Hey all, if nothing else this (which is my first new post), is to try and spread the knowledge of a game I’ve fallen in love with called Project Zomboid. It’s a survival game in a zombie apocalypse, and despite the genre being oversaturated, it’s still a very good entry. There’s a lot of detail in stats, skills, and character creation, and the ground work is already there for some interesting mods as far as this site’s purposes go. The mod workshop is through steam, which is generally not that difficult to deal with, and in the game by default there is already a character weight that is modified by diet and exercise, as well as traits that are applied to your character based on their current weight, or how much they’ve recently eaten. The biggest shortcoming is that I don’t believe there’s any sort of visual change as far as the character model goes, but I’d also argue the game isn’t really about graphics. So, I would absolutely love to see more experimentation with this game, like mods to change player model based on weight, growing curves, or more “interesting” dialogue when stuffing yourself/gaining weight.
I remember a previous thread somewhere mentioning sprites being hardcoded or something among those lines, and so the interest on a possible Project Zomboid mod has quickly dwindled.
Hopefully someone makes something interesting in this thread though, even if it’s just adding stomach noises and burps with no visual change.
i believe the game was updated at some point to include actual 3D models.
But those might also be hardcoded.
The new 3D models are not hardcoded. There are about 2 mods on the workshop that change the female body model.
Looking on Google, I found both a pear-shaped mod and an alternative XL pear-shaped mod, I believe this is what PolishFox was referring to
perfect, 10/10 mod absolutely no notes
I still haven’t played the game much yet, but it does look like the recent patch may have opened up the possibility of improved weight-gain visuals. The base player model can apparently be changed now, as well clothes & wearables. While you may not be able to change the in-game player model dynamically for weight gain/loss, it’s possible you could script wearables (with big/small variants) to simulate it much like other games (like Starbound Big Fatties) does.
If anyone knows how to implement it, i can rig, animate and model.
in the description of the mod
I’ve got a passing interest at least! Can’t guarantee anything but I’ve decompiled the code and am digging through it to see what I can find. I haven’t messed around in Java or Lua but I’ve heard Java is pretty close to C#.
If we were to make a mod like this how ought it to work? I own the game but I’ve never really played it. It seems like there’s already diet management so maybe that could work. Otherwise there’s always character select options though that’s less interesting.
Well in the game already there’s a weight system increased and decreased based on how much you eat, and possibly even what you eat, as food items have values like calories. So it could be dynamic, based on current weight/your character’s diet and exercise.
I’ve messed around a bit and think there may be a way to swap models at runtime. I was able to get a rudimentary mod made, though all it did was absolutely wreck the poor survivor haha (gif attached)
I’ll look more into what I can do tomorrow and see if I can make this work.
Any progress with the mod? Also is there a tutorial on how to mod project zomboid that you’re following or just winging it?
Its totally possible to have a rudimentary wg system that uses clothing like the Starbound BF mod. There are some problems though. You can’t see skinned clothes like shirts and pants. Modeled clothing works, but would need a system to also be swapped.
I think a playermodel swap would be better since it applies to all clothing modded or not. I know model swapping is possible since I was able to change the players mesh and have it update in real time. I think the best way to do this would be to replace the femalebody.x with another model for whatever stage the players weight is at.
I haven’t touched it much, though still had some interest in the project. If there were other people interested in collaborating on this (maybe Java experience or able to make the models). I think it would be much more feasible. At the time I determined what would be necessary to make this happen but it’s a bit involved. Once I get the RimWorld mod in a more stable state I was considering starting back up on this.
There’s been a looong history of people being interested in having dynamic body shapes, something teased by the game’s nutrition system.
The trick to getting a comprehensive mod for body morphs on that scale is IMO, first collaborating on a non-explicit mod (ie focused only on implementing a dynamic body system) that more people would be willing to contribute to in the general zomboid modding community, THEN thinking about a companion mod on the side for more fetish-y settings and content. Reason being that the sheer volume of work and knowledge needed aren’t really available here alone.
The main trouble stemmed from the fact that:
- The body changing code isn’t exposed to the modding API via LUA, so it would have to be a Java mod, which is substantially more complicated and fragile.
- Additionally, the game uses one mesh for all males, and one for all females iirc. This means that there would have to be a creative rewrite on how to change this behavior. Originally I had planned a hacky solution that would have done wacky file renaming and selective refreshing, but it seems that the OS module for LUA was disabled by the game devs, preventing this appraoch.
- The body meshes are some archaic format I could not figure out how to open for the life of me. Given that the body replacement mod mentioned in this thread uses a different, more modern format it seems that this could be circumvented, but nevertheless caused some trouble.
- There was a project that allowed for more dynamic Java modding, but that seems to have stalled or died.
These points may or may not be relevant at the moment, as I haven’t checked since my earlier post, but I suspect it hasn’t changed much.
From what little I know of the game it’s a little complicated. I have seen and used mods that track your weight more actively, and mods that change the model of characters (such as making women curvier or something). However, I don’t know just how difficult it would be to not only have the player model be totally distinct from the standard model of that gender, but also have it change based on actions like gaining weight.
I thought about a wg project for awhile and came to the conclusion that it’s definitely possible and I think I have it mostly all thought out.
The best way of doing it would be to use a piece of clothing that is the players current body size (like how I showed in my previous post). The body outfit would be hidden from the players inventory, but would be programmed to always be equipped and swapped to a different body sized clothing item when the player gains weight. There is a furry mod on the workshop that already does this stuff in Lua so I know it’s possible.
The problem I was having was getting the skinned clothing, underwear, and right skin color to appear but I learned that can be solved with code. The BIG problem is modeled clothing. A mod like this would involve remodeling all of the clothing for the new body sizes (overweight and obese), doing it for both sexes, and swapping the right clothing item at the right size.
I have modeling experience and can work on a mod like this, given I had someone to help with programming.
I’ve always wanted to see a wg mod for this game, so if anyone is working on a project like this, than I wish you the best of luck. I would like to help but I have no experience in coding or moding.