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sic-disaster

Project Zomboid

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I just got this game because after reading an article on RockPaperShotgun i became very, very interested in the possibilities.

It's just pre-alpha but already it is very interesting to play.

Now i have tried it out and i have to say it is quite awesome!

The premise of the game is this:

It's a zombie survival game (STOP RIGHT THERE! Dont you dare go out of this thread before you've read this I know, another zombie survival game.. but this one is different )

The game starts out with you and your injured wife in a house.

Your first goals are quite easy: shred some linens for bandages, find some painkillers, go to shed to get wood, nails and wooden planks to barricade the house. Go out, find some food in nearby house, go home, cook food, etc. To save me some time i suggest you read this article by RPS:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/05/30/impressions-project-zomboid/

Assuming you've read it, i'll have to say i had that exploding oven incident myself too As i caugth fire i ran outside in a panic, right into a big horde of zombies who were very happy to see me.

I also met the friendly stranger with the shotgun... Took me a couple of tries where he shot me and shot my wife, but finally managed to kill him before he could harm me or her. That gave me a nice baseball bat, a shotgun and 39 rounds.

However, using the shotgun isnt a particularly good idea as it is very loud, and noise attracts more zombies to your location. So, best to use if you are in trouble far away from your safehouse (and any house can be turned into one, by the way), otherwise you might not be able to get out of the door the following morning.

So this is where my own story picks up: i wanted to go out and see what more i could find.

After a second night's sleep i got out of the house and immediately got welcomed by some zombies. Thankfully there werent many of them and i managed to kill them.

I walked into town, killing a few lonesome zombies with my baseball bat as i went along(these zombies caused a slight panic in my character) and encountered a diner.

So i ran in, closed the door behind me, and immediately checked all ajoining rooms from the main area. It was all clear, so i started pillaging like a madman: some cans of soda, 2 loafs of bread and some fresh and some rotting meat, and i even found a flashlight. Meanwhile the zombies outside took notice of my presence (this diner had some big windows) and decided they wanted to get in on the hunt for food. A few of them started banging the rear door, which startled my character, so i had to take a run for it.

I encountered a few zombies but i didnt try to kill them. I ran for dear life, got home and barricaded the door again with the last of the wooden planks.

I went into the kitchen, stored the meat and drinks in the refrigerator and put everything else into cabins. My character was tired, so i had a quick snack and went to bed.

1:00 i woke up to the noise of what seemed to be hundreds of moaning voices. As i checked the windows of the upper floor i couldnt see much for it was pitch dark, but the sound wasnt to be mistaken: i was in trouble.

I ran downstairs to check up on all the barricades, but thankfully they didnt do too much damage yet.

I opened up the back door and killed a couple of zombies there before i closed the door again. Then i realised i couldnt board the door back up for my lack of wooden planks. So, i forced myself into a night long of guard duty in front of the weakly wooden door, getting drowsy with sleep. (i had planned on staying up that night already but now i had to stay with this single door instead of spreading my attention over both of the entrances)

I decided to open the first attack, so i opened the door in hopes of being able to kill all the zombies on this side of the house before the other door caved in, and i had to fight off a group. I managed to kill them, but i got scratched on several limbs and received a bite wound to the head in the process.

During the brief respite i quickly bandaged myself up, but bites are fatal: i was a lost cause already. Even scratches have a 25% chance of infecting the character, so fighting zombies isnt a particularly good idea but something which has to be done anyway to get the stuff to survive.

Another group came in, and as i was fighting them i heard the other door collapse, and i got swarmed from the other side as well.

In his heavy panic my character's aim got really ****ty though in this group of zombies it wasnt hard to miss. I managed to take a couple of them down with me, but i died.

I get a feeling i should have killed the zombies that saw me come out of the diner and run back to the safehouse, as i have a suspicion this might have influenced the result of the following night

I am now hooked, and will probably dream about the zombie apocalypse when i go to sleep in a few minutes

PZ has a nice line of sight system by the way that doesnt allow you to see what is behind your character. He'll have to turn around and see what is behind him, and it's quite a brilliant thing.

It means you cant just walk in a house without checking all the corners if you want to make it to the next day, and it means you have to stand on the upper floor of your house so you can look down and see if there isnt a big horde of zombies parked outside your front door.

I've got a feeling this is only the bare beginnings of the game.

