Comment I made on Mathas' latest video :)

[Oddzball]

Well,

 

I'd be lying if I said I wasnt upset about NPCs not being released yet, before multiplayer. I think I've been waiting for working NPCs for over 2 years or so... I mean, I bought the game over 3 years ago, maybe 4...

 

I understand though. It drives sales, and gives you a break from coding the same thing all the time.

 

Just... dont forget those of us who supported you guys back before all this steam crowd came in and started demanding we turn this game into some isometric DayZ.

[Guest easy AI opponent]

Its may a bit early but nevertheless i share mathas (and other peoples) fear that MP comes at the cost of NPC development.
Eversince MP was announced it was the major/only topic of the mondoids with NPCs barely mentioned.
Not that it makes a too big of a difference as NPcs were hardly mention in this years mondoids at all.

In fact, if i am not completely wrong than the last substantial update on NPC progress was on the 26th August 2013, literally half a year ago.

 

In said mondoid the progress was so promising that a NPC video was announced to likely be shown in the following weeks mondoid.As we all know that then never happenend as NPCs were sidetracked/dropped in favour for Steam development.

 

However Zomboid hit steam now for already quite some time and if npc development continued eversince (ABADCCABBABDDCDCACAACB)...then WHY not show that progress that was made?

 

As intended in: http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2013/08/mondoid-bloomin-mondoid/
 

[nasKo]

...then WHY not show that progress that was made?

NPCs have made huge progress, but the difference is we are no longer making videos to show anything since we learned a lesson about making videos of stuff that's not imminent. That rush of NPC videos we did were ill advised, as the NPCs weren't close enough to release and all they did was taunt people, but the fact of the matter is unless we get lucky and one of these phases of development (like this MP one) lead to something we can actually release before they wind down, then for the sake of speed of development of the game I need to use my time in the way it'll be most productive, and although I obviously try at all times to prioritize things that are the most important or most desired, to an extent have to account for where the ruts and peaks are, and persevering with something that's currently making my head explode is just meaning I'm progressing at a much slower speed of development.

[Guest easy AI opponent]

....

 

Yeah i know that one. But i did not know that this already apply to that NPC video which was informally announce on mid augusts mondoid.

 

Part of the confussion is maybe the diametral statements of progress between the mondoids and forum posts.

 

Also if its ill-adviced to show a video, then show screenshots or nothing at all and write some text?

 

When will we get the next mondoid dedicated to NPCs?

[nasKo]

When NPCs are imminent. Until then, it's taunting the waiting masses, which is what we want to prevent, stated by Lemmy.

[Verun]

Just... dont forget those of us who supported you guys back before all this steam crowd came in and started demanding we turn this game into some isometric DayZ.

 

I came with the "steam crowd" (sounds pretty negative to me). I'd never play this game with anyone else then friends that I know for the same reason I don't play Minecraft or Planet Explorers with strangers: when you play with the masses, then there will be all kinds of people. Meaning there will be griefers too.

 

Also I usually overload my single player games with so many mods, that it's sheer impossible to play it with others.

 

That said, I'd never play DayZ either. I came with steam because I did not have the luck to find this game sooner. And I only found it via a dedicated, advanced search run. It might be the biggest problem of Indie games; that they're mostly dependent on mouth to mouth propaganda. If you don't have an iconic figure like Chris Roberts, then you have to do it the hard way.

Steam helps with that.

[Guest easy AI opponent]

When NPCs are imminent. Until then, it's taunting the waiting masses, which is what we want to prevent, stated by Lemmy.

 

I dont want to be pettifoggery but lemmy stated to not show npcs Videos (and only videos) for said reason....

He did not mention that their will never be mentioned until they are finished...

 

[TheCenturion]

 

When NPCs are imminent. Until then, it's taunting the waiting masses, which is what we want to prevent, stated by Lemmy.

 

I dont want to be pettifoggery but lemmy stated to not show npcs Videos (and only videos) for said reason....

He did not mention that their will never be mentioned until they are finished...

