Multiplayer stagnation

[Big Stew]

Is anyone else tired of multiplayer taking up the majority of the games updates, been following the game for years but in the months leading up to MP I was anxious about all the dev time it seems to consume and now every update seems to focus on some MP balancing or QoL feature rather than finishing the game itself

[Big Stew]

Just wanted to add something to this, even if the multiplayer is being developed by a separate team, all additions to the game going forward have to be developed with MP in mind which has seemed to slow the SP-dev experience to a crawl.

[Rodi]

What are you on about

[Barabasz]

Originally posted by Rodi:

What are you on about

he means mp is taking more of developer time than other features, very ture

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Originally posted by Barabasz (real):

Originally posted by Rodi:

What are you on about

he means mp is taking more of developer time than other features, very ture

Actually its an outright lie. Only when you haven't enough developers to specialise would it even possibly be true and there are multiplayer specialists on the team so why not have them do what they are good at while everyone else does other stuff? Doesn't slow anything down.

[Animalman]

I made a multiplayer last night. And it’s a lot of work. Now no. It’s not a lot of work! But if you want to make a good game it’s a lot of work. Packing positions sending positions. And all other data that is server side. Needs a ping pong collection send distribute. It’s quite complex. Zomboid is good they draw from the same games setup files to assemble the game mode of multiplayer. only they distribute the result of a clients control inputs differently to a server and back. A client has to smooth the experience. I watched myself the rate of speed between server broadcast message and client receive message last night. And now that I had seen that rate, I can see how it is working. And it has to chop together these data’s make them make sense display them to the player. Which can cause some latency for a client. Who watch his team mate jolt position, or see an absence in rotation update on his friends.

Everything that go into a game to expand it must process through multiplayer. So if they do new systems like liquid for example or the other new systems they need a multiplayer version or consideration how the data they use and produce will be handled serverside. And server side will enjoy very much the elegance of systems, meaning the simpler a system is the more elegant a system is the easier it is to expand into multiplayer.

The moving of food system to server side for example is not such elegant! And a lot of work I’d imagine.

People loving ripping into these devs I personally don’t think it’s fair.

[Shady Allie]

Originally posted by Big Stew:

Is anyone else tired of multiplayer taking up the majority of the games updates

Nope. Not at all. I am totally fine with the development goals and the time involved in executing all of their plans.

[Alree]

If you read carefully all blogs etc..
You have on one side TEA (The Eccentric Ape) and GA (General Arcade) really working on PZ.

Some core members of TIS are Freelance, others just want to begin a new project (not me.. Chris Simpson say it: https://www.nme.com/features/gaming-features/project-zomboids-chris-simpson-talks-about-a-decade-of-zomboid-and-build-41-3129604)

What we have actually ?
Java game not really up to date, java 20 is available. and PZ doesn't really use Java 17 eiher.
Kahlua is dead since 10 years.
Still based on lwgl where all try to pass on Vulkan at least.
Most of the game rely on modders/mappers (and a lot of things TIS explained as impossible, modders did.. guess who know the game better ^^ ...

And if you look closely, today workshop is just a random way to download free mp3, and all modders are now hidding features behind patreon.

And TIS hiring some modders/mappers as freelancers.
Just look at the credits... TIS is 10-14 person (refering on TIS UK legal documents)

Here the "real" roadmap.. welcome on a 20y early access game https://ibb.co/chQNG51

And my God, I love this game.. but still the weekly news has become.. a news maybe every two weeks on the blog.. Communication is always the first pillar to fall..
Official maps is deprecated...
Modding/Mapping tools not updated..

Maybe it's time to try The Last Stand: Aftermath

[Alree]

player since Desura.I'm patient but we will see..

PZ is surely (with 7 Days to Die) one of the oldest early access game.
Steam Early access is also from 2013.

Concerning Modding/mapping tools, due to MIT License etc.. it's all on github and community already managed to update them even with v42 features.

Community will continue to make tools, framework, etc..
But for a game relying on mods.. (some have more subs than actual players) modders deserve to have more informations/considerations.
And some TIS members have already discouraged many talented developers in the community from doing so.

Not to mention I'm also a modder for many game, and since many years with different nickname.
Everyone except Bethesda and TIS cares about their modding community and don't act like a diva with it.

Before being clients with Early access we're supporter/promoter
And not all "indie" company have more than 2millions (MP is indeed the goose that lays golden eggs)
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/08650737

[Dane]

The game is not dead because there are good mods, we had boats, motorcycles etc before the arrival of multiplayer which allowed us to wait, a large part of the players were on other games as well.

There it is the same, to see the statistics, the game is stagnating or losing players.

We can say that multiplayer keeps Project Zomboid alive but how many servers are vanilla?

Old players are no longer interested in vanilla games or vanilla servers.

They are waiting, like every Thursday, for clear communications to maintain the hype.

It's true that in v42 you will bring in players, but as with each new version the hype will go away and the players will wait for the other version, it starts again.

Take the example of Rust in terms of communication.

https://rust.facepunch.com/news?category=devblog

The studio was able to maintain the hype through communications and content.

"It's less that modders do things we feel are impossible; it's more they do things in ways we'd not feel acceptable;"

I may not have understood but it is not acceptable to add motorcycles? some additional items? update the map regularly to bring players new places to visit? speaking of entertainment, being able to sit down? to go to bed ?

Project Zomboid must not become the Star Citizen of survival games.

Modders are helping as they are missing things.

but sometimes it's so obvious that you wonder why it was never done by TIS.

[Alree]

No offense, here we just do what steam say ot us
"
What is Early Access?
[...]
And get involved; give feedback, participate in discussions
[...]
"

And I think we're a lot on many discord to have the same feelings, even some of your members ;)

[Dane]

Thanks for the answer :) I know steamcharts very well.

The notable updates were:

- The vehicles
- v41 animations
- Multiplayer v41

Now I understand that it will take a long time to have a finished game and I understand the direction regarding updates.

On the other hand, I didn't talk about competition between dev and modder.

I was especially wondering why some features weren't in the base game and brought a lot in terms of gameplay.

Sometimes it can be simple things but bring a lot to the game for the player.

[Alree]

You know at my age you don't care to be appreciated or not =)

But I'm really interested on my lies

[Pherdnut]

I haven't been playing the game since the beginning but seems to me like it's been 10 glorious years of perpetual rich new layers being added to it. Cars, crafting, farming, aging environments, weather, all complex amazingly detailed systems juggling a crap-ton of state. I don't know how good it was for sales but updating multiplayer led to a very obvious uptick in interest in the game. That brings more modders/mods and longer life. Now crafting is getting a huge upgrade and there's going to be livestock? I look forward to seeing human NPCs in-game, but there's plenty of new stuff to play with until that happens. The years of refinement that have gone into this game should be celebrated, not complained about.

And they did it with Java. Poor bastards.

[Bored and Tired Gamer]

I would also like to see many mods applied at the offical game but then the developers would need to put many things under sandbox since not every gamer group is after the same type of experience. Not only that players would most probably wish to play at different settings even at the same day , just as if roleplaying at another story.


Post apocalyptic.

Sci-fi Futuristic.

21st century action.

May be even full pve or full pvp. Some people even play the game without zombies but other type of challenges, combined with roleplay.

Some players may go and play the game as if Sims with a light post apoc theme.


Not easy for an Indie company to risk it, releasing all in one game ;rushing ,at once, or under tens of expansion packs, with the smaller budget.

Compared to those companies which are backed up with big investors. Indie developers need to watch and listen the critics of their long time gamers and need to pick a minimalist approach. Even though it doesnt need to be a pure populist approach, to develop only what the biggest portion of the playerbase enjoys. Ignoring all the rest.



The base game seems to be allmost bug proof when mods may bug alot more then expected. Not to mention some of the mods require giant of a memory cmpared to the actual game. Developers would need to sum up and shrink all of those mods and would still need to be sure nothing will bug out right after the next update.


Compared to Single player, heavy modded Multiplayer is like a chronic cramp fest when it comes to performance. Naturally, it would require more attention.