Apparently characters can be met and join you, and each might get into a depression, have trust issues, get scared, lonely etc. I'm interested to see in what kinds of situations i might get in in the future

Check out an example video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4iMO9BpGkQ&feature=player_embedded

Website here:

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/

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I heard about it on Ctrl+Alt+Del. There is a comic there that I thought was funny and then he explained the game a bit underneath it in the article. I haven't played it yet but it does seem kind of cool.

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Just into it, very good atmosphere right from the start, the dialogues and the background music are very immervise, died 2 times already in a very short timespan, but i'm not giving up :D

Took me 24 game hours to make soup... forgot the pot... :rolleyes:

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I found out there is some form of paranoia already in.

Yesterday i was walking along a street and kept seeing figures walking behind me, but when i turned around nothing was there. Might make for an interesting situation of 'the boy who cried Wolf!' later on :p

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I tried to buy one of the games that gives you the lifetime PZ license, but it seems only to work using Google Checkout, which requires a credit card. I don't have a CC, so does anyone know how to acquire this game using a different payment method - PayPal, for example?

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Google Checkout is the only option available at the moment.

They tried using Paypal but they got in trouble with it somehow. Apparently they are not allowed to directly offer the pre-alpha tech demo for sale, and the same thing went with Google Checkout. However, with Google Checkout they found this workaround where you can buy any of their other games and get PZ for free.

But that is also why right now GC is the only option.

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Google Checkout is the only option available at the moment.

They tried using Paypal but they got in trouble with it somehow. Apparently they are not allowed to directly offer the pre-alpha tech demo for sale, and the same thing went with Google Checkout. However, with Google Checkout they found this workaround where you can buy any of their other games and get PZ for free.

But that is also why right now GC is the only option.

Well, that sucks huge donkey balls. I really want to get this game, but can't.

I guess I'll have to contact the devs and see what they say. Surely they must be able to sell those other games via PayPal too...

Requiring a credit card for such a minor thing is just stupid.

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Well, that sucks huge donkey balls. I really want to get this game, but can't.

I guess I'll have to contact the devs and see what they say. Surely they must be able to sell those other games via PayPal too...

Requiring a credit card for such a minor thing is just stupid.

I know how you feel, i wish the whole world would just switch to iDeal, though the only non-Dutch website i have seen that uses is is GamersGate, which allowed me to buy the ArmA2 DLC's easily without using my creditcard, which i prefer not to use at all.

Anyway, i havent even considered playing it yet, from looking at videos and reading some playthroughs i concluded that it was a little bit too alpha for me to enjoy, ill check it out at a later stage.

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We can't let this thread die. This is the most amazing and addictive game I've played, next to ArmA. and this is just the "Pre-Alpha Tech Demo"! This is something I'd actually pay $50 for (the final version years down the road) instead of another shooter clone/CoD:9999.

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Free demo released.

  • PC only for the moment, as non of the developers own a Mac. The community is helping with this though.
  • The biggest negative for me, no save system yet. It will most likely be a "save on quit" system when it is implemented, as the whole purpose of the game is you dieing.
  • Because of issues they had with pirates leeching from their cloud servers, which was costing them money, the demo is currently only available as a torrent. (You can find atleast one non-torrent mirror in their forums though, and if that goes down and anybody here wants it I can upload it somewhere)

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2011/06/free-public-demo-released/

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Cool, I'll try this out. :)

Edited by Ben_S

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I like the gameplay, however the "you are screwed anyway" endless quest towards death for nothing have kind of pull me away.

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1st Playthrough:

Game starts, I take the sheet and the pillow. I think ok, its not like I'm going to do a lot of things with a pillow, so why not to give it to my wife? :)

*Chokes wife*

Oh man! :butbut: I now understand the comic posted in the first page.

2nd Playthrough:

Well... I just burned down the house while makin soup.. :cool:

I'm just into it but I'm positively impressed so far. Now, to the third playthrough!

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I like the gameplay, however the "you are screwed anyway" endless quest towards death for nothing have kind of pull me away.

"It's fun to lose" is their mentality :)

I like it personally, because having an ending might make the game repetitive once you figure out what to do to win. You'll start out somewhere, and rush through to the finish.

Right now you have to do whatever it takes to survive for just a bit longer, and when you die it is usually always your own mistake. You can see where you went wrong, and next time you can do a little bit better.