 

 

 

Frankly, no matter what it is; video, screenshots or information, it's going to 'taunt' people all the same. Not showing development updates all the time also gives them more freedom, since they don't have to work with a community generated timetable (really; fan's minds often go into overdrive when even the smallest bit of info appears). That means they don't need to work with unnecessary due dates that the community expects, that sort of thing. 

 

Last thing they want is to release info of impending NPCs, only to hit a major bug that causes PCs to self destruct which ends up delaying the release another year or so. They'll release info that the community can digest, when it's ready to be digested.

[Guest easy AI opponent]

I can understand your point. But also think that not showing any information is taunting people as well.
Especially when there is already a bit of silence for a longer time and most important if X feature was
claimed to not come at the cost of feature Y. Then it would be nice to hear a bit of Y from time to time...

[Rathlord]

I can understand your point. But also think that not showing any information is taunting people as well.

Especially when there is already a bit of silence for a longer time and most important if X feature was

claimed to not come at the cost of feature Y. Then it would be nice to hear a bit of Y from time to time...

 

At some point you're just going to have to trust the developers either way. In reality, what they post to the blog is done as a service to the community and can be handled however they want. What makes the difference is how much work they've actually gotten done, and pretty much  no matter what they write that's for them to know, not us. So, trust them, or don't, but either way the blog posts have no actual impact on what's being done so arguing about it is pretty pointless imho.

 

 

As far as Lemmy's working style, I can corroborate that with my writing. I can only push new chapters out for so long; then I go back and edit the rest of the book, revise an old scene, change something, work on characterization, flesh out future plot details, etc.

[zaf]

I wish mondoids contained more technical information. Chucklefish had updates that made seemingly mundane things very interesting (and educational). You can talk about how pathfinding works or rant about progress with NPC ai and whats bugging you and stuff. I love reading about those things in post mortems and at aigamedev. 

[Rathlord]

They do on occasion zaf, but that's not what most people read them for. It's meant to be kind of a far-reaching thing that appeals to a broad audience. Still, totally get where you're coming from and I quite enjoy those kinda blogs also.

[silents429]

I briefly cut out from the blogs, but came back to read the progess on the 3D engine, and see Multiplayer.

HONESTLY

Honestly.

NPC's haven't appealed to me that much, I mean awesome, but when I think NPC's I think of those A-holes from 2.0q, not the better ones they are making.

As long as they don't up and ditch the game, or give up on keeping low spec users like me around then I can keep waiting.


BTW.

Recent Beta Build: Solid 30FPS. Doesn't dip ever, and the weird studdering from walking around is gone. Congrats

[Oddzball]

 

Just... dont forget those of us who supported you guys back before all this steam crowd came in and started demanding we turn this game into some isometric DayZ.

 

I came with the "steam crowd" (sounds pretty negative to me). I'd never play this game with anyone else then friends that I know for the same reason I don't play Minecraft or Planet Explorers with strangers: when you play with the masses, then there will be all kinds of people. Meaning there will be griefers too.

 

Also I usually overload my single player games with so many mods, that it's sheer impossible to play it with others.

 

That said, I'd never play DayZ either. I came with steam because I did not have the luck to find this game sooner. And I only found it via a dedicated, advanced search run. It might be the biggest problem of Indie games; that they're mostly dependent on mouth to mouth propaganda. If you don't have an iconic figure like Chris Roberts, then you have to do it the hard way.

Steam helps with that.

 

I didnt mean it to sound negative, so I'm sorry if it did. I just kind of feel, that before steam, the big promise to all of us early adopters was improved NPCs. That was THE feature everyone had been waiting for. Nobody really cared one way or the other for multiplayer. It wasnt even really brought up that much.

 

Then a new "steam crowd" of buyers/customers come in, and it felt, from my point of view anyway, priorities changed, to cater to this huge new mass of folks, while those of us who have been waiting for NPCs for about 2 years now(With barely and update about them), to me, felt like we kind of got pushed aside.

 

Either way, it's GOOD that PZ got all these sales, and is becoming super popular, the extra funding and publicity is sure to help the game in the long runbut surely you understand how I and Im sure others(like Mathas) feel about it.

 

Thats why I said initially, I'm not happy about it, but I accept it.

[EnigmaGrey]

Since my early days here in 2011, multiplayer has been one of those things everyone talked about and fantasized about. Yes, there were people like myself who didn't really care and just wanted the single player experience, but I have to say I always felt as though that was a minority view.

Like as not, I think they're catering to both their older players that wanted, asked, and suggested multiplayer over and over again, as well as the newer mass of people who want nothing but multiplayer.

There's always going to be those of us who wanted the game purely for the SP angle, though -- part of the reason I bought MineCraft was because how fun Survival SP was. When Notch started focusing on MP again, it was quite a kick in the gut, one that I should have expected. Can't help but see some parallels here.

[Oddzball]

Since my early days here in 2011, multiplayer has been one of those things everyone talked about and fantasized about. Yes, there were people like myself who didn't really care and just wanted the single player experience, but I have to say I always felt as though that was a minority view.

Like as not, I think they're catering to both their older players that wanted, asked, and suggested multiplayer over and over again, as well as the newer mass of people who want nothing but multiplayer.

There's always going to be those of us who wanted the game purely for the SP angle, though -- part of the reason I bought MineCraft was because how fun Survival SP was. When Notch started focusing on MP again, it was quite a kick in the gut, one that I should have expected. Can't help but see some parallels here.

 

Oh i remember people fantasizing about multiplayer. But at the time everyone just accepted it wasnt going to happen any time soon. I dont think anyone saw back then MP taking priority over NPCs as a focus. If i remember, back then, it was always a side project.

 

Not to say NPCs isnt a focus, just I think its obvious that multiplayer became MORE of a focus with the new crowd of folks, the Multiplayer Zombie game generation, especially with the popularity of things like DayZ now.

 

In mathas video, which lemmy's response is to, the only thing I really didnt like, wasnt that the focus shifted, but more, that now that MP is going to be a thing, more time is going to have to be used fixing MP bugs etc, instead of getting the metagame and NPCs going.

 

Out of curiosity, I really wish I knew what the holdup was on NPCs.

 

easy AI opponent makes a good point.

We haven't heard jack about NPCs in almost a year at this point, even if mad crazy work is happening behind the scenes. I mean there was never a solid date given about when npcs were going to finally come out, BUT form my understanding, it was suppose to be RC 2.9/3.0 so you would think there would be something to show at this point. Understand where us NPC folks are coming from?

[silents429]

 

Since my early days here in 2011, multiplayer has been one of those things everyone talked about and fantasized about. Yes, there were people like myself who didn't really care and just wanted the single player experience, but I have to say I always felt as though that was a minority view.

Like as not, I think they're catering to both their older players that wanted, asked, and suggested multiplayer over and over again, as well as the newer mass of people who want nothing but multiplayer.

There's always going to be those of us who wanted the game purely for the SP angle, though -- part of the reason I bought MineCraft was because how fun Survival SP was. When Notch started focusing on MP again, it was quite a kick in the gut, one that I should have expected. Can't help but see some parallels here.

 

Oh i remember people fantasizing about multiplayer. But at the time everyone just accepted it wasnt going to happen any time soon. I dont think anyone saw back then MP taking priority over NPCs as a focus. If i remember, back then, it was always a side project.

 

Not to say NPCs isnt a focus, just I think its obvious that multiplayer became MORE of a focus with the new crowd of folks, the Multiplayer Zombie game generation, especially with the popularity of things like DayZ now.

 

In mathas video, which lemmy's response is to, the only thing I really didnt like, wasnt that the focus shifted, but more, that now that MP is going to be a thing, more time is going to have to be used fixing MP bugs etc, instead of getting the metagame and NPCs going.

 

Out of curiosity, I really wish I knew what the holdup was on NPCs.

 

easy AI opponent makes a good point.

We haven't heard jack about NPCs in almost a year at this point, even if mad crazy work is happening behind the scenes. I mean there was never a solid date given about when npcs were going to finally come out, BUT form my understanding, it was suppose to be RC 2.9/3.0 so you would think there would be something to show at this point. Understand where us NPC folks are coming from?

 

I am pretty sure they have said on multiple occasions that work on NPC's And Multiplayer wouldn't slow down or effect other things.

And wasn't there NPC stuff a few months back? What more can they say if they have nothing more to report?

[Doominater]

These comments are why Indie Stone is hands down my favorite game company.

Hahaha Yep! =D

[Guest easy AI opponent]

Hi silents429,

no offense but we arguing a bit in circles. In fact your response summarizes the issues some of us have:

 

And wasn't there NPC stuff a few months back?

 

Yes there was a mondoid in August 2013, about half a year ago.

 

I am pretty sure they have said on multiple occasions that work on NPC's And Multiplayer wouldn't slow down or effect other things.

 

Great!?

 

 What more can they say if they have nothing more to report?

 

Thats the concern: That they have nothing more to report...

 

 

Obviously that became a big thing/issue, just found a mirrow thread in the steam forums:

 

http://steamcommunity.com/app/108600/discussions/0/540732889705282494/

Edited February 12, 2014 by easy AI opponent

[nasKo]

Just because Multiplayer is coming does not mean that NPCs are coming later that they would've without MP.

 

What you are suggesting is a Mondoid blogpost exclusively about NPCs while Multiplayer is being prepared for a release?

 

 

It's not like NPCs weren't even talked about in the past Mondoids.

 

January 20th:

Y NO NPCS?
YES NPCs are still very much in development. In fact we’ve done some work on them in the past couple of weeks, along with the new meta-game stuff detailed in the last couple of Mondoids. However, since release, and particularly since our appearance on Steam, it’s become clearer and clearer not only that MP is of such massive demand, but that the lack of multiplayer has had a not insignificant effect on the ‘must-haveness’ of Zomboid to a large chunk of gamers out there, that would otherwise have dove in long ago.

We need to make clear that this in no way impacts the Indie Stone’s massive focus on single-player for this game. Remember that outside of game design, Will, one of the co-owners of Indie Stone,  as well as PZ dev RingoD’s sole development responsibility on the game is single player story and NPC writing and scripting, so you can bet they will be given a ton of attention.

 

As a development team we vehemently uphold the principle that a game should not punish those who wish or have to play alone with less features and scope, and we are the first to complain when an RPG series we like goes all ‘MMO’ and more or less ends our interest and participation there and then. Our fondest hope is that once NPCs are added to the game, most people would choose to leave them enabled as part of a multiplayer server, so integral as they will feel to the dynamics of the game. In short, multiplayer will always remain just that: A way of playing the single player game with multiple people, and we’ll never rest on it as a crutch and let single player features slide.

 

That all said, despite the closer community of our game being ravenous for NPCs, the lack of multiplayer has been a cavernous hole in our game as far as a huge percentage of people are concerned.
So why did multiplayer hit before NPCs? Well, as amazing as it sounds, and it has surprised us too considering the nightmare that is network coding. The NPCs have become such a hotly anticipated and crucial to get right feature of the game, as Mathas has repeatedly quite correctly said, they are the feature that PZ will live or die by, and so  the unthinkable happened and NPCs ended up becoming a more complicated and difficult task than the multiplayer did.

 

As Lemmy dropped back and forth between them as one or the other caused migraines and/or swearing at the computer monitor, it started to become clear that multiplayer was beginning to slot into place a lot faster than expected, and NPCs a lot slower. Multiplayer development however had the privilege of being mostly unknown to the community, who had wrote it off (often with sadness) as ‘not for a few years’, where NPCs have been more or less perpetually in the spotlight. This doesn’t affect how long one or the other take, regardless, despite NPCs having the lions share of time devoted to them.

 

There are two camps in the PZ community, and while a lot of the community will be ecstatic about this Mondoid, we don’t want the NPC camp to be fearful or disappointed. The team are still beavering away at those AI controlled twerps and the only reason you haven’t gotten your mitts on them is because ‘damn we need to get this right and it ain’t quite right yet’.

