Fire needs to be adjusted.

[Cresimir]

At the moment, fire is too random and uncontrollable. I have had the stove burst in flames in the same house (Cortman Medical) on two seperate multiplayer servers, while cooking bacon on TWO seperate occassions (Bacon is cursed).

After setting up in a new safehouse, I've decided to be more cautious and use the barbeque set outside for my cooking needs -- bacon to be specific, and that bursted in flames, spread to the house in about 10-15 minutes real-life time. The real kicker is; the bacon wasn't even cooked by the time the barbeque lit up.

I did manage to get all my gear stockpiled outside to move it to another safehouse, but somehow the fire randomly spawned literally 20-30 tiles away from the main location of the fire, then disappeared, then reappeared, and this happened literally more than 10 times in a row.

The random fire spreading 30+ tiles away from the main fire eventually killed me. Instaneously too, but 50/8 weight on my character may have contributed to her death.

So, in dot-points, my issue with fire at the moment is:

• Fire is too dependant on chance, and happens way to commonly.
  
  
• These fires occured while I was constantly watching the bacon's cooking process, and on one occassion, didn't even cook the bacon before the whole place set on fire.
  
  
• Cooking skills should reduce the probability of a fire occuring, not entirely, but 3 cooking appliances shouldn't have bursted in to flames whilst being operated by a character with 2-3 cooking skill.
  
  
• Fire in real-life, does spread uncontrollably, but it shouldn't magically conjure 20-30 tiles (I am not kidding) away from the main fire, and it shouldn't be able to perform ridicolous voodoo magic and die down, then reappear at the same spot, again, 20-30 tiles away, on 10 seperate occassions. If fire is not spitting from a multiple-storey building, and is rather on flat ground, it should have a slightly more predictable path that it will spread.
  
  
• Perhaps the fourth point is due to bugs/glitches or the fire system in the build hasn't been completely refined, therefore I understand if it's wacky in the current build of the game. Finally, there should be a way to put out a fire, but I believe the developers are working on this. So, just take your time in deal with what you guys believe is most important.
  
  Otherwise, I can't complain about any other aspect of the game. The survival aspect of this game is great, much more so than DayZ, and I am eagerly anticipating the final build of Project Zomboid, however, the fire needs to be tweaked, and I hope this raised the developers, and players, attention towards the fire aspect in the game, and change it according to what they deem neccesary. Thank you to anyone who read this, and good luck to the guys and gals at The Indie Stone.

[Qinji]

I'm surprised that this hasn't gotten a reply...this is a seven month old post. I just loaded up the game again after a long break from Project Zomboid.

Fire is just silly! it's making "cooking" absolutely impossible without burning down everything in sight. You'd think campfires over gravel or concrete will be safe but it's not! Fire spreads over concrete and cement!! HOW? Every oven/campfire I've used have caught on fire almost immediately (less than a minute) upon turning on.

I agree with Jean on every point that he makes here, especially that fires should not be a random occurance. It should be something that occurs if the player does something wrong like leaving something burning in the stove/campfire for too long or triggers it in some way like molotovs.

For a game that's has such large emphasis on the food/hunger mechanic, it's a shame that cooking is so broken because of this.

[John NoFap_Gaming]

Originally posted by Qinji:

I'm surprised that this hasn't gotten a reply...this is a seven month old post. I just loaded up the game again after a long break from Project Zomboid.

Fire is just silly! it's making "cooking" absolutely impossible without burning down everything in sight. You'd think campfires over gravel or concrete will be safe but it's not! Fire spreads over concrete and cement!! HOW? Every oven/campfire I've used have caught on fire almost immediately (less than a minute) upon turning on.

I agree with Jean on every point that he makes here, especially that fires should not be a random occurance. It should be something that occurs if the player does something wrong like leaving something burning in the stove/campfire for too long or triggers it in some way like molotovs.

For a game that's has such large emphasis on the food/hunger mechanic, it's a shame that cooking is so broken because of this.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I sometimes leave my oven on, and days later I go to cook something and I realize it's still going. I mean, fire shouldn't spread across cement, that needs to be fixed, but as long as I don't have food burning in the oven it doesn't seem to catch fire.

I haven't used campfires though, so I don't know if they're horribly bugged, but perhaps you're just unlucky.

Edit: So it's been about ten minutes. I started up the game, went to sleep, and when I woke up there was a pile of ash where my oven used to be, so I guess I left it on again. Maybe I am just lucky, I don't know.

[Qinji]

So I read before that your cooking appliances, like ovens/microwaves/bbq/campfires, shouldn't catch fire unless it's left on with a burning item for too long...but for me this wasn't the case, I simply put a few pieces of fresh meat in and about 3/4 of the time it will start to go out of control even before the meat is half done. I don't know about you, but if we're going to talk reality, not even the most newb of cooks in real life start kitchen fires that often.

[spykerKonyn]

I had a random fire start on the tarmac of a parking lot in a multiplayer session. Underneath my feet even xD So yeh, I guess fire needs some work.

I did end up having great time leading zeds through it though. All dem piles of ash, awesome.

[jackdog3]

maybe its a multiplayer thing, Ive never had a fire once in hundreds of hours but don't generally use cookers inside prefering my meat smoked out in the open. On fire ive ever seen was one I set deliberately.

[Robert Johnson]

Fireplace INSIDE houses, no matter what floor will start to burn, even on concrete.. I can understand in warehouse, you have lot of crates around..

Will check if weird thing happend really, but don't do a campfire inside a house... Guys, just think about the smoke :D

[vandigeth]

Weird, I too have left on an oven for days and never had it burst into flames *knocks on wood*. Even more to the point, I've never had anything burn down in one of my games (the electricity always runs out first.)

[Darius]

Actually, fire will burn and spread in a predictable manner. The problem as I see it is that we are given no indication of the factors that would influence the spread of a fire... if they're even in the game. Wind direction, speed, humidity and so on.

Fires starting from stoves should be disabled as they are clearly electric, not gas. Any minute chance of a stove fire would be from the gas variety and would depend on secondary factors not in the game. A stove of either make could be left on for days and not cause any problems other than wasted electricity/gas.

This appears to have been put in the game as a "gotcha" with little or no real purpose.

The only time I've ever seen an (unwanted) fire start in a kitchen is from bacon grease direcly landing on the older style, electric coils and from being instructed to prep a deep fryer that hadn't cooled enough.

Cooking as a whole needs a major overhaul in usefulness. Cooking times are rediculously high and the end result, most of the time, is hardly worth the effort to acquire all the ingredients needed. Most of the recipes become useless very soon in the game, almost to the point of wondering why they bothered putting them in at all.

[vandigeth]

Originally posted by Darius:

Actually, fire will burn and spread in a predictable manner. The problem as I see it is that we are given no indication of the factors that would influence the spread of a fire... if they're even in the game. Wind direction, speed, humidity and so on.

Fires starting from stoves should be disabled as they are clearly electric, not gas. Any minute chance of a stove fire would be from the gas variety and would depend on secondary factors not in the game. A stove of either make could be left on for days and not cause any problems other than wasted electricity/gas.

This appears to have been put in the game as a "gotcha" with little or no real purpose.

The only time I've ever seen an (unwanted) fire start in a kitchen is from bacon grease direcly landing on the older style, electric coils and from being instructed to prep a deep fryer that hadn't cooled enough.

Cooking as a whole needs a major overhaul in usefulness. Cooking times are rediculously high and the end result, most of the time, is hardly worth the effort to acquire all the ingredients needed. Most of the recipes become useless very soon in the game, almost to the point of wondering why they bothered putting them in at all.

+1 to this guy. Only in the most extreme circumstances have I heard of electric ranges catching fire and it usually has to do with damage wire insulation which still has a really, really low chance of catching fire considering a range is made completely of metal (nothing flammable.) This means something has to be in the immediate vicinity of the electric range, a spark from uninsulated damaged wiring actually ignites something like cabinetry. The chances of that are atronomically low and may happen once a hundred million.

Grease fires can happen but only while cooking something with extreme negligence; not simply by leaving the oven/range on.

Leaving something on the stove *may* have a slightly higher chance but it would have to be something like cardboard or fabric to actually make an open flame; and I'm not sure this is even possible with electric ranges. (I've just never tried, it may happen, I've just never done it.)

As Darius said, it would strictly be the gas range's open flame and the chances of it having exposure to a flammable item is extremely low. More likely is the gas range leaving its source open and filling the house with flammable fumes.

Agreed with cooking too; I only bother with tier 1 type stuff in the very beginning like cooking steaks and what not. Farming more than meets my needs for sustainability; however, the lack of protein is somewhat disconcerting except for the very small amount in a potatoe. You'd have to eat like 10 a day or something crazy to meet the protein need.

