032125 (DayZ)

Aye that. Rocket might do his vanguard a favor by realeasing smaller updates, more often. They don't all have to be polished video commentaries. For fuck's sake throw up a couple of pictures every week and a line or two of update. I could to that much just sitting on the pooper.

Firefox+"Reload Every" addon

I just posted this in the video blog thread, then realized that this is the better place for it. Imagine if that swamp was submerged every 6 hours. When the tides recede, players rush out to see what items (crabs, trash, bodies) have washed up. Imagine if heavy rains raised the water table so that ponds lakes and rivers (we can only hope they add at least one river) could potentially spill over thier banks. This would be flipping amazing. I don't think it would be difficult to implement, though I may be wildy misled.

Tides change the landscape on a consistent timetable. A wise man can use this to his advantage; he can find a tidal island to rest in relative safety from zeds, park a car on it to keep people from driving it away while he forages, or ingress/egress using watercraft at key times. A flooded salt marsh forces players out of the low ground, which they may otherwise use to hide movement. If the developers factored weight limits into swimming, getting caught in the tidal flats could be deadly for an overloaded player, caught unaware by the rising waters. Rising rivers is another issue altogether. Imagine you've set up shop in the basement of a riverside house. Heavy rains flood the river, and threaten to flood your base; do you abandon it? Do you have enough sandbags to stave off flooding? What if you are being chased by bandits, and the ford that you have used a dozen times is now sitting under six feed of water? Are you desparate enough to attempt a crossing anyhow? Do you head for the bridge a mile away and hope it is clear? If the rain persists, entire fields may become swamps, forcing players to take the lon way round, or slog across slowly, exposed to fire. Flood waters may also be tainted, and spread disease. Corpses might wash up on river banks far away from larger settlements, introducing new problems. These are the things I think about with water tables and tides.

That mosquito sound pops up at too regular an interval. Needs randomization.

Dude that swamp is connected to the sea/ocean. This is called a tidal swamp or salt marsh. There is one three miles from where I'm sitting, and it floods every 6 hours. http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Salt_marsh They are extremely common. Here is a time lapse: As far as I know, the water table is just a setting that could be set to move up or down over a given time. The consequences of this change on player behavior could be very, very significant.

Captain Ellipses; my old nemesis; we meet again; let the battle of hyperpunctuation; BEGIN!!!!

I suppose I mean that loot would spawn underwater while the tide was in, simulating the kind of refuse (natural and man-made) that accrues on shores when the tide comes in. Drift wood would be cools as well; you don't then need a hatchet to start a fire on the beach.

Looking at that "swamp" (more of a tidal flat) I just had an epiphany, and didn't find that anyone has mentioned it yet. Tides and water tables. Imagine if that swamp was submerged every 6 hours. When the tides recede, players rush out to see what items (crabs, trash, bodies) have washed up. Imagine if heavy rains raised the water table so that ponds lakes and rivers (we can only hope they add at least one river) could potentially spill over thier banks. This would be flipping amazing.

I agree. Chernarus desperately needs some mid-map water obstacles, like at least on decent-sized river. Hopefuilly some more significant water features will be added in the center (more swamps would be nice).

Head bob is a ridiculous concept to begin with; our spines are flexible, our heads independent from the rest of our bodies. What vision-centric animal can you think of that loses visual acuity while running? None. Animals like rhinos can't see shit anyhow, but you'd better believe that any predators that got all fucking blurry when they ran were edged out eons ago. How would you persue prey if this were the case? Does your vision shake and blur when you run? Mine doesn't. Head bob is to FPSs what 30lb axes are to RPGs; a gross misunderstanding pushed along by institutional inertia. [edit] Just sprinted down the hall; no perceptible head bob, certainly no blurring. Either my head is bobbing so little that it's irellevant, or my brain has developed to filter out the motion. Now about that stupid corsshair bobble in the prone....

My garage.

Ooh! Can you grab me some morphine auto-injectors, blood bags, and an epi-pen? Thanks, comrade.

Apparently I'm dense, and am unable to find the Q&A on the DayZ Reddit. Linky?

Federal empires are a disease. We should have learned this over the last 200+ years, but we're entrenched in a failed experiment. Why am I politically chained to the opinions of New Englanders, the dirty South, and Kalifornia? I'm pretty sure that a lot of Europeans are feeling the same way right now, and believe me that will grow. Maybe if you didn't have to drag Greece around like dead weight, you could focus on thier good qualities, instead of thier flaws. Some relationships just work a lot better at arm's length.

