Why isn't the game played from a first person perspective?

[Tonkka]

 

 

For what we wanted to do, it couldn't be first person.

 

From my memory, the video mentioned several points:

1) full 3d is extremely taxing, there's no way we could have as many zombies as we wanted (hundreds, thousands) if they were 3d. Think of games like L4D, DayZ, etc--there's not many zombies in area at the same time. Dean Hall also mentions this.

2) roleplaying: PZ makes use of some dice-rolling; we can say you're poor at shooting by making you miss more. If the game made you miss from a first-person perspective, you'd just be annoyed. From a FP perspective, you expect to be able to do certain things that would forego the role-playing element

3) level of abstraction allows your imagination to fill in the details: we can't provide animations for everything, but at the vantage point of iso, you can just imagine things happening (eg. in the Kate & Bob story, her being smothered had NO animation, it was just text). If it was detailed FP, you can't get away from that kind of thing. We're a small team.

4) we like iso.

Good! GOOD! finally a proper answer.

 

Majority of them are good points as well. I hated it when Fallout 3 did the whole missing shots RPG thing in FPS. Very good.

 

Here's an idea, it may be taxing in execution, but it will payback in immersion: Remove the status effect icons, and implement their effects visually on the player character. That way other players can see how you're hanging and the ability to see yourself in iso will finally be a benefit. Hurt? Put some visual wounds on the player character. Exertion? Make the player character produce loud breathing noises that attract zombies. Sick? Coughing that attracts zombies and pale skin. Infected? Skin turns a bit greener. Sleepy? Make ZzzzZZZzz's emit from the character. Broken bones? Make the character move slower and emit pain noises - in a choir now: that attract zombies

 

Using UI's to portray the status of your character are for gameplay perspectives where you can't really see yourself.

 

 

I'm pretty sure seeing someone's condition is planned, either through visual indications or hud/hoover mechanics. Like for instance I think I remind the devs saying we'll be able to see bandages, carried bags etc... Also the coughing and sneezing is already a thing that attract zombies ;o

don't forget the game is still at an early stage of development !

 

 

Yeah i know about the coughing thing. It's pretty genius. 

 

Also good to hear that these guys have already thought about the thing i stated earlier.

 

Only problem is how does one imply thirst? Hunger can be implied with stomach grumbles (that attract zombies!), but what could possibly be a visual/audio thing that implies thirst? Being drunk can easily be implied with the classic cartoon effect of bubbles being emitted from a characters head and depression with rainclouds or black zig-zag lines, panic can be implied by blinking white lines around the characters head "as if they were sun rays".

[Bull Dog]

This might sound dumb, but how about a thought bubble of a water source, like a tap.

[deprav]

 

Yeah i know about the coughing thing. It's pretty genius. 

 

Also good to hear that these guys have already thought about the thing i stated earlier.

 

Only problem is how does one imply thirst? Hunger can be implied with stomach grumbles (that attract zombies!), but what could possibly be a visual/audio thing that implies thirst? Being drunk can easily be implied with the classic cartoon effect of bubbles being emitted from a characters head and depression with rainclouds or black zig-zag lines, panic can be implied by blinking white lines around the characters head "as if they were sun rays".

 

 

About thirst, hunger, "visual" sickness and stuff, I don't think the devs want to opt for a cartoonish representation of the state of the character. Plus, even irl it's pretty hard to say if someone is thirsty, dehydrated, hungry, sick, panicky (only by his behavior & talks) or else; you could either notice he looks weakened, in pain, in general physical trouble without knowing the reason.

 

Imo what we could see somedays is a written "HUD" indication, like right clicking on someone's character and read something like :

- This person looks tired & weaken.

- This person looks healty

- This person looks depressed, xxxx & xxxxx

- This person looks pretty fackin hawt.

-etc...

Also for the drunk moodlet, they had a really cool zig-zag awkward walk in some earlier version ! I'm pretty sure we'll see that back in the game sooner or later

[Tonkka]

 

 

Yeah i know about the coughing thing. It's pretty genius. 

 

Also good to hear that these guys have already thought about the thing i stated earlier.