[Dracon]

Originally posted by Kasen:

Edit: As a side note, I'm sure it's been mentioned before, but having some kind of craftable fireplace/chimney would be a really nice alternative.

Know wha the funny thing is?
Some of the houses have old ovens that actually run on wood or gas - I never tried whether they work with it though.

[Qinji]

Originally posted by vandigeth:

Originally posted by Darius:

Actually, fire will burn and spread in a predictable manner. The problem as I see it is that we are given no indication of the factors that would influence the spread of a fire... if they're even in the game. Wind direction, speed, humidity and so on.

Fires starting from stoves should be disabled as they are clearly electric, not gas. Any minute chance of a stove fire would be from the gas variety and would depend on secondary factors not in the game. A stove of either make could be left on for days and not cause any problems other than wasted electricity/gas.

This appears to have been put in the game as a "gotcha" with little or no real purpose.

The only time I've ever seen an (unwanted) fire start in a kitchen is from bacon grease direcly landing on the older style, electric coils and from being instructed to prep a deep fryer that hadn't cooled enough.

Cooking as a whole needs a major overhaul in usefulness. Cooking times are rediculously high and the end result, most of the time, is hardly worth the effort to acquire all the ingredients needed. Most of the recipes become useless very soon in the game, almost to the point of wondering why they bothered putting them in at all.

+1 to this guy.

actually, i've seen this happen before:

a pot of water was left on an electric coil range and forgotten, boiled dry, and the bottom of the metal pot was super heated to the point of glowing red heat. When the pot was finally discovered and lifted off the range, the bottom of the pot seperated and fell right to the floor. Upon impact, the heated metal fractured, scattered and ignited various parts of the kitchen.

Just saying...still, this is an example of something being left on and forgotten for a long time, not something in the middle of cooking properly.

The point I was trying to make earlier in above posts is that fires should be due to player error and not random chance.

[Qinji]

Originally posted by vandigeth:

Originally posted by Darius:

Cooking as a whole needs a major overhaul in usefulness. Cooking times are rediculously high and the end result, most of the time, is hardly worth the effort to acquire all the ingredients needed. Most of the recipes become useless very soon in the game, almost to the point of wondering why they bothered putting them in at all.

Agreed with cooking too; I only bother with tier 1 type stuff in the very beginning like cooking steaks and what not. Farming more than meets my needs for sustainability; however, the lack of protein is somewhat disconcerting except for the very small amount in a potatoe. You'd have to eat like 10 a day or something crazy to meet the protein need.

I agree with this also. But I love the cooking aspect of the game not for it's effectiveness in the game, but rather for it's immersion value for the game.

[0ero the Hammer Slayer]

I'm absolutely terrified of catching a fire near the house. We haven't had a problem so much as we've been carful. We've only had a campfire spread when a player was standing too close and he caught on fire and spread it.

I've burned down a few houses. Once I left it on after cooking grilled cheese. Came back and the house was on fire. Another time it was because I had made a big stirfry with a lot of stuff and it was taking forever to cook. So if it tkaes forever to cook the overn has to stay on for a good amount of time and has a higher chance of bursting into flames. So that happened.

It's stilla little random, but if you only keep it on for like 10-20 minutes in game you should be fine.

[Robert Johnson]

The oven fire thing was a great thing at the K&B time, basically it was some kind of tutorial, we teach the played how to do a soup, then his wife need help, he let the stove on.. And bam fire, everyone die :D

The stove fire have really a low chance to happen right now.
I've also already tweaked some of the cooking time, it may need more, if you have any suggestion about it, please tell us :)

And for the campfire on concrete, I'll see what to do.

Also, when we start a fire, we decide a random wind direction.. But we also need a way to extinct a fire.. So much thing.. :D

[Qinji]

I'd like to see oven fires be able to start only when you have either a "burning" food item, or a combustible non-food item present in the oven. I think this is a bit more reflective of reality than just random wild fires from an appliance and makes the occurance more reliant on player error.

Campfires are a different story, though...I do expect a few random wild fires now and then due to the unpredictability of flames and stray embers flying in the air.

I would say that a way to extinguish fires would be a very good solution to this problem...right click on a fire and expend water units in your inventory to put it out? kind of like watering plants?