Hmm this DID work as you'd expect it to, so not sure what's going on here. We're investigating, I guess something must have broken since earlier B41 builds.

If we’re suggesting a new sound for a headshot kill, can I suggest a unique sound for a knife stab? Something quieter so a sneaky survivor doesn’t immediately reveal themselves to nearby zeds upon making a single stab.

You'd think after 600 hours I'd know this. What would I do without you man

Turns out i have been hitting the torso all this time. I always thought i need to hit my weapon on the head so i stood further back.

Not sure how I came up to the conclusion of "where I stand matters, not where my hit lands" myself because it's really counter-intuitive, but definitely a helpful video

This is why i always found weapons less effective than stomping. Stomping is close enough to the player it Correlates to headshots fine. But with weapons its very unintuitive.

I feel like this could simply be fixed by keeping the auto aim system somewhat, just adjusting exactly which spot you're hitting depending on the intersection between the aim cone and the iso cursor. I.E. you're still locking on to the zombie closest to you, but if your iso cursor is closest to the head hitbox (and it's within range of the aim cone ofc), then it should switch to the head. Makes sense to me.

You are the zomboid game mechanic MVP.

The game says that if it looks like a headshot, then it is. I have to assume this is a bug added in to later versions. But regardless I've been mislead into doing leg shots in all my years of playing this. The whole point of the 'improved combat system' is that it does what it looks like. That's what the devs have always said. I'm really shocked and disappointed that they've left it in this state. This can't be intentional.

I actually needed to hear that "You are awesome" today. Thanks buddy, you are awesome too.

I've noticed that with stomping, but despite nearly 800 hours I did not realize it with weapons... I usually use axes, spears, and cleavers so the zeds die in one hit anyway. The aiming targets make sense, but I think there needs to be more to account for a weapon min/max range and the iso cursor. You shouldn't be able stab a zombie head with a spear by standing directly over it.

It’s interesting. I never realised it wasn’t a headshot because I always had a one shot kill when standing on their chest and the cursor on their head. It might just be because I had a higher Axe lvl and strenght

I think what would also help is an animation that illustrates where your character is aiming, like if your Weapon is held high than your in headshot range. Or they could implement a color system on the reticle, red for head, yellow for body and blue for feet as examples.

Maybe the isomeric cursor's position should override player position when aiming on the floor? And maybe there should be a different animation when attacking a floor spot *near* you? Like striking down or swinging to hit the spot you're standing on? But that would be a late-stage solution.

They could do like Eternal Darkness on the NGC and highlight (fully colour green on top of the general outline for example) the part you're currently aiming at. It's intuitive and wouldn't require much effort at all. I didn't know about this mechanic so I'm glad I came across your video.

I noticed this subconsciously, I think. However, it was never relevant to me since I liked to actually stomp when I'm standing on a zombie and never actually finished them with a weapon when they're down. It's immersion breaking to kill them with a strike that doesn't actually connect visually, plus if I have multihit on it feels cheaty to squish multiple at a time with a pipe or axe when they're down; just... from that downward angle I don't see how it'd be physically viable to multihit them to death like it would. But just spamming/holding spacebar does have a lot of mechanical benefits as well: I like my maintenance exp, it takes less exhaustion to stomp a zombie than to swing around a metal bar or fireaxe, and it even has the added benefit of leaving you less exposed since pressing spacebar would also shove a zombie if one came at you from the front or side, and is really the only way you can effectively stomp multiple at a time unless you're squishing them with multihit on.

This explains why my preferred method of killing prone zombies has been to ignore weapons in favor of stomping on their heads. "Headshot" headstomps just outdo most weapon body and leg shots.

There is so much jankiness with the combat in this game and this explains a good portion of it

The biting sound does not actually always equal death from my experience, especially in multiplayer. I've had times where I've heard it, only to find it was my clothes that took the damage and not me, or someone caused it to play nearby, but never got hit at all, due to inconsistencies in the server versus client side.

