms (not impossible and it'd depend on the library and its support) and to have a more intelligent debug/editing system. Different Java implementations of Lua that use JNI to call a C implementation of Lua, for example, might require a ton of boilerplate code, whereas Khalua2 is able to expose their contents to scripting with a single line.

 

There's always trade-offs, unfortunately. :(

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1 minute ago, EnigmaGrey said:

Yet going with a C implementation of Lua would also make it more difficult to support multiple platforms (not impossible and it'd depend on the library and its support) and to have a more intelligent debug/editing system. Different Java implementations of Lua that use JNI to call a C implementation of Lua, for example, might require a ton of boilerplate code, whereas Khalua2 is able to expose their contents to scripting with a single line.

This is quite true...C/lua make the cross platform alot more of a pain, and ya using a different implementation requires alot more of that boilerplate. But thats why I suggested limiting the java side to strictly input/output methods to reduce the amount of wrapping code required. kahlua is impressive for what it does, I had never actually heard of it before i started messing with PZ, and checked it out to find out its limitations and benefits. But I'm not a java coder personally, I've messed around attempting to embed lua in C++ before and found it a real PITA, and ended up embedding python in the project instead.

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Really hoping they finish the vehicle build either before the end of Q1 2018 or before the end of Q2. Hopefully animations won't take more than a couple of months.

 

Personally, I feel like the reason it's taking so damn long for all this stuff is because you have them constantly going back and forth working on the animations, then the NPCs, then the vehicles, then back to the NPCs, then back to the vehicles, and then move over to the animations, and now you're getting updates that take several years to push out.

 

They need to focus on one thing and one thing only. The entire team needs to devote their resources into getting the vehicles integrated entirely into the game. Then after that, devote their resources into the animations, and then when that's done, the NPCs will be the final piece of the puzzle.

 

If they did that from the very beginning, I'm pretty sure PZ would've been finished two years ago. Then again, I'm not a developer.

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11 hours ago, DizzyCrash said:

the wordl feels empty and unchanging and prone to glitching or exploitation. Every year that crawls by i see almost no changes in the development.. No closer to the game they promised.  It feels like the game has been abandoned. 
It just gets uglier and buggier with every year with no end in sight. Why they didnt build on that initial framework i do not know. But can somebody please tell me what the state of this game is.

NPCs, Sanity, Normality, Cleaning wounds like.. the way they had this pitched to me initially was like Zombie survival sims with a bunch of meters and goals and fun little events. but instead it seems there priorities have been on the least interesting aspects of PZ for god knows how long.

 

I do agree and disagree with a lot of your points, i am the one that always brings up the very first blog post of PZ that said a whole bunch of stuff that made me go "wow this speaks to me in a spiritual sense", like you said sanity, NPCs killing themselves and a whole lotta stuff. 

 

TIS is known by the time they take to make updates, they have taken a sweet ass focken ton of time with the vehicles update, i swear i have read the same old "After this we want to add the vehicle build to IWBUMS for public testing" for like 3 months now while the animation update is like "Mark made some progress in the animation side" for like more time than the vehicle bits of information.

 

But you know what? The game is coming together, i like how the implemented the concept of starvation and malnourished characters, i liked how the mall is a death trap like they said it would be, i like how the lore of the game is there and shaping up with the radio and TV stuff and you see how shit hits the fan outside of your reach but you cannot do anything (and hope to see that you need to survive the first week to get into Louisville) and overall i love a lot of the additions the game had.

 

Right now we do have diseases like leaving the bodies without burning can make you sick, we have infections for deep cuts and overall its a revamped medical system like they promised, i am pretty sure that begin covered in zombie blood from the animation update stuff will make you suffer some sanity loss or NPCs are going to be like "oh fuck" when they see you.

 

Right now i would say the game is in its ""final stages""".

They need to kick the vehicles out so multiplayer serves live longer since traveling is a fucking pain in the ass and overall it adds a whole bunch of stuff of gameplay opportunities. 

 

The animation update is a MUCH needed update, new clothes, new combat, new zombie variation, new weapons, new stamina system from the looks of it, zombies are going to be more of a threat it seems and overall its the big deal.

 

But after the animations the NPCs are supposed to come out, and with NPCs the sanity stuff is supposed to come out, because losing sanity with no negative effects like NPCs seeing you as the mad or unapproachable person you became or seeing other survivors going insane there is no point for having it right now in SP.

 

Each update is a stepping stone for the promised game where at the end everything comes together, i hate how long each step takes, i seriously do, but you cant do anything about it, if what you were saying was right that the devs just want to finish the damn thing, they would have added NPCs without animations and call it a day and it would be a mess and everyone would be like "How the fuck did this shit took 5 years to make".

 

The one thing i do really agree on with you is the map, as much as i love the current map, i just feel nostalgic for the old one, the feeling i miss the most its the feeling of begin actually trapped inside a city with not a whole lot of options to run, it really hit home the feel of "This is how you died" because sooner or later you were going to get fucked by the lack of supplies making you go downtown or the grocery stores or the hordes would concentrate on some random street near your house and you would not be able to loot for a few days.

 

However, you can try to revive this feeling pretty darn easily, download the game and play the challenge "You have one day" and go at it, the charming artstyle is gone, that is very very true too, but if the animation update is really shaping up good, then i have no problem because everything will be more moddable than the sprites were and people are going to be able to mod a lot of weapons in with actual models.

 

Actually my last advice, want to kinda see how the game was going to be with the very old NPCs and the old map?

Download this mod https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1158053757

Then this mod that adds very basic NPCs like the ones that were added way back when before the game got overhauled https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=786130456

 

Chose the map called Knox County and go at it, that is how the game was going to feel at that time, its kinda enjoyable but not very deep.

 

Really hoping they finish the vehicle build either before the end of Q1 2018 or before the end of Q2. Hopefully animations won't take more than a couple of months.

 

Personally, I feel like the reason it's taking so damn long for all this stuff is because you have them constantly going back and forth working on the animations, then the NPCs, then the vehicles, then back to the NPCs, then back to the vehicles, and then move over to the animations, and now you're getting updates that take several years to push out.

 

They need to focus on one thing and one thing only. The entire team needs to devote their resources into getting the vehicles integrated entirely into the game. Then after that, devote their resources into the animations, and then when that's done, the NPCs will be the final piece of the puzzle.

 

If they did that from the very beginning, I'm pretty sure PZ would've been finished two years ago. Then again, I'm not a developer.

 

I have no doubts that the vehicles build is going to be finished around July and September, if we are lucky we might get a stable vehicle build around August and the animation update that has been having so much progress in the background might come out to the public stable between November/December.

 

However they do focus on one thing at the time, the main team is focused on the vehicle stuff right now while they have 2 guys working at the animations stuff in the background, the animation update was the main focus like around 2016-2017 until they hit a brick wall, and then another brick wall and another and another until they stopped with that stuff and it went into the background and the vehicles stuff came in and they hired the 2 guys to work on that stuff, the focus is not the main problem with the team so far, its just the roadblocks they encounter. 

Edited by Blasted_Taco
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