And here I thought the center of the world was a nickel–iron alloy. Apparently it's Wales.

Not a Hollywood construct. It's just ignorance about the temporary use of Y as a stand-in for the older English character thorn Þ, þ which represented TH sound, before it was replaced by the modern digraph th. Also, when is this next supposed mod update?

Threadomancy!

Wat? Following weights are all from mail in the Wallace Colelction A1 (Late C14th, short sleeved, 74cm long) - 4.5 Kg A2 (2nd Q C15th, short sleeved, 71cm long) - 8.8 Kg A3 (1st H C15th, long sleeved, 69cm long) - 9.0Kg A4 (mid C15th, sleeveless, 71cm long) - 6Kg A5 (mid C15th, sleeveless and incomplete, 72cm long) - 9.0Kg A6 (late C15th, long sleeved, 71cm long) - 7.5Kg A7 (C16th, long sleeved, 64cm long) - 8Kg

I'd rather do away with the zombies and implement gangs/raiders/bandits. Dean has let me to believe that the zombies were an afterthought; the original concept was a survival simulator, and I like that better. I'd take a MadMax mod over a zombie mod any day.

Lots of games offer a "default" key bindings button, but none offer a "clear all bindings" setting. For a game as complex as ARMA II, this means that unorthodox players (like myself) spend hours wiping and reassinging buttons. It should take very little in the way of dev time to offer an option to clear all buttons so that I can assign my own. Some buttons are never needed; let me clear them all out and assign as needed. I know that people who grew up using WADS are scratching their heads. Don't bother suggesting that I just use WADS; I hate it and always will. Please consider an option to assign buttons as needed by having a "clear keybindings" option. That is all.

My key setup is admittedly insane (LMB forward, RMB Back, S&D strafe Left and Right respectively, F to Fire, etc.) but I've had it that way since Wolfenstein when you only needed about eight buttons to do everything. I suppose one counld dig into the config file, but it's doesn't seem too much to ask for a single button.

That makes me happy.

First of all, there is no balance in DayZ. Dean just reiterated this in an interview yesterday; so balance arguments are right out the window. Second, DayZ is absolutely biased towards external knowledge. Again, Dean has pointed this out numerous times; the classic example being that the stars in the skybox are accurate (to Eastern Europe apparently, Orion sits differently from where I sit) and anyone with a knowlege of orienteering can use them in lieu of a compass. Third, bipods stabilize the rifle by isolating the rifle from user movement. They do not eat recoil (assuming you're using the bipod correctly, you will be loading into it, not hanging back on it). Your body eats the recoil in a proper prone position, down your back and out through your toes. Fourth, any .50cal rifle with a decent brake recoils about like 3inch turkey loads. An ill-placed Mosin hurts more. The AI AS-50 has a decent brake, so anyone who is used to shooting big bore civilian rifles should need no special training to use the .50cal. Fifth, how on earth could someone get kissed by a 5.56 rifle? There's almost no recoil... in fact the Army teaches nose to charging handle in basic training, because A. it's an index point that any doofus can remember and B. there is almost no recoil on a 5.56 rifle. Sixth, I love that realistic sniping video, but I've never noticed any wind effect on ballistics in ARMA. Is that something that they added as well? If windage had to be accounted for in DayZ you'd find a lot of people giving up on long range shooting altogether. Elevation is easy-peasy; windage is the devil, especially across valleys.

The sounds are poorly recorded and extremely lacking. I don't care where they were recorded, they suck. M4s are especially loud; one or two shots unprotected will jack up your hearing for a couple of hours, and if you're like me and have been exposed to a lot of gunfire, you probably have permanent loss and tinitis. People who use the AS50 unprotected should develop both after a couple of mags. [Edit] now that I mention it, everyone's ears should be ringing after a gun battle. Period. For at least a minute. Anyhow gunfire up close needs plenty of thump to it; even 9mm. My friend had a ported CZ75 (9mm) and every time I pulled the trigger it was like leprauchans were slapping the inside of my sinuses with cricket bats. A hand grenade within 50 meters is unbelievably loud; you feel it right through your chest. They got the sonic crack right; it's one of the best little touches in ARMA and most games totally neglect it. All of the other sounds are ridiculous. Why do I sound like I'm wearing amplified tap shoes in a house, louder than a bleedin' M4 50 feet away? Meybe it's not the sounds themselves, but the volume at which they come through relative to each other...