Turning power/water back on?

[drfish]

Hey all, loving the multiplayer so far, very glad it got moved up the schedule, have owned Zomboid for a long time but with so many other games to play I decided not to mess with it until I could play with my friends, had a blast last weekend doing just that!

 

So my question is about power/water, I've read that they can turn off anywhere from 0-60 days but I suspect either the rules are different in multiplayer or the timer keeps running even when no one is on the server (which is not true for plant growing so I'm not sure).  Basically I started our server in the morning before I went to work last Friday and we didn't play until that night.  We never had power and water was, well, flaky at best, but that seems to be the case even with rain barrels, whatever, alpha and all that, not a big deal.  I'd sure like to play the game with power though, even for just a few days, is there somewhere in the server bin file I can go in and flip it back in a hex editor or something?  If not then did I just have bad luck or does the timer for water/power run even without anyone in the server?

 

Thanks for any answers.

[makkenhoff]

Yes, power/water seems to shut off even when people are not logged on; Which is okay in the context that the world is moving even while your asleep. Currently, the server does not have settings really available to play with, it should happen soonish. As a note, while playing solo, I've had it set on sandbox for the maximum amount of time and still had the power shut off on day 1, so really you have to expect that to be a reoccuring theme.

[unsaved_progress]

Yeah it's just part of the PZ charm. Stock up on non-perishables, eat all your bacon and salmon and get ready for some pretty dark nights. 

[dra6o0n]

Except it's up to the players and community themselves if they want to play it any more differently than defined.

 

Though a 0~60 day gap is a bit odd as there's no other options.

[jblaze421]

I am also hoping for settings such as this. It would be great if you could eventually customize your server like you can your sandbox game. I personally like to play with longer days just so i don't have to sleep as often. Obviously sleeping isn't an issue with multiplayer yet but it would still be nice to have a little more daylight. 

[dra6o0n]

I am also hoping for settings such as this. It would be great if you could eventually customize your server like you can your sandbox game. I personally like to play with longer days just so i don't have to sleep as often. Obviously sleeping isn't an issue with multiplayer yet but it would still be nice to have a little more daylight. 

In the normal sandbox you can adjust the length of day from 30 minutes to 24 hours (1 real day = 1 real ingame day).

 

Though it would be nice to have a 'custom' setting where you can set how many hours in 'doubles' from real game time to ingame time so you can get the minutes working properly.

 

For instance setting it to 2.4 hours a day, means every minute is 10 minutes ingame.

2 hours a day sets it to be a bit faster though.

 

Basically the length of time a player plays, and the days passed until power and water is gone, should be important.

 

But because this is a timed thing, it affects everyone globally. New players who join the game like a few real days later, as the server time keeps going, will be stunted and cannot proceed with the game as not only the world gets looted, but power and water stops working too. So there is a absolute limit before balance is totally destroyed.

 

PZ MP in this state means that with regular gameplay, it's not designed for multiple people joining over time like a MMO as it doesn't have any means to 'regenerate' itself without reseting everyone... It might be a nice idea to add 'refreshed' containers options to server host so places where players never go to, and has been abandoned for days/months ingame, may refresh and add random items into the containers for new players to find.

 

Finally on the 'turning the power/water' back on... Maybe later on the devs could have actual power station or power generators that players can use, to turn power back on with by repairing the hydrodam, or whatever industrial facility needed for generation, or use gasoline to fuel gas generators in some houses. It's optional for players to possible go to a water treatment facility to possibly find a way to get water running again.

 

While these ideas don't necessary need to prove to anyone that it has to be 'a way you die', it gives players goals and reason to pursue them for the sake of progress, and in doing so, find new challenges or ideas to attempt. Bored players won't really die, they'll quit the game or server entirely.

[syfy]

maybe you should read the Mondoid before you pass info that is not quite true.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2014/03/road-to-unification/

 

Soft Reset

Server operators are now able to ‘soft reset’ their server. This resets everything in the world, such as zombies, loot, blood, characters. But it leaves any map changes in effect. so zombie fortresses will still be standing, and (now much less likely) kitchen fires will still leave their mark on the world. But water and electric will return, blood stains on the walls, zombie bodies in the street, will all be cleaned up. Zombies will walk the streets again as they would in a totally fresh game.

