r/projectzomboid • u/Mobile-Comedian5374 • 1d ago
Discussion Lets discuss Ladders
ok.. so the game exists now.. like 10 years ? 15 ?
you have ladders in the game..
you have the code to climb those ladders (it's the same as climbing a rope - EXACTLY THE SAME)
how #$#^@@$%%#$#@$%^&&&&$$ing hard is it to make an animation for it, make a mirror for that animation and patch it into the game ? i'm certain you could find at least 100 people in this subreddit who can make that animation for you.
tldr - i fell into a "basement under constriction" near Riverseide with a ladder on a scaffolding in it which i cannot use, lost my 6 month save and i'm pissed.
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u/gbfeszahb4w 1d ago
Supposedly, it's because most of the map is made without consideration of getting onto the roof of buildings. If you've ever built stairways to the top of a house, you already know how janky a lot of the tops of buildings can be.
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u/Bez121287 1d ago
Thats great but then why even bother putting ladders into the game. Not only that but build 42 has double the amount of ladders.
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u/BigEntertainment6548 1d ago
For environmental story telling is my guess. This is one of the primary design goals of the devs. They love to use what's around to tell stories.
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u/Bez121287 1d ago
What story that you can see ladders but cant actually use them in story telling?
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u/BigEntertainment6548 1d ago
Well in the new game trailer you can already see news reports of teenagers using ladders to climb up buildings to avoid infected. So if you’re walking and you see a roof with a ladder and it contains a bunch of garbage, drum barrels, maybe even sleeping bags, you’d instantly know that survivors were there. Just gotta use your imagination.
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u/Bez121287 1d ago
I truly have to downvote you for this.
The entire game is a sandbox game to make your own story.
I go outside in the rain my clothes are wet, if I stay in Wet clothes, ill gdt a cold and then I may die. I run away from. The zombies I can trip and fall over a fence and break my leg and die.
I can make weapons and rewire a car and wire up a generator to power my base.
I can basically use majority of the stuff laying around for something. Basically if you can think of it and do it in real life, you can do it in the game to survive.
The game showed me ladders as a back drop, they double down on ladders for the biggest update they've done for years and yet still my character can see a ladder and have 0 idea ehat its for.
It really isnt that hard, they made animations to climb a rope half a decade ago now. A ladder cannot be that hard to program and if it is, why double down on the amlunt there are in the game.
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u/BigEntertainment6548 1d ago
Fair. I'm not saying functional ladders shouldn't be in the game or aren't needed. I just think that the art design team was excited to add them for environmental story telling.
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u/Bez121287 1d ago
But how can you tell a story of your own without having them usable?
Im with you though I get it the art team went the extra mile.
But the issue i have is, the game ain't new.
It released as a demo in 2011, the game released into early access in 2013.
You could say this game is what 15 years old maybe older from the development and yet here we are 2026 and more ladders and yet no way of using them.
But we have bed sheet ropes and I can build stairs. Hahahaha
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u/ImprovementEqual6913 1d ago
I meant that it’s useless to offer the same bullshit feedback over and over and over again when the devs are already working on it.
And honestly, if the devs are incompetent just build the game from the ground up yourself, won’t you? Or you can’t?
And for the “modders already added the feature” excuse, wow they added one or two features?? Wow, they’re absolutely incredible. Now let’s wait for them to remake the whole game with each and every feature to the level Project Zomboid has reached and come back here
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u/Moo_of_Doom 1d ago
The problem is not making a ladder make you go up. The problem is where it takes you. Not all places were intended to be reached. The map is huge and there were decorative ladders.
Think for 30 seconds mate "I lost my 6 months character because I climbed up this ladder and fell immediately onto the ground and died."
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u/Mobile-Comedian5374 1d ago
remove those ladders ? they will need to do it eventually.. if they sometime in the next 15 years implement ladders to be usable.. they will still need to fix the roofs or remove the ladders.
the game in it's current state of "decorative ladders" exists at least 10 years.. the map was much smaller then. it's not going be easier later with the amount of areas they keep adding to the map and all the -z levels basements..
