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The Double Edge Sword of the Delay


ZombieHunter

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While delaying a product to improve quality is always meaningful ;

This adds the inevitable - relevance question.

 

Will it still be relevant on release? 

 

From what I see if Zombid has more than Multiplayer issues when it comes to a delayed release.

 

Another major issue is the UI

 

1. Moving items around is best described as painful.

When I played Dues Ex 1 decade ago, I felt it was painful game of tetris.

But Zomboid took it a step further and made it a painful game of Excel Sheets.

 

Moving various datapoints along various columns and searching for data in the sheet without a viable search function in the thick of things.

Some "gamey" mechanics go a long way such as modded INV UI in skyrim. 

 

2. Crafting Mechanic - The Redundancy Jackpot.

Almost every single action is a "Recipe" why? Why do you need an "Unboxing Recipe?" It is just polluting the crafting window. 

Crafting can go a long way by using a flag system to display only relevant information.

 

While there other issues, I feel these 2 are the biggest hurdles to new player retention as newer generations are not going to enjoy such labored mechanics. 

Instead of adding new features, while welcome. I suggest polish up the existing ones.  

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15 hours ago, ZombieHunter said:

While there other issues, I feel these 2 are the biggest hurdles to new player retention as newer generations are not going to enjoy such labored mechanics. 

Instead of adding new features, while welcome. I suggest polish up the existing ones.  

If they polish things now before such foundational things as animations (done) and multiplayer (and maybe NPCs) are in place, they may have to go back and repolish things anyways. Best they finish the foundation, walls and ceiling before they attend to the decor.

 

The team seems to have high expectations for themselves and I imagine we'll see that continue when they come to a dedicated polishing stage.

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The UI is bad but it mostly comes down to lacking the ability to filter through what we are wearing, and what we intend to always keep, plus the lack of compartmentalized containers for organization, like wearing a load bearing vest/MOLLE rig to carry EDC (everyday carry) items, or having a Fanny Pack that isn't just dead weight, or having smaller separate containers within backpacks that can hold items. 

I don't mind the listed inventories until I need to start managing my own. 

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The golden rule I've been taught with game development is, basically, if it takes you an hour to make something for singleplayer, it'll take you twice as long to make it work in multiplayer—sometimes more.

 

I'm really excited for Multiplayer, and I'm basically checking in every now and again almost exclusively for news on that but, at this point, the last thing I want after waiting for so long is something half-baked or that'll need several more updates before it can be called "finished". So, best to just let it sit and wait for the devs to be satisfied.

 

Besides, with how much things have changed, the game already feels like a sequel to what it was a year or two ago, and it never fails to rekindle my interest everytime I come back to it.

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On 6/23/2021 at 12:40 PM, trombonaught said:

If they polish things now before such foundational things as animations (done) and multiplayer (and maybe NPCs) are in place, they may have to go back and repolish things anyways. Best they finish the foundation, walls and ceiling before they attend to the decor.

 

The team seems to have high expectations for themselves and I imagine we'll see that continue when they come to a dedicated polishing stage.

 

UI and Animation are 2 separate systems. 

In fact usually involves different developers with different skill sets - the exception being the programming element.

 

On 6/25/2021 at 4:19 AM, Fuzzy Wolfy said:

The golden rule I've been taught with game development is, basically, if it takes you an hour to make something for singleplayer, it'll take you twice as long to make it work in multiplayer—sometimes more.

 

I'm really excited for Multiplayer, and I'm basically checking in every now and again almost exclusively for news on that but, at this point, the last thing I want after waiting for so long is something half-baked or that'll need several more updates before it can be called "finished". So, best to just let it sit and wait for the devs to be satisfied.

 

Besides, with how much things have changed, the game already feels like a sequel to what it was a year or two ago, and it never fails to rekindle my interest everytime I come back to it.

 

Gameplay elements that is true, especially when it comes to world interaction you got to account for how to send that information to all relevant clients seamlessly.

When it comes to UI though its generally a single player aspect unless you are dealing with a multiplayer UI element like trading.

 

Since it is an element in how the individual deals with their personal items. 

Or to put it another way, Frontend systems not backend. 

 

Though UI is one of the hardest things to accomplish - as it is heavily theory crafting. 

How do you turn this completely mess of a UI into something elegant. and very few companies push that envelope well.

 

Mass Effect really helped push the Gear Wheel System of interaction which is now used in an incredible amount of games.

When it comes to Inventory there are basically 3 major schools of thought.

 

1. Listed Inventory

2. Tile Inventory ( Stackable and Non Stackable ) 

3. Category Inventory ( which is a Filtered variation of the top 2 ) 

 

Category based inventory though is in my opinion one of the strongest candidates as - it limits certain items to certain containers.  

While this reduces "Freedom of Choice" considerably. it also increases gameplay streamline considerably, making inventory management feel less clunky.   

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Hello! Yeah right now the inventory windows are pretty laborious to get around. They are quite confusing at first, the cooking menu had me so lost lol.

If you want you can read the announcement for 41.51 (don't know if it was already out when this was posted), from what they said, a filter button will be added to the inventory, not sure if it has many functionalities yet but I'd guess they are already thinking of making the UI more accessible little by little.

 

The changelog is here https://pastebin.com/4w9SazYT

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