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2022 and Beyond


nasKo

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Howdy survivors! Another crazy week for us, we’re still in a bit of a daze!

 

Just a few more days until the entire team are back together after the various international holiday periods have all come to an end, and we’re looking exceedingly forward to fixing up a few of the big issues that have come out in the wash since the MP launch. You can read more about them in last week’s blog here.

 

So the big question, now 41 is out there, and after the remaining MP issues have been fixed up, is what comes next?

 

 

Two Team Release Schedule

Going forward, now the behemoth that is Build 41 is increasingly looking to be in our rear-view mirror, we are going to structure the internal game’s development into two distinct teams (With General Arcade continuing in the meantime on improving MP, optimizing the server, increasing the player count and other MP related tech)

 

First, a little bit of a teaser!

 

 

(This is a fairly old internal video, created as a working proof-of-concept of various aspects of our NPC tech. It’s also not necessarily canonically accurate anymore. It was built to echo our earliest tech demo, but this might not be the start point we take with narrative in future, even if the characters would still be familiar.)

 

It’ll have been no surprise to anyone who read the interview in which Lemmy dropped some major Thursdoid spoilers that one of those teams is going to be focusing exclusively on NPC development from this point on. We’ll also be able to talk about it (not necessarily every Thursdoid, but certainly no longer in a vacuum), rather than work away in secret due to our ‘only discuss what’s coming next’ rule we instigated after a few instances of talking far too early about stuff.

 

Long ago we stated (informally on a forum post) our planned features for future builds, starting with hunting for build 42, and then numerous NPC builds for build 43 and onward.

 

However, many changed circumstances and much ponderings later, we’ve decided that this is not the best approach to take. First of all, its very clear that human NPCs have long been the most requested feature that is still outstanding, and the source of most of the frustration and bad feeling from those who consider the game to still be incomplete.

 

Not only this, but in slightly more selfish reasons, a big reason for not being comfortable with hunting and pets being first, is they are still NPCs and would necessarily leverage all the technology we’ve being working on for years at this point.

 

We have such amazing and peskily talented modders out there, we know fine well that as soon as we released this tech within their grasps, we would end up seeing extremely powerful NPC mods appearing, using our NPC tech heavily, before we had the pleasure of seeing this hard work paid off with our own NPCs.

 

It may be the initial build still contains hunting and wild animals, they ARE NPCs after all. It may be they drop into a subsequent build or later on in the unstable beta cycle, its not clear yet for reasons we’ll discuss in a bit. But the next BIG thing will be NPCs and we’ll have a dedicated team working toward this goal going forward.

 

However, NPCs will still, technically, be build 43. This is because we’ll be running a second dev team exclusively on a quicker, less risky yet still super cool content patch before the NPC work is complete, and then ongoing alternately between the other NPC patches to keep the content train going.

 

Behold this fancy graphic we cooked up! Now that we’ve blown up a bit we need some fancy graphical charts in our Thursdoids!

 

image-5-1024x585.png

Hopefully the chart shows that, in very real terms, NPCs will be coming out as quickly as they can, uninterrupted, and the other builds are there to help bridge the gap. No build will ever take as long as Build 41 did, it was a practical rewrite of large portions of the game, but nontheless NPCs will take time to emerge, and we don’t want to leave the community without new content in those waits.

 

 

Build 42

There is still a lot of polish and fix work to do on 41, primarily for the MP team but also with a side-salad of bug-fixing issues in both online and solo.

 

Beyond this, however, is a much ‘smaller’ but still extremely cool update that’ll drop before NPCs, that will release during the push toward an NPC release.

 

I say ‘smaller’ only because no major functionality or new fundamental systems, and it will be more a balancing and content patch while NPC team’s work is underway. However it will still be pretty beefy in terms of what it brings to the game.

 

It will serve several important purposes:

 

1) To balance a lot of the existing mechanics, particularly in relation to traits, professions, skills and other areas of the game that have been neglected or suffered some degradation during the years of development since they were introduced. Balancing traits and professions, medical system, and other stuff where it comes down to essentially tweaking numbers to make more builds viable or close up ‘free points’ exploits in character creation. Loot balancing and anything else that’s an easy balance but will help improve the game also fits in here.

 

2) To begin the expansion of the ‘tech tree’ of the game significantly to provide a more rich end-game experience. While until NPCs exist, some of this may be slightly less impactful on single player (though we’re sure will still add a lot of potential), it will significantly improve the MP experience by servers being less pressured to wipe or have loot respawning, providing players and communities ability to create more items that at present can only be obtained through looting.