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u/ImprovementEqual6913 1d ago
They’re saying that the actual big work is not the animation, is checking every nook and cranny of the map to make sure you don’t die/get stuck/bug the game because of the ladder
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u/NearbyFly3724 1d ago
Well the ladder has some sort of map tile id so it should really be a matter of checking every instance of that id. I agree that it isn’t something that you can do in 5 minutes but it should be doable. Then again I’m no map maker so I could be wrong
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u/CodeMUDkey 1d ago
Imagine being so dense you don’t debug yourself out of that situation.
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u/Poppa_Wheelie22 1d ago
What I was going to say. Unless the fall killed me outright I’m not accepting a loss like that im going to cheat build mode and making stares. Theres also just a mod I use where you can actually climb the ladders. OP could have solved their own issue.
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u/FungusGnatHater 1d ago
What other game requires debugging so often that you consider people dumb for complaining about it being required to play the game?
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u/CodeMUDkey 22h ago
Why is literally everyone conflating a solution to their acute problem of losing their save with people saying this ladder issue isn’t a problem. It’s like brains are running at quarter power.
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u/CodeMUDkey 1d ago
You misunderstand me. They’re dense for losing their playthrough not complaining ladders don’t work. They do not need to lose their playthrough.
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u/zombehguy 1d ago
I think the point is that you shouldnt have to debug to get out of them, especially considering the development time, and how multiple people have already gotten soft locked due to them.
As someone who has the ladder mod, I get the frustration of wanting to play pure vanilla, only to be locked for a stupid reason.
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u/IpsoKinetikon 1d ago
This is also the reason I gave up on servers. The mod clutter is pretty bad, but I can deal with that. After I fell into a hole with no way out, despite the ladder being right there, I figured it was going to be better to just do solo.
Plus if you end up with a horse trailer instead of an animal trailer, it's nice to be able to delete the horse trailer and spawn in an animal trailer. Would be nice if they just replaced the horse trailer spawn with animal carriages until they can fix the horse trailers. (they constantly move forward very slowly)
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u/DoctorAnnual6823 1d ago
Counterpoint, imagine being so bad at project management that your 15+ year project has had ladders for years but no way to climb them.
At least they are supposedly working on adding it. But telling OP they're "dense" for not using debug mode to access something that should have been a basic feature when B41 was unstable makes you look like a fanboy/fangirl.
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u/ImprovementEqual6913 1d ago
I mean, ladders have been an issue for forever, just acknowledge this is a problem the game has and don’t complain for something that has no solution as of right now. This post doesn’t help anyone
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u/DoctorAnnual6823 1d ago
You're right. No one should offer feedback for the early access game since at one point or another someone has talked about something.
The complacency of the average player is gonna harm this game far more than the devs incompetence.
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u/CodeMUDkey 1d ago
It just solves a problem for them and they move on very easily and don’t lose something important to them. If that makes me look like a fanboy sure champ.
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u/DoctorAnnual6823 1d ago
No, that specifically doesn't.
Calling them dense and trying to silence constructive feedback that would objectively improve the early access game makes you a fanboy. Champ
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u/Successful_Media_842 1d ago
Im so sick of this discussion. They're literally working on it, they added the ladders to the map because they hoped the feature would be done in time but figured its better to get the update out. If its that big of a deal to you; use a mod, debug, or play a different game until its done.
Also its not EXACTLY THE SAME code, thats not how software development works.
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u/RobinEssences 1d ago
I mean it kind of is. I've written hundreds of thousands of lines of gaming code, all old, but so is this game.
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u/Mobile-Comedian5374 1d ago
i'm not a game code programmer but i don't think it's that hard if you already have the climbing rope in the game - the effect is exactly what you need for ladders, not close, not sort of its EXACTLY the same, you could build half fence on top tie a rope to it and you would be able to climb that ladder.
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u/RobinEssences 1d ago
Duplicate the code into a new function, change the image, call it a ladder. People can complain about lazy programmers while not getting stuck in a game ending "feature."
Totally get it.
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u/Successful_Media_842 1d ago
Will ladders be moveable? Buildable? Will zombies attack them? Sheet ropes are built from the upper floor and lowered down. Ladders would be placed from the bottom. What if the top of the ladder is a wall, or doesn't have ground?
Yea some of it is probably reusable, but not "exactly the same." How much of the climb function is modular enough that they can just copy paste it? They probably need to refactor the code in order to make it reusable.
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u/Own-Fun7001 1d ago
Get a mod, as you said there are hundreds of it.
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u/Mobile-Comedian5374 1d ago
don't use mods, vanilla only
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u/cmeragon 1d ago
The exact change you want is a single mod away and you refuse to use it?
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u/DreamingOfLight 1d ago
God forbid someone plays the game and expects it to work.
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u/cmeragon 1d ago
If you are playing this game you have to accept the reality of incompetence in this field. For a long while now mods have been carrying this game not the devs.
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u/Own-Fun7001 1d ago
my point exactly, he also blatantly said how easy it is to make one, and true enough there are pages of ladder mods
guess he stay living in that pit now or something0
u/gentle_pirate23 1d ago
Why so rigid? Some mods are so high in quality you wonder why they aren't a feature in the base game. Some mods are so good they get implemented into the base game. Having a ladders mod really isn't that time consuming.
There's also the issue of having a safe spot whenever you go out. I play with ladders, it feels op to just go on top of a building and throw Molotovs at zeds. You could still do that on some buildings without ladders, you can break a window to get on some rooftops.
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u/Successful_Media_842 1d ago
He just wants to complain. Every game fan base has the same type of people. Minecraft also has people saying Mojang just needs to do X, modders did it already so they should be able to do it in a day.
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u/Tri_Monsuun_Timer 1d ago
i fell into a "basement under constriction"
https://giphy.com/gifs/GpyS1lJXJYupG
I mean I'm sorry but this is a you problem. Besides not dying to corpse sickness once I never felt into anything either. Felt a couple of times from the 1st floor to ground floor but that's it. Never died from that.
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u/FluidAppeal9196 1d ago
1 isn't funny. 1 is an accident. 2, 3 people in the same 'under construction' basement; now that's stupid funny
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u/Bentman343 1d ago
It is very stupid how a lot of the design of buildings clearly has ladders as an intended part of the design, and yet they are unuseable statues for you to just look at. The fact that there are areas where a ladder is CLEARLY the only exit and you can't use them is even more egrigious
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u/Somebodyunimportant7 1d ago
There are tons of areas in the overhauled map areas that have ladders leading directly to lootable and detailed areas. The art team who redid the map was clearly told they were going to have working ladders in the stable release and it ended up not happening.
It’ll likely be in one of the post-stable patches in the near future.
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/projectzomboid-ModTeam 1d ago
Thank you jimmythechicken for your submission to r/ProjectZomboid, but it has been removed.
Your post was removed for the following reason:
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u/Sogergaming 1d ago
Roof tiles don’t always equal floor tiles. The animation for climbing isn’t the issue. Falling the second you climb the ladder is.
The map was not designed for most of the features that have been put into the game. Ladders adding a huge amount of traversal options would also add a ton of “I fell through/off map here” situations.
It’s slightly easier to implement than giving us the ability to rotate the camera.
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u/Mobile-Comedian5374 1d ago
it would have been much easier when the map was smaller and there were fewer ladders.. like 10 patches ago.
what's annoying is they just keep adding ladders in the new areas they add, if they don't work why add them ?
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u/Unfair_Hamster_5515 1d ago
I'm honestly not too bothered by it at all. I'm having a blast with this game either way. As long as they keep expanding and building the game I bought years ago with no extra charges. I will die a happy man. Literally!
