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What happened to the story and the NPC survivors?


eldergamer

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What happened to the story and the NPC survivors?,

 

I've seen some very impressive fog, moving clouds in window reflections, and many other solid and important updates to the game. This is all fine and well. I'm not trying to take anything away from all the many accomplishments this title has seen in its development. I am however concerned that over the last seven years someone has lost sight of the initial goals used to draw in investors like me. What happen to the story? I can't remember the last time I heard mention of it in the (News & Dev) updates. The same goes for the NPC survivors. These both played major roles in helping decide to invest in this game and it feels like they've both been forgotten.

 

I'm not trying to take anything away from this game. It's a blast! I love it and it's because I love it I have to ask... What happened to the story and the NPC survivors?

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On 1/30/2019 at 4:20 PM, littleblueboxes said:

For all evidence given they will not be included in this game, and nothing has been confirmed to show otherwise. So play the game as it exists until you get bored then pick up something else.

thats not true at all

theres plenty of videos out showing the new npc behaviors and how they loot and move around the map. theyre very indepth and come with an entire "meta game system" last time i checked.

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On 1/30/2019 at 3:20 PM, littleblueboxes said:

For all evidence given they will not be included in this game, and nothing has been confirmed to show otherwise. So play the game as it exists until you get bored then pick up something else.

 

This is not true, we've just started a very strict 'only talk about next build' policy on thursdoids to avoid hyping people up or talking about stuff that may hit delays, hence we only talked about vehicles while we were working on the build they would appear in, and same with anims (putting aside the stuff long ago before this policy was decided on). Build 42 is hunting and will integrate the AI systems into the game that the NPCs will use for animal behaviours, and every build after that until 1.0 over 3 builds will be focused on NPCs, going from simple encounters ,to the whole group dynamics, full automation and meta-game stuff we promised. We call it our 'Road To NPCs' roadmap and we're not talking about it officially in thursdoids until anims releases.

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Lemmy101 I just want to thank you and all the other devs for working so hard and making the zombie game of my dreams literally! I have been following you guys and playing the game since 2014 and you guys are just awesome, through all the negative comments people throw at you guys and other announces with game developing you guys still truck on and I respect that! But again thank you all for making what is now and has been since 2014 my favorite game in the world! 

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13 hours ago, sniperman1109 said:

Lemmy101 I just want to thank you and all the other devs for working so hard and making the zombie game of my dreams literally! I have been following you guys and playing the game since 2014 and you guys are just awesome, through all the negative comments people throw at you guys and other announces with game developing you guys still truck on and I respect that! But again thank you all for making what is now and has been since 2014 my favorite game in the world! 

Might as well chime in here as well. TIS truly has something special with Zomboid. Lots of people seem to think "just another zombie game" but is there really one that gets as close to the original depiction of zombies + survival? Max Brooks? The Walking Dead? Besides the (hopefully good) upcoming Dead Matter, no. Maybe Dead State? 7DTD, SoD and countless other games have special zombies, their own lore and settings, more arcade-y gameplay. DayZ has barely any zombies. Resident Evil is a completely different type of game. You get the idea.

 

Zomboid is one of a kind, and it can be a fault too, since if it were to fail, no other developers would risk trying something like this and that would be sad. It's the only game that I've ever seen get the zombie apocalypse and survival correct, Risk + reward, becoming bored and risking your character even though you could live your days in isolation.  It's only getting better and expanding on those systems. Insanity (possibly), more negative effects for depression and loneliness.

 

Of course animations/hunting/NPCs just make it better and better. I've just recently hit 600+ hours, and the only real thing that bothers me in the game is the sound effects being lower quality (white noise/popping) so I hope we can get a sound overhaul/update to complement the rest of the polish of the game someday. :D

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On 1/30/2019 at 4:20 PM, littleblueboxes said:

For all evidence given they will not be included in this game, and nothing has been confirmed to show otherwise. So play the game as it exists until you get bored then pick up something else.

 

Don't want to be a smarty-pants here, but NPC Survivors are listed on the PZ site under "The Game" -> "Planned Features"...

 

...how can anyone say that they are not planned or have been removed???

 

14 hours ago, MadDan2013 said:

Might as well chime in here as well. TIS truly has something special with Zomboid. Lots of people seem to think "just another zombie game" but is there really one that gets as close to the original depiction of zombies + survival? Max Brooks? The Walking Dead? Besides the (hopefully good) upcoming Dead Matter, no. Maybe Dead State? 7DTD, SoD and countless other games have special zombies, their own lore and settings, more arcade-y gameplay. DayZ has barely any zombies. Resident Evil is a completely different type of game. You get the idea.

 

Zomboid is one of a kind, and it can be a fault too, since if it were to fail, no other developers would risk trying something like this and that would be sad. It's the only game that I've ever seen get the zombie apocalypse and survival correct, Risk + reward, becoming bored and risking your character even though you could live your days in isolation.  It's only getting better and expanding on those systems. Insanity (possibly), more negative effects for depression and loneliness.