 

Only problem is how does one imply thirst? Hunger can be implied with stomach grumbles (that attract zombies!), but what could possibly be a visual/audio thing that implies thirst? Being drunk can easily be implied with the classic cartoon effect of bubbles being emitted from a characters head and depression with rainclouds or black zig-zag lines, panic can be implied by blinking white lines around the characters head "as if they were sun rays".

 

 

About thirst, hunger, "visual" sickness and stuff, I don't think the devs want to opt for a cartoonish representation of the state of the charact- 

 

 

The game's mascot is a cartoon tanooki/red panda/coon

[Spaniard]

 

About thirst, hunger, "visual" sickness and stuff, I don't think the devs want to opt for a cartoonish representation of the state of the charact- 

 

 

The game's mascot is a cartoon tanooki/red panda/coon

 

The game itself though is actually pretty grim. Spiffo provides a nice juxtaposition to the game's ambiance and feel. Spiffo is an exception, not the rule.

[Tonkka]

 

 

About thirst, hunger, "visual" sickness and stuff, I don't think the devs want to opt for a cartoonish representation of the state of the charact- 

 

 

The game's mascot is a cartoon tanooki/red panda/coon

 

The game itself though is actually pretty grim. Spiffo provides a nice juxtaposition to the game's ambiance and feel. Spiffo is an exception, not the rule.

 

What's the problem with some cartoon effects in the first place? as long as they're not obnoxious, they should fit right in.

[Spaniard]

What's the problem with some cartoon effects in the first place? as long as they're not obnoxious, they should fit right in.

 

 

The problem is that they wouldn't fit right in.

[Tonkka]

 

What's the problem with some cartoon effects in the first place? as long as they're not obnoxious, they should fit right in.

 

 

The problem is that they wouldn't fit right in.

 

 

How the hell do you know?

[wsensor]

Why does everyone obsess about first person?

 

1. Its not required to be used in every game.
2. Most first person games seem to always be the exact same game.
3. There are already first person games with zombies.

This game is great the way it is why think otherwise?

[Fryhizzle]

I don't have much to add to this besides the fact that I like the game the way it is, and the way it is going.  I know the thing that drew me to this game was the fact that it was different than other zombie games I've played.  The view is great, with only a few moments here and there where it is irritating.  The nostalgia I feel from the way this game looks is great.  I like seeing better ideas than better graphics.

 

To each his own, and I hope you can find a way to enjoy it for what it is, and hopefully the view doesn't hold you back from enjoying!

Cheers!

[deprav]

 

 

What's the problem with some cartoon effects in the first place? as long as they're not obnoxious, they should fit right in.

 

 

The problem is that they wouldn't fit right in.

 

 

How the hell do you know?

 

Because as he said earlier, spiffo being the exception, the game relies on a pretty grim / dark atmosphere.

We can take the first fallout games as an exemple, Pip-boy is a funny looking cartoon boy, but the game in itself doesn't have any cartoonish visuals or indication at all (because that would make no sense seeing the atmosphere of the game).

[Realmkeeper]

At the risk of this post being entirely ignored, I'm going to give an opinion from a game design and development perspective.

 

There's near on a million technical reasons why an indie studio would avoid full-3D first person perspective in a largely interactive horde-infested post-apocalyptic American zombie survival game, but I get a feeling that if you're asking the question posed in the OP in the first place, most of those reasons would go straight over your head.

I think the most obvious, easily understandable reasons are (as have mostly been stated already):

1) Skill set

Honestly, I don't think the PZ developers even had the skill set (way back when PZ was little more than an idea) to develop a first-person zombie survival game. Even now, with their level of perfectionism, and attention to detail, it would likely be near impossible to convey that same 'completeness' over into high-detail 3D. If anything, in hindsight it has been a blessing to develop PZ in isometric - trying to accomplish the 'horde factor' in first person hits a technical limitation, as shown by DayZ and mentioned by Dean in the Rezzed video (which we hope you've watched in it's entirety by now)

2) Resource limitations

Again, avoiding too many technical terms and descriptions, a zombie sprite, or in the modern incarnation, a low-poly 3D zombie model is vastly more simple than a high-poly skeletal rigged in-your-face zombie, as would be found/required if we were to have PZ in first person with any respectable level of detail. An oversimplified comparison would be that in terms of memory, processing power, and rendering capabilities, one DayZ zombie would require the equivalent of at least 100 PZ zombies. And that's a conservative comparison.

