entspeak

The Mosin Nagant can be found in DayZ 2017 instead of the Enfield.

When I started out, the best tips I got were: the clouds go from West to East... and at night, look for the North Star.

Of course, on private servers it's their own business. Personally, I'm not a fan of giving players anything for a donation. I can see that a skin might not be so bad (so long as it's not a ghillie or other skin that provides an advantage), but giving players an advantage over other players - weapons, vehicles, etc... - for payment just seems wrong to me.

You're paying for Arma, but yes... there are the many other mods of Arma that are available as well as the variants of DayZ that are well worth playing. There will be no modding of DayZ SA for some time, I imagine.

What's been discussed by Rocket is the notion of exploring something along the lines of toxoplasmosis... which can also have flu like symptoms. In this case, it would be a parasite or virus that causes humans to become more aggressive... perhaps something that's been weaponized to cause a population to wipe itself out.

These are zombies in the sense that they were in 28 Days Later. They aren't reanimated corpses - you don't die and become a zombie (unless you're playing DayZ Epoch, that is... :) ), they are living infected humans. There will always be a debate about whether or not these are truly zombies; though, personally, I think it's safe to use the word to describe them even if they don't fit the classic mold.

And walking in the game doesn't hinder your aim, but people don't walk much in game, now, do they? Now, if you said you'd ran 4-5 miles with that equipment and it didn't hinder your aim - taking a shot immediately after that run... I'd say you were full of it.

I've heard the L85's also have a laser pointer which can only be seen by NVGs - like its AWS predecessor. Good for spotting targets for snipers and blinding players with NVGs.

Yea!! I'm glad that adjusting the angle of view didn't have adverse effects on performance. But perhaps giving zeds an FoV significantly greater than humans are capable of is a bit much... haha! ;) What happens if you have it at 180 and keep that random chance they won't see you? Does that make them not spot enough?

The way zombies behave in the latest build is, for the most part, pretty awesome. I haven't had a zombie hit me through a wall - though, I did see one try, but I happened not to be near enough. So, that issue has definitely been minimized, if not addressed completely. They are definitely more like the 1.7.5 zeds and they hit harder, but don't make you bleed as often. And, they certainly chase you longer. I ha one that RAN AROUND the pine tree I tried to use to lose LOS - it didn't stop an walk for a moment, as I've seen in the past. It took a lot of weaving for it to finally get lost. So far, the only issue I've seen with the zeds is the aggro from sensing. I've had zeds almost 20m away aggro when they are facing away from me when I'm crouch walking, I've got no bars for sound. It would be awesome if it was still possible, though difficult to enter an area without aggroing zombies, if you took it really slow, used cover and played the angles... at the moment it's futile. No matter how good you may be at stealth, if you a come across a zed, it's not a question of IF they aggro, it's a question of WHEN - and that will be more sooner than later. If you can't get your hatchet out or a silenced weapon, be prepared to check for loot by running by windows and doors and quickly pie'ing it. And, I really think the blood regen should apply to ALL blood regeneration. The great thing about the idea of a "skills based" system is that the "days survived" factor can reduce the mindless PvP and make people want to keep their characters alive to gain a benefit... but that won't happen if bloodbags are a loophole. Simply making bloodbags more rare is not enough. Why not try it with bloodbags. I love that blood from food regenerates slowly.

And this is the douchebaggiest thing you could possibly do. It's cheating and shouldn't be encouraged. Theft is part of the game and if you are stashing vehicles in the debug, you are removing them from the map and taking them out of the game. In other words, douchebaggery.

DayZ is incredibly CPU heavy, so... perhaps that could be the bottleneck.

I have no problem with the idea of PvP, the problem is with balance. There are consequences in the world for avoiding PvP... chances are you won't get te really good loot, you will have a problem repairing and keeping possession of vehicles, you have to stay out of kill zone areas. The consequences of engaging in PvP is that you risk getting killed a lot. But, if you talk to most PvP players, they will tell you that doesn't bother them. So, to add consequences, you have to make PvP harder... enter the zombies. Zombies make PvP harder, they give away your position, they make it hard to keep on a target, they make it harder to gear up again when you die. If the zombies are not a threat, the balance between PvP and survival gets skewed in favor of PvP. The zombies will never be perfect, but they are definitely improving. It won't be so easy to get away from them in the next release. They are more persistent. I've had problems where I've lost one set among some buildings only to run into another set. Yes, you can still run into buildings and lose them that way. But if you want freedom to loot, it will require planning a route and silently taking out zombies that are going to get in your way... or creating a distraction. Unless you're a diehard PvP person who only wants to come on to a server to rack up as many kills in a couple hours as you can, the next build will be enjoyable, I think. Of course, server admins will also play a role in whether or not PvP is more balanced as a part of the game.

Regarding nights... from the 1.7.7 Changelog: * [NEW] - Servers date has been locked to give full moon nights.

The figure on the DayZ site is the number for public servers. I don't believe the site tracks private server player counts. And, after playing this morning with a rifle in my primary that I wanted and couldn't put in my pack, I can tell you the zeds are, thankfully, going back to being an issue in 1.7.7. They are more persistent, it's almost as if they can smell you the way they start slowly heading your direction, they hit harder and firing a weapon will draw them to you quick. If you don't have a silenced weapon, expect to have trouble looting. This combined with the adjusted loot tables means survival will be difficult. If you're playing in daylight, you will be seen and the zombie calling seems to be working better. It's possible to be stealthy, but very difficult during the day. There are some issues with sensing, but I prefer they err on the side of zombies seeing you than not. Like I said, I hope that admins will reset their databases with this one. It's a good one to start fresh with.

Except for the things the devs can't control in terms of admin customization, 1.7.7 is much more survival based with the current build - guns are very rare and often spawn with no ammo. Even the heli crashes are not the smorgasbord they once were. I hope every admin resets the database when 1.7.7 is released - not going to happen, but it would be awesome if it did. And admins are going to have to pay close attention to their anti-hack measures... nothing brings out the skiddies like a game where it's hard to load up. The zombies are still a bit easy, in my opinion, but there are now some points where you are going to have to deal with them because they spawn in the buildings and stay there. Freaky as hell to turn a corner and bump into a waiting zed blocking my way. I also love nighttime play and wish there was a way to force gamma/brightness. I admit to using the exploit, but only on higher pop servers because I know they are likely doing it and there's no point to playing in the dark when everybody else is exploiting to see. The game is so much better in the dark in terms of intensity.

Oh, okay. I see that now. I had to move through the video slowly to see what you were talking about - with the blood, there's a lot of red on the screen, you're facing straight ahead and the explosion moves your view up, so... the indicator doesn't jump out. I mean, I'd rather it be an adjustment in the blood spatter on the screen to give a general idea of direction - to get away from a more precise HUD-like indicator, but the idea of a hitmarker for that doesn't bother me.

No on hit markers from me, too. But, in the video immediately above... isn't that just another hit marker for hitting the enemy with the grenade and doesn't indicate the direction from which you were hit by the grenade? I wish DayZ would add back in the blood spatter on screen from Arma 2, then that could be set up to give a general idea of the direction from which you were hit. Which is something that, realistically you'd get a sense of, in my opinion - if you're shot, the impact would give you a general idea of direction. Having a precise indicator, would not be realistic, however.

True, but kind of misses the point.A bandit will rob and tell an unarmed fresh spawn to leave the area - preventing them from getting armed... if they don't comply, then killing them is fine. A - what's the word used? - right... a dick simply kills a fresh spawn on sight.

Something similar happened to me once on a public server. I was walking through an opening in the trees near Gvodzno and suddenly started bleeding. I didn't hear anything and I had treeline all around me, so nobody had a clear shot from a long distance away. The first time my screen went gray, I thought it was weird. Then, a few seconds later it went gray again and I started bleeding. There was no gun sound at all, didn't hear bullets flying at me or landing near me. I figured it must've been a hacker because I'd just called out someone for being a hacker because they were bragging in side chat about how they had g36's and radios (this was well before the G36 was added to public servers), so I logged out and went to a different server. On another occasion, I was legitimately killed by the ATC tower at the NWAF and was pleasantly surprised to learn when I got all the way back to my body that they'd left my NVG's and Rangefinders - I just lost my CCO-SD.

Ack! I'm suddenly reading every post in Rocket's voice. Even as I write this, I hear it in his voice! Thanks for the devblog; glad to hear that it's progressing so well! Looking forward to the screenshots. :)

Yeah, it's a forest fire usually caused by a heli or plane crash. Can't hurt you.

Yeah, I'm happy to say DayZ is absolutely playable on a Dell 14r laptop: Core i3-2310m @ 2.10Ghz, 8GB RAM, Intel HD3000. The extra RAM helped tremendously because it increased the video card's share of the RAM to 512MB from 324MB. I have the same experience with Arma 3. I believe I get about 30fps... which ain't great by any stretch of the imagination, but it's playable. I've gotten my share of kills in Arma 3 Wasteland. I just can't play with shadows on - which sucks because it adds a really lovely dimension to the world, but... that's just the way it is. If I had a GTX690, I'd be playing with shadows on definitely. At some point, I'd love to get a new computer that can get a better frame rate at higher graphics settings, but that just isn't going to happen any time soon. And, it should be noted, your eyes aren't going to notice any improvement in FPS beyond the refresh rate of your monitor. If, for example, your monitor is set to 60hz, you're never going to see any difference beyond 60FPS. The benefit to a GPU that can put out more is that when the load gets heavy, it may not decrease in fps below the monitor's refresh rate.

Looks to me like the OP is not running with shadows on. That makes a huge difference for me on my crappy lappy in terms of video performance. I'm sure that explains some of the high FPS. If I turn shadows on, the game becomes unplayable; if I leave them off, it's pretty snappy... though not nearly as pretty, to be sure. I've been told that, if you're going to play with shadows on and your graphics card can handle it, to keep shadows on high or above... this shifts the shadows off of the cpu and onto the graphics card. As others have said, viewing distance is set to a max of 1600 in DayZ, though some servers bring in more fog to lower that. I think you get better results when the other details are set to High or Very High because they render out smoother into the distance.

As other's have stated, the SA will go back to DayZ's roots. I agree that private hives (believed at first to be the savior of the game because of the ability to whitelist) have become one of the big failures. The problem is that, rather than playing the game as is or coming up with their own variant, they choose to customize the game and still call it DayZ. They tend to cater to those who don't like the survival aspect of it and, so, you have custom loadouts... or worse, custom loadouts if you give the admin money. Hopefully, the SA will be able to severely limit hacking and scripting by design... thus making private hives unnecessary. My hope is that, should private hives be added, that the admins will not have the ability to customize loadouts. If you want to rent a server and play DayZ, you should rent a server and play DayZ... not your own interpretation of DayZ-lite. Leave game-altering customization to modders when that becomes possible with the SA. Currently, the private hives are spoiling players (and, in some instances, milking them for cash with the promise of easier gameplay). Custom loadouts confuse players as to what DayZ actually is. I've seen this first hand playing a DayZ variant where, because some admins decided to add back in a particular over-powered weapon, players believed that weapon was actually a part of the variant game when it wasn't and got mad when the creators went so far as to make that weapon (and all other weapons not included in the variant of the mod) weigh thousands of pounds so that you couldn't even move if you picked one up.