The second update for this post right here.

I spent the entire day creating NPCs, using DatPat's code as a reference. I contacted him and told him about the project, and once everything is finished, I'll send it over so he can review the code himself.

Anyway, this showcase demonstrates how it's possible to dynamically simulate an entire world populated with NPCs that move around, perform activities, get sick, die, and interact across the map without bringing your computer to its knees.

So far, what I set out to create a dynamic outbreak simulator that does not rely on scripted events appears to be completely achievable. Not only that, but this MVP and research phase are progressing extremely well.

I haven't done any really serious runs on B42 so far (Okay, so i died a few times whatever), and I've spent a bunch of my time on mods like Week One, so this has never really come up before.

But... I planted my garden. And waited. And waited. And I wait. I've kept it watered, carefully watched the weather for rain. Brought in some barrels.

And nothing has changed. I went to look up the grow times on the wiki. Okay, I'm all for realness in this game, but TIS, you're just gonna kills us with stuff like this. I get that real gardens take time to grow, but who is going to do any gardening when it takes this long? Especially when it's so easy for crops to die due to zeds, or water, or pests, or whatever.

WHO'S GOING TO LAST LONG ENOUGH TO HARVEST THESE CROPS?

Seriously, how long does the average player last in this game?

(To be clear - not a lot of time has passed since I planted this garden, but nothing visually has changed since planting. Everything is still in 'seedling' stage. And the grow times are what they are.)

edit to add: here's the thing. Way back in B41 when I started growing veggies and trapping, then cooking my own meals with spices in my kitchen, this game took on a whole new level/meaning for me. That's the level and meaning I think TIS is trying to capture with all this new crafting stuff. But cooking meals is everyday. Not something I'm going to do once.

Hello, actually lately I've heard people talking about a new boss at the indie Stone, but I haven't found any information about it, and so if it's true the roadmap is obsolete (I can't wait to see the surprise for 42.20)

Hey, I have seen a lot of people quitting their worlds in preparation of 42.20. I am deep in a world rn. When is the update coming?

I cannot find a release date for the life of me. Sorry if this is an dumb question.

never really got why the soldier zombies dont have riot control face-shields

The time it takes for a potato to burn in an oven, is unfathomably unrealistic. Is it just me?

I appreciate that this is a measure to give a purpose to hutches and it is realistic and creates an interesting challenge for ranchers but it does create a big issue that once you have chickens you can't really go over a day away from your base. You can leave them in the hutch for days at a time but that risks starvation and death by disease. So once you have chickens you become landlocked by your base. I ended up switching it off in my extiction run by the 6th month because it just started becoming such an annoying burden that prevented me from clearing anywhere that needed me longer than a day.

But rather than just bitch, here are some suggestions for stuff you could implement that would prevent the event from occuring in an organic fashion.

1. Chicken Wire. Making a secure perimeter out of chicken wire prevents the event from happening, but the condition of the wire degrades each time the event happens and saves the chicken/rabbits life. (I've read online that having a wooden pen is enough to prevent it, but I don't know how true that is. Either way, anyone who knows foxes knows that a small wooden fence aint doing shit against them. Hell even chicken wire doesn't last that long against the tenacious bastards.) A wooden pen should have like a 50% chance to prevent it whilst chickenwire is 100% till it degrades.

2. Anti Predator Measures. Placing fox/coyote traps or dousing the area in predator urine prevents the event from happening whilst the measure is active.

3. Defender animals. Dogs, donkeys and geese placed in areas near the pen prevent the event from occuring. Where would you get donkeys from, good question, there is a pony riding track near Brandenburg.

4. Kill a predator. Killing a fox/coyote in the area prevents the event from occuring until another one moves into the area.

this is something ive never seen in 500+ hours of playing this game and its confusing me a bit. i was driving thru this neighborhood and i heard a loud boom in the game that came from the general area of this house (i was only just down a road from it). and i saw this house caught on fire, but only upstairs. i looked up to see if anyone else has seen this but the only things that i can find is ovens being left on (the oven is downstairs and theres no electricty anyways) and generators exploding, which also cant be true. so, what the hell happened?

Also there is a VHS here titled "You are dead" wtf

Im curious what people think about mods, this one can be very beneficial to the point it's kinda feels like cheating, hear me out you can TP from your vehicle to your small little safe heaven just one click away

My friend group largely has the unfortunate combination of traits that make them both gun junkies and loot goblins; whenever we start a game, maybe the first week or so is spent setting up at whatever place we intend to call our base. But after that, like a cancer they spread out across the map hitting every location that might even possibly spawn guns en masse. The only thing I think that holds them back from doing it all in like two in game weeks is the fact that only like two of them, other than myself, are capable of driving to and fro without totaling a car. I'm into guns as much as them, and am perhaps equally guilty of doing it.

But with B42 allegedly on the edge of becoming stable and its focus on some end game stuff and sustainability, I would like to find a way for us to perhaps take it slow and not do the same thing we always end up doing like its crack; because I feel like it ends up burning us out quicker, when we're only 1 or 2 months into a game and we've already been through every town. The only idea I've had so far was putting a 1984 restriction on travel outside of our spawn town for the first week or two and perhaps elsewhere progressively though this is a completely artificial solution and I don't really have any ways to enforce it other than just asking nicely and hoping they go along with it.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

didnt get scared at all

I've never gone into the pause menu as fast as I did when I came down these stairs 🙏

This is why the garbage bag update is one of my favorite things

... after 1550+ hours of playing:

• got a combat skill to level 10 (Aiming at level 9 is my highest so far)
• sarted a CDDA run
• survived a full year (my two longest runs lasted 8.5 months each)
• started in Louisville
• built a house completely from scratch
• set foot inside a skyscraper
• slept in a tent
• forged my own weapon
• worn iron armor
• thrown a bomb (Molotovs don't count)
• played a no-car run
• had a car crash that actually killed me
• found the annotated map for March Ridge (found it once before I knew what it meant)
• found a bathroom with more than 2 zombies inside
• harvested my own crops (B42)
• taken a lap around the Irvington Speedway
• entered the Asylum
• cleared out the Rosewood Prison
• entered the Rosewood and March Ridge bunkers
• hit 10,000 kills
• done a zero-to-hero run
• drunk bleach

I'm pretty sure there's tons of other stuff I haven't done yet.
But thinking about it, what I remember most is everything Juliet and I accomplished together!
I have so many amazing memories of our runs, the bases we built, or the cure we researched.

Juliet and I still have a lot on our to-do list, but once 42.20 drops, our first priority will be restoring the power and water grid. After that, we'll dive back into researching a new cure—this time in Extinction mode, but with no respawn.

I absolutely love this game!

and Juliet ;-)

fyi: i've played around 650 to 700 hours in B41 and the rest in B42!

Yeah, have you ever wanted to play Project Zomboid before the world actually ends? To watch society collapse in real time instead of starting after everything is already dead?

That's basically what the Necroa Outbreak aims to be.

The game begins in a completely normal world, similar to the Week One mod. People go to work, cities function, and life carries on as usual. Then the infection starts spreading. Civilians get sick, die, reanimate, and begin attacking others. Supply chains break down, emergency services become overwhelmed, entire cities fall, and civilization slowly unravels before your eyes.

And no, we're not talking about the usual brain-dead NPCs. The mod uses advanced NPCs, and there are roughly 80,000 of them populating the world. There are also no random zombies spawning out of nowhere—every zombie comes from an actual infected person.

Right now, this is still largely an experiment to see if something on this scale is even possible in Project Zomboid.

So far, the answer seems to be: yes.
And I'm actively working on it.

Hello survivors!

I've been working on some tools for modders lately, and one of them turned out to be pretty cool and something that the entire community might be into.

It's called PZ Survivor Studio, it's a web app (also available as a desktop app) where you have a 3D player character that you can dress, equip weapons, and play animations on, and then render PNGs, GIFs and MP4s to share with others. It's fully adapted for mobile as well.

You can either create a new survivor from scratch, or you can import one from your PZ saves!

The studio replicates the shader and rendering methods that PZ uses in-game, so it stays true to the graphics of the game. It also comes with an isometric camera view that has the exact same angle and tilt as the in-game camera.

You can run it either fully local in your browser by pointing it to your installed game files and mods (limited to desktop only), or you can use the built-in vanilla assets that are hosted by the app in case you want to do it on your phone or a computer without PZ installed.

There's a completely optional sign-in feature that gives you access to some extra sharing options, you can render an image/video and have it hosted by the app, so you can share it as a link right away, no need to upload it anywhere else. You can also share a detailed view version of the render which has a panel that shows all the gear you have equipped.

For modders, there's a separate steam auth login they can use and through that they can give permission for me to host their modded assets so that they can be used in the online version as well.

It's been a fun project to mess around with, and I have a few more plans it! (First up is adding so that you can put items in the equipment slots, like a baseball bat on your back for example)

Let me know what you think!

Are there any builds which are making knives and screwdrivers usable as a weapon?