Also, Isometric restricts the view frustrum (cone of sight, stuff that is visible). In first person, we have come to expect a near-infinite view distance, or at the very least hundreds of metres ahead of us. In Isometric, we have a fixed area being visible at any one time, which makes it much better suited to optimisation and much simpler map structures - because we know exactly how large the area being viewed at any one time is, and we can develop the map with any technical limitations in mind (such as maximum number of objects on-screen). With some of the low-end machines people try playing PZ on, knowing a few concrete specifics about the game state is a godsend when trying to cater for a large range of hardware.

3) Budget

Time - I'll leave this as simply a question. Do you have any idea how many more man-hours would be required to develop full-3D high-quality models and textures in place of all the content we have in PZ? And that's just the assets, the complexity of the engine to manage and display all that extra data is likely orders of magnitude greater than what currently exists.

People - With all that extra time needed to get simple things working, you're going to need more people. Preferably more people right from the start, so you don't need to spend even more time training them up along the way.

Money - Time is money, and money makes quality (most of the time). PZ would never have even made it to a tech demo capable of enticing the masses that have purchased the game, that has funded the ongoing development - PZ would not exist today, if it were not for the initial development of an isometric zombie survival game on existing engines that were in no way ever capable of running the game that PZ has developed into today.

 

Again, there's probably a million other things I could have added here, but it looks like the post is already dragging on long enough. Remember, it's all just my speculation and opinion, and was typed as it came into my head - so don't expect it to read to nicely, or ideas to flow on to one another.

[Kirrus]

General reminder of our primary rule, people;

Be Lovely

Remember your tone of voice is hard to determine in text, so please be aware of how what you type can be construed.

[Kajin]

The only reason Day Z could even be an FPS in the first place was because it started out as a mod for a larger game developed by a larger team with access to larger amounts of money and resources. And even then it was a bug riddled mess for the longest time. PZ on the other hand has been built almost entirely from scratch by just a handful of people with an exceedingly limited budget. The Indie Stone was simply working with what they could manage when they first started making the game. They chose an isometric perspective because it appealed to them as an appropriate choice for what they wanted to do with the resources they had available. And thus far it's been working out rather well for them.

 

Asking why Project Zomboid can't be an FPS like Day Z or any of the other dozens (if not hundreds) of other zombie games is like asking why you can't make orange juice from the lemons that the Indie Stone has brought for you.

[GerbilSchooler]

Bit 

 

 

 

 

For what we wanted to do, it couldn't be first person.

 

From my memory, the video mentioned several points:

1) full 3d is extremely taxing, there's no way we could have as many zombies as we wanted (hundreds, thousands) if they were 3d. Think of games like L4D, DayZ, etc--there's not many zombies in area at the same time. Dean Hall also mentions this.

2) roleplaying: PZ makes use of some dice-rolling; we can say you're poor at shooting by making you miss more. If the game made you miss from a first-person perspective, you'd just be annoyed. From a FP perspective, you expect to be able to do certain things that would forego the role-playing element

3) level of abstraction allows your imagination to fill in the details: we can't provide animations for everything, but at the vantage point of iso, you can just imagine things happening (eg. in the Kate & Bob story, her being smothered had NO animation, it was just text). If it was detailed FP, you can't get away from that kind of thing. We're a small team.

4) we like iso.

Good! GOOD! finally a proper answer.

 

Majority of them are good points as well. I hated it when Fallout 3 did the whole missing shots RPG thing in FPS. Very good.

