A few thoughts on.. (New Anim System, Bug Fixing, etc)

[Hicks_206 (DayZ) 4297]

So - a week or so back I was talking to a survivor outside of Grishino, and I realized that he (and probably many others) weren't exactly sure what DayZ's new animation system, and player controller really effected via way of the development pipeline.

I wanted to take a moment on the forums to give people exactly what changes are pending the useable state of the new animation system, and in tandem the player controller.

First off - straight from our animation department, Adam will give you guys a brief explanation of what and why in regards to the new animation system.

"Why switch to the new animation system versus the old animation system

We switched to the new system because it became necessary with the things that we wanted to do with the player character in DayZ. Over the years, the older animation system has seen a lot of use, but with such a company wide use, there's a lot of features that get added to the animation system. Those features often don't have a thought out design behind them, and after a couple of years you end up with a less cohesive system that has a lot of small quirks.

The issues that we started to encounter quickly rose in numbers and they become increasingly hard to iron out, since something essential might be dependent on a smaller, but seemingly unimportant, feature. As the new player character required more actions, gestures, guns, vehicles, and other functionality, those quirks gets really hard to get past for us animators. In other words, everything was being kept together with glue and duct tape.

On top of this, the old system also consumed a lot of network traffic simply because of how it works. While 2 kilobytes of data seems insignificant over networks, any desynchronization with that much memory hinging on the player character being properly animated and responsive is dangerous. You can see the limitations of this in DayZ at the moment, as the animations don't feel responsive, and rather laggy most of the time.

In contrast, the new system has been through a heavy trial by several animators to see if we could do the same things as in the old system and how fast this system can operate in comparison. Within just a few months of us working on the player system we've been able to get most of the player functionality in, plus the additions of being able to arm/disarm yourself while moving and changing stance, or walking around and eating and still breaking into a sprint which then interrupts your tactical bacon feast."

From a design perspective, there are countless areas that are dependent on, or will touch the player controller itself - and thus on hold pending the new system being in game and functional internally.

- 3rd Person toggleable UI overlay
- 3rd Person overlay when in vehicles
- Character Soft Skills
- User Actions (change from the old style "start anim - finish - success" style to a more fluid per-time style system)
- Character Lifespan (Weathering / Beards)
- The move and rewrite of all base game actions to Enforce Script
- User controls balancing / audit pass
- Weapon Handling / Character Stamina

To name a few!

In addition, I frequently get asked why a specific bug might not be resolved yet, or why something hasn't been addressed yet in development that from a players perspective might seem critical.
There are a lot of things to take into consideration in development when weighing a bugfix, not to mention when you're dealing with a title transitioning from one engine, to another one that is *in development* Lets take a quick look into a brief break down of how the thought process goes:

- First off - what is the risk of this fix at the current time?

• What are the goals for the upcoming build? Does this potentially represent larger issues that will push the build back?
• Is this issue tied to a technology that is going to be replaced?
  • For example - Is this an issue tied with the legacy renderer?
• Is this issue related to ongoing investigation of a larger issue with wider sweeping impact on the title?
• If this issue IS tied to a system scheduled to be rewritten or replaced - what is the estimated time involved in:
  • Work resolving the issue itself
  • Test pass on the issue
  • Overall BVT test pass to ensure related issues are not encountered
  • Regression testing on the issue 
• A lot of issues consumers see in the way of:
  • Duplicating (Old action system)
  • Glitching into models
  • Damage / Projectile cheats
  • Balancing / etc

Are all things that are slated to be resolved, or at least mitigated with new technologies that are being worked on *right now* - so the hard decision has to be made - Do we potentially waste valuable development time and resources on something that will *not* end up in the shipped title? Honestly - we try to do that as little as possible. We still end up going a very large amount of it to try and keep the consumer steam branches as playable as possible, but frequently the unpopular and hard decision has to be made to stay the course, and dedicated those resources towards the final product / final systems / final technology.

[ColdAtrophy 1850]

More of this please! I know it takes time to type this stuff out, but this is excellent. Thank you very much Hicks. I'd give you beans but ya know. The forum devolved.

[Tatanko 5591]

6 minutes ago, ColdAtrophy said:

I know it takes time to type this stuff out, but this is excellent.

Agreed. Thanks for the insight into the development process, Brian!

[Zimorak 50]

Cool! Thanks for the update Hicks.

[ultimatewarmachine 0]

Thanks Brian for this update on animations, I love to see these and more would be great :D

[Hicks_206 (DayZ) 4297]

I saw a few tweets and comments being a bit confused about some of the dependencies - so:

New Animation System < New Player Controller < All those things I listed waiting on it

[BoneJunkie 21]

Thanks for taking the time for this write up B. I'm THE biggest Dayz Fan, as you may or may not know. *raises can of beans* Cheers to that...

Anyway,

With the release of .60 *tomorrow*, do you feel that a large portion of the current development struggles will be a thing of the past? We, the people, feel that the current blockers are big items and once those are taken care of, things will be smooth sailing here on out.

Thanks again!

 

[gg_wolf 56]

Sorry, but where was it stated that 0.60 would release "tomorrow"?

[BoneJunkie 21]

32 minutes ago, gg_wolf said:

Sorry, but where was it stated that 0.60 would release "tomorrow"?

Tomorrow is always in the future. The future is never in the present. That's why I had it with * 

[c4p 30]

True words, thank you Mr. Hicks. Can't wait :-)

[HardManiac 2]

I secretly hope that the update will come out before Easter ;p .

[joe_mcentire 2074]

Quote

- Character Soft Skills

can you give us an unrelated example what this might mean? how do you imagine "soft skills" dependent on the player controller, in which context?

also: not sure how to describe it but i reckon each animation is "recorded" with a defined speed of sequences so that animation A takes from start to finish t seconds. how will this be handled in future or how is it handled currently? is there/ will there be an option to change the speed of sequences on-the-fly or "offline" as set of animations A with predefined durations tx? so animation A can have a duration of t*0.7 and, t*1.4 respectively for example? hope to make sense here. i could see aspects of soft skills realized in such a way to some extent. e.g. low medic-skill: t_treatwound = 8s vs high medic-skill t_treadwound = 3s. and also enabling different styles of gameplay: slow/silent vs. quick/noisy in areas such as reloading weapons, sneaking, handling objects in general and looting

 

edit regarding bugs:

i know you might work hard on implementing a new feedback-tracker but the time since it has been offline is unreal. i can't imagine a 0.60 release without a somewhat functional feedback-tracker. pls make this even a higher priority. i jump in now and then solely to give feedback and i can imagine there are quite a few of us. 

Cheers

 

edit: do we get an SR as well today :P ?

Edited March 22, 2016 by joe_mcentire

[Funkdoc 46]

 

1 hour ago, joe_mcentire said:

so animation A can have a duration of t*0.7 and, t*1.4 respectively for example? hope to make sense here. i could see aspects of soft skills realized in such a way to some extent. e.g. low medic-skill: t_treatwound = 8s vs high medic-skill t_treadwound = 3s.

 

such animations of a variable duration can just be made of animation loops, like we know from arma3 and ace3 medicsystem, i think that wouldnt be a problem.

i think the animation shouldnt be a thing to get stuck on.. its nice to have good looking fluid motions, right ...but alot of people always want more.. this is a endless story

 

@Brian

i like the way u stay to your project... take your time and make a real hammer out of that title... u guys deserve it

dont forget the infected AI at the end of beta please :)

[St. Jimmy 1631]

15 hours ago, Funkdoc said:

i think the animation shouldnt be a thing to get stuck on.. its nice to have good looking fluid motions, right ...but alot of people always want more.. this is a endless story

Not sure what you mean here but the animation system is one of the biggest thing to happen for this game. This is so huge step from the RV animation system and when it's made right, it allows much much more. Every animation modder (and the devs) have been waiting for this to happen because the old system is really outdated. It's not just that the animations would be smoother, it's also about that the animations are easier to do.

[HeXed MinD 5]

17 hours ago, joe_mcentire said:

edit: do we get an SR as well today :P ?

Every second Tuesday.

[EatSleepSurviveRepeat 1]

Keep up the work !
Looking forward to 0.60

[korzhyk 0]

22 hours ago, HardManiac said:

I secretly hope that the update will come out before Easter ;p .

Yes, in the next year!

Edited March 23, 2016 by korzhyk

[Wh1spY 110]

On 3/22/2016 at 8:12 PM, HardManiac said:

I secretly hope that the update will come out before Easter ;p .

Someone whispered in my ear, it will be late april / early may. But don't take my words for it. 

Edited March 24, 2016 by Wh1spY

[Ugly (DayZ) 79]

hi DayZ team! Just want to say I really,,,,,,,,, REALLY appreciate the new updates! Even if the news is "we're delayed", I very much appreciate being kept in the loop! Thank you!

[Coheed_IV 381]

Thank god you Devs have the balls to build this game properly, under the stress of EA.

[Drake84pl 31]

On 21 marca 2016 at 6:35 PM, Hicks_206 (DayZ) said:

I saw a few tweets and comments being a bit confused about some of the dependencies - so:

New Animation System < New Player Controller < All those things I listed waiting on it

With the implementation of the New Animation System, New Player Controller and probably various other things further down the line, is it possible that DayZ SA's melee combat will someday in the future be as fun, fast and responsive as in The Culling?


 

Edited March 29, 2016 by Drake84pl

[emuthreat 2837]

After reading the latest status report and this link, I am still confused as to the distinction between player controller and new UI; particularly regarding the new weapon chambering/reloading animations.  Are these UI, or player controller functions, and how do the gun animations factor into the necessities of .60 functionality?

[S3V3N 1402]

On 26.3.2016 at 5:40 PM, Drake84pl said:

With the implementation of the New Animation System, New Player Controller and probably various other things further down the line, is it possible that DayZ SA's melee combat will someday in the future be as fun, fast and responsive as in The Culling?


 

Are you completely mad? The Culling has the most shite combat, I've seen since...hell, I don't even know. People prove every day that they have no understanding of game design or features, will run after every trend and hype the biggest shit around. The Culling is completely sub-par in every aspect. It's a terribly designed game with poor environments, unresponsive melee (basically it is scissors, stone, paper) and a  few other features that are terrible. 

Dayz's melee combat might get better over time, but it won't ever be good. It's pretty terrible now, but since there will be some updates it can possibly become decent. If you want to quote good melee combat, look at games like Chivalry. It puzzles me why any dev in the first place would make the decision to have Dayz heavy with melee weapons. There's tons of them and they are all useless, unless they are a tool; sure you can chop down infected with it, but that's just as exciting as cutting wood. 

Edited March 30, 2016 by S3V3N

[Rags! 1966]

HOLY CRAP, BRIAN! That's incredible!

You saw somebody in Grishino?

[Hicks_206 (DayZ) 4297]

Bumping this because it is especially relevant right now.

A lot of future content is pending these large changes to the base engine.