 

While we may not hit this spot in our first build, our ultimate goal is to provide significantly extra crafting potential to allow players to effectively create a post-apocalypse nu medieval community, to provide plausable alternatives to any of the lootable items in the game that would logically be plausable with the correct skills and resources so players don’t feel pressured to restart the early game repeatedly to get long term fun out of the game. Want to be the person who makes clothes and sells them to a neighbouring settlement? Build brick walls and create something that resembles an actual house? Maybe even build a windmill? Who knows.

 

These are all examples of things we could do here, and may not all appear in Build 42, but hopefully our intended direction is clear. Ultimately to build up to the point that Alexandria / Hilltop / Kingdom style communities can form years after the apocalypse, giving more incentive to keep playing and building on existing worlds instead of intentionally replaying the early game because there is no real late game.

All this would be a time sink and require a group effort and wouldn’t be compulsory for those who prefer to just die repeatedly in the early apocalypse days, but the hope is to allow for a much greater level of community building, and facilitate trade and potentially years of stories and rich history from within a single world, be it NPC populated or an MP server, spanning numerous player lives (so it can still be the story of how you died).

 

These professions and expanded tech trees would be heavily gated and require specialization, often in case of the more complex crafting paths requiring pre-apocalypse skills that while it’s possible, are extremely difficult to attain to high levels after the apocalypse without a character specced toward them. We long ago ‘nerfed’ a metalworking system that was added to the game due to the implausibility of some random survivor crafting spoons and katanas in the apocalypse, however we’ll be expanding this again to include better items available through sufficient mastery and enough plausibility with the character build.

 

We’ll increase the amount of recipes that’ll be unlockable within the world through books, magazines or VHSs, and try and accurately model more advanced and multi-tier crafting professions to allow survivor communities to thrive and provide much more diverse activities for players who like to stay in the safehouses.

 

Finally, and vitally, we’ll be introducing the concept of ‘crafting surfaces’ to further restrict where some crafting recipes can be used. Some more complex recipes will require specific tables or equipment, some will just require a table or surface of any kind, while others can be carried out in your hands with no surface at all.

 

This will add an extra level to the crafting, as making a place suitable for crafting the more complex multi-stage recipes, and potentially upgrading your crafting station and equipment, would become a more fulfilling experience than standing in the field and being able to make a stir fry.

 

We have many and varied other things we want to inject into the game also – we’re currently working on seated / reclining characters for example, and also want to expand on in-game events and tie them to the map. We also need to do some work to improve guns, and PvP, at some point. It’s not clear when smaller features will start appearing, however, so will report on them in blogs as the year progresses.

 

 

Build 43

Worked on concurrently to the balancing and crafting update, as well as discussed and shown within our blogs going forward, will be the first version of NPCs. We’re still deciding what should, could and would be present in the first NPC build. It could include autonomous NPCs that the player can group with, it could primarily include the reintroduction of the story mode, it could have NPC animals, or that could come later.

We really need to look at what we have, and what’s feasible to deliver in a reasonable amount of time, as well as what we could release as a first build and not have people who’ve waited years for them to appear be disappointed. There’s a lot of plates to spin, decisions to make that require more brain power than we’ve had to spare during B41’s development, so we’re going to take some more time to discuss what would make the most satisfying and manageable first build, and take a stock check of what we have.

 

We’ve got a LOT of NPC code, lots of cool systems, from Rimworld style priority and jobs system, personality systems, procedural story event systems, combat systems, autonomous survival behaviours, advanced group behaviour systems, vehicle driving systems, and a whole bunch more. While nothing could be described as 100% complete, the vast majority of the hard work has been done, is functional and is extremely cool.

 

But B41 has taken a huge amount of our time and resources, and also taken some elements of the PZ workings in a different direction to things our NPCs were using, and so they need some time to be reintroduced to the most current build and made MP compatible. And when we do that, we’ll be moving stuff over in stages to release, rather than try and get everything functional and release ready at once.

A good analogy is we’ve got two rooms, one full to the ceiling of extremely cool and complex circuit boards and wires that we’ve spent years making, one room is empty.

 

Trying to tidy and assemble everything in the first room will be a nightmare. So we’ll start moving bits into a new room, setting them up, plugging them in together, and making something cool out of them to release. After release we’ll continue bringing in more pieces and attaching them, and so on for perhaps 2 or 3 builds until the first room is empty and our vision of NPCs is complete. It doesn’t mean that’s all we have, far from it, just sorting that entire packed room out would take too long and we want to finally start pushing NPC content out as soon as possible.