 

Here's an idea, it may be taxing in execution, but it will payback in immersion: Remove the status effect icons, and implement their effects visually on the player character. That way other players can see how you're hanging and the ability to see yourself in iso will finally be a benefit. Hurt? Put some visual wounds on the player character. Exertion? Make the player character produce loud breathing noises that attract zombies. Sick? Coughing that attracts zombies and pale skin. Infected? Skin turns a bit greener. Sleepy? Make ZzzzZZZzz's emit from the character. Broken bones? Make the character move slower and emit pain noises - in a choir now: that attract zombies

 

Using UI's to portray the status of your character are for gameplay perspectives where you can't really see yourself.

 

 

I'm pretty sure seeing someone's condition is planned, either through visual indications or hud/hoover mechanics. Like for instance I think I remind the devs saying we'll be able to see bandages, carried bags etc... Also the coughing and sneezing is already a thing that attract zombies ;o

don't forget the game is still at an early stage of development !

 

 

Yeah i know about the coughing thing. It's pretty genius. 

 

Also good to hear that these guys have already thought about the thing i stated earlier.

 

Only problem is how does one imply thirst? Hunger can be implied with stomach grumbles (that attract zombies!), but what could possibly be a visual/audio thing that implies thirst? Being drunk can easily be implied with the classic cartoon effect of bubbles being emitted from a characters head and depression with rainclouds or black zig-zag lines, panic can be implied by blinking white lines around the characters head "as if they were sun rays".

 

Panting... like a dog could easily imply thirst in a sound bite. It worked well in a Breaking Point (a mod for Arma 3 in the vein of DayZ).

[Strider]

<snip>

 

I won't really try and answer your question. I think some of the other posters have done a pretty good job of that. I can add my opinion though. I like the 3rd person because it gives the illusion of safety. You can see what's behind you but that's just a snapshot of what you seen before. There could actually be Z's there. 

When you have that quick blast of music as a Z shocks you with an appearance. I see that as an audible representation of your peripheral vision. To see nothing behind you only to turn around and see many Z's is a wonderful mechanic that I like very much.

[syfy]

we have enough games with that annoying (to me) first person perspective, and like posted above, they all look the same. i was really interested in that H1N1 or whatever its called game when i first read about it. seemed like it could be pretty interesting, and with a large studio and huge budget "Potential" seemed to be a key word. then i saw the video with one of the staff playing the game.

 

at it's base, it was just like every other first person perspective game out there. nothing special, nothing unique or groundbreaking. just another game. sure it has some new stuff, but it's just another game, that happens to have a different variety of zombie.

 

PZ is not like every other zombie game, that is a huge part of it's appeal to many people. frankly, i think if it was it would not have the following it has. and people would not be so eager to tell others about a zombie survival game made by a small studio that many people have never heard of before (sorry TIS)

 

you want it your way? go learn game development and try making the game the way YOU want it to be. in the meantime, me and many, many, MANY others will enjoy our diamond in the rough.

[Strider]

i was really interested in that H1N1 or whatever its called game when i first read about it. seemed like it could be pretty interesting, and with a large studio and huge budget "Potential" seemed to be a key word. then i saw the video with one of the staff playing the game.

 

MMO and survivalist zombie games do not go together at all. PZ works because of permadeath. Or rather that's one factor which great contributes to it's success. 

That all said, I consider 98% of the 'zombie games' I've played to be utter, utter shit. But that's just me.

[CaptainBinky]

Mash did a nice summary of the key points, but I will add:

 

Lemmy and I came from the commercial industry. We certainly *could* have made a 3D first-person game had we wanted to. We chose not to. This was *not* to differentiate ourselves from DayZ since at the time DayZ did not exist (either stand-alone or the original mod). It was purely because we considered the project, taken to the point we wanted to, was in itself already a hugely ambitious project and therefore making it 2D would cut a huge chunk of the risk out of the equation (planning an ambitious project is easy - but you have to be damned sure you can deliver it). We would no longer have to worry about whether it would be technically possible to render the required number of zombies - DayZ, with its considerably larger development team and an established game engine under the bonnet, is undergoing engine changes on account of this very problem.

 

As I said in the Rezzed talk, zombie numbers are *essential* if we're going to make a faithful early-Romero / Max Brooks zombie apocalypse game. Everything else is secondary to that. So if we have to make the game 2D to *guarantee* this, then so be it. The fact that Lemmy is a huge fan of the original X-Com, and I love The Sims meant that we didn't personally mind this concession at all.