[Doko]

Originally posted by EnigmaGrey:

Originally posted by alree_unjammer:

If you read carefully all blogs etc..
You have on one side TEA (The Eccentric Ape) and GA (General Arcade) really working on PZ.

Some core members of TIS are Freelance, others just want to begin a new project (not me.. Chris Simpson say it: https://www.nme.com/features/gaming-features/project-zomboids-chris-simpson-talks-about-a-decade-of-zomboid-and-build-41-3129604)

What we have actually ?
Java game not really up to date, java 20 is available. and PZ doesn't really use Java 17 eiher.
Kahlua is dead since 10 years.
Still based on lwgl where all try to pass on Vulkan at least.
Most of the game rely on modders/mappers (and a lot of things TIS explained as impossible, modders did.. guess who know the game better ^^ ...

And if you look closely, today workshop is just a random way to download free mp3, and all modders are now hidding features behind patreon.

And TIS hiring some modders/mappers as freelancers.
Just look at the credits... TIS is 10-14 person (refering on TIS UK legal documents)

Here the "real" roadmap.. welcome on a 20y early access game https://ibb.co/chQNG51

And my God, I love this game.. but still the weekly news has become.. a news maybe every two weeks on the blog.. Communication is always the first pillar to fall..
Official maps is deprecated...
Modding/Mapping tools not updated..

Maybe it's time to try The Last Stand: Aftermath

That's quite the spin, dude.

Small indies use contractors and some of those contractors either have or are provided by another company. There's over 20 people working on the game at this point; most of them, including myself, were contracted on from the community. GA, for example, has around 40 people working for them and provided 2 programmers and some QA services for MP -- they ofc work on other projects (their business is porting games, after all). TEA is much smaller (afaik) and their focus was mainly data input and fleshing out the animations system in 2018-2019. They still help out with troubleshooting and certain tricky aspects, mainly graphics-related, but like GA have other things to do.

The Java version, the public status of Kahlua, and your opinion on LWJGL doesn't really have any affect on the game's development.

It's less that modders do things we feel are impossible; it's more they do things in ways we'd not feel acceptable; at times when it doesn't fit into our plans .etc. Note that the same founders of TIS were also modders for other games, like The Sims 3 (The IndieStone Story Progression mod).

Modders do indeed deserve to get paid for their work, I feel. Why does it matter if that's through Patreon or through working with TIS?

While I don't think it'll take 20 years to hit 1.0, I think I'd be quite proud to work on a game that remained relevant and continued to grow for so long. If that's the way it shakes out, then you get more content and we provide a good game to more people.

The blog has been going for some 10-11 years. It was moved to a two week stretch to be less spammy.

The mapping tool is fine, but our internal tools now differ due to the changes in build 42, so it's going to have to wait. Likewise, there's not much point updating the item scripter if it's going to just need to be rewritten again with 42.

I agree with everything there, except the "modders deserve to get paid" part, because we saw how this worked with Steam and bethsda creation club introducing paid mods, and well, the community backlashed against the idea.

You really have to think of the snowball effect of how that would work, like imagine if all modders decided to start charging for mods, for content that isn't entirely theirs (because to mod said game, you need to use the game, the game which they did not create), people wouldn't be able to afford mods over time, because it would all snowball with the riding costs combined over time.

I get it, people want to make a quirky job out of nothing, but sometimes you just do stuff out of pure passion, not "how do I turn every single passion on the planet into a money printer". Modders for the most part have created mods purely out of passion and because it's fun, not because they've always wanted to turn a side passion project into a full time job (I see it the same way I see streamers, it's not even remotely the equivalent of a full-time job on the level of a doctor, fire-man, police officer, etc).

By all means, studios can hire modders and start them on their payroll, I'm all for that, it gets their foot through the door into that kind of career, to work with said studios, but I disagree with the idea that mods should now cost money.

I've already seen what games like Conan Exiles, Ark, Sims, Cities Skylines and Train sim have done over the yrs, with their content racking up total combined prices to silly amounts, I really wouldn't have faith in gaming if modders joined those ranks and outright charged per mod, because then you're looking at £200+ for a game+DLC+mods.