Project Zomboid - The farming simulator disguised as a zombie survival game

[Basement Dwelling Dork]

Playing another run this time with the muscle strain mechanic turned off. I appreciate the added details they've done to the roof. Plus added an extra stairwell for the rooftop of on Riverside school. Now I can officially get started on that rooftop farm again. Still that one dude who pointed out how dark this game is not joking. I had to bring like 3 lamps just to find the light switch to the building.

Hope they make another update because its absolute hell playing without washing off any rags in the game.
Oh and also this shit, make it so that I can block doors with furniture again.

Edit:They fucking changed the library now. You can barely find any of those skill books that you may need.

 

[WonderWino]

Honestly who gives two fucks other than the usual soy brigade of troon deviantart spawn?

Companies do. There can be some significant legal problems if they got caught or even accused of using AI derived art in a commercial product. If anybody claims or even suspects and accuses a company of doing that any anything derived from their artwork they can cause all kinds of legal problems for them. They can prevent sales, go after them for damages and force digital storefronts and payment processors to stop all sales until the company can prove its their (or legally licensed) artwork. Nobody wants to be on the wrong end of a copyright issue, particularly when a commercial product is involved. Its the kind of thing that could fuck a small indie company. If the company can't prove where the artwork came from they're fucked if somebody ever makes an issue of it. Ignoring such claims would absolutely fuck them sooner or later

Far better to avoid that can of worms entirely and produce their own artwork

That said I can't say I like anything about this update except for maybe the addition of basements. Those could be useful, though I have my doubts about it being a good idea to have significantly taller office buildings, thats asking for large increases in lag, especially on multiplayer servers. I'm not too clear on what they are referring to by romero like zombie spawn locations. I mean we already have a mall with zombies, i'm not really sure what else there could be like that. Absolutely not a fan of this muscle strain nonsense mechanic either, thats going to piss alot of people off

 

[Chunky Salsa]

Wow, it's shit now. Amazing, what a turnaround. No NPCs, but the game is just kind of ass now. Get fucked.

 

[Pippa is a spic whore]

Wow, it's shit now. Amazing, what a turnaround. No NPCs, but the game is just kind of ass now. Get fucked.

I wonder if they will have the balls to go for "muh realism" once they inevitably let you play as a troon.

 

[Charred Dinosaur]

I wonder if they will have the balls to go for "muh realism" once they inevitably let you play as a troon.

You already can. B41 did away with the inability for male characters to wear dresses and now any character can use any voice type

 

[Pippa is a spic whore]

You already can. B41 did away with the inability for male characters to wear dresses and now any character can use any voice type

• Can a post-op character use the neovaginal stench to sneak around like the whisperers?
• Can it get stuck with perma-depression?
• Where is the dilation multiplier?
  
  I specified realistic.

 

[The Early 2000s]

They reduced the muscle strain to 60% of it's previous value, so the melee combat is much better now.

I'm starting to warm up to the update.

Also, Lemmy made a post about how the gun system works: https://www.reddit.com/r/projectzomboid/comments/1hjfzuv/psa_regarding_gun_aiming_rework/
In short, the projectile physically exists when the gun is fired, and it depends on reticle aiming much more than the old system, which was a hack job of having guns be super-long melee weapons. Taking that into account, pistols are a lot better to use in this update than before, but shotguns are still kinda shit due to the pellet penetration change. I need to find a m14 in-game to really test the gun system out.

I really do hate the faggots who pretend the update doesn't have its problems thougheverbeit. The simple muscle strain change seemed to be controversial; it's like these people think fun is an unwanted side-effect of the game.

 

[sodomy lifestyle]

I'm not sure how to feel about the new crafting system. The game already suffered from item bloat, and the blacksmithing skill seems to add even more. I'm not sure what's worth picking up and what should be best left for later

if the implemented blacksmithing system is anything like the mod I tried, I second the item bloat. As I recall, you can craft maybe three dozen items that are complete junk, and several that are OP (namely, engine parts).

Noticed that the current beta seems to lack normal cigarettes, which sucked when I took the smoker flaw on my first run (don't know if it exists in vanilla, my more traits mod seems to still run).