Another banger product from ma boi ! I honestly had no idea

The more I watch your videos, the more I realize just how much spaghetti code Zomboid has

such helpful info. good stuff

I feel like they should move the hitbox to the weapon instead. I don't know how possible this is, but it feels rather weird to have the most effective attack against zombie to be standing on head, and smashing the ground

This video was recommended to my by BonZAI0 from Twitch. What an awesome, informative video for anyone interested in mastering Project Zomboid combat mechanics. Thanks Retanaru!

I really appreciate the fact that you put the music source in your video, I love the idea that runescape music lives on through videos

Grub

Oh Gosh! This was one of the most useful Project Zomboid Video for me! I really like your style of narration, Subscribed without delay :D

HOLY. SHIT. I had no idea this was a thing until I saw this video, and I’ve seen just about every part tutorial there is on KZfaq. And man, you REALLY can you tell the difference once you start doing it.

I lost everything you said after 5:52 because I was panicking with the amount of sprinters you had to deal with. Had to go back to it a few times to finally understand what you were saying

Thank you. I was wondering why Private Lime's double fences defence was way more effective than when he fought normally over fence, and I think it's just the double fence puts the zombies head in the perfect position to get actual head shots.

Maybe it's time to let the player make noise in certain events, perhaps hitting a zombie repeatedly will let the player character give off a grunt of increased effort as the damage ramps up, and just pitch it into more of an exhalation as you get more exhausted.

Oh, hey, I'm surprised to see the Clear moodles mod being used, I'm one of their creators (I am in charge of making sure the information is accurate and up to date for English and Spanish). About it being or not correct, I spent about a week digging at the game's code to make sure the information is as correct as possible. Initially the mod was using the Wiki's info but then I noticed how outdated it was and decided to contribute to the mod by decompiling the game (to read their java files, which actually contained a lot of info) and also I went ahead and studied every single Lua file that had any mention of moodles. The values and information typed on the noodles are done manually, so if anything, the information you get will only be outdated if the game gets an update that adds or changes the buffs/debuffs. If I remember correctly, there's only some very small things that are not documented, and those things were stuff related to specifications of body damage if I remember correctly (they were just too specific and I couldn't figure out a way to make it look nice), besides that, the rest of the information was studied, hand picked, typed and tested to make sure it was correct (that week I mentioned earlier was me checking the code, typing the info, going in game and testing said things to make sure they do indeed work the way I read it). Nice video btw! I love the format you use as it is made in a way that makes it pretty easy to follow and learn, which is something I appreciate from your videos (it makes them easy to share to people who know nothing about the game without having to send them a huge essay on game mechanics lol).

Thanks for the video!

Unbeliveble! u always telling things that no one knows! Thanks!

well thank you for the video now i know, ive always done it where the weapon model hits.

Well I think the fix for this would be pretty simple, just make the autoaim mechanic aim for where the weapon model is landing closest to opposed to what the player is closest to.

Science is stronk! :) Thx for sharing more info. Good luck, have fun

I am not sure if still in the game, but there is a nasty targeting bug, where there is a "blind spot" where a melee weapon will not hit an approaching zombie depending on the angle it is coming in, even though the distance and visual cues would suggest a hit. This makes it such that it is way better to have them come at you exactly from the isometric line of a direction, which makes no in-world sense. They should instead align the visual animation impact with the actual hit.

Good ol PZ science. Thanks for this friend

Finally someone speaking about it after seeing for a long time many people not oneshoting. I knew it would be you with the debug and everything XD. Started searching yesterday in case you already had one jsjdjsjd. This has been for a lot of time. I started playing the game like 10 - 6 months before multiplayer and it was something my brother and me found out in the first run (splitscreen jshs), searched online and since then you are the first person speaking about that I have found. Someone playing with controller can't use the isometric cursor, so coming as close as possible was my logical thought, saw my bro not oneshoting the head so told him to do so, and worked the same. Sorry if I spelled something wrong, English isn't my main language, glad for any advice.