 

Of course animations/hunting/NPCs just make it better and better. I've just recently hit 600+ hours, and the only real thing that bothers me in the game is the sound effects being lower quality (white noise/popping) so I hope we can get a sound overhaul/update to complement the rest of the polish of the game someday. :D

 

I second this! I feel exactly the same way since I played the PZ demo a couple years ago, it was a must buy.

 

Thanks, and keep up the impressive work :-D

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On 2/2/2019 at 2:35 PM, lemmy101 said:

Build 42 is hunting and will integrate the AI systems into the game that the NPCs will use for animal behaviours

 

I mean i love that we are going to get hunting but this just screams to me that NPCs are going to be in 2020 by now, man i thought we were going to get NPCs after the animations.

 

That aside, i can live if the dude who made the Super Survivors mod updates it when the animations drop.

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2 hours ago, Blasted_Taco said:

 

I mean i love that we are going to get hunting but this just screams to me that NPCs are going to be in 2020 by now, man i thought we were going to get NPCs after the animations.

 

That aside, i can live if the dude who made the Super Survivors mod updates it when the animations drop.

 

Forgive me if I'm mistaken but hunting animals will entail adding NPCs. They'll just be animals, instead of the survivors you are anticipating. It's only just February so a long time for survivor NPCs to be added by the end of the year.

 

To quote a famous recent video game character; HAVE SOME FAITH!

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5 hours ago, Blasted_Taco said:

 

I mean i love that we are going to get hunting but this just screams to me that NPCs are going to be in 2020 by now, man i thought we were going to get NPCs after the animations.

 

That aside, i can live if the dude who made the Super Survivors mod updates it when the animations drop.

 

I can't promise when NPC build will appear, its still very unclear whether animation dev will be surprisingly fast, expectedly normal or unexpectedly long. We would be fools to assume the first though. Hunting rather would be, relatively, much less destructive and intense development but would bring huge benefits.

 

As I've said, the hunting is an important stepping stone to NPCs by actually integrating their systems into the game. There is a LOOOOT of NPC code that's not in current up to date code, that needs implementing into the new animation system and so on, and the hunting system would allow us to get all that tech functional and in the game, without the massive complexities of NPCs. You got two choices (well you haven't but let's pretend),

 

a) You get a simpler form of the AI systems integrated for animal behaviour, where the entire team can pretty quickly add animals into the world, expand on the wilderness game and add stealth anims, while I continue to implement the NPC infrastructure ready for the immediate build after that will start integrating NPCs. Results: 42 = Hunting, 43 = NPCs part1

 

or...

 

b) You get no hunting, the AI system integration takes the exact amount of time (likely much more though, due to implementing in one huge block just for complex npc behaviour without phasing it in simpler steps is exactly how it got tied in knots last time, the very reason it was planned like this is to avoid the problems in the past we've had with npcs delay and code branch getting left behind the game's dev), thus build 43 becomes build 42, but comes out at most a month before build 43 in scenario A would come out, due to the saved time of team not developing hunting systems (but in realistic terms not all this time would be 100% transferable and the much more complex AI integration required all at once could delay us even longer than scenario a). In this scenario, you'll never get hunting ever because now the NPC pandoras box is opening and people are gonna be pissed off to high heaven if we don't show that all the advanced NPC features teased years ago are in development and priority at that point.

 

Once NPCs are done, after near a decade working on this game and we're finally able to get out of Early Access, bug fixing and polish will be the 100% focus  and after that you can bet your ass we'll be moving on a whole bunch of people onto another game and considering third party game porting and such. That's your lot. Forever. We'll still support the game with bug fixes and smaller additions, but the dev manpower support will never be what it is right now again (probably 1/10th at best) and 3rd party company porting efforts would likely forbid us all but bug fixes and small changes for a year or more, so so as not to complicate that (exactly why we've avoided console ports etc during active dev). Game 1.0's without one major update it would have had, so any other features that'd appear in that build also are never added. Hopefully someone will make a hunting mod.

 

Still sure you don't want hunting as build 42?

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5 hours ago, lemmy101 said:

 

I can't promise when NPC build will appear, its still very unclear whether animation dev will be surprisingly fast, expectedly normal or unexpectedly long. We would be fools to assume the first though. Hunting rather would be, relatively, much less destructive and intense development but would bring huge benefits.

 

As I've said, the hunting is an important stepping stone to NPCs by actually integrating their systems into the game. There is a LOOOOT of NPC code that's not in current up to date code, that needs implementing into the new animation system and so on, and the hunting system would allow us to get all that tech functional and in the game, without the massive complexities of NPCs. You got two choices (well you haven't but let's pretend),

 

a) You get a simpler form of the AI systems integrated for animal behaviour, where the entire team can pretty quickly add animals into the world, expand on the wilderness game and add stealth anims, while I continue to implement the NPC infrastructure ready for the immediate build after that will start integrating NPCs. Results: 42 = Hunting, 43 = NPCs part1

 

or...

