horrorview

LOL! Yes, you have a very good point, there. And Rocket's current silence could very well just be due to the fact that he's got his nose to the proverbial grindstone squashing bugs, which is fine with me, but it would be nice were he active once again (or at least as active as he was a month ago). I think the silence, in this case, is deafening.

One thing I agree with the game's detractors on is the fact that, yes, we do need more by way of communication from the devs. I understood Rocket's decision to back away for a bit after the fallout of the Eurogamer article, but it's time for him to return to the forefront and do what it was he did before Reddit exploded. Rocket is the reason the team doesn't have a community manager, as he's on record as saying that they're superfluous and that "no one listens to them anyway", so he's long served as the defacto CM. If he doesn't want to deal with the negatives and the personal attacks and criticisms (and who among us really does?), then he must HIRE A COMMUNITY MANAGER to at least give us a weekly update on progress/setbacks. Pithy comments and tweets from Hicks are obviously not enough to satisfy the community.

That's not really fair, though, is it? I mean, I played Breaking Point when it came out for ARMA III and I still play it on occasion today (actually I logged a few hours this evening seeing as how experimental is down). I enjoy it for what it is, but, at the end of the day, it's really just a less buggy version of the DAYZ mod with a bigger focus on PVP. There have been vehicles in BP since it was released because they're simply using the ARMA III vehicles (albeit rusted out versions of them), and the only new things they've brought to the table are the melee weapons (originally they were using the Arma II/DAYZ mod melee weapons but BI put the kibosh on that) and a sort of clumsy looting mechanic that has you rummaging through boxes/garbage bins/suitcases which saved their modeling guys the hassle of having to create 3D models of the loot items to replace the ones BI said they couldn't use. If you look at the things they've actually made, you'll see they're not very polished (the textures on the melee weapons, clothing, etc aren't very easy on the eyes), and their zombies, which walk through walls just as they do in SA although no one seems to ever mention that - are hilariously ineffective. I played on the Thirsk map today, where dozens of zombies wander around the central town, and I literally jogged around them with as much trepidation as I would running around a bunch of pylons. So, yes, they've made custom maps, have vehicles, campfires and hunting (using the same mechanic as the mod), and persistent (yet still very buggy) storage, but it's all achieved using BI assets and ideas and altered code taken from DAYZ. The core mechanics of the game work as well as they do because the majority of it was already there in the first place. I have nothing but respect for the mod team behind BP as I think they've done well with limited resources, but you simply can't compare what they've done to SA as they're essentially adding a few new strokes to an already finished painting. SA is building from the ground up. BP will never have the depth SA aspires to. Sure, it will be more refined (after all, it's in alpha as well), but it will only go as far as the engine will allow whereas the SA team are incorporating middle engines for things like physics, employing a team of devs whose specialty is actual hunting games to make the hunting aspects of SA as immersive and realistic as possible, incorporating improvised weapons, and a cooking mechanic that goes well beyond lighting a fire and clicking on a slab of raw meat in your inventory. And, while it's currently all the rage to make light of the multitude of clothing options in game (as if their very existence is what's holding up development despite the fact that they're being made by a small group of modelers who have nothing to do with the core mechanics of the game), this allows us to customize our characters so they aren't all just Black Shirt/Black Cap/Khaki heroes from BP or naked bald clones from Rust. SA will allow us to do so much, but a game of this magnitude takes time. We bought into the ground floor of what equates to a skyscraper.

You have my beans because Tom Waits.

Your avatar haunts my dreams... :(

Yes, it is good to see Rocket posting on Reddit again. Hopefully he gets back to his old self pre-NewZealandGate and keeps talking to the community. There are still a lot of dinguses among the redditors, but the majority just want the transparency and honesty back. Someone said it above - he IS the community manager. He's the face of the game, whether he likes it or not, and a good amount of us bought into this because of his dedication and enthusiasm. These last couple of weeks of dead silence have been disconcerting, and save for Chris Torchia and a few pithy comments from Hicks, it's been very Un-DayZ like in terms of development and communication.

He's just saying the "the moment they have" a fix, they will notify us, not that they have one at the moment. They're still working on it as far as what I can tell from Twitter, Reddit, etc.

