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

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Are there any suppressors for the firearms in the game, either by default or through mods? I don't like all this talk about guns being useless due to noise.
 
FunPosting101 said:
Are there any suppressors for the firearms in the game, either by default or through mods? I don't like all this talk about guns being useless due to noise.
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By default I don't believe those exist, I don't remember, but almost all of the gun mods, including the one Firearms B41 mod I linked to, either have suppressors built into the mod, or have other modders that come along behind them and add them. If you really want to pile in an unreasonable number of guns, I'd go with Brita's Weapon Pack, which also has suppressors built directly into the mod.

Mind you, I'm not saying that guns are inherently useless, I'm saying that if you plan to use one, you should have a lot of Aim skill and a shitload of ammo. If you have both of those squared away and you know how to move or fortify a building, guns are absolutely the best way to clear out an entire town, but if you just wanted to run around pretending to be Sam Fisher, grab a suppressor and specialize in the Burglar profession with the Marksman trait and you'd be well on your way.

I just prefer melee weapons and crossbows. Guns aren't bad, I'm just deeply biased. Guns also work very differently in Project Zomboid than most games that aren't trying to be hyper-realistic. You do need to have preloaded magazines somewhere on you in order to reload and keep shooting, for any gun that would rationally be using a magazine. You don't just fill your pockets with bullets and keep dumping ammo, you actually do need to have the metal rectangles.
 
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1Tonka_Truck said:
Did not realize how similar this and Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead were until now. The only things missing are the superior cyberpunk future and all the weird mobs besides zombies.
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Probably worth noting that Project: Zomboid actually has a scenario based on C:DDA. Funnily enough, that scenario is actually how I found out that C:DDA exists.
 
It's HK-47 said:
I just prefer melee weapons and crossbows. Guns aren't bad, I'm just deeply biased.
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From what I've gathered between your OP and a bit of a buddy playing it forever ago, it's the difference between "heh, nothin personnel kid" and "IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A HUNKA FAT JUICY MEAT, EAT MY BUDDY PUMBA HERE BECAUSE HE IS A TREAT".
 
Just Some Other Guy said:
@It's HK-47

Good job selling me on this game. Gonna try to get a friend to coop this with (if that's feasible).

Thanks for the write up.
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Co-op and even large-scale multiplayer is part of Project Zomboid, but the current build isn't compatible with most forms of multiplayer unless you do a lot of jerry-rigging or use that odd Steam Play system which is essentially streaming local co-op via split-screen. Build 40 works for multiplayer perfectly fine, but Build 41 is a significantly improved version of the game, where a lot of the major changes are starting to take place.

If you're keen on only playing it in co-op, I'd advise holding back until Build 41 has had its multiplayer functions hammered out, to be prepared to deal with a somewhat awkward co-op experience, or to just play in Build 40, which, now that I think about it, probably won't feel that different to you if you've never played Build 41 to begin with.
 
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It's HK-47 said:
Co-op and even large-scale multiplayer is part of Project Zomboid, but the current build isn't compatible with most forms of multiplayer unless you do a lot of jerry-rigging or use that odd Steam Play system which is essentially streaming local co-op via split-screen. Build 40 works for multiplayer perfectly fine, but Build 41 is a significantly improved version of the game, where a lot of the major changes are starting to take place.

If you're keen on only playing it in co-op, I'd advise holding back until Build 41 has had its multiplayer functions hammered out, to be prepared to deal with a somewhat awkward co-op experience, or to just play in Build 40, which, now that I think about it, probably won't feel that different to you if you've never played Build 41 to begin with.
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Thanks for the heads-up. Only survival we've played was Minecraft, lol.

Enjoy the idea of scavenging and surviving in bug out shelters.
 
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I've put a small amount of time into this game, played it basically an entire weekend after they introduced the cars way back when. It's really fun at first, but once you get setup with a car, gear, and plenty of food the game starts to get a bit stale for me. Does not seem to be a lot of long term goals to shoot for once you have all that. Though for the zombie enthusiast there is not a better game out there that does the zombie apocalypse thing as 'realistically' as PZ.