 

b) You get no hunting, the AI system integration takes the exact amount of time (likely much more though, due to implementing in one huge block just for complex npc behaviour without phasing it in simpler steps is exactly how it got tied in knots last time, the very reason it was planned like this is to avoid the problems in the past we've had with npcs delay and code branch getting left behind the game's dev), thus build 43 becomes build 42, but comes out at most a month before build 43 in scenario A would come out, due to the saved time of team not developing hunting systems (but in realistic terms not all this time would be 100% transferable and the much more complex AI integration required all at once could delay us even longer than scenario a). In this scenario, you'll never get hunting ever because now the NPC pandoras box is opening and people are gonna be pissed off to high heaven if we don't show that all the advanced NPC features teased years ago are in development and priority at that point.

 

Once NPCs are done, after near a decade working on this game and we're finally able to get out of Early Access, bug fixing and polish will be the 100% focus  and after that you can bet your ass we'll be moving on a whole bunch of people onto another game and considering third party game porting and such. That's your lot. Forever. We'll still support the game with bug fixes and smaller additions, but the dev manpower support will never be what it is right now again (probably 1/10th at best) and 3rd party company porting efforts would likely forbid us all but bug fixes and small changes for a year or more, so so as not to complicate that (exactly why we've avoided console ports etc during active dev). Game 1.0's without one major update it would have had, so any other features that'd appear in that build also are never added. Hopefully someone will make a hunting mod.

 

Still sure you don't want hunting as build 42?

 

You sure know how to sell your ideas man, that is why i love ya when you post in these type of threads.

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On 2/2/2019 at 10:35 PM, lemmy101 said:

 

This is not true, we've just started a very strict 'only talk about next build' policy on thursdoids to avoid hyping people up or talking about stuff that may hit delays, hence we only talked about vehicles while we were working on the build they would appear in, and same with anims (putting aside the stuff long ago before this policy was decided on). Build 42 is hunting and will integrate the AI systems into the game that the NPCs will use for animal behaviours, and every build after that until 1.0 over 3 builds will be focused on NPCs, going from simple encounters ,to the whole group dynamics, full automation and meta-game stuff we promised. We call it our 'Road To NPCs' roadmap and we're not talking about it officially in thursdoids until anims releases.

 

It's the first time i read/note that intel in a post here (maybe i miss the Mondo... Thursdoid where it's stated). Anyway, ty for the road-map 2019-2020/1 ! :)

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7 hours ago, agreubill said:

 

It's the first time i read/note that intel in a post here (maybe i miss the Mondo... Thursdoid where it's stated). Anyway, ty for the road-map 2019-2020/1 ! :)

 

point is this hasn't been in thursdoids, for the very reason mentioned in the bit you quoted :D we only talk about the immediate next build, which was vehicles, then weather, now anims. 

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4 hours ago, lemmy101 said:

 

point is this hasn't been in thursdoids, for the very reason mentioned in the bit you quoted :D we only talk about the immediate next build, which was vehicles, then weather, now anims. 

Two things: One) I read on a steam article, that had some dev responses that there was going to be some insight into modifying vehicles, into sort of a spiky, roll-cage styled battering ram. Is that gonna be something we can look forward to without mods?

 

Two) Unrelated, but I'm really grateful for the controller test beta. As someone who exclusively uses a controller (except, as I've pointed out in the thread, where I can't use one) it's nice to finally have my voice heard. I'm sure you've browsed it, but if not, I would pop in there from time to time. There's plenty of really really useful feedback in there.

 

Anyway, looking forward to anims and hunting. Can't use IWUBMS now because of the controller test beta, so at least I'll have something to look forward too when you all are done. Cheers :)

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16 hours ago, lemmy101 said:

 

point is this hasn't been in thursdoids, for the very reason mentioned in the bit you quoted :D we only talk about the immediate next build, which was vehicles, then weather, now anims. 

And past prove why TiS has all reason to do so ! But the hint about hunting is appealing anyway :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm so glad to see some talk about NPC's. This is the kind of info I've been interested in, throughout the past.

 

I think you guys have really nailed what needs to be done to do NPC's properly.  The procedural development of the AI system will be way easier and less of a let down than some glitchy ass NPC behaviors.

 

It will allow you guys to expand on things that you probably never thought of or knew were possible; as with every new feature.

My hopes are that while doing NPC's/AI you leave room for some editor based scripting for when you guys decide to focus on the Map Editor (hopefully after NPC's are released?). 

 

This would allow people like myself to create some really unique and cool scenario's. The ability for us to create our own narratives would be mind blowing to say the least. As we all know not every game is very Modification friendly. Though I'd put this up there with Half-life 1/2 regarding the simplicity and freedom to Mod.

 

We all know how long that community lived for - A LONG TIME. So here's hoping you leave room for a NPC's/ Map/Scenario Editor.

 

I don't say this lightly, but great work and good communications with us players. Cheers!

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