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

[777-]

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.

It would make for more of a horror experience than an action one, Reminds me of I Am Legend and how creepy it was knowing that monsters were lurking in the shadows and could surprise you any moment.

 

[Truman the Jewman]

I don't know how indepth the modding scene for Zomboid is because I don't feel like joining any tranny discords to find out, but I feel like I've noticed way more AI slop on the Workshop lately than ever before.

That being said Guns of 93 should be getting updated soon and it's really good for anyone that likes weapon mods. Antique Swords and Weapons of the Orient are also cool. Hard to keep up with what's updated because modders are constantly privating their mods whenever anyone complains about anything...

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I felt like this is as good a place and time as any to go on my rant that I hate eagles (so overused, so non-specific to this country) and would much rather our national symbol have been the raccoon, an actually interesting and unique North American animal that directly ties to our frontier mythos but itself represents wittiness and adaptability and if you're being cheeky our melanated friends.

 

[Fully Eshay Skits Bruh V4]

I felt like this is as good a place and time as any to go on my rant that I hate eagles (so overused, so non-specific to this country) and would much rather our national symbol have been the raccoon, an actually interesting and unique North American animal that directly ties to our frontier mythos but itself represents wittiness and adaptability and if you're being cheeky our melanated friends.

Agreed, A fat rodent (American) that breaks into other peoples (nations) trash to steal, acting like coons (Love for nigger speak/culture) and often has rabies and attacks people.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

A fat rodent

...their closest relative is bears.

 

[Neodanthril]

the greatest potential this game has is to fully commit to the "simulation = additional tedium and general unfuness" by adding the following things

1. shoe sizes. massive speed penalties for wearing the wrong size shoes. shoe size changes during the day by half a size depending on your characters bmi and activity level to simulate swelling
2. clothing sizes. massive dexerity penalties for wearing the wrong size clothes or trying to wear a larger shirt under a smaller one. size dependant on bmi
3. wearing shoes without socks gives your character blisters. massive movement penalties
4. fully funcitonal bathroom system, inculding various related dieseases like dysentery gonorrea diarrhea kidney failure colosotmy bags IBH chronic flatulence
5. runny nose where your character occasionally interrupts whatever they are doing, including combat actions, to wip their nose. you have to manually restart the action
6. just general "i dont feel good" character debuffs that happen randomly. like headaches, migrain, nasuea.
7. since we are "accurately" simulating the time it takes to gain muscle and lose fat, lets "accurately" simulate the skills tree as well. reading books is no longer enough. now you have to find coursebooks for an entire bachelor level college program (including gen ed) to put a nail in a board. have to find the masters level books and coursework for building stairs.
8. all metal objects are subject to rust. farcry 2 levels of rusting for all metal objects in the game, including things that are obviously stainless steel.
9. fire is more lethal. signifigant chance that lighting a cig will cause you to spontaneously combust. smoking within eyesight of a fueled vehicle will cause it to explode.
10. your charcater wont touch things zombies had on them for fear of getting infected.
11. fully simulated tooth decay system. cavities cause your character to expierence constant pain. have to get medical skill to level 8 or higher to pull a tooth without killing your character, as unskilled players would just shatter the tooth on attempting to pull, leaving an exposed nerve in their mouth forever. if your character loses all their teeth they cant eat food. no dentures either.
12. sunburn

feel free to expand this list

 

[Fishnumm]

wearing shoes without socks gives your character blisters. massive movement penalties

only one id actually add lol

the penalties wouldnt be massive though

anyway there should be a sword/knife store added somewhere on the map preferably like one in louisville and one in rural knox county

i was playing pz while watching 28 days later and the part when the car alarm went off spooked me lol

 

[Truman the Jewman]

anyway there should be a sword/knife store added somewhere on the map preferably like one in louisville and one in rural knox county

Agree. Early 90s Kentucky should definitely have some more sketchy head shop/bootleg/cheap knife/fireworks stores, it's an American tradition.

Most people playing seem to hate the "discomfort" system. I really have never found it that big of a deal unless you're an autist wanting to play as some optimal übermensch. I like the idea of poor fitting shoes or a sockless penalty, it's one thing CDDA has that I think would make sense.

Oh, I guess one of the big new Zomboid modders, FadedTTV, got banned from the Workshop (his shit had the purple-robed skeleton?). I used a few of his mods, so it's gonna suck once they no longer work properly.

 

[Neodanthril]

1. no dentures either.
2. sunburn

Actually let's include dentures, but there is don't kind of fully simulated mouth size system such that your chances of finding a set that fit are about 2%.
Sunburn causes your character to yell whenever they do a melee swing. High pain as well.
Building shacks are highly dangerous and subject to collapse. Instead players are "incentivised" to learn the new concrete and architecture skills to learn how to build a stable foundation, ( requires packing the dirt with a tool as rare as sledgehammers, concrete mixer, foundation molds, rebar, house footings, insulation) and before you can build the floor you have to build a subfloor, floor joists, and you have to follow state and city building codes for 90s Kentucky regarding joist spacing, number of house footings, and frost line foundation rules.
Sometimes your character just trips on nothing at all. More likely walking backwards
Fully simulated eye prescription system, so you have to find glasses that match your prescription if you take one of the glasses related debuffs. You don't know what your prescription is at the start either.
Work related injuries. Possible for the player character to injure themselves doing a task with potentially dangerous tools like knives and hammers or near fire. Likelihood of injury proportional to skill, with a max level skill dropping injury chance to about 70%.
Rats added but not as an actual model. Instead they are an abstract concept that just has a moderate chance to eat food you have stored when it isn't visible to the player. You can't tell it's been eaten until you pick it up and open it, sometimes not even until you start cooking with it, if at all. Food cooked that has been eaten by rats has a high chance of making you sick. Mousetraps do not lower the possibility of rats eating your food, that's just too hard to code

Chafing.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

shoe sizes. massive speed penalties for wearing the wrong size shoes. shoe size changes during the day by half a size depending on your characters bmi and activity level to simulate swelling

• clothing sizes. massive dexerity penalties for wearing the wrong size clothes or trying to wear a larger shirt under a smaller one. size dependant on bmi

Too true. Games always assume clothes are just the same. (This is unironically appealing to me in the sense that clothes would be rare and valuable.)

wearing shoes without socks gives your character blisters. massive movement penalties

As it should, and when you wear the insole of your shoe out the little metal peg should eat a whole in your foot.

fully funcitonal bathroom system, inculding various related dieseases like dysentery gonorrea diarrhea kidney failure colosotmy bags IBH chronic flatulence

Unironically. Real animals hunt often based on droppings, wouldn't zombies?

runny nose where your character occasionally interrupts whatever they are doing, including combat actions, to wip their nose. you have to manually restart the action

And if it's Winter and you spend a lot of time in doors you get a much greater chance of nosebleeds and you can and will die from them.

since we are "accurately" simulating the time it takes to gain muscle and lose fat, lets "accurately" simulate the skills tree as well. reading books is no longer enough. now you have to find coursebooks for an entire bachelor level college program (including gen ed) to put a nail in a board. have to find the masters level books and coursework for building stairs.

I was legit pondering skills the other day because I hate the way its done.

fully simulated tooth decay system. cavities cause your character to expierence constant pain. have to get medical skill to level 8 or higher to pull a tooth without killing your character, as unskilled players would just shatter the tooth on attempting to pull, leaving an exposed nerve in their mouth forever. if your character loses all their teeth they cant eat food. no dentures either.

Why not? It was good enough for my redneck brother-in-law to pull his own teeth.

sunburn

Excellent idea. They can add swimming and boats (like kayaks, canoes, and other), and if you go shirtless on land you will be fine, but if you go shirtless while swimming or on a kayak you will get incinerated like IRL. I already hate it.



ON SKILLS (SERIOUS)
I hate the way skills work, because it's one of the more gamey (and not in the sense of balance, of course the game has to be goofy to play well with its balance, but in mechanics) things in a very un-gamey game. It repulsed me when I learned that the way you basically do anything with mechanics or electonics is that you're expected to dismantle everything you come across.

I think that all recipes should be unlocked to tackle all the time.

You may have extremely low odds, it take an extremely long time and such as its represented extremely bad quality, but anybody can set out to make a barrel or rebuild a car engine or solder electrical wiring as a complete novice. This goes way more smoothly if you have instructions (magazine, book, etc.) on hand. It goes more smoothly if you've actually done that specific task before. It goes more smoothly if you have general skill.

I need to work on the car, I can just read it out of Car Maintenance Vol. 12. I'll just really suck at doing it.