 

[WonderWino]

Randomly got recommended this video on youtube, for a mod that hasn't been officially released yet, but from the video looks like it might be pretty good tbh

Its basically a mod that sets up the week leading up to shit going crazy, where everything starts normal, people doing their jobs and shit and gets progressively worse as the days progress until everything just collapses as the zombies start becoming a thing and going after people

It looks like it could be really good if the dev doesn't fuck it up

 

[Batko Bandera]

Randomly got recommended this video on youtube, for a mod that hasn't been officially released yet, but from the video looks like it might be pretty good tbh

Its basically a mod that sets up the week leading up to shit going crazy, where everything starts normal, people doing their jobs and shit and gets progressively worse as the days progress until everything just collapses as the zombies start becoming a thing and going after people

It looks like it could be really good if the dev doesn't fuck it up

The fact he thought people would wanna see his ugly mug in like 1/6th of the screen for the whole video annoys me.

 

[Gravemind]

Randomly got recommended this video on youtube, for a mod that hasn't been officially released yet, but from the video looks like it might be pretty good tbh

Its basically a mod that sets up the week leading up to shit going crazy, where everything starts normal, people doing their jobs and shit and gets progressively worse as the days progress until everything just collapses as the zombies start becoming a thing and going after people

It looks like it could be really good if the dev doesn't fuck it up

The fact he thought people would wanna see his ugly mug in like 1/6th of the screen for the whole video annoys me.

Agreed. Mod looks neat, but the guy showing it off is obnoxious.

 

[Serbian Peacekeepers]

It looks like it could be really good if the dev doesn't fuck it up

I have the feeling if this mod ever releases, which I doubt it will, it will be so script dependent that it will break if you look at it funny, which is a shame since I think the idea is great and hope one day we get something like it as a tutorial for the base game.

 

[The Early 2000s]

Anyone know of a mod/fix for the car battery/propane tank charge bug? It's getting unbelievably annoying.

 

[Jheeb]

I've played a decent bit of the unstable (~100h) and I'm currently doing an insane pop playthrough with otherwise vanilla settings so I'll vomit out some of my thoughts here:

THE BAD​

• Muscle strain is kind of pointless, it becomes almost a non issue after ~level 6 in a weapon skill, even on insane pop, but before level 3 is overly punishing and just tedious, it leads to me just conserving my attacks and relying on fences, fences also let you Billy Batts zombies to death which only generates muscle strain in your right leg so you can kill more before having to rest. I don't mind muscle strain existing for hopping fences, but again it's too punishing, even at lvl 9 strength your character is at a serious disadvantage if they hop a tall fence immediately into combat.
• Zombie telepathy (I don't know what else to call it) is probably the worst new feature imo, from what I can tell when you kill a zombie, even if completely silently and out of sight, there's a decent chance that nearby zombies all suddenly try to travel to near where that zombie just died, this leads to overly long combat where you're just waiting for more zombies to show up.
• If you're between a tall fence and a zombie and they don't have a short enough path to reach you, rather than just standing like they used to and letting you poke them through the fence they will now walk away a short distance, out of spear/knife range. This is just annoying mostly, I doubt anyone used this strategy as a means of actually cheesing a lot of zombie kills and it makes walking around to finish stragglers off a pain.
• Pitch black indoors darkness is really annoying, rather than it simply being dark it seems that the game just doesn't render zombies that are in darkened tiles behind you, which makes you extremely vulnerable to being attacked from behind as they seem to pop into existence. It's kind of dumb that a room with just closed curtains at mid day becomes full on Ghanian and I'm not entirely sure if this is just a quirk of the new lighting engine.
• New moodles are painfully bad. The old ones were more retro styled and it suited the time period of the setting itself, they wouldn't have been out of place in some kind of informational pamphlet, like they had an almost formal kind of look to them. Because the moodles are the interface between the player and their characters they need to tonally fit in to facilitate immersion. I think that's why there's been such a strong negative response to them, even though ultimately they're just cosmetic and easily fixed with a mod.
• I've noticed that after ~1 month buildings begin to become 'trashed' (I also don't know what to call this), items that would normally spawn in the respective containers of that building are redistributed across the floor and with a loss in condition which makes looting these really tedious.
• The new shooting mechanics are weird, apparently a large portion of the community wanted a crosshair but it honestly feels less reliable than the old shooting mechanics. At least with the old ones you could tell what you were going to hit. I think a crosshair might just not work well in the isometric style.

There's also the plethora of bugs/balance issues and some questionable art but these are kind of to be expected of an unstable pre-release like this, I mainly just listed the things I found the most concerning/indicative of a worrying direction.

~THE GOOD~​

• For the most part I really like the new functional items, the western canteen for instance is a super nice QoL item to have and the key ring bottle opener/can opener are too. The majority of the new weapons are cool visually and it's fun to screw around making abominations like the kettle maul.
• New vehicle art/types are a cool addition, I'd recommend setting vehicle spawns to high just to see them.
• The liquid transfer system is a good way of measuring out specific portions (mainly of alcohol to sleep with claustrophobic) instead of having to use an entire 1/4th of a bottle of whiskey.
• Sharpening and refitting axe/hammerheads is much less tedious than I imagined it'd have been.
• The increased rarity of skill books is honestly something that I like, I'm finding it fun to have to work around skill deficits and it adds a lot to replayability and the satisfaction of completing a set.
• I'm not sure if this is intentional but currently you can sprint after rabbits and stab them to death with a high enough shortblade/running skill, the entire hunting system in general is a nice way to give characters that otherwise lack survival skills a renewable, somewhat calorie dense food source. You can also run them over, and they barely affect a vehicles momentum, it's... very immersive...

• The optimization improvements are probably my favorite addition, especially as someone with an abacus for a PC the game runs much smoother, the only other game I can think of that actually put in serious effort with optimization is factorio so it's a nice surprise.

I haven't gotten time to try some of the new features yet like the fishing thing but all in all it's about how I expected an unstable to be. I think a lot of people are acting like the devs aren't going to resolve a lot of these issues by the time of release but then again I don't exactly have high hopes for any indie games these days and there's quite a lot of concerning crap here too so who knows.

 

[The Spoils of War]

Every popup in the tutorial has a quirky Rick and Morty line about the inevitability of death.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I'm just here bitching about a game I don't play and forcing my "special interest" on you,

But the Historic Coalfield is not an authentic portrayal of a coal town at all. It's like Wild West theme park land.
That may be justified in-universe, though, if it's one of those tourist traps that seems to litter the South (maybe elsewhere in the country, but there's a specific one I drive by regularly that is little more than a convenience store with a front made up to look like main street of a Wild West town). Or if it's not meant to be a company town. I just find the saloon, sheriff's office, all that stuff gaudy. A good coal town would have a church, a schoolhouse, YMCA maybe, a superintendent's house that's a big manor, and a bunch of shitty little cabins (not shotgun houses, but imagine that if you want), all cookie-cutter, laid around with a tipple. They're familiar, cozy places while also being depressing.


Edit: I'm cheesed about this because I think it's otherwise REALLY COOL how Project Zomboid is slowly building a map of the Louisville area that's lightly fictionalized (for gameplay purposes). Days Gone did something really similar with a tiny stretch of Oregon countryside. Kingdom Come: Deliverance hewed insanely closely to a real random stretch of Czech countryside. I think it's fantastic that games are starting to give random-ass places in the sticks the treatment that big cities get. So it's inconsistent with that.

Would have a company store. Would probably not have a sheriff, but a marshal. Would not have a saloon.

 

[lego racers]

Anyone know of a mod/fix for the car battery/propane tank charge bug? It's getting unbelievably annoying.

really late, but in case you haven't found it on your own, there's one here.

 

[Wild at Heart]

I've been messing around in Sandbox in B41, finding my perfect settings. I turned off respawn and set the zombies to slow speed. This has let me live a long time and learn a ton of game mechanics I missed when living 10 days at a time. I will say after almost 3 months in game, it does get a little boring having a stable base with absolutely 0 zombies in town. I have started venturing out to other towns and setting up safe houses to eventually make excursions into Louisville (which I have never been to in 150 hours of game time).

Almost died in Muldraugh (fuck Muldraugh) and bandaged myself back up with a centimeter of health left. I then drove all the way home to Doe Valley with dirty bandages covering me and agonizing pain hindering my driving. Almost losing a 3 month character and surviving was one of the biggest rushes I've had in a game in years.

I usually HATE loot-centric games, but the menu and transfer system is so intuitive. I have looted the entire secret forest research base, and army barracks and still not found a single M16. Praying I don't get completely rolled in Louisville.

 

[Cheesy Beavy]

I have looted the entire secret forest research base, and army barracks and still not found a single M16

There’s plenty of gun stores in game along with police stations. There’s an online map for build 41 with all those points highlighted. I wouldn’t say you necessarily need an m16 but good aiming skill, maybe a shotgun and a hand gun.

Also when you roll into Louisville at the main gate, there’s plenty of army crates at the check point so there’s a good chance you’ll find one there

 

[elrond hubbard]

Also, make sure you drive really fast through the checkpoint