Die It Yourself: Project Zomboid's Creative Mode
Make a death world with your mates
I'm not sure when - or if, or how - Project Zomboid [official site] will ever be finished, as developers The Indie Stone are forever finding new things to add to their open-world zombie survival sandbox. Simulating a world with thousands of characters, players and NPCs, can be a mighty deep rabbit world. DayZ has gotten lost down that hole at times, but Zomboid has at least seemed to be heading towards a finished game.
The next big addition will be a 'Creative Mode' which makes creating your own levels far less of a pain in the bum, and will let players do it together online.
The Indie Stone explain that their current system simply isn't good enough. "The learning curve for the toolset, the drudge of copying files, the exporting and all the rest made it an intimidating process," they say. They'd hoped people would do more, but totally understand why they haven't. This may change with Creative Mode. They say:
"It lets you build maps faster, have fun and work as a team. In essence, it lets you edit the map in any way you can imagine. You can use any buildings or other map pieces available: whether you’re subscribed to them on Steam Workshop, copying and pasting them from the existing PZ map or creating them yourself.
"It's a mode that lets you, as an in-game Zomboid character, create extra buildings, districts, even complete towns and cities. What's more, absolutely anything can be shared to the Workshop – at the moment via an external app, but soon straight from the game itself. Coming back the other way, anything you're subscribed to will automatically be available to place within Creative Mode."
The initial release of Creative Mode with version 33 will be a little limited, letting folks landscape, make buildings, and plop in furniture. Tools for roads, pavement, fences, erosion, and other nice details will arrive later. Still, this looks pretty easy to me:
