The Architect Behind Lifestyle: Hobbies

What do you do when you're not doing this?

Hi, I'm John and I'm lucky and fortunate to have the privilege of spending most of my days doing what I love in life be it spending time with my great partner and all my loved ones, or playing with my two silly dogs, or gaming (recently finished witcher 3 + dlcs), or going for a jog or hitting the gym (and to be completely honest, there are also days I mostly just want to lie on the couch and relax while mindless browsing the internet) I'm also an Architect, I love to design new buildings.

Did you have any of these skills before Zomboid, or did you learn through developing mods/frameworks?

no experience whatsoever lol aside from my very basic attempts at fixing my mod lists when one mod or another broke or conflicted I had virtually no knowledge of anything related to modding, be it programming, animations, sound design, pixel art, or anything related to making, publishing and managing a mod. I have also never studied programming or any related subject and coding languages were (and sometimes still are) basically undecipherable magic to me. I had a lot of ideas and zero knowledge, but I kept on trying, despite the many (many many many) crashes, the roadblocks, the constant failures, I kept on trying. Eventually, things started working. Then they didn't again. Then they did. And I kept on persisting, still failing more often than not, but learning with them, getting more and more experience, getting to know how to work with new things and eventually being able to create new things. If there's one message I could share from the experience, its that you should not fear failure. Most of the time its completely fine and okay to fail, to mess up, make mistakes, break things. It's an experience we all have in common. So don't fear it, use it instead to become better today than you were yesterday in whatever it is that you want to do.

How long have you been at it, and what was the first thing you shipped that actually worked for Zomboid?

well... it was Lifestyle: Hobbies lol although at the time this little guy didn't have nearly as much content as it does now (you could say it was basically false advertising as it only had a singular hobby, meditation... and a very bare bones version of it). It's been a long journey, but I'm quite satisfied and proud with all that was accomplished so far and knowing that so many people could enjoy it with me :)

What made you go from "I play this game" to "I'm going to make something for this game"?

I didn't want this game no seriously. I saw it on steam so many times, never picked my interest for some reason. I'm not sure if it was something about how it looked or if I thought the name was weird, it's old history now and I don't exactly remember my reason, but it didn't catch me. I even had a friend willing to purchase it to me because he was certain I'd change my mind (oh boy, was he right) Months after that same friend first tried to convince me, he bought it for me out of the blue and begged me to at least give it one chance. I booted it up (mostly because I was feeling a little guilty for not at least giving it a try for a friend), we played a local host game with a few other friends, this being my first time playing this game, and... oh my god. I felt so silly for my stubbornness almost costing me such a great experience. It was very complicated at first, but so so fun and also quite deep in many of its mechanics. We all played together for months, in our own little world, building our house (which later became a veritable mansion), adding mods we thought would add missing qol or challenge or just bc they were fun. it was good... for a while you see, once we hit the "endgame" and had every resource we could wish, every gun at our disposal, all the cars we could want, surpassed every challenge, mastered most if not all skills, the game grew very very stale... we a had a huge mansion and so much stuff, yet had nothing to do. It was like being in a doll house where you could see and touch, but aside from a few minor interactions, almost everything was "plastic" our survivors too were starting to incite the same feeling, like there was really almost nothing to do with them besides killing, looting and the few basic needs that they needed tended to the writing was on the wall, we soon quit our hosted world and the game as a whole. then I made a shitpost on reddit. I mean... IT WAS just a shitpost (and not a very good one), but it honestly made me realize that we could have our cake and eat it too (the metaphorical cake being having sims stuff in zomboid)... ...zomboid to me is a fantastic game made with a lot of time and effort by very talented and passionate people, a game that can easily give you dozens of hours of fun and even more so with friends, but to me its also something more... to me it has this pull, almost like it begs you to mold it. Of course, having a very friendly and intuitive way for adding your own code helps immensely, lua is great for beginners, its also very easy to add new images, sounds, animations and most of what you could think of, it also has a splendid and active modding community, with an abundance of resources, tools and support. The devs have also cultivated a good with modders, often asking for our feedback or even including us in discussions about the future of the game, this is where someone could say: "but angry, there's other games with nice modding communities and with easily moddable resources". And to that, I'd say: --- -- - yeah, you're right. but still, zomboid to me has this effect that no other game ever had, it makes me want to create, it inspires me to be creative, its always a immense pleasure to see ideas that only existed as an amorphous thought one moment gain solid life the next, the feeling of satisfaction that comes after hitting a development wall one day only to overcome it the next, to see my creations shared and enjoyed by so many is a humbling and joyful experience. I could say more, but I'll leave it at this: creating in this game is a pull and compulsion, a source of stress and also of much joy, theres nothing like it to me, I fell victim to... The Call of the Boid I apologize for that joke. oh and the reddit post I mentioned before still exists and you can even see a bit of our old house, I'll leave it here if you'd like to see it: https://www.reddit.com/r/projectzomboid/comments/10o9e8d/help_accidentally_deleted_the_pool_ladder_and_now/