Recommend first time players pick traits and professions that closely match their own to see how long you would be able to survive.
 
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Gun Safety said:
I've put a small amount of time into this game, played it basically an entire weekend after they introduced the cars way back when. It's really fun at first, but once you get setup with a car, gear, and plenty of food the game starts to get a bit stale for me. Does not seem to be a lot of long term goals to shoot for once you have all that. Though for the zombie enthusiast there is not a better game out there that does the zombie apocalypse thing as 'realistically' as PZ.

Recommend first time players pick traits and professions that closely match their own to see how long you would be able to survive.
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Yeah, once you understand the general rules and get better at determining when you should fight and when it's best to run, it's not too awful to survive in the short term. Long-term can be more difficult because PZ is remarkably good at throwing curve balls at you, especially if you start to mess with the settings. I like to decrease the temperature of the map so that it's much colder in general and winter is downright brutal, so having torn clothing can actually become a bigger issue than just lowering your chance to prevent damage.

Decrease the spawn rate of all loot and food items to the point where you're under a nearly constant pressure to scavenge, crank up the timescale so you're much later in the year at the start, increase the horde sizes and give them a very long "memory" so they remember where you went for much longer, throw some survivor mods into the mix so you're never quite sure when some lunatic with a shotgun is going to jump you, and maybe even pack in a mod like Toxic Fog and Toxic Rain, so if you're caught without a gas mask or go fucking around in the rain unprotected, you're potentially in serious trouble.

Project Zomboid's ability to scale the difficulty of the game with the Custom Sandbox mode is genuinely ridiculous.
 
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One thing I've learned is that guns are shit weapons (unless you have a silencer added by a mod) because they'll alert and attract every fucking zombie in the neighborhood. So what I use them for is just that, luring them away from where I am to other areas, or to kill zones design by building a small structure, setting up a few remote controlled firebombs, then firing off a couple shots and running to a nearby hiding spot. When the zeds come to investigate I blow the whole thing to hell and finish off any survivors with a bat or axe.

It's a good way to clear your local area before the next respawn and it's also a fun activity for once you've got your setup established and scavenging is no longer top priority.
 
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Decided to give it a try because of this thread (great mod list btw), lasted about ten in-game days [and a hundred dead zoids killed] before I accidentally walked out a door and into three zombies. The new apocalypse mode is so much more difficult. With the superb-survivor mod the first few days are a real chaotic mess and it's great.
 
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Meh, I have it but bother with it very little. It will never successfully release from early access. The devs have made it abundantly clear they don't really know what they're doing. They didn't have any form of source control or backups at the start and what happened? They got the entire game stolen and had to start over. Then they restarted and after getting back to the point they were originally at what did they do? Change the art style and start implementing systems that weren't needed, didn't make sense and to the detriment of stuff that actually did need to be worked on. All while letting it slip they had no actual plan or structured design doc and were winging it in terms of what they did and implemented. Note they're now on their third incarnation of the artwork, implemented vehicles half assed and then went off in weird tangents, first doing a bunch of stuff with weather that not only wasn't needed, wanted, asked for or practical for gameplay, but went off at people that questioned why they did it, and then abruptly abandoned that and started working on a heating and cooling system, only to abruptly pull people off of that to do focus on......an exercise system so players can work out....which doesn't really make any sense to even have in the game given the mechanics and what the averages players day to day activities are in order to survive. The next jump has been heavily implied to be to some kind of animals/hunting system, which doesn't make sense considering the current state of everything that would be needed to be worked on first to get them where they need to be for such a system to be implemented in a practical manner at all. They do this all while ignoring features that actually have been asked for, such as npcs, alternatively claiming they're coming, to claiming they're not feasible to implement, to claiming they never said that and they're coming to getting so angry at people for requesting features or questioning when things are coming that they literally stopped posting news entirely to steam and carefully curating comments on what little news they post on their site

tldr: the devs are a walking stereotype of everything you can expect a grossly incompetent development house to do. They have been in EA for going on 8 years with very, very little in the way of actual improvements beyond changing the art style 3 times and implementing cars that ate up years of resources that were much better spent on things that actually needed attention. PZ will never see a full 1.0 release. The longer it goes on the way it is the less people will buy it and the the less money they will have for development. It will inevitably run out of development funds long before it approaches anything close to what they claim 1.0 is supposed to be

