Xeros612

That's actually kind of a shit idea as it just needlessly limits who can play the game. Hell, I can't even play DayZ as-is anymore because of that update that locked the view distance to what the server's set to. I could play just fine before by dropping view distance to about 600 or lower, but now it's unplayable*. Besides, many, many games have had variable view distance switches, has that been an issue there? It's just an entirely unnecessary version of forced-"equality". *I'm not in a position to buy a new computer at the moment. Besides, my computer is capable of running ARMA II/Operation Arrowhead proper, it surpasses the minimum requirements. I expect it to run choppy at times, that's fine. But to be literally unplayable just because view distance is entirely server-controlled and I can't turn it down like I could a couple patches ago is simply moronic. As for the main topic: So tell me, what engine would be more suitable for this game? What other engine could render a 221 square kilometer map seamlessly like Real Virtuality? What engine out there can render such a large map without cutting things into segments? Furthermore, what other engine would be capable of this and running all the simulation calculations and TrackIR? Real Virtuality 4, certainly, and I'd love to see it on BIS's new engine version, but what other engine out there would cut it? I'm with you on "better performance", but again, what other engine out there could even hope to render all of Cherno as one object? As for AI, they only AI in the mod are zombies, and since when have zombies been intelligent? From what I've seen and played myself, the AI is fairly intelligent for a collection of algorithms in normal ARMA II gameplay. Pathfinding... is pretty much the same thing. Even still, all of these, including GUI, can be tweaked and improved without changing engines at all. As for the graphics, let's be honest here: BIS is not some gigantic AAA developer/publisher with millions of dollars to spend on their games, and even if they were they'd probably be pressured into making console-friendly arcade-like shooters to bring in the money for their multi-million dollar budget. (The same could be said for the bugs. They aren't dirt-broke, but they aren't pulling ing millions upon millions to make super-polished games.) Of course their 2009 DX9 engine isn't going to look as nice as Crytek-EA's 2011 DX9/11(because why support 10? it's not like it's a valid DX library or anything) does, and the same likely goes for their newer engine. At the same time, have we seen CryEngine 3 rendering anything on the scale of Chernarus? Same question goes for Unreal 3 or any other engine suggested in this thread. If they could render that large a map at all- seamlessly, I might add; no loading cells- I doubt they'd look as "eye-candy" good as they're shown to be in their fancy promo videos. At the end of the day... Harris, you are making a lot of very, very ignorant statements. Aside from the suggestions you've made that have been responded to, to say ARMA is a failing series when they greenlighted a sequel not too long ago- before DayZ, in fact- is just plain wrong. Additionally, people "not hearing about ARMA until DayZ" (or, more accurately, until some big-name youtubers made videos of varying quality about it) says nothing negative about the game's quality. You have to remember the kind of society gaming is today, where simplistic, easy, generic, rehashed, console-based games and very casual flash games are the big, popular games, and anyone with a fully functioning brain should know that popularity and quality are connected in any way whatsoever.

One possiblity could be the render distance. If I remember right, some patch made servers have full control over render distance for some terrible reason; 1600 I think? If ARMA II runs alright, and you've got your view distance set below that, that may be the issue. (My laptop has had the same issue since that particular patch, to the point I can't play the mod any more.)

Definitely. It's probably for the best that I've never gotten better than the Enfield (shamefully don't have much time to play this between recording, editing, and rendering things for the youtubes), since I doubt I'd be able to calculate that kind of aiming! Pretty fun game, to be sure. But the thing is, Ubisoft is a much bigger company with much higher budgets, so they can afford to buff graphics and make their engines more efficient. BIS is an independent studio that makes simulators- a niche, rather than a popular, mainstream genre- so it makes sense that they'd be behind richer companies in engine efficiency and quality. Oh dear god no. The only company I'd want handling something like this less would be Activision-Blizzard. I like my DayZ without being a console port with online passes, overpriced DRM, arcade ballistics, regenerating health, and intrusive DRM, thank you. Fair enough. Then consider my joke sensor broken! Sorry, not doing it for me. Looks 2002-2003 console game at best to me, still using sprites for details even. ARMA2 on minimum settings is definitely still above that. Additional point regarding stamina: I think the thing is, ARMA is built on playing as highly trained military soldiers sent on combat missions, not "random survivor dude n" given free reign of the entirety of Chernarus. Certainly might be something that can be tweaked in time for DayZ, though.... I'm pretty sure it's already been tweaked, in the way of increasing stamina. I've seen quite a number of ARMA 2 vanilla videos in which the players' aim is shaky after running for a while, while I haven't seen that happen in DayZ at all other than when the player needs painkillers.

