The effects of casualizing modding. Steam's Workshop feature is great, but it fosters a sense of entitlement in communities that neither value nor understand the effort and time that such projects require. They take content for granted, yet the only thing they provide are complains and demands.
It's a shame when modding reaches this point, but there's no reason to keep giving in to a bunch of ungrateful retards, much less if he's doing it for free. They can all learn to modify and update the mod themselves for personal use, but I'm willing to bet that none of them will take the time to do so. They'll just wait for an alternative and the cycle will repeat.
Reminds me of the Starfield (lol) release, a lot of people now seem have this issue with expecting mods for everything and then sperging out when a modder does something that they don't like in their own mod. I've read some real subhuman-ape level freakouts at modders on the steam workshop for entirely benign stuff in extremely niche mods.
No one forces these faggot modders to engage with the community in any way. Every modder who complains about "toxic community" or some shit has a gay discord server where they expect to be worshiped like demigods for the act of modyfying someone else's work using someone else's tools, and then crash out when someone doesn't buy their bullshit.
Those "ungreteful retards" are people who are mad about the mod being months behind promised schedule because the devs were too busy ERPing minors or engaging in gay discord drama. Reminds me of when Xilandro, a FNV modder, had a melty because a bunch of ruskies finished a car mod he promised to release god knows how long before, because how dare someone steal the clout of making a mod for a 16yo game from him.
Those "ungreteful retards" are people who are mad about the mod being months behind promised schedule because the devs were too busy ERPing minors or engaging in gay discord drama. Reminds me of when Xilandro, a FNV modder, had a melty because a bunch of ruskies finished a car mod he promised to release god knows how long before, because how dare someone steal the clout of making a mod for a 16yo game from him.
Those "people" aren't entitled to jack shit, regardless of how many times it was promised to them. If the developer, who works for free, wants to waste his time "ERPing minors or engaging in gay discord drama", then he can. Again, any of those "people" can use their own time and the freely available tools to learn and start updating the mod for personal use. How many of them will? What is the percentage of players compared to modders? They deserve nothing, they are owed nothing. It's unpaid work that someone dedicates their life time to.
Although, just to be fair, I completely agree that prohibiting other people from continuing to work on the mod is bullshit.
A lot of you sadly never actually got a chance to use Knox Event Expanded, so I figured I should explain it, and frankly glaze it, and why it was the best NPC mod.
KEE used B42's animal AI system as a starting point to make it's NPCs, but from there every NPC was basically a self contained player. When you started a new game with the mod activated, it would prompt you with a screen where you would set up the generation settings for the NPCs, you could control the starting population which would then be simulated from 1950 to the games start date of 1993. The simulation would show you details like the amount of men, women, couples, adults, infants, kids, criminals, employed vs unemployed, and probably more stats I forgot. Once done it would show you the final amount of NPCs that would be put into your game. In game, NPCs would secure their homes, loot, criminal NPCs would try to hold up the player and other NPCs. NPCs would claim the homes they spawned in, and this would mean any NPC or Player who entered their home would be considered trespassing, and the NPCs would yell for them to leave, and if they didn't, would attack them. Louisville had the exclusion zone actually manned by Soldiers who would shout warnings at the player, shoot zombies, and if they player attempted to breech the barriers would just unload on them.
There was also a Rimworld-esque settlement management system for NPCs you recruited to join your camp, but I never used that system. Before it got shit canned, I believe the next plans the Dev had were making a faction system which would allow for survivor communities and bandit gangs to form, ally, trade, and go to war. There were also plans to add custom map support via dynamic waypoints, which would have also futured proofed the mod against any map changes. I think even letting NPCs drive cars was a long term goal.
KEE was leagues ahead of Bandits, and Superb Survivors wasn't even close. All this, mind you, by I believe a single dev who did all this in his free time. I hope once B42 stable drops and he has had some time away from the PZ community he picks it back up, while I wished he had allowed someone to take over or at least continue maintaining it, I can see that going very bad. KEE required a Java file to work, and you needed to edit a new class into the "ProjectZomboid64.json" file to make it work, and that would probably be a very easy attack vector for a malicious maintainer to take advantage of.