So glad I watched this! subbed!

one point to also notice on leg stomping, it can break the get-up animation from the zombie, making a bit easier to fight more zeds

Huh, never would have thought to question this, thanks for the explanation! I'll just go back to jawstabbing and shotguns.

That running zombie gameplay is nuts@@. Eyes opening.

Your videos make me a better Zomboid player. Thank you.

This explains why it always felt like stomps did more damage compared to weapon ground attacks.

Lore implications:my character isn't killing the zombie by crushing their heart in with a stomp but the zombies just carry over their weird fetish when they turn so they're in actuality dying from a heart attack from getting too "happy" from having some tomboy lumberjack step on them

I play with blood off completely now and it's done wonders for my FPS.

So THATS why stomping always felt like the better option

the devs are your worst enemy. that should have been obvious when they created a trolltorial that just end up with you dying

I feel like they'll change that eventually to where it lines up to how far away your mouse is aiming or generally where it is facing. Rather than pretty stupidly where your currently standing. That way you can aim relatively far away and so long as your body is close enough to do the damage you will attack the closest part to where your mouse is aimed. That or possibly just simply make it so you can highlight the area your hitting normally like how they have an option to highlight the zombies themselves when your aiming.

This channel is so good.

Great content as always! :)

I was about to poke at you on you pronunciation of "Gibblets". But now that i think about it you are more likely to be right about this than me. I will not stop saying "Jibblets" however. Loved the video

Leg shots kill zombies because at one point you mush the zombies legs so badly that miraculously a bone fragment from their rotting tibia flies into their skull. Every time somehow.

could also just make the ground targeting aiming point hover half a meter in front of you in the direction you are looking, its a lazy way to get a good enough estimate so you dont have to find make and implement sound files that might or might not be intuitive and immersive at all, especially both of these at the same time. if you wanted to really go out of your way to make a good system you could probably also slightly shift the position of a leg or head in relation to the body every time one is hit, which would make it very obvious if and what you are hitting, at least when you have good visibility, also incredibly intuitive. though youd probably have to go through a lot to split the bodies from whats probably just a glorified png to something that supports this.

for a game that focuses so much on being realistic, its really dumb that it doesnt cares about where the weapon hits, its counter intuitive and makes no sense and its for such a important mechanic too, aaaa

6:20 yes omg i have gotten bitten so many times from some wack shit like this, it's infintely irritating and more often than not i just quit the game and abandon that save entirely when that happens

In my opinion for heads you need something that indicated more bone than flesh as well, and like bone breaking, mixed with flesh rending

This explains why i always miss fence lungers

Basically the team needs to fix this, I didn't know, but now I know I honestly still don't wanna move my entire character way over a zombie and do some janky looking animation that doesn't visiually hit the zombie itself tbh, wish I never knew lmao

I have suspicions that this was the case, This case is finally solved.

3:38 they should make it which node is closest to the middle of the cone instead of which node is closest to the player

It could be a recent bug, but regardless, I've always thought that the aiming was a bit unpredictable, as is expected since we're relying on our own eyes, 2.5D graphics and variable weapon ranges. So I have over the years developed a habit to not stand or walk over downed zombies when going for a kill. Instead I try to isolate the head as much as possible. In the worst scenario, I will approach directly from the feet and walk to the side and then strike maybe when I'm standing next to the shoulders. How I've always rationalized this is that the more you isolate the head as the only plausible target, the more likely you are to hit the head. Now with the mechanic of standing on zombies, I have had to learn to prioritize clean fast hits vs isolating a zombie, but I don't stand on them habitually since it contradicts how I learned to play. I think newer players are more susceptible to make this mistake.

This must be fixed, seems to work as expected now.

