Project Zomboid

[Samwise]

In this day and age, that's really, really, really clownshoes stupid.

This.  Even if you can't be arsed to use real source control, you can put the thing in Dropbox or some similar device.

(edit)

[Sky]

Every time someone bitches about our three (four for the smart ones) tier backup, I have an overwhelming urge to simulate an outage for them.

[Malakili]

You'd really think they would know better, and I'm sure they did *know* better, but apparently not badly enough to actually do anything.    Hopefully the project recovers, because its actually quite a good game.

[Ghambit]

 
Maybe they dont want it to recover.  Maybe they'd be better served to take their alpha money and run (how much have they made thus far btw?).  Maybe the whole thing was actually staged so they could beat a hasty money-laden retreat whilst they move on to other projects or a real job.

[Vaiti]

Don't click if you aren't up to date on Breaking Bad:

[Sheepherder]

Maybe they dont want it to recover.  Maybe they'd be better served to take their alpha money and run (how much have they made thus far btw?).  Maybe the whole thing was actually staged so they could beat a hasty money-laden retreat whilst they move on to other projects or a real job.

Dude.  You should never again hypothesize why people on the other end of the internet are doing things ever again, because it just makes you look really, really fucking crazy.  Not the hypothesizing, just the way you do it in particular.

[Ironwood]

Fairly sure he was joking.

Of course, his explanation actually makes more sense to me than 'Software Company Without Backup or Version Control.'

[Vaiti]

Yeah, it does. I'm having to backtrack on what I said before. Still feel sorry for them. But as Samwise pointed out, even something as mundane and simple as Dropbox could have saved their asses here.

[Ironwood]

Hell, Backify just released that Free 512Gb version.

[Sheepherder]

Of course, his explanation actually makes more sense to me than 'Software Company Without Backup or Version Control.'

People are stupid sometimes.

Like inviting Edward the Longshanks into your country to run the place so you can focus your full attention on arguing over who gets to be king.

[Ironwood]

Oh Shush.

 

[Sky]

Like inviting Edward the Longshanks into your country to run the place so you can focus your full attention on arguing over who gets to be king.

Well played, sir. Well played, indeed!

[Mrbloodworth]

Really sad news! Having worked on many small teams like this, I can relate to the lack of a more "official" backup system. Sometimes when you just have a group of dudes working on a project, they do not think of such things. It happens.

I also really feel for the Lemmy guy, lack of a PR persona means someone on the Dev team fields that role, directly or indirectly. The backlashes and e-mails from the community, for some really petty shit that has zero bearing on reality or development can be downright nasty. I got a number during my time on Wurm. I think its one of those things you can't really explain until you are the the focus. Its a mix of anger, and complete disappointment in your user base.

He will likely never be that active in public on a project again, with great reason. If you ever REALLY want to know why development teams do not interact with the player base, ask to see their e-mail sometimes.


Hopefully they can pick up the peaces, who knows, a month back in time they may do something more interesting with the progress.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/10/17/best-wishes-to-project-zomboid/

[UnSub]

If you read through the development history of Project Zomboid, the team has been through development hell in terms of problems popping up.

They have also been too open with a gaming community who expect AAA products when they put money down.

[Mrbloodworth]

I can't say I have watched everything. But yeah. I think indies have a big problem sometimes that other houses do not. Small teams, and the need for support of a community. Especially in terms of tempering/wall testing ideas, testing builds ETC.. Something 4 guys can't afford like the big guys, but still need someone to do. Finding Funding ( Pre-order/Donate ) seems to vary between projects as to if its needed, but its a line once crossed, you change the name of the game completely.. ( Goes from this is fun to, we need a build out now, or else )

Its hard to be four strong and continue a multi-year project, at the very least, on a good day, a "Community" provides the will to keep going when things get tough and you want to toss it in. It can also crush all will to ever touch a game project again. Big houses can shield people from this and provide other means of motivation.

[Yegolev]

Don't let your clients see your internal problems.

[Yegolev]

Tangental, but I've been using Backblaze.  It's not expensive but I'm curious if something better exists; this is a fast-developing field I think.  The free Backify might work, but you get what you pay for, they say.

[Mrbloodworth]

If you are tiny or solo, nothing wrong with Dropbox. For a bit larger, or more remote groups, SVN is cheap. Hell, an external drive would have avoided this as well, I bet a thumb drive would have worked. I suppose it comes down to how many people, how remote they are, and the size of what you need to back up.

[IainC]

Tortoise SVN is free. No need to shell out for Perforce just to have some kind of revision control and backups.

[KallDrexx]

Tortoise SVN is free. No need to shell out for Perforce just to have some kind of revision control and backups.