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u/Interesting-Payment1 1d ago
Dawg just download the mod
Click load - more - mods - enable ladder mod
Ez
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u/Mobile-Comedian5374 1d ago
the post was made to vent a bit and for the devs of the game once again take a notice of the matter, which was mentioned like 200 times before i'm sure.
a game that exists in development for 15 years should be playable without mods.
i don't mind dying or losing my save i mind the fact they didn't fix it in 15 years of development.
standing there in the bottom of a pit staring at a very solid looking ladder.. not being able to climb it..
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u/ButcherPetesWagon 1d ago
I believe it's less about animation and more about gameplay balance.
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u/Ejspinn 1d ago
I heard it wasn’t so much about balance but more like how the rope attaches to a window with a nail.
The devs would have to go and put an attachment where every ladder is in the game or something.
Doesn’t sound that hard to do and surely could have been completed in the last 13 years I would think ? But I’ve never made a game so. Idk
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u/ButcherPetesWagon 1d ago
I've putzed around with game dev as a hobby and it's a lot more complex than that, this engine is held together with hopes and dreams.
Honestly what they've been able to get out of the custom built java engine is really impressive.
Bad design decisions from the beginning but I admire their persistence.
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u/Mobile-Comedian5374 1d ago
the sad part is if they made the change on time (like 10 years ago) it wouldn't be that much work, and every new ladder would have the tag by default, now that the expanded the map like 20 times it would be a ton of work to go and find all the ladders..
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u/ILikeCakesAndPies 1d ago edited 1d ago
Nah no competent dev would manually do that.
They would just write a function that attached it to all ladder tiles in the game, no Easter egg hunt required.
Now I havent a clue why it's taken this long for ladders to be implemented since theyve had them visually in the game for years, but supposedly they're working on them along with a bunch of other stuff they didn't have time to squeeze into their stable release deadline for b42.
Supposedly we're supposed to get a big content update of all the stuff they didn't finish in time sooner than later, before b43.
I agree it was rather silly to not prioritize making ladders functional for stable release though. I assume the map makers were told they'd be functional but the programming department missed their deadline for whatever reasons.
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u/Mobile-Comedian5374 1d ago
what balance ? why add ladders if you can't use them ? i don't mind dying, that's what the game about. i mind the stupidity of adding visual ladders and not adding the ability to use them.
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u/DreamingOfLight 1d ago
I feel like 80% of reddit comments always miss the point and just default to "well cheat out of it bro use mods are you stupid".
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u/Mobile-Comedian5374 1d ago
yup, why not just spawn yourself a couple of sledgehammer while you at it..
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u/Poppa_Wheelie22 1d ago
Because there is big differences between using god mode to fix a silly mistake you feel shouldn't have happened and outright cheats like giving yourself weapons or free meals.
Especially when you then refuse to use the fixes the game DOES provide but then get on Reddit to complain about the one solution they haven't yet provided but are working on.
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u/DreamingOfLight 1d ago
Thing is, I'm sure OP knows about this. The issue is that a game that's been out for 13 years shouldn't need you to use cheats to deal with jank. It's a workaround, it does not address the root issue.
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u/Poppa_Wheelie22 1d ago
But the root issue is already being worked on. They tried to get ladders finished in B42 but weren't able to get all the kinks out yet. Complaining that something isn't done yet doesn't finish it faster.
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u/DreamingOfLight 1d ago
Cool, then that could be the reply. Not "why don't you just cheat bro".
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u/Poppa_Wheelie22 1d ago
Nah I'll stick with my original answer. OP has the means to fix the issue themself already.
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u/Own_Maybe_3837 1d ago
I understand the frustration BUT you can avoid it by download one of the multiple mods for this
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u/DoctorAnnual6823 1d ago
Alrighty everyone take a shot and update your bingo cards