This will hopefully allow for servers to evolve and change over time, yet for people to be able to play the early Zomboid game more often without total resets.

[dra6o0n]

maybe you should read the Mondoid before you pass info that is not quite true.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2014/03/road-to-unification/

 

Soft Reset

Server operators are now able to ‘soft reset’ their server. This resets everything in the world, such as zombies, loot, blood, characters. But it leaves any map changes in effect. so zombie fortresses will still be standing, and (now much less likely) kitchen fires will still leave their mark on the world. But water and electric will return, blood stains on the walls, zombie bodies in the street, will all be cleaned up. Zombies will walk the streets again as they would in a totally fresh game.

This will hopefully allow for servers to evolve and change over time, yet for people to be able to play the early Zomboid game more often without total resets.

This means stuff like your inventory and characters reset, meaning items are emptied, so hoarded stashes of food and farmland is gone. All it does is deter people who hoarded and created fortress from ever coming back to play it.

 

The stuff I'm talking about that regenerates stuff in real time, is for only the newcomers and to maintain a sense of balance to the world, without punishing them for playing for a few minutes, leave, and gets reset.

 

Heck, DayZ utilizes item respawn because pvp gets common at some point due to PvE becoming weak... Project Zomboid servers will inevitably get the same thing happening for pvp servers, as supply runs out.

 

DayZ does also use 'helicopter crashes' and events to refresh parts of the map, so Project Zomboid could do with random events during the server is running (based on the player vicinity and their stats), to provide them with opportunities.

 

Like a group of surviviors failing to hold out at a super market and dies guns blazing... The noise is literally played to everyone in the vicinity (but the event does not start if they are too close), so the scene occurs before the player arrives and they see a horde of zombies, with corpses and items on the floor.

 

Water and Electricity returns yes, but at a cost of everyone's stuff, excluding buildings.

 

Even with soft resets, trolls and hackers manages to find ways to ruin it for everyone anyhow.

[FawkesGaming]

While I don't have the game, I can already see why respawning containers would be a bad thing, and hard to program in a way that would leave exploitation to a minimum.

First off, if you designate certain containers to respawn then what stops people from building bases around these sustainable resources? And also, what happens if you are unaware the container respawns, stash away your tools and then bam; they're replaced by some food, or useless items?

I suppose you could set a timer so that crates not accessed for a long time respawn loot, but that means you can essentially build item farms by accessing the crates at intervals which allow respawns to happen. And, I don't fancy the idea of having to constantly check crates in use to ensure they don't fall victim. Not to mention defining each criteria would take an age, and most likely be bugged (also detracting from time that could be spent implementing NPCs ;])

In all honesty soft resets seem like the best option at the moment. Perhaps the larger map will lead to longer sustainability, but until then... Oh, and one more thing. Project Zomboid doesn't seem like a game that would need more than maybe 10-20 people at a time, each belonging to a faction. Not with the current map size anyway.

[dra6o0n]

Well the latest news mentioned some sort of survivior starter kits for new characters so that might buy some more time... Or it might start a griefing frenzy of new characters who they steal new supplies from...

 

But basically at this point maybe have players with 'good' survival kit migrate into the map from the outside on a highway near a town so they get off on a good start and then venture towards the town...

 

It's actually better if instead of starting in towns/cities that we start off in the rural and venture 'inward' towards the center of the map, where all the hordes and zeds are located.

 

So instead of a certain area at the edge of the map being a 'city' with the end game loots, it can be a central part of the map somehow... Which may mean expanding the current game map worlds so that the 'biggest' point are in the middle of the map, and players spawn on the edge to migrate to cities (like surviviors escaping one city and is finding shelter at a community place).

 

For instance, since the devs are planning 'random profession' kits:

I'd like to see a generic list of usable items alongside these kits.

Every character should start off with the smallest backpack available that makes sense for the profession.

Every character should start off with the ability to create campfires via matches.

Every character should start off with a few special 'ration' type food like beef jerky which doesn't rot.

 

Professions other than the ones already in the game can be setup with 'useless' goods alongside useful items...

For instance a Student profession means spawned with bags of chips, soda pop, school bag, pens and pencils, and a beginner book of a random type.