Tortoise SVN is a client tool.  You still need an offsite server to store it on for it to matter.  That being said, I'm a 1 man team and I pay $7 to store my shit on Github.  BitBucket allows you to store private repositories for free.

[Samwise]

Tortoise SVN is free. No need to shell out for Perforce just to have some kind of revision control and backups.

Perforce is totally free for small teams and/or small projects.  /shill

[Ironwood]

lol.

[NiX]

Not sure if anyone has been keeping up with the game, but it looks like they didn't lose as much progress as they thought. It almost seems like it motivated them a bit more and the person writing the updates is actually doing a good job of keeping people informed on their progress.

[Yegolev]

I've been looking at the site occasionally, mostly to see that they are still working on it.  I don't plan on buying it until it is finished, though.

[Malakili]

Not sure if anyone has been keeping up with the game, but it looks like they didn't lose as much progress as they thought. It almost seems like it motivated them a bit more and the person writing the updates is actually doing a good job of keeping people informed on their progress.

Yeah, they've been keeping up a lot better since the theft.  I've basically given up on playing the game until save functionality makes it in to a new release though.  Don't get me wrong, I've played the crap out of this and am happy i bought it, but there are only so many times I can start from the beginning.

[Malakili]

Well despite all the setbacks, these guys are still plugging along.  The new lighting looks really nice, and looks like it will actually be important to gameplay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HhWphSiCl4E

[Malakili]

I know I'm the only one bumping this thread at this point, but I think you guys will like this quite a lot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CMryy7MtoVQ

Carpentry demo...  do want, so much.

[Bann]

Watching that makes me think of a real-timey xcom fight where you can build structures in addition to destroying them. I want this.

[Xanthippe]

Looking better and better.

[Malakili]

They are doing a public test on some of their recent alpha iterations, you can download the most recent one here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/alpha.projectzomboid.com/pz_0_2_0q.zip

This has the carpentry/base building stuff in it.

Edit: My mistake, this is not public, you need to have pre-purchased in order to play this version, so it is not public as I had originally thought.  Sorry!

[Sky]

Boo!

Well, makes sense but hard to give them money after the debacle.

[Malakili]

Boo!

Well, makes sense but hard to give them money after the debacle.

I gave them my money before the debacle so 

But really, I think it cost 5 pounds, which was about 8 dollars when I bought it and I easily got that much fun out of the version they had BEFORE the theft.  This new version already has a lot more, and the modding community is already producing tons of stuff.  I can see the desire to wait and might even encourage it all things considering, but I'm just saying for the sake of argument that you could probably get your money's worth for what is available already if you like zombie survival.

[Malakili]

With the power of necromancy I say RISE!

Ok, so this thing has actually gotten pretty good.  Development continues.  But notably there was a surprise update today:

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2014/01/the-third-act-twist/

Online multiplayer with persistent player run servers! Yes!

We have no figures on maximum player count as of yet, but we’ll be expanding our tests in the run up to release and suspect it’ll be connection and server spec limited only. Bugs aside, it managed 10-12 or so on a domestic cable connection pretty effortlessly though, and could probably have gone higher and whatever the limit can definitely be optimized further.

Anyone with a copy of PZ will be able to launch their own dedicated console only PZ server just by passing the appropriate parameters to the executable (or running a batch file, or whatever) with whitelists and blacklists, choice of co-op or PvP (purposefully defaulted to co-op to ram the point home) and all that goodness. Servers will be fully moddable using the same stuffs you mod PZ with now. Modders will be able to create their own networky messages to sync the server and client, and we’ll add checksums to check both server and client are running the same mods. In future we could look to auto-download stuff in cases the clients don’t have what is required.

Due to the moddable nature of the game and the easily decompilable nature of Java, it’s likely that we’re not particularly hack resilient, so until we can work on some solid countermeasures, people should stick to whitelisted servers with user/pass access, to allow servers to be policed effectively and ‘wrong’uns’ removed. You can read more on all this on this thread, where Lemmy was very proud and also frustrated to hold his tongue on the status of the multiplayer in his responses.

If anyone was interested in this back when it the alpha funding first started and it was little more than a tech demo, now is a good time to check it out again.  The multiplayer isn't quite ready for primetime yet, so it isn't in the upcoming beta patch according to their post. 

[Falconeer]

It's great. I love this game, I funded it two years ago and I've been patient enough to let it rest, grow, recover (this is the game that at some point lost a huge chunk of progress cuase they got robbed of their laptops and all the data was NOT on the cloud), and get big. Now officially and constantly endorsed by the Day Z folks, it has become quite the awesome cool thing. I am sad that the "Story campaign" isn't fully fleshed out yet, or multiplayer, but even in this stage it's actually quite addictive. The UI takes some time to get adjusted to though...