Reminds me of when Xilandro, a FNV modder, had a melty because a bunch of ruskies finished a car mod he promised to release god knows how long before, because how dare someone steal the clout of making a mod for a 16yo game from him.
Xilandro made the car mod, but it was attached to the Frontier. He had plans to make a standalone version but wished to improve and expand it, then Russian missiles started landing in his bathroom and his PC got killed by constant power surges, so he had to cancel it because he couldn't work on it on his laptop. Someone else had ripped the car mod out from the Frontier and had reuploaded it with Xilandro's permission. No one ever "finished" the mod other than him, it was just a third party that made a standalone version from the Frontier that got banned off nexus for being a unauthorized rip of a modders content. (Also XRE was the first person to make a car mod for Fallout New Vegas, Xilandro's mod was just the best car mod ever finished.)
In case anyone is interested there is KF PZ server currently running it has few mods and activity is rather low now after few in game months it is mainly active during US hours i guess if activity spikes there could be a full restart maybe.
(IP was changed later new one is 212.192.29.2 and port 27037 password is sneed)
And in case you are worried about your steam acc getting exposed create a new steam account (make sure its frendlist is set to private) then add your main account with Family thing and you will be good.
KEE is no longer totally dead, the dev has updated the page to announce he's working on it again, but to not expect a relaunch of the mod until, at least, stable B42. archive
a lot of people are pissed about the trait balancing but I don't know enough about the meta to really make a call on it. What really pisses me off is THEY GOT RID OF ECHO CREEK as a spawn location. They said it was just a temporary spawn location for build 42's new mechanics but like, why remove it? Indiestone bitches about players not traveling more but got rid of the best spawn to explore the western part of map? Who the fuck is gonna go to Irvington now?
I'm fairly convinced it's multi-player balancing bs. The echo creek gas station is high tier base, but in MP 4 guys can easily turn it into a well-stocked fortress within the first week. You have guns-unlimited, farms for animals, plenty of wood, a river right next to the gas station. If your quick you can even harvest a shit load of pre-planted crops and stuff them into the 6 or so freezers it has, especially if you have the organizer trait. Above everything else, echo creek being so small, a base at the gas station basically has it's own spawn point. The KF zomboid server just moved they're base there, partially I think so that respawns and new players didn't have to hoof it to Louisville where it was before.
Really, MP hosts should just be able to deselect spawn points instead of removing them totally.
I personally haven't noticed any notable balance changes (though keep in mind I play this game like a weirdo and have a lot of experience) outside of target shooter and tinkerer, both of which are essentially redundant now because of the books for aiming/maintenance. Before you'd have to take handy for maintenance and hunter for aiming.
I don't see a compelling reason why anyone wouldn't use this or a similar build as a base for singleplayer characters outside of tedium or maybe for a specific challenge. Increasing the cost of wakeful and cats eyes is just tedious and doesn't really have any serious impact (for me at least) when designing a character.
The vast majority of the traits are still overwhelmingly niche, I think a better design direction for the developers might be giving traits additional permanent passive bonuses (like with foraging) that can't be achieved through leveling skills or literature. Furthermore there are plenty of traits that are still mandatory picks (keen hearing, organized and slow metabolism), or QOL traits that are unbearable to play without (cats eyes and dexterous). Additionally there are the various intermediate traits (e.g. out of shape or weak) which have been redundant for a long time due to how easy it is to get 2 levels in most skills. Some skills like carving, masonry and agriculture are so ridiculously easy and cost effective to level that taking a multiplier is pointless whilst old staple skills like carpentry and welding have been rendered genuinely difficult to level due to time or resource investment which ultimately make them desirable to circumvent. I think the ultimate issue with traits that impact leveled skills boils down to the old RPG design issue of: if I can feasibly master every skill on one character, then why have character options to begin with. You would require skills (currently nimble, running, fitness and strength (and arguably electronics/combat skills excluding long blade and aiming)) which certain characters could not reasonably master without a serious time investment. I think in an ideal system every skill would more or less fall into this category, and the game moving skills like maintenance (whose difficulty to master used to define character builds) into the category of easily levelable skills like agriculture and foraging takes away from the variability and customization of your characters. Like it makes sense that a career farmer would have more readily applicable knowledge about farming than some guy who read 5 books and picked corn over the course of a week, but currently the game doesn't display that.