Did anyone notice a performance gain? I don't know why this is, but I left off in Svetlo last night (where I was getting a cool 15fps as it's the WORST town for fps for me at the moment), and, when I logged in for a few minutes after the new update, I saw I was getting 28-30 FPS, in a rainstorm with a freakin' ton of zombies around (as well as a couple of fresh spawns who ran past me). I didn't see anything about performance tweaks in the change log, though. Hmmmm... I also found a wool coat and a cooking pot with five inventory slots, but I couldn't put anything inside of it. :(

Awww crap. I always had a lot of fun on their servers. I was hoping we'd see them when we'd get private hives on SA eventually. R.I.P.

Same here, and it's 22 degrees outside. Some spring this is!! :P

I'm with ya, man. I'm 44 and I get sick on a freakin' Ferris wheel. I don't think I could hang with those goggles on my noggin' for very long. As for the "running in place" thing, it'd end up gathering dust next to my treadmill/clothes rack in my office after a couple of uses. lol.

I don't know if hunting is "close", as what Rocket showed in the dev video was a WIP, and he also said they'd just brought on four new people whose specialty was hunting games. I think we're going to see cooking (in its early state) in the next experimental patch, but, from what I gathered from the dev blog, hunting was going to be a major deal, and have a whole bunch of "exciting" new mechanics to it. Maybe I misinterpreted it, but I think the hunting in SA will be vastly superior to (and more in-depth than) the mod. At least I hope so, as the mod's hunting wasn't so much hunting as it was walking up to a static animal and knocking it over with an axe.

ARMA 3 singleplayer runs very well for me on my rig, and, for the most part, has since it was in alpha. I create my own missions, and, even in a resource-hog town like Kavala, I'm able to run a squad of 5 through a gauntlet of enemy AI, civilians, and civilian vehicles (the latter two powered by TPW's excellent immersion mods) and still get 40-50 FPS with all settings maxed. As for online, I also occasionally play Breaking Point, and, so long as there aren't more than 30 players on a server, I get around 30-40 FPS in "cities", 50+ in the wild (but I do have to drop my draw distance and object detail a bit). It's a good engine with gorgeous graphics and, initially, I was disappointed that DayZ wasn't developed on it. That being said, I don't think I'd get the same kind of performance on a Chernarus modeled in ARMA 3. Chernarus is much more colorful and detailed than Altis (which, while beautiful, isn't nearly as vibrant or diverse), so I can't help but think that much of the good performance I get from ARMA 3 comes from the fact that Altis and Stratis consist mostly of wide open, fairly featureless terrain and small, monotone buildings. Throw a lot of trees, colorful houses, large buildings, zombies, loot, AND players in there, and I fear the ARMA III engine just wouldn't cut it. For comparison's sake, try using some of the custom maps made for ARMA III. Admittedly, these aren't "optimized" for the game, but will give you an idea how ARMA III's engine deals with lots of foliage. One map - a really cool Pacific island map modeled after the Diaoyudao Islands - is loaded with palm trees and brush, and, once you step foot into it, your FPS drops dramatically. I've created missions on there, with a small coastal military base and a few shanty towns in the hills, and, with only 50 or so AI enemies (given very basic "orders" like patrol, or guard), the game ran like a slideshow. As it is now, DayZ is one of the most graphically pleasing games I've ever played. The weather effects, clouds, sunsets, god rays, etc make it one of those games that I often log onto JUST to be in the world and take it all in. To be honest, I'm actually shocked by how good it looks considering the engine they used, and, while it obviously needs tweaking, if Rocket's suggested performance increases offer even a 10 FPS boost in cities, I'll be more than happy that they stuck with this engine.

I've been playing the experimental for hours on end and I've only had a zombie spawn in my line of sight once or twice at most, and, even then, it's been off in the distance. Sure, there's probably a better way to do this, but, as it is right now, it's pretty damned effective, especially with their newfound agility! My friend broke his leg at the construction site west of Vybor and I had to go off to find morphine. I got my ass handed to me by zombies in the surrounding towns. Went through all of my damned rags patching myself up. A couple of weeks ago, I'd have just konked a few on the head and went about my business. Now it's pretty intense (especially at night)!