I believe giblets is pronounced like "jib-lits"

that broke my immersion a lot... I hope they fix this issue

at this point ever since i experienced multiplayer desync on low latency, i don't question zomboid anymore (still best zombie game tho)

Topic aside: I can't believe there's not a video on youtube with the audio sounds the character makes while in pain or dying.

I fun little bug I recently discover is that for some reason, you can insta kill with m9 pistol with no ammo aim at a zombie and wait for it to come towards you, while its coming, just keep spamming the left click on the mouse. what happends is that it does a push but then the push kills the zombie (if you don't stop spamming the mouse key) also it happens when there is only one zombie and not more from my testing and I've only ever tried the m9 pistol, idk about the others

Babe wake up new retenaru vid

They just need to change it, it's going to be a thing that depends on the range of the weapon (something that already exists), so when you aim the calculation of the damage is based around the closest to your Strike point is while you look at the zombie. That would fix the problem and solve this mechanic that needs to be redone. Imagine if a Call of duty had a useless system that if you melee someone while aiming at the head it's not going to connect and it would be the same as hitting the legs, the mechanic would be dumb, and the devs would try everything to reward players for aiming while they try to melee people.

This guy should join the dev!

I felt like I hit the head when I aim at it, maybe its bc I'm using short blunts and get close to the head. Gonna pay attention to this next time I play.

Looking for that essay on the lore implications 😳

same thing for hitting zombies on the ground, the fact that the actual visual cue is irrelevant for scoring a head impact is really broken. They should change these things, especially in an unforgiving game like zomboid

I didn't know that, I'll do 3:03 if I'm in a hurry, 3:52 if I want a little extra immersion. 0:40 should also help early game until you get something like the crowbar. Edit: VERY effective, thank you lol. 😂

Wooo! Body shots! Party time!

This is a pretty easy fix, just make weapons aim slightly further in front of the player than stomping does

Pretty sure if a zombie loses to much blood they would die. However that doesn't explain why knives or dot weapons don't outright kill them

This has not been my experience but I believe you. Guess I was just wrong

IDK if you've done a video on it, but a really similar thing that bothers me is the complete lack of ways to determine that your car door is completely open. Especially with the door closing sound playing even if the door isn't closed. That particular mechanic is completely invisibly to the player and it's very frustrating to get bit through what appears to be a closed door with an intact raised window. Even now knowing the mechanic it's frustrating trying to guess if my doors are actually closed. Thanks for the video, I was starting to suspect something was up with the way the head hit boxes worked haha. IDK if I ever would have figured this out though.

huh. so aim with the space between my legs. just like the default root position when i open a character model in a 3d program. what am i even saying?

God I hope they fix the melee system before full release.

this video made me realize i've killed the vast majority of grounded zeds with body shots, since my way of doing it was to stand on their chest and aim with the reticule at the head then strike :|

best solution, make the weapon model actually hit where it looks like its hitting, the fact that my character is clearly "missing" when i get headshots is infuriating

Heads should explode. Thanks for the good advice.

Quite a niche topic but could you investigate the hidden "marksmen" trait that you can only get via admin mode and adding to your character manually? The wiki claims it significantly increases your aim but I feel like it does nothing.

Random gamepad player: "Isometric what?"

I'm not gonna complain about giblets because the video is too good

Been doing bodyhits all my life, the lies unfold

Man fucking sprinters are terrifying.

based game design philosophy

Is that why it seems to do more damage if you stomp while they are getting up?

With the new mechanic of zombies randomly getting up after getting killed, does killing with a head shot affect it? Does the game even differentiate between headshot and non headshot kills? Or is it just a fun new mechanic that takes control away from the player?

A feature of the gunslinger mod, which is used with Brita's will display how much damage you are doing.

Video request: towing - how much horse power does the car need to have extra to compensate for Sunday driver and how much less HP for speed demon to be as good as without either trait.

Adding parallax should be super easy, barely an inconvenience.

omg all the careful precision I've been putting in to be efficient with my resources! This particular mechanic is way off from any intuition.

Just another reason why I play with the cursor off.