Removing the Echo Creek spawn is weird and I think it'll be reverted honestly, it's still prior to actual release so I'd've liked to have the option to still spawn there for experimentation but I do also like the idea of desirable far off locations that the player needs to travel to reach (March Ridge, LV etc). I'm not sure if I'd consider Echo Creek to actually be a desirable location though, maybe in the future it'll be swapped out for Rosewood?
They integrated trapping with the new animals system, but how it's balanced means that ~1/2 of the time you end up catching baby animals that I can't bring myself to kill, so in my recent playthrough I had like 30 baby rabbits/racoons running around my yard. In my experience it also makes trapping borderline unviable for maintaining calories in winter (which in fairness is somewhat realistic) unless if you have a super dedicated setup.
a lot of people are pissed about the trait balancing but I don't know enough about the meta to really make a call on it. What really pisses me off is THEY GOT RID OF ECHO CREEK as a spawn location. They said it was just a temporary spawn location for build 42's new mechanics but like, why remove it? Indiestone bitches about players not traveling more but got rid of the best spawn to explore the western part of map? Who the fuck is gonna go to Irvington now?
I'm fairly convinced it's multi-player balancing bs. The echo creek gas station is high tier base, but in MP 4 guys can easily turn it into a well-stocked fortress within the first week. You have guns-unlimited, farms for animals, plenty of wood, a river right next to the gas station. If your quick you can even harvest a shit load of pre-planted crops and stuff them into the 6 or so freezers it has, especially if you have the organizer trait. Above everything else, echo creek being so small, a base at the gas station basically has it's own spawn point. The KF zomboid server just moved they're base there, partially I think so that respawns and new players didn't have to hoof it to Louisville where it was before.
Really, MP hosts should just be able to deselect spawn points instead of removing them totally.
Mind you the zeds spawn in echo creek is so low that you can clear it out in a day. I wouldnt mind if they made Ivrington a spawn point instead but idk. Also so many players dont end up leaving their spawn town anyway, so without an EC spawn most people will never end up going to the western side of the map.
That'd be a fun long-term playthrough goal: fortifying a base in every city. (I do tend to stick with my first chosen base location for quite a while...)
I've been enjoying testing the Guns of '93 mod in my latest run. Gun distribution feels much more realistic, and you're not guaranteed to get good guns anyway, a lot of the time you're picking up (realistically) clapped out revolvers or Saturday night special ghetto blasters. America has more guns than people and vanilla Zomboid just doesn't reflect that experience.
There should be guns EVERYWHERE but they should be fucking god awful
I went to the range today and some dude was shooting three different dogshit h&r revolvers with his mom. they were the mom's guns and he didnt know how to shoot them well
This is like the 3rd major exploit the PZ devs have fixed this year, but so far it's the only one that's been abused before being found. I think we are going to reach a point where the devs need to fix the spaghetti code to stop this shit.
The combination of "long term passion project" with ease of accessibility is a deadly combo for a certain Indie developer. You think Toady One ever had to deal with the amount of spergs that being listed on stream and content creators creates? Don't get me wrong, Toady is a pretty chill, cool guy and Lemmy is a gay British man. But being able to see your spergish, passion project changes being panned in real time is more punchy.
So I don't double post, here is a devs response to why they removed Echo Creek as a spawn:
Which uh, sounds like BS to me. I understand the British don't have the means or reason to experience the Great American Commute, but surely they understand you don't have to work in the city you live? Beyond that, why remove a spawn in favor of a future spawn, for a feature you haven't even announced, nevermind implemented? Just weird and fuels my conspiracy thoughts that they heavily rely on multi-player data for developing the game in a direction for when NPCs are a key feature for single player.