I'd like to see the much-talked about prison placed in the far west, where there's obviously the foundation for a large development (the huge plot of open land and roads near the westernmost railway station). They could surround the prison with fencing, lots of industrial sheds and buildings, some barracks-type places, guard towers, etc (maybe even some solar powered emergency lighting in the guise of floodlights), and lots of parking areas filled with damage vehicles ripe for parts looting. Have some prison-specific loot (body armor/riot control gear, the rumored stun guns, tear gas, etc). That, along with another couple of cities like the WIP "floating city" west of the NEAF, would do a lot to draw more people in from the coast. Places out west need at least one or two unique features, though; the cut-and-paste is fine for most of the villages around the coast or slightly inland, but it's not worth the run if you're only going to find more log houses or hospital/school buildings. How about a commercial airfield with a small terminal, a couple of hangers, some wrecked/stripped passenger planes, and maybe a larger, lootable plane (with medical supplies, flares, clothing). How about a small, minor league soccer stadium (as many have mentioned), with accessible locker room/shower areas, a vending area, etc? A ruined amusement park (yes, I realize it would take a lot of work modeling it, but they've doubled the team, so it's not beyond the realms of reason) ala Chernobyl? Even some overgrown playgrounds/parks would be a welcome addition (albeit for mostly aesthetic purposes). As for expanding the map, I'd like to see them fill in all of the dead space first (within reason - we need woodlands for hunting and campsites). I'm sure they're not exactly foaming at the mouth to make new models, but, as I posted before, I'd LOVE to see something like a large-ish caravan park (shades of Fallout), an abandoned campground with cabins, etc. As for new expanded areas to the west, how about a proper swamp, or some actual running water/waterfalls in the mountainous regions? Maybe some caves, or large quarries? Obviously, it's a sandbox and the kid in me wants to fill it with EVERYTHING, but I'm trying to think of things that wouldn't be out of place in an Eastern European country.

I do think the zombie pathing is much improved, however! While they still clip through buildings, it seems they're avoiding things like fences and such and going around them until breaks/gates. I've also been noticing the zombies have been making an effort to actually enter the doors of buildings rather than materialize through the walls. Of course, once inside, all bets are off, but it's a definite improvement over the early "zombies run in a straight line despite all obstacles" pathing. My big hope for this week is that the team finds a solution to the "invisible player" bug (the current workaround for my mates and I is to hit things with out melee weapons until we become visible again). It's a drag running through a town with a group, having to stop every couple of minutes because one or more of us have gone invisible and have to start whacking trees/walls/cars with our axes until popping back into view. :(

Rocket just posted that campfires will be in this next "two week sprint" and that he's very pleased with them, so looks like campin's imminent! :P

This game sucks so much that I've spent 440 hours on it. It's terrible, quite frankly, and I'm going to go play for another three hours right now just to prove that.

I love the new animations with the melee weapons, but having to hit the space bar to "enable" it (like raising fists) doesn't feel very fluid. I much preferred equipping the weapon and it being ready to swing away. As for FPS, I seemed to lose about 10-15 FPS, which isn't too terrible (I was getting 30-40 in towns/cities, 50 woods, and 70 in open fields/coast). I also had a few issues with my inventory (not being able to add things without removing something from a half-full backpack). I'm guessing a lot of this is just breaking in the respawn system of the zombies, though, so I don't think a bug report is needed.

Not digging the wet/dry indicator sound, but loving the FPS boost. Still getting bogged down in cities, but not nearly as much (30-35fps according to FRAPS as opposed to 20-25 FPS in stable).On the coasts and in clearings, 80fps or better? Damn! Nice job guys!

I'm assuming that, eventually, the crashed copters will have at least a few bits of military loot. It'd be nice for those requiring the 5.56 ammo not to have to make the suicide run to the airfields to stock up on their munitions, but, then again....

In the 400 hours I've played (yes, I know...it's a sickness, but I'm laid-off from work for the winter, so I've got the time), I've found the Press Vest only two times; once in a train station out on the fringes of the map, and once on the boat wreck. Haven't seen the leather jacket, but I'm not sure if that's made it over to stable yet.

I think I'm going to quit doing hamster style....