I've quoted the worst points you've brought up. And how do you expect it to work? Get hungry' date=' eat food. Get thirsty, drink a beverage. Get cold, get a heat pack or start a fire. Bleeding? Bandage the wound. Of course there may be room for needing a splint or "homemade cast" for lack of a better term for broken limbs rather than just jabbing yourself with morphine, but how complex can a survival system be? Unless you've played the single player mod of the mod and it happens there, you can't really say it's not latency. Latency client-side, latency server-side, the fact that it's an alpha, all come into play. As for ballistics, I doubt they've changed from ARMA 2, and that's not exactly something to sneeze at. Sure, there's plenty of tweaking to do but that's what Alpha and Beta are for. 1. Your mind is blown by the fact that a game from 2009 doesn't run as well as a game from 2004? Is your mind also blown by the fact that Doom 3 didn't run as smoothly as Quake III? That Crysis didn't run as well as Far Cry? Next thing you'll tell me is DirectX 10 should have run faster than DirectX 9. Real Virtuality 3 isn't exactly the best optimised engine out there, but it should come as nothing more than a "no fucking shit" that the game doesn't run as quickly as something from five years prior. 2. Futile. Frostbite 2.0 is decent eye candy, but the ballistics are pure arcade and there's no modding support because that would make it harder to sell official map sets or that bullshit excuse the PR department made up. 3. DayZ on the Source engine.... nope. Sorry, but an engine from 2004, despite being updated, is probably not the best choice for something this far removed from everything Source has been used for. Has Source even been used to render one gigantic map as a single loaded entity? 4. Gamebryo is a crap engine for what it's used for already. How again would that be better suited for something like this? 5. Bullshit. That's literally impossible. Even minimum settings (which I have to use because I've nothing but a three year old laptop at the moment) look better than that.

Maybe a Makarov, one spare mag, a can of beans, a bottle of water, and a bandage. Let's be honest, weaponless spawns would be awful. What happens if you alert a zed somehow? Just stand there and accept death or run as long as you can? You need some way to defend yourself.

I was in some small village near the coast, having been moved there from my previous position near the NW Airfield by the latest patch. Looting the area to try to reacquire some of the ammo I had lost in various zed horde rushes brought on by their heightened sense of hearing, much greater than I remembered in previous patches. 2 mags and 1 bullet for my Enfield, three mags for my M1911. It was the greatest haul of my DayZ career; the lack of lustre of it owing to having never made it to the northern areas. Somehow, I had alerted the zeds in the area. I made a break for the barn nearby to take advantage of their slower interior speed. I managed to take out the initial wave without too much trouble, having a bit of ammo to spare. I had noticed on my way to the barn some ammo in a nearby outhouse. I tried to loot it, but another wave had made its way to my location, some even clipping through the rear door I had shut. The next wave proved too many, the hollow click of the trigger of an empty rifle followed by the hollow click of my sidearm. Not even one bullet for myself. I knew it then: I wasn't going to live. Even if I managed to run far enough to encounter another survivor, it was probably going to end up like it had before: myself being shot before any of the zeds. I wasn't about to sit there and let them take me. I ran. I ran. Dodging the zeds in the barn wasn't hard, not one of them managed to land a punch. I tried again to loot the ammo in the outhouse, but the gear key wouldn't even recognise the items. I bolted again, running around the right side and around the pile of hay. I could have sworn I dodged any zeds in that area, but one had apparently hit me. With that one hit, I was down, my leg broken. It was over. Everything lost to a zed's one lucky punch.

1. People have trust issues' date=' especially now since a popular response to bandits being bandits seems to be "ok, now I'm going to kill everyone on sight because I can't trust anyone". Of course there's going to be a lot of player killing. 2. I believe eventually all chat beyond direct chat will be disabled, partially fixing this. 3. [i']Play hardcore survival shooter, complain that you're punished for dying. You die, you lose everything. There's no continuity issue here; you're dead. You "respawn" somewhere as a different person altogether with a coincidentally identical look and name with just rookie gear. Sure, it sucks to lose good gear to some bandit or paranoid survivor (or falling off a fucking ladder for no reason), but such is life in the zone- er, Chernarus. You die, you lose it all, you start over fresh and hope for a better life this time around. 4. Hardcore survival game needn't have shoehorned-in objectives. Anything beyond simply surviving in terms of objectives is something the player needs to make up themselves. Gather parts for a vehicle and make it. Try to make a base with some buddies. Make your own goals. As for rewards, your rewards is the gear you find while looting corpses or buildings. No need at all for MMO-style quest rewards or ribbons/experience/etc. for doing some random task. 5. Nope. NO. For god's sake, NO. The game is hardcore survival. There are going to be loners, survivors with friends/squadmates, and bandits. The only punishment a known bandit needs to have in such a scenario is getting a bad reputation among other players on the server. Shoehorning in some gamey system just because people love to whine and cry about every little player killing incident is a horrible idea and I'm glad the old system is gone. You want trustworthy people, try to get people you know to play with you. There are going to be bandits. Deal with it.