 

We also have some big plans for a gun mechanics rework at some point, to provide a more solid gunplay experience that will make guns not only more interesting to use, require more a player skill element, but also make PVP encounters a lot more interesting for those who enjoy that kind of thing, as our PVP component is still one of the more lacking elements of our multiplayer experience. But for now we are not committing to where this will thread into the release schedule.

 

The process of moving stuff over will take some time, and so we may be quiet for a couple of Thursdoids until we start getting stuff moving in the current build. As soon as we are though, we’ll be talking about the ongoing NPC development, alongside the concurrent crafting and balance patch, until they drop. Exciting times!

 

It shouldn’t go unsaid, however, that if a big new feature is not ready then it’s not in our DNA to push it out of the door uncooked. We’re confident that this will be a great year for PZ, and feel we can keep the content pipe flowing, but also won’t be abandoning our accustomed position as the tortoise in the ‘tortoise vs. hare’ race which appears to now be paying dividends for both game and community.

 

 

Much love,

 

TIS x

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Experiencing multiplayer upon release, I can say that your decision to hold the release until it is polished enough to be stable for good experience is a great decision on the developers' part. I experienced nearly no game breaking bugs and am having much more fun in the game than I've ever had in the past 7 years. It was truly worth the wait!

I am also very excited on the NPCs that are coming soon. I agree with you; animals are also NPC! They will be a good foundation to the monster AI that human NPCs will have. Not to mention that the modders will probably expand upon those for even better gameplay.

The team continues to deliver far beyond my expectations and I hope for more success in the future. Thank you for your hard work!

 

Edit: Also, having a tech tree that can be more accessible through certain professions and build will make multiplayer more engaging since everyone seems to be running a combat focused character. This is due to the skills being easily maxed because of server xp multipliers along books and VHS tapes. Hope to see it in game soon!

Edited by Weighland
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Best Thursdoid ever, this truely is brightening my day ! I've been waiting for this moment so many years and i'm happy I survived to see it, my hype is through the ceiling !

 

I want to give all my thanks and all the love to The Indie Stone team and all the modders who did such a hard work over the course of a decade. The direction you are taking for NPCs by taking inspiration from Rimworld is exactly what I was hoping for and I'm sure you will come with a great unique system.

 

The talent and discipline of the team is breathtaking, I still remember my first day playing PZ on the Redboid server in 2014/2015. I got a blast with the hordes and it was the best experience I had with a game ever, even with PVP ON the community is just so friendly and dedicated. And the drama just flows in a natural way.

 

Thanks again for the many years of joy (and fear) and entertainement (and anxiety x) )you provided to us.

 

Much love and may this year be the best for you, you deserve it ! :lol:

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Most importantly, don't do everything in a hurry.
The game has already been rushed to release, and it is still raw, and the price has already increased. As for me, it was necessary to sort out the optimization in multiplayer, and then increase the price of the game. It's just that my friends and I do not understand why in SP we have 2 times more FPS, and even on an empty server there is less FPS.
Also, for a start, it is worth finalizing the visual style of the cars, we are surprised that the game is in release, and the trunks and doors still do not open visually, although we all know what you were going to do with the cars. And no, I am not asking you to make for me a tuning mechanic now - I am asking you to make cars of "release quality".
Also in your beautiful game, which has a lot of small details, one huge detail is missing:
All objects do not have a snowy appearance. That is, if we put a chair on the street in a blizzard in winter, it will not be covered with a snow sprite. Also, cars do not have a snowy layer, but it would be cool that if we did not clean the car from snow, then we have no view!)
Return the draw-artists to the winter stage - work through these omissions) Thank you)
P.S.
I hope Nasco and Ringo took a rested in the New Year holidays, because the guys seemed to be lived with us in discord)

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9 hours ago, Хибити\Hibiti [BLR] said:

Most importantly, don't do everything in a hurry.
The game has already been rushed to release, and it is still raw, and the price has already increased. As for me, it was necessary to sort out the optimization in multiplayer, and then increase the price of the game. It's just that my friends and I do not understand why in SP we have 2 times more FPS, and even on an empty server there is less FPS.
Also, for a start, it is worth finalizing the visual style of the cars, we are surprised that the game is in release, and the trunks and doors still do not open visually, although we all know what you were going to do with the cars. And no, I am not asking you to make for me a tuning mechanic now - I am asking you to make cars of "release quality".
Also in your beautiful game, which has a lot of small details, one huge detail is missing:
All objects do not have a snowy appearance. That is, if we put a chair on the street in a blizzard in winter, it will not be covered with a snow sprite. Also, cars do not have a snowy layer, but it would be cool that if we did not clean the car from snow, then we have no view!)
Return the draw-artists to the winter stage - work through these omissions) Thank you)
P.S.
I hope Nasco and Ringo took a rested in the New Year holidays, because the guys seemed to be lived with us in discord)

The game is not yet in release. 41 build in release. The price increased deservedly - with 41 build, it's a completely different game. The multiplayer will continue to be optimized, they warned about it.

 

Visual style of the cars will be in the future, I remember a long time ago there was a screen in one of the news - August 8, 2019 "Twisted". 

image-6.png.2068b3ccc6bc5d64f8ff264deedf5df6.png

 

I'm not sure about the snowy appearance, maybe they will do it.

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Amazing news. The wait won't be too long for me, I'm now used to, it even didn't feel long to have 41 MP, really, I was not waiting it before mid-2022, and I wasn't angry by that x) Good surprise though.

Take your time, keep doing great job, you have all my support ^^

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19 hours ago, ToningUnit said:

The game is not yet in release. 41 build in release. The price increased deservedly - with 41 build, it's a completely different game. The multiplayer will continue to be optimized, they warned about it.

 

Visual style of the cars will be in the future, I remember a long time ago there was a screen in one of the news - August 8, 2019 "Twisted". 

image-6.png.2068b3ccc6bc5d64f8ff264deedf5df6.png

 

I'm not sure about the snowy appearance, maybe they will do it.

What's interesting to me is that almost all cars are setup with those details already. They have interior, they have a modeled trunk and hood, etc. The only thing missing are the actual animations. Really curious why this wasn't added yet -- doesn't seem too hard or complicated to do at all. Hell, I was thinking of doing it myself as we can easily modify vanilla models, but my blender / animation skills are way too rough and I don't really have the time to dive deeper into it for long.

Edited by Lexx2k
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I got chills seeing Kate and Baldspot. Really happy about this news!

 

Thanks for all the hard work through the years TIS! I really need to buy this game another time with a more proper price now. I've got almost 1000hrs spent into Zomboid (in steam alone, not counting the time before)! Still a huge fan and I really appreciate the tenacity of you guys.

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Once I wanted to create a mod that includes a story mode mixed with open world in the game, it was going to be called "Project Zomboid: Story Mode", but I decided not to do it because I don't have much idea of how to program.
Seeing that you are thinking of resuming the narratives of the game, I would like to tell here the story and the things that I had planned for the mod.

I will use three sections for this and they will be reproduced in the following order:

History

Factions

Side stories

If "The indie stone" gets to see this, I want to tell you that I would like to tell you the story of this mod so that you can include it, I don't want to make any profit, I just want you to include this so that our favorite game improves with fan requests , and although possibly no one has asked for this, I think people will enjoy it, in the next reply I will tell the story if they are interested. (clyde)

Edited by ILAR.IO
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On 1/7/2022 at 7:06 PM, ToningUnit said:

The game is not yet in release. 41 build in release. The price increased deservedly - with 41 build, it's a completely different game. The multiplayer will continue to be optimized, they warned about it.

 

Visual style of the cars will be in the future, I remember a long time ago there was a screen in one of the news - August 8, 2019 "Twisted". 

image-6.png.2068b3ccc6bc5d64f8ff264deedf5df6.png

 

I'm not sure about the snowy appearance, maybe they will do it.

did you open my eyes? I'm so stupid, I didn't know it (sarcasm)

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13 hours ago, Хибити\Hibiti [BLR] said:

did you open my eyes? I'm so stupid, I didn't know it (sarcasm)

Oh, you knew it? What exactly?
"The game has already been rushed to release", "we are surprised that the game is in release" and "I am asking you to make cars of "release quality"" - sounded like you really thought the game was in release.

 

Or you knew about visual style of the cars? If you know that the game is not yet in release, then it makes no sense to ask for it. It will be when the time comes.

 

Or you knew about the continued multiplayer optimization? Then again, why are you indignant bad optimization?

 

Sorry, if I misunderstood anything. But if you really knew it all, write so that it is understandable that you know it all. 

 

And yes, despite all the problems, the price increased deservedly... Oh, you knew it... I'm sorry.

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I've been talking with a friend that PZ becomes quite easy once get the hang of how to play it (i mean on original settings intended by developers). There are two main ways game provides difficulty to you - quantity of zombies and scarcity of resources. Now with NPCs there might be another source of difficulty. Imagine that some NPCs are hostile or formed gangs of bandits, who can be smarter than zombies, using various weapons and tactics. This might be very interesting and good choice by developers on prioritizing this. Congrats.

 

edit:

Notice in the video when those 3 armed survivors are walking around the corner of the building, they step back a bit and kite around to looks whats behind at a safer distance? If thats what NPCs will be capable of, i am impressed.

Edited by Toshis
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