Do you remember the moment you realized people were actually using your work?

when I first released the mod I thought maybe people wouldn't use it at all. At the time the mod was all promises and no content, the only thing it provided was a very basic set of meditation animations and a poorly written timed action I was barely able to make without crashing the whole game. when it first hit about 20-40 subscribers I remember being like "oh those poor people", but... aside from a very few (very vocal) minority... the people who reached out to me were extremely nice. They empathized with my struggles as a newbie modder, many had cool ideas that I was completely incapable of executing at the time, some even shared a lot of valuable modding tips. So I kept on developing. Today there's so many more people here than when it all began. I especially enjoy spending time finding and reading all the personal stories and experiences that were facilitated by the mod in some form or another.

Walk me through your setup. What tools/software/process do you use?

Notepad++ have been the staple of my setup since the beginning of my modding days, it's not the most advanced tool out there by far, but it's easy-to-use, lightweight and won't overwhelm a complete beginner like other tools probably would. Blender and fragmotion for animations and modelling, both are useful and each has its own strengths and weaknesses, however blender is undoubtedly the more powerful tool DaVinci Resolve for sound design, mostly for complex tasks. Audacity for a lightweight alternative, its much simpler than the former but should still be able to handle most sound related needs Photoshop and Aseprite for all my 2d art: tile design, traits, ambitions, moodles, UIs, workshop page, icons, etc And finally, TileZed for creating and editing tile properties and packs

Where does an idea start for you? A new potential game mechanic, a bug, a screenshot in your head? Just wanting to do something cool?

Its often when I'm doing something completely unrelated, like taking a shower, or driving, or just after waking up. I do have an overall vision for the mod and I've spent enough years working on it to know exactly where I want to take it in terms of creative direction. However, for most of the little details and content under that fall under said direction I just let my mind wander and go with the flow.

How many hours goes into your work? Per mod, per week, per month, however you want to describe it.

Depends on my mental health, to be completely honest. I struggle with depression and adhd, so sometimes its difficult to muster the will, other times its difficult to get me to stop and rest lol Some weeks I give it my all, you won't see me out of the house except when absolutely necessary. Other weeks I'll be moderate, modding for a few hours a day but taking care not to overexert myself. And some weeks I can't even muster the energy to open discord.

Was there ever a time you spent weeks working on something just to throw it out?

ALL THE TIME no one has any idea how much content I had to scrap for a variety of reasons: it was too performance intensive, or would take too much time to develop and I had other more pressing concerns, or wasn't a good fit for the mod, or wasn't as fun or engaging as I thought it would be, or was simply not the right moment. did you know you could dance with a partner before, as in dancing WITH them and not just beside them? well its gone (for now)

What does burnout look like for you, and what are the things that contribute to burnout the most?

I've suffered from burnout from my workplace before and to me it takes the form of severe apathy, numbness and inability to do anything related to the burnout cause. It's crushing, especially if it happens with something you would otherwise enjoy doing. and you just have to let it run its course, not force it if you can help it. I know this is easier said than done when it comes from work and if you're currently going trough this... I have no advice for you, except to say that, I understand.

What's the part of your work nobody notices but you're proudest of?

everything behind how the beauty icon works. To me it's the finest example of something that I set out to do that I was able to do 100% how I wanted it to be

What's the most useful thing a player or the community has ever done for you?

I'll never forget how Zlobenia gifted me an updated Dj Booth tile texture. I was taken by surprise when they simply offered it one day and I never forgot that act of kindness, their updated texture is still used to this day.

What's the most damaging or discouraging thing a player or the community has ever done to you?

well, there was that time when someone impersonated me to scam others by taking money from mod commissions using my name and reputation besides that, there's always a vocal minority, and you learn to pay no mind to it with time, but don't refrain from using the block function if it becomes too much, your mental health comes first

What should real support actually look like?

there's many ways to support me there's financial support trough my patreon which helps me justify focusing even more hours into the mod; complete, step-by-step, bug reporting helps a lot with development; detailed and constructive feedback is always welcome and not often easy to come by; helping others that have issues or questions related to the mod when/if possible; all are equally valid methods of supporting me and my mod, but please don't ever feel pressured to do any of them

What tool or resource is missing that someone should build?

It'd be nice to have thursdoids back if that doesn't count, then idk if it makes sense but some form of a standardized update time that modders could follow so servers wouldn't have to restart as often, ideally.

What mod author is underappreciated or should be known?

A good friend of mine, Russo. He builds plenty of cool things (author of Machines 2) and has very recently returned to create mods for the new build.

What needs to change in the way players, server owners, or the community in general treat mod authors?

Grace. I believe we could all benefit from having a little more of it.

Anything else you want people to know

thank you for taking the time to be here. I had a lot of fun answering all these questions and I hope it was worth something to you or at the very least a bit entertaining. Thank you all for the opportunity, Take care and be good.