I’ve been playing / watching project zomboid content since forever but have never seen people from the GCC (Kuwait, Oman, UAE, Saudi , Bahrain, Qatar) that play the game , stream it or even create content for it.

Considering that PZ is kind of a niche game I’ve just been wondering if you guys exist!

Preface: This is a joint work with Claude code. The patches here are all lua mods, and do not do anything on their own. They make different mods faster when used together.

After setting up the current mod list, I can only drive with 30fps and a lot of stutter, while i can drive max speed in 120fps vanilla (thanks to PZ optimization). I want to play the game, so I profile my save to find offenders. The fix turned out to be pretty effective, so I figured I share it here in case it helps anyone.

The collection can be found here: https://github.com/galaxy321/pz-optimization-mods. Hope this is useful to anyone who has issue with a lot of mods.

Some Technical Details For People Interested

Mods ask the engine to see if specific item/furniture exists every time a chunk is loaded. The query is rather expensive when it reaches java engine, and the cost adds up quickly for multiple mods. Driving fast compounds the issue as thousands of chunks are loaded each second. The patch merges all such queries into one, and only invoke corresponding handler if, for example, a generator or a gas pump is found in the chunk. My list contains 7 such mods, and the patch shaves the original 170ms/s query time to 30ms/s.

Another patch targets UI throttling to help with stutter. In vanilla, character inventory is rebuilt every time it reaches a new square, and this causes stuttering for me with mod like CleanUI. The throttle patch changes it to rebuild inventory only when new container/ground item appears, and also throttle the rebuild frequency when jogging/sprinting. The patch also skips rebuilding while you are driving, unless there's inventory action. This moves the corresponding time cost from 30ms/s to 8.3 ms/s. This is best paired with tuning down UI refresh frequency in the game options.

Some other minor fixes, and the profiler used to determine the hurting points, can also be found in the repository. In total this get me from 30fps driving with constant lag spikes to mostly smooth drivng with 60fps at max speed.

...I would have said that game already exists and is called VEIN. Or DayZ. And those games are great but like PZ the way it is.

It’s been raining for days bruh. But seriously, yall don’t like this mod fr?

i should not be this happy over something so small

Hey, just sharing this in case anyone else has the same issue: VRAM usage gradually climbing, followed by stutters and sudden drops.

I made VRAM Steady, a small mod that reuses GPU buffers to keep VRAM usage more stable, without changing visuals or gameplay.

It targets this specific issue rather than being a general FPS booster.
Requires ZombieBuddy. Installation instructions are on the Workshop page.

If you try it, let me know how it works for you!

Before B42 release I played B41(duh), and I always made sure to add my beloved Firearms B41 to any survival of mine. Although it seems like B42 version of Firearms is quite clunky, buggy and, unfortunately, mod can be considered dead. So what is the new standard of authentic, balanced, lore friendly weapons mod?

So I was like an hour into a play through and my character got super stressed, no matter what I did I couldnt get rid of it. Bear in mind my house was in the woods with curtains closed, I had no traits that would cause stress, had barely seen any zombies, none outside my house and I had no blood anywhere. It Just wouldn't go so I tried making a new game and about 10 mins in, the same thing happened. I have some mods installed so I tried deleting them all but the one I really wanted which is rv interior 42, but the moodle was still there. I can’t imagine it’s the mod as it’s massively installed by many and doesn’t seem to have anoyone saying that this is a glitch.
what the hell is going on?

I have over like 1k hours in zomboid and I tried the viewpoint mod last week and all of this week, I understood the hate when it first came out because it really did look horrible, glitchy, and I get why people love the isometric view of the game more, I love it too, but this is too big to ignore.

I think people are blinded with rage over the fact that it was vibe coded using ai, I'm not familiar with how they pulled this off, but I can point out several instances where this has changed everything, and made the game truly better.

1. Stairs - This mod has removed all the horrible mechanics revolving stairs, you can look down them, see zomboids down them, you're never blind to an upstairs threat, or downstairs.

2. Driving - I tried driving into Louisville and I ran into over about 1k zomboids on screen while maintaining over 40fps with no spikes while ramming into zomboids, the fucking fear you feel in first person isn't even close to the fear you feel in the isometric view.

3. Sightseeing - I can flip on first person, see a grocery store with hordes in the parking lots, you can go on literal nature runs, walk along the rivers and see across them, its truly breathtaking stuff given you have the right shades.

4. Combat - don't get me started on this, you can blast these fuckers back with impact bullet and first person support, it feels too good laying down a crowd of them, and being able to aim and hit specific parts, its too good.

That's just some major things i've noticed, but it also comes with some really game breaking bugs that are hard to ignore, like how a majority of some buildings have bugged and broken textures, but given how fast they release mods to fix this, it won't be a problem in like 2 weeks.

It's a hard subject to talk about in here and I wanna hear what some people have to say about it, I think it's the greatest thing ever, and the fact that we get access to this, makes me excited to see what we can do in the future.

also just a side comment, does anybody else's game run significantly better in first person? I don't understand how thats actually possible lmao

musician mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3816180767
I actually played the lead guitar part live and sang this live so I was actually really surprised when the zombies showed up and ate my character, although I was making tons of noise, so I don't know why I was surprised but if I were in ISO I would've seen them coming so... it is what it is. hah.

Hello!