If anything its a product that shows why there should be limits and restrictions on how long you can stay in EA and why there needs to be some kind of progress system to push devs toward having to release things in a reasonable manner
 
WonderWino said:
They do this all while ignoring features that actually have been asked for, such as npcs,
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I can't see NPCs working well in a game like this. You'd either have to babysit them constantly or have them cheat and never require any food, water, or weapon maintenance. The things a survivor has to do in this game are way too complex to do well by AI.
 
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garakfan69 said:
I can't see NPCs working well in a game like this. You'd either have to babysit them constantly or have them cheat and never require any food, water, or weapon maintenance. The things a survivor has to do in this game are way too complex to do well by AI.
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The only way I can see NPCs working is as something of a resource. They just sit in the building they spawn in until rescued by the player or killed by zombies. Until rescued they don't have any "needs" like food or water, but once rescued they have all the same needs as the player, food, water, entertainment, sleep, etc... They can follow the player, carry equipment, scavenge local containers, and even fight. But they're not very good at any of it and are meant as more of a supplement to the player, a way to carry more per trip, an lookout for when you're poking through buildings looking for nifty shit, an extra bat wielder in a fight. But on their own they're basically just meat.
 
ExceptionallyExceptional said:
The only way I can see NPCs working is as something of a resource. They just sit in the building they spawn in until rescued by the player or killed by zombies. Until rescued they don't have any "needs" like food or water, but once rescued they have all the same needs as the player, food, water, entertainment, sleep, etc... They can follow the player, carry equipment, scavenge local containers, and even fight. But they're not very good at any of it and are meant as more of a supplement to the player, a way to carry more per trip, an lookout for when you're poking through buildings looking for nifty shit, an extra bat wielder in a fight. But on their own they're basically just meat.
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That's actually not very far off from what Superb Survivors does, to be honest. The only real difference being that they always require food and water even before you stumble across them, so they'll roam to find it. You can always just shut off their hunger/water needs, but it's kind of interesting to watch them stumble around and find it on their own, or start actually bunkering down inside of a building to defend it.

They're also good at giving you a fucking heart attack when they open the door to the room you're trying to rest in, especially if it's a hostile survivor. Generally though, their purpose in that mod is to help expand the way that you build bases, since you can designate specific jobs for them and 'zone' areas in your base where items are supposed to go or where farming should be done, or where people should stand guard.

I'd say it's not a finely-polished experience, but nothing in Project Zomboid is finely-polished. It's just a clunky game.
 
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Half the fun of the game is waiting for Lemmy, their primary dev, have periodic meltdowns when people remind him that they are going on at least five years of "soon" for NPCs.

They are absolutely going to release this thing with no NPCs and then do a round of interviews with places like gamasutra to talk about design and how they handle such a "toxic fanbase" who are simply asking for a complete game.
 
Honored guest said:
I remember when the hard drive that had all the game data got "stolen" and they had to restart from a much older build. Its great to hear that they're still working on it. The last time I played it they had just added cars and they felt pretty bare bones, I'll have to play it again soon.
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They haven't heard of git yet I suppose?

This game actually looks pretty fun, I'll check out the demo and pick it up if I like it.
 
NPCs would be neat but lets be real there is no really good way to implement them and them actually be more useful than just doing it by yourself. You either make them automatons that do exactly what they're told and require no maintenance (and are useful) or you make them have all the needs of the player and then they end up being more work than they help and fuck you over somehow. I like the survivor mods just because it's neat to see a third element to just add to the chaos, but I don't really rely on them to be anything more than zed food. I can totally understand the devs being apprehensive about adding them, it would take a lot of work to find a balance that makes them both useful but also realistic.
 
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