I ran into the woods, ate berries, got queasy, didn't eat for a while
Later ate berries, got queasy. Ate another berry. Immediate fever and rapid death.
I had just made a tent and was functioning fine (I was shirtless blonde firefighter calendar model Chad Hunkson).
I wish this game had the ability to, even if it took horrific amounts of material and was a pain in the ass, put curtains up on cars for when you sleep in them at night.
Zimbob idea
The Bloodhound
It's a normal person that walks about holding its face in its hands
It tracks you with pinpoint precision based on smell (devs meant to do smell at some point)
It will shamble a while then rest
If you get close enough when it's shambling, then it drops hands, and unleashes the SIRENS OF HELL
Loud, unhinged, continuous wailing calling down all of God's creation.
The point of our zambi here is that it respects Zomboid design conventions of only being behaviorally distinctive, and it is meant to evoke the terror of fiction where, like in I Am Legend and stuff, you've seen a thousand zombies and only this one suddenly is... behaving diifferently. In such a way you might not even notice it.
Maybe the thing even seeks out sheltered places that you have often walked by...
I started Build 42. Everything is slightly off in ways that piss me off. I don't like the graphics being improved.
I'm ambivalent about the music. It took a while for me to even notice it because it loops so much in the game it becomes white noise, but apparently they've gone with this new - at least I don't think I've heard this track before - plucky "apocalyptic folk," as I think of it, sound. It fits in some ways way more than the old soundtrack, but the old soundtrack was also fitting in a way too - grungy, aggressive, felt like 1990s zombie fiction if that makes any sense - and this is more cliche. The Last of Us I htink really unleashed this on us, I liked it at the time but now it feels overplayed to have the minimalist acoustic sort of sound. Maybe I'm way off and just rambling like a madman. The old stuff was too much when it'd just blare constantly. I also hated the Arabic singing, it worked up until the moment I thought "WTF is this Arabic?" and then it was the hokeyist, most amateurish thing.
I've been enjoying testing the Guns of '93 mod in my latest run. Gun distribution feels much more realistic, and you're not guaranteed to get good guns anyway, a lot of the time you're picking up (realistically) clapped out revolvers or Saturday night special ghetto blasters. America has more guns than people and vanilla Zomboid just doesn't reflect that experience.
Guns of '93 is my absolute favorite zomboid gun mod. I always found Britas and the others (I'm sure there's a few good ones but I haven't really touched any others) to be way too tacticool le hecking operator. I don't want a fucking scar in a game set in 1993.
Another cool thing about guns of '93 is being able to take the trigger groups out and modify or replace them. In one of my playthroughs I found a bushmaster dissipator and slapped the automatic trigger group off an M16 into it. Also the pistol grips into foregrips is cool.
The gunplay in B42 is actually usable now if you know what you're doing so Ive been able to enjoy shooting shit
I think something has fucked up the game's zombie distribution. Since I started playing Build 42 there's very few inside of buildings. I first noticed this when I stumbled across Ekron Community College and looked it up online and saw how people were saying there's 800 in there (I ran into maybe a dozen tops). Now I had this run where I just kamikazed into Louisville (I started on Valley Station, got bit being a moron, then just ran the barrier on a bicycle and then ran - I was a fitness instructor - the rest of the way) and it seems like any building in Louisville is deserted. Whole apartment buildings with nobody in them.
I think something has fucked up the game's zombie distribution. Since I started playing Build 42 there's very few inside of buildings. I first noticed this when I stumbled across Ekron Community College and looked it up online and saw how people were saying there's 800 in there (I ran into maybe a dozen tops). Now I had this run where I just kamikazed into Louisville (I started on Valley Station, got bit being a moron, then just ran the barrier on a bicycle and then ran - I was a fitness instructor - the rest of the way) and it seems like any building in Louisville is deserted. Whole apartment buildings with nobody in them.
Honestly now that I think about it I haven't seen too many zombies inside of buildings. Maybe it's just because I use guns a lot so everybody ends up outside, but I never really stopped to think about it.
I think I saw one singular zombie inside a house and that's about it. They'll be out and all around the buildings but never in them