EDIT:

Also, yeah, it seems like many people were surprised with the purpose of the pillow in the game :P

I didnt expect it either, which is why i never tried to do anything with the pillow untill i read you could do stuff with it lol. Then ofcourse i had to try and smother the wife, but felt bad when she did her little dying speech.

Hearing "I love you" right before you choke someone isnt quite working out for me :p

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I'm bringing this up to post some bad news.

These poor guys have had so much bad luck, and it just got worse

...I won’t beat around the bush. The Indie Stone have just suffered a major set-back. The Newcastle flat where Lemmy and Binky live and work was burgled this evening, and so far the clearest things taken are two computers and Lemmy’s credit card...
http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2011/10/project-zomboid-burglary-statement/

(check lemmy101's twitter for more updates)

After all these guys have been through, with PayPal and Piracy and being a tiny indie dev team, I feel so sorry for them.

I hope they manage to find the stolen laptops and get all their work back. :(

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Time to necro this thing.

A new video has been released, showcasing the new AI grouping system.

In my opinion it looks great. Still some quirks here and there (like they were unable to find one of the windows in the original safehouse so they left it open, while closing off all other windows with curtains etc.

They group together, the leader makes decisions and they have a bit of dialogue to illustrate what decision has been made.

They are also able to switch safehouses when it gets overrun, and will eventually have dialogue for this as well.

Near the end, there is a supply run where two NPC's stand outside blasting away at the horde of zombies while two other NPC's move inside the house to quickly raid it for supplies.

y7rk0Va2b3A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7rk0Va2b3A&feature=player_embedded

Lemmy also posted on the forums to enlighten us with what the three icons on the bottom of the screen are.

That's so you, the player, can select your 'disposition' how you'll respond to people. More specific interaction with NPCs will be done via a radial menu which will hopefully, but not definitely, be in the update. Your character will generally respond to NPC barks automatically, and this specifies how you respond to them.

And this is how we tie in the negative mood moodles with real game effects. If your character is angry or unhappy, it may lock off the happy, or even the neutral ones, and your character will be forced to reply angrily to any NPC. You'll be in the situation where you'll be avoiding your teammates, worried about pissing off all your fellow survivors when you're in a ****ty mood, or getting on the wrong side of an aggressive shotgun toting NPC while wandering, which will give the player a reason to try and improve it and maintain it.

Edited by Max Power

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@SiC-Disaster,

Tried it, loved it =) thanks for the heads up.

If you guys like this, check out class3 by undead labs. A zombie MMO thats being developed for the xbox.

http://undeadlabs.com/

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Forgot to thank you for fixing that last video, but thanks :)

What exactly did i do wrong by the way? I cant ever seem to be able to get youtube video's to work on these forums.

Which is a shame, because there is another tasty new video and a blogpost as well, showing off an updated lighting engine. It looks bloody awesome.

There is a link at the bottom.

The game now also includes streetlamps and other lightsources, like lamps inside of homes which you can now turn on and off.

More importantly, having a light at night will keep you from getting depressed from sitting in the dark with the undead horde outside of your safehouse.

However, sheets or curtains are no longer enough to close off a window while a lightsource is burning: zombies will be able to see your silhouette on the material. So in order to properly seal off the window you will have to board up the windows.

They will also add (at some point) mooncycles and weather effects further affecting the overall light.

Another nice bit of information is that they apparently managed to reduce memory usage of the game to about a quarter of what it uses currently, which will most likely allow for bigger maps to be created.

Apparently these will be the big changes for the next update, after which save on quit and travelling between map cells will be the next focus, though the basics have been laid.

As they continue work on that one, there should be further updates adding female characters and other stuff to keep things fresh.

Blog post here:

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2012/01/2012-the-year-of-the-zombie/

HhWphSiCl4E

http://youtu.be/HhWphSiCl4E

Edited by SiC-Disaster

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Sic Just quote his post just to see what he did, it's basically the last bit of code in the original YouTube link :)

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I really hope that we will have a multiplayer in.

The lighting engine demo video is quite nice.

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Sic Just quote his post just to see what he did, it's basically the last bit of code in the original YouTube link :)

Thanks, fixed it. So that's how it's done :D

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I really hope that we will have a multiplayer in.

The lighting engine demo video is quite nice.

They do plan to add MP, but the last info on that was "not for another year or so". :(

I just fear it will be rather difficult to do if they leave it so late. It's better to factor networking functionality in from the start, rather than try to add it as an afterthought.

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