 

 

 

February 3rd:

NPC phase initiatin’
We’re already prepping the ground work in the multiplayer branch to begin porting over the NPC code to work with new ‘NPCPlayer’ types, who will derive all their behaviour from the multiplayer/network communication enabled player. Once this is done we will be able to transmit NPCs behaviours easily over the internet, as well as automatically gain everything implemented for players with the next iteration of the NPCs. We can feel it all bubbling away again, and with the new meta-manager (Sadistic AI) and various other things are starting to feel the NPC train running again!

 

 

 

If you get to choose next Mondoid's content, what would it be?

[Connall]

-snip-

 

I've always personally maintained the belief that, while I do really want NPC's, I still see it as a far away feature. In that way I see multiplayer as a way to tide people over, and give people a really big update. Since (unless I'm forgetting something) for the most part it's a drip feed of features and bug fixes. I mean it's nice that we are getting this nice BIG new feature so that we will be set a bit more for the wait to NPC's.

[Guest easy AI opponent]

I know npc got mentioned in the last mondoids.

But hey, from that very second line on that whole "Y NO NPCs" paragraph is arguing about
that "MP before NPC" thing rather than the progress of the latter.

And you have to admit, that compared to that, the 3 sentences of "NPC phase initiatin"
paragraph are rather short and the info they provide is very in general / insubstantial....

[Sieben]

Just because Multiplayer is coming does not mean that NPCs are coming later that they would've without MP.

 

What you are suggesting is a Mondoid blogpost exclusively about NPCs while Multiplayer is being prepared for a release?

 

 

It's not like NPCs weren't even talked about in the past Mondoids.

 

January 20th:

...

If you get to choose next Mondoid's content, what would it be?

 

3D-Player-/Zombiemodels?

 

Neither npc or multiplayer are important to me, but nice to have. I can understand both sides of "fans".

I'm interested in the 3D-models or some mapenchantments like lootable car-/bus-/truckwrecks (the streets are to clean for me) or other things to raise the ambient of this really great game.

 

But I'm a patient guy and I've learned to wait until these parts will be integrated. I'm happy about every new addition, even if it's a rabbit

[Rathlord]

I know npc got mentioned in the last mondoids.

But hey, from that very second line on that whole "Y NO NPCs" paragraph is arguing about

that "MP before NPC" thing rather than the progress of the latter.

And you have to admit, that compared to that, the 3 sentences of "NPC phase initiatin"

paragraph are rather short and the info they provide is very in general / insubstantial....

 

What exactly are you expecting from them? You want Lemmy to copy and paste the exact lines of code he's worked on? The demands you're making are ridiculous. They've been talking about them in general terms- that's the entire point of the blog. It's not to hold your hand and walk you through the massive slog of code they've been working on. Setting up frameworks or pathfinding or whatever isn't exactly glorious work- and any screenshots they posted would just be screencaps of NPC's standing there which provides no information more than we already have, and would only whip up more people like yourself into a frothing frenzy over it as exactly proved by your attitude here. You are the reason there isn't more information about them. Because every time they show something people like you think they need to know everything about what's happening and expect things sooner rather than later. Sorry to be blunt, but that's the honest to goodness truth.

[Blasted_Taco]

I can clearly see the POV of lemmy about this stuff.

If you dont have the enthusiasm or will to do something, but you have enthusiasm in doing another stuff in the same area (the game), might as well work on that till its burn out.

 

But still, everyone pretty much expected SP to have the depth of NPCs, metagame events and stuff like for this year, cause the devs said to not get any hopes up for MP for atleast another year.

 

That kinda shifted a lot of minds around the community because no one expceted that MP was going to appear first.

I think everyone was thinking like:

 

3D models and lighting engine>Metagame migrations>Something>NPCs>Hunting>Vehicles>Multiplayer

 

Now that got shifted around and most of the people are scratching their heads, and those who dont read the fourms, the first thing they are going to think is: "huh, guess they changed priorities cause DayZ hype train"

 

But if this is the best course of action and is easy to do (to some extent), i will gladly support it