I want to start new game with a friend and I haven't played PZ in 2 years so I am not aware if B42 is a stable as B41 used to be.

Can I get recommendation for mods or collections for my friend and me?

I love building, looting, fighting, fixing cars etc and I used to love Brita's gun mod but it could get kinda broken at some point unless you set rules.

My friend loves exploring and fighting so a gun or melee mods are also welcome.

I don't care if we break game too much in terms of balancing but I would like it to remain challenging with gun mods.

Also, if there are some trait/class mods that are awesome that also be great.

I tried looking some collections from content creators but I didn't have much luck since they are mostly looking to have challenge so its fun on stream.

Thank you in advance!

I had a box truck I was using as an RV. I loaded into the game inside the RV. Exited and the vehicle was gone 💀💀💀

Has anyone encountered this before? Thoughts?

Mods causing losses like this, nothing I messed up or can do anything to resolve, make me not want to play at all...

The spawn location in Irvington is always the same. Not so far up north is the gun club. There is a lot of survivor zombies with tons of books in their bags there ! Plus you easily get hiking and military bags too (and drippy clothes) !

I love this game and the community. I only have over 200 hours in the game now but at 30 hours in I fell for this game so hard I knew this is going to become a permanent obsession.

I started playing the new POV mods recently and I can't lie. I'm loving it. I've been turned away from project zomboid before because I've been one of those gamers who were spoiled for pushing graphics in more modern looking games. But everytime I searched for a survival game that would cure the itch, zomboid popped up. Eventually I pushed away my psychological block stopping me from playing a game that looked older and I wish I did sooner. The amount of game I got for the amount of money I spent feels like I scammed the devs for a title that's worth so much but the devs don't ask you for your life savings just to enjoy a great game. That itself was something I thought about for weeks.

I acknowledge and agree with the fact that this is really really cool but it isn't exactly project zomboid in its glory and what it was supposed to be. But just the fact that I could explore the game again in another perspective made me so excited and I really think it's amazing. I DONT think it is zomboid and how it was meant to be played. But no first and third person game out there can live up to zomboid (IN MY OPINION AND PREFERENCE okay? Just my own feelings, not what you gotta feel)

I will probably play the game in isometric and POV because I love what the game is as zomboid itself and I also love that these POV mods are creating a different experience to a game I hold in an extremely high regard.

I'm someone on the fence who loves both sides of the perspective and I don't care what side you prefer to play the game in. Im just worried we will have people who might tear this community through the center where there won't be a middle ground where we just enjoy zomboid together. It's in a similar aspect to me of how the shitty pvp gamers created two sides of their community where you're either a noob or a tryhard. You can't win either way, you are either one and you're a problem, you can't just be someone enjoying the game and having fun.

Well that was my 2 cents on the topic, I just feel like we might lose the community that made this game so amazing by having people prefer one side and attack the other side.

I’m under the rosewood bank and well I found this opening in the wall. Has anyone else found something similar. I want to look more but I’m Lokey like scared of falling😭 Never seen anything like it before.

This is not really about the game itself, and more about the idea of surviving a zombie apocalypse at all. At what point would you say you've "survived" the apocalypse itself. Being that we're humans, we will all die eventually, but in an apocalyptic survival scenario things are a little different. For me, I would say i've "survived" if I manage to make it ten years. Maybe it's not a timing thing, maybe its surviving until some semblance of a survivor's society can persist? (a la TLOU) or some other personal goal. Curious about your thoughts!

I was really sad about dying in my save so to cope I doodled a bit
I KNOW HE'S BASIC DON'T TELL ME 👹

Beginning to think I have a problem

Okay so 5 zombies in good ol Reggie Shagg managed to get a snag on his head. Twice . The first was nothing , the second was a laceration to the head .
He then started to heal all the way up .
We got damn near the edge of death.
It said terminal but I happened to have a full thing of pain killers in the closet.
We ate well, sat and I figured I was about to die .
But he got full health. From 7 pounds of weight back up to 12!

But now I have the nausea trait and it’s bringing my weight down to 11. It’s starting to kill me .

Is Reggie infected even tho he healed all the way up? It’s about 1-2 days after the full heal and I don’t think we had the nausea trait while he was healing but I just can’t recall.

Decided to stop whining and see what the hype about this first person/third person 3D Zomboid stuff was about….proceeded to play my longest session in months, it really is crazy how great it looks and plays (after I messed with my graphics settings)

As the title suggests, I am looking for a mod like the vanilla vehicle expansion mod, where you can add things like armour and roof lights onto vanilla cars, but I don't think that mod works anymore for build 42.

I know the K15 models work fine, but I would prefer to find a vanilla mod as well.

If anyone knows of a mod like this, that would be amazing.

Here's the Workshop link - This mod is a heavily modified fork of Glapnak's Claimable Outposts. The mod is very similar to State of Decay in it's function, and with 10 different outpost types, it adds 223 possible outpost locations across Knox County.

The idea was to add some vitality to the gameplay loop and help relieve the burden on more sought-after resources in servers like Weapons, Ammo, and Welding materials like Metal and Propane.

I hand-built each outpost location (sandbags, tents, etc.) and added a little extra spice if you have SiaCatty's The Mutants enabled as well.

Both Bandits and Project A-Life are supported, as well as multiple Weapon mods such as Guns of Marz and VFE!

Hope you all enjoy, Happy surviving!