[Vantus]

Why wasn't Tomb Raider a real time strategy?

Why did Borderlands decide to use a Cell Shaded art style?

Why is X-com a turn-based Strategy and not a FPS?

 

4) we like iso.

 

I think this is as much reasoning or explanation that is required.

No barrel-scraping for a list of reasons and definitely no apology needs to be made.

 

Project Zomboid is an Isometric video game, because that's what it is and that's what Indie Stone set out to do.

 

The simple answer really is: "Because that's the game the developers wanted to make."

 

I'm glad too, I've got far too many first person zombie apocalypse games. Project Zomboid, without even trying, offers me a complete escape from the norm.

[Strider]

<Snip>

 

DayZ, with its considerably larger development team and an established game engine under the bonnet, is undergoing engine changes on account of this very problem.

 

And this is why DayZ SA is not installed in Steam at the minute. In spite of the fact I *loved* the mod. No zombies (or very few) and all you have is a survivalist shooter. And they're 10 to the dozen.

 

Nice to get clarification from the source though.

[Fryhizzle]

I always find it funny that people consider DayZ a zombie game.  I've played a lot of hours in the mod (more than I'd like to admit) and never thought it was a zombie game.  Zombies are in it, but the game itself is just a PvP Griefer Party.

[Strider]

I always find it funny that people consider DayZ a zombie game.  I've played a lot of hours in the mod (more than I'd like to admit) and never thought it was a zombie game.  Zombies are in it, but the game itself is just a PvP Griefer Party.

 

It is loosely but depending on who you ask. If you ask Rocket he'll say it isn't. Personally I think he put 'The infected' in there to make it a little more attractive to download but he's spoken at length about the genesis of DayZ and it was when he did a survivalist training for New Zealand army (in Singapore I think but don't quote me)

He ran into trouble and was in real danger. It was during this time recovering that he had the idea.

 

I mention this because DayZ is - as you rightly say - more of a survivalist game than a zombie game. It is also - as you say - a massive griefing engine but that's because there aren't anywhere as many infected as there should be. For example, if DayZ had as many Z's as PZ does when on 'Insane' setting then it'd be incredible. People would be forced to work together to survive. I'd love to see that but I'm not going to hold my breath.

 

One last point. DayZ is a griefing engine because of the players. I'm quite happy with how I played it. I tried to play it as close to myself as possible. Live and let live and had fun doing that in the mod.

Edited July 4, 2014 by Strider

[Fryhizzle]

 

It is loosing but depending on who you ask. If you ask Rocket he'll say it isn't. Personally I think he put 'The infected' in there to make it a little more attractive to download but he's spoken at length about the genesis of DayZ and it was when he did a survivalist training for New Zealand army (in Singapore I think but don't quote me)

He ran into trouble and was in real danger. It was during this time recovering that he had the idea.

 

I mention this because DayZ is - as you rightly say - more of a survivalist game than a zombie game. It is also - as you say - a massive griefing engine but that's because there aren't anywhere as many infected as there should be. For example, if DayZ had as many Z's as PZ does when on 'Insane' setting then it'd be incredible. People would be forced to work together to survive. I'd love to see that but I'm not going to hold my breath.

 

One last point. PZ is a griefing engine because of the players. I'm quite happy with how I played it. I tried to play it as close to myself as possible. Live and let live and had fun doing that in the mod.

 

The player base makes any MP game I guess, and in my experience DayZ draws the worse crowd.  Hell, I wouldn't even be surprised if people still did what they do with insane amounts of zombies.  Luckily, what it lacked for me, I found in PZ, and that I won't complain about that.

 

If you take this as a DayZ diss, don't.  I had my fair share of fun with "The Running Simulator".

[Tonkka]

Why didn't you just read the earlier thread

 

This question has already been answered by the dev, i don't need your input on it.

 

I also find it kinda funny that people believe that i want the FPS mode to be with AAA graphics. Don't underestimate people. I was thinking more of a Minecraft + cubeworld + Imscared type of voxel graphics style