klassent

I concur; I'd like to see something make it into common adoption besides the stereotypical Mk II and M67 frags. Preferably some other fun stuff to change it up, concussion / HE designs notwithstanding. Honestly, as far as getting the dynamics right, I almost think the best course of action would be to lay the foundation with LTL concepts (Flashbangs, gas/smoke, etc.) Plus, it'd provide some much-yearned functionality for the gas masks and respirators; though realistically, I still don't see it being addressed in any form until a lot more backend work gets sorted. Content can come at whatever pace it needs to as long as the evolving structure of the alpha doesn't collapse under its weight. Foundations first, fun later. ;)

If it happens, I want to be able to pull the pin, but hold the spoon! Your quick-and-dirty hallway holdup isn't so impressive when I become a walking dead-man's switch, eh Mr. Bandit?...

I don't foresee an economic standard of any sorts emerging in the post-apocalyptic world, outside of barter currency used within single settlements. Value of goods varies SO wildly based on immediate need as opposed to theoretical use, and DayZ is the kind of environment where circumstances are often classified as "Out of the frying pan, into the fire." For a useful yet anecdotal example, one of the trades I engaged in recently with a friendly involved me carrying my usual M4, where he had a Mosin. Surely enough, we had each picked up both 5.56 and 7.62 in our travels, and we were both happier than hell to trade them to each other for the kinds we actually used. In this case, the easy ratio was just stack-for-stack, because even though I use 5.56, I still think 7.62 is a slightly more 'valuable' round, and his few 30-stacks of 5.56 seemed a perfectly fair swap for my few 20-stacks of 7.62... But our respective needs were low; this was a trade of convenience, not necessity. Let's instead say that I know for a fact that I've got a three-man squad headed straight to my base camp, and I'm all out of rounds for my Mosin... But, I happen to come across an M4 user as I'm scouring the nearby town, and-- in the hoping he trades as favorably as I did in my previous example, wonder if he has any 7.62 laying around. Well, he does, but he's holding it for his buddy, so he really doesn't want to get rid of it... "OH GOD PLZ! I'll trade you three 60-stacks for ten rounds, I need them." Which, by the way, are the three magic words you never say during a trade, because something about human economics I've never quite been able to pin down, implies that the respective price of an item suddenly spikes up to match the perceived value... ;) But, non-sequitor aside, circumstance can wildly skew the value of items like that even when they're the same classification of goods. Imagine how much more awful the standards might be if we were trying to measure something like Antibiotics once brain flu becomes more widespread, or gasmasks if we manage to get some kind of airborne infection afoot.

Our group has a standing policy to handcuff ALL contacts, peaceful or otherwise. In an effort to make it a positive experience for everyone involved, we even handcuff any fresh spawns we come across-- if you don't have anything of value, we tend to actually help you out instead. Found one poor guy as we were leaving Elektro, he identified as friendly, and we slapped the cuffs on him. Poor li'l bambi had a half pack full of cans, and no way to open them. I "stole" all his cans, and gave him a few bags of rice, tuna, and a couple canteens, then uncuffed him and told him some of the key locations back in town that had goodies we left behind (Magnum in the fire station, few fruits and sodas left in the store) and he seemed rather surprised that we let him go. Granted, he was a smart bambi, and I saw him constantly checking back on us over his shoulder as he walked away, so I like to think he kept a watchful eye for anyone else that wanted to peek inside his pack.

While I'm not sure if ammo quality can affect anything, I'm all but certain running a ruined mag through a weapon can jam it-- unless there is a hidden weapon condition at play as well, and the gun itself was ruined. Either is a likely scenario, especially since pistols are susceptible to being container-damaged from firefights.

I've come up with a bit of an internal flowchart for determining the outcome of my contact reports: 1. Ambient Threat Level Recent events are the biggest factor in determining how my encounter plays out. If I've just overheard a gunfight nearby, I'm going to drop anyone outside of my group that has a weapon shouldered. True, perhaps they're some poor soul that just fought off a KoS'er and barely escaped with their life; regrettably, you're going to victim of circumstance if that's the case. It simply isn't worth the risk if you can confirm recent hostilities in the area. On the other side of the coin, though, if I've just overheard a friendly exchange over Direct, then I'm much more likely to identify myself and see if there's anything we can do to help each other out. 2. Location The difference between how I handle urban encounters as opposed to scenarios in rural settlements is staggering too. I presume anyone that's in the middle of Cherno or Elektro has gone there with a very specific purpose in mind, whether it's to scrounge up a few medical supplies or hit the densely populated parts of town for a major food run. Either way, friendly banter usually isn't on their list of priorities. Not only do I expect players to be more natively hostile in urban encounters, there are also a lot more places an interested third party could be hiding to ambush both of us even when I do happen to find a friendly. Best-case scenario for a big city is evasion, but if the threat level dictates it, I don't rule out KoS if we both stumble across each other out in the open. 3. Can I gain anything out of an interaction? Are there any supplies of which I am in immediate need? Antibiotics, morphine, food, water? If so, and there's not an immediately high threat level, I'll call out and see if I can trade, though still attempt to keep vision one-sided. If I can see you, but you don't have a clear fix on me, I like having that ