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

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I play both (or should say have played both in the past, though I need to try a few new Cataclysm forks) and they do different things for me.

PZ is my 1993 simulator. I try to keep everything relatively period appropriate. I guess if I had strong enough autism I could do the same for Cataclysm also, but unless I wanna play innawoods there's all sorts of future shit in Cataclysm. Zomboid is just zombies. George Romero movie game. I've played CDDA with just zombies and it's boring. They're different enough for me.
 
If you look at the changelog, which they used to publish weekly (maybe they still do, I haven't looked in years), it becomes clear that the Project Zomboid developers are being deceptive about actual work they're doing on the game. They're loaded with nonspecific and often unverifiable supposed updates that, if you don't look at it closely, make you think "wow, they're still doing a bunch of work on this game!" They're not. The game has been in development for 15 years. When you consider that, you'll realize how little progress they've actually made. The game has been in "Early Access" since 2013. I don't think it's unreasonable to consider what they're doing fraud.

Did you know they've made well over $100 million on it? Still no NPCs, by the way.
 
astrohairlip dijo:
If you look at the changelog, which they used to publish weekly (maybe they still do, I haven't looked in years)
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Actually in the last few months they've greatly increased the pace of updates to the game since hiring a new production manager with actual experience.

I would agree though, if someone pays full price for Zomboid expecting a revolutionary product at this point they've probably been deceived. I bought it in 2018 and didn't touch it for years.
 
Truman the Jewman dijo:
Actually in the last few months they've greatly increased the pace of updates to the game since hiring a new production manager with actual experience.
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What is the actual substance of these updates? Did they just get around, after 15 years, to actually starting real development on the game? Because every time I see it, it looks more or less like the same game I played 13 years ago.
 
Well, there aren't NPCs yet, I can tell you that. It doesn't really bother me. As I said, I bought the game years ago when it was even cheaper than it is now, and I've gotten plenty of hours of entertainment for my money. It's more a sandbox to tinker with than a proper "game".

Most of the updates lately are to polish the game for the stable release of the latest build, 42. The main changes have been to crafting, traits/professions and firearms/shooting mechanics, I would say.
 
They've been "polishing" it for over a decade, supposedly making little changes here and there. That's what I was trying to point out. When you look into it, most of it's not even real. I remember looking at weekly changelogs and seeing long lists of stuff, like "updated texture on such and such," "tightened controls in this circumstance," and hundreds of things like that. That alone isn't suspicious, but very little of it is even possible to verify as actual changes. Very occasionally you might notice some very small thing you personally encountered mixed in with the hundreds of other things, but it's rare. And for how long they've been doing it? There's no fucking way. People talk about game development like it's a monumental task, and it is, or certainly can be, but as someone who's worked on games, I can tell you there is no way that a game that's made WELL over $100 million dollars (that's honestly a very conservative estimate, it's likely closer to $200 million), and had 15 years of active, supposedly constant development, has any excuse for how little they've actually accomplished.
 
Última edición:
zomboid has been rebuilt like five times in that 15 year span of time. that's not a defense of taking forever or being retarded with dev resources but the game that i remember playing back was basically a vertical slice of the current game. you can get into a fucking car and drive to march ridge and die from dysentary and none of those features were in the game 10 years ago
 
Project Zomboid has never been rebuilt. It's still running on the same engine, and the last time I booted it up about four years ago, it was practically identical to the game I played years prior. I know they've claimed to have "rewritten" lots of the game's systems, but at most what they've done is refactor them, meaning they cleaned up shoddy spaghetti code. That's just normal development. They have a way of framing things they've done to seem more significant than they actually are.
They did add cars around 2018, I think. They've always had dying from disease. Driving cars is about the only significant feature they've added in since the game was put in Early Access, and that was 8 years ago. They've been saying NPCs were just around the corner since before the game was even released on Steam.
 
astrohairlip dijo:
Project Zomboid has never been rebuilt. It's still running on the same engine, and the last time I booted it up about four years ago, it was practically identical to the game I played years prior.
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Wouldn't the transition between 2D sprites and 3D enviroment be considered a change? I recall back in 2012ish when I first heard of the game it had 2D sprites.

Also, I remember there was a whole ass sequence with your wife infected in the bed and ending the "tutorial" with you fighting a home invader with a shotgun. Also fuck me, PZ had NPCs for a while back in the early builds, and they just... removed it because it was "broken" or something like that and never bothered to reimplement them.

But yes, I agree that PZ haven't had alot of meaningful changes all these years. In fact, for me, build 42 is a reaction to all the youtubers making videos killing thousands of zombies with minimal effort. They are artificially making the game grindier and more obtuse to try and curbstomp people getting bored from killing all the zombies and realizing there's no real end game shit to do.
 
D. Pedro II dijo:
Wouldn't the transition between 2D sprites and 3D enviroment be considered a change? I recall back in 2012ish when I first heard of the game it had 2D sprites.

Also, I remember there was a whole ass sequence with your wife infected in the bed and ending the "tutorial" with you fighting a home invader with a shotgun. Also fuck me, PZ had NPCs for a while back in the early builds, and they just... removed it because it was "broken" or something like that and never bothered to reimplement them.

But yes, I agree that PZ haven't had alot of meaningful changes all these years. In fact, for me, build 42 is a reaction to all the youtubers making videos killing thousands of zombies with minimal effort. They are artificially making the game grindier and more obtuse to try and curbstomp people getting bored from killing all the zombies and realizing there's no real end game shit to do.
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I guess I should clarify, I think they did update from pixelated pre-rendered sprites to actual 3D rendering, but I think that was before it was even released on Early Access to Steam. It was also prior to the claim that they're close to ready to release the game, and functional NPCs were just around the corner. The stuff with your wife, and the early version NPCs were all scripted events, it was a big reason why a lot of people got on board with the Early Access (myself included). They said the scripted NPC stuff was just a demo, and the real NPC stuff, with dynamic behavior and lots of different interactions, was just around the corner. Almost 15 years later, the game's still in Early Access, and those things never showed up. It really hasn't been updated much.
 
Well, if I recall correctly the promised NPC work came from a build of the game that was physically stolen from the devs in question that had been working on it and all progression made from that point basically had to be redone from scratch. This was 2011, so still very early into development (hence not an excuse for why there still aren't NPCs, but just context for your point). News story from the time it happened.
 
Chunky Salsa dijo:
Zomboid absolutely is a scam in terms of what was promised versus delivered. I like it, it's a fun game to play with my friends, but the dev is a spastic retard that deserve to be mocked and heckled through the street for his retardation.
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While development is slow (yeah I get coding a game is hard) but like lmfao, the devs constant sperg outs about being criticized is laughable. That and the sniveling redditniggers who rush to their defence at any perceived slights are pathetic.
 
Truman the Jewman dijo:
Well, if I recall correctly the promised NPC work came from a build of the game that was physically stolen from the devs in question that had been working on it and all progression made from that point basically had to be redone from scratch. This was 2011, so still very early into development (hence not an excuse for why there still aren't NPCs, but just context for your point). News story from the time it happened.
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If you work on games, or software in general, you probably know how profoundly retarded this is. I remember this when it happened, and the news story is underselling it by saying some people are miffed and accusing them of being unprofessional. If this story is even true, which I'm pretty skeptical it is, it doesn't exactly make them look good that they apparently weren't using any kind of version control. I've long suspected they're actually just full of shit with nearly everything.
 
I realized a while back how dumb zombie apocalypses are. It's a special genre in that the logic holes just multiply the more you think about it, there's no salvaging it. I liked Max Brooks but the thing is this:
Imagine how big your town is.
Now think, there's like 2.5 people per household.
So look at all these houses.
That's the zombie population. 2.5 per every one of these. IRL, they'll be concentrated around their own houses and specific civic/infrastructure like buildings (churches, hospitals, police stations, etc.).
You will not have magic zombies for every burger restaurant and office and what not. There might be zombies in one, because something lured it out there or a person was hiding and died in it or whatever, but that person doesn't "exist" in htis world because of the burger joint but because of a house they lived in.

You do that little thought experiment and it becomes clear that even though, say, 60,000 zombies to stab in the head in your rural town sounds like a lot, that is going to be such a diffuse, fragmented horde unless these are cascading moaner zombies and that's still assuming they're scattered around.

"Real zombie apocalypse" is going to be a very, very lonely world where either you're being pursued by T H E H O R D E or you're dealing with tons of totally abandoned houses, even neighborhoods or a place has one or two in it or you open a random door and fifty spill out on you.

It'd make a shite game.
 
Ughubughughughughughghlug dijo:
It's a special genre in that the logic holes just multiply the more you think about it, there's no salvaging it.
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Yeah but it is kinda fun to walk around the city/town/village point out random bits of infrastructure and imagine how (You) would turn that shit into base/fortess and so far i think only PZ and 7Days to Die have those things (in 7days its mainly ruins so its kinda pain at least they were when i last time played maybe thay added a setting that changes it i remember a WHILE back they made some VERY unpopular changes and recently they gave more shit to players to modify AKA if zombies can dig to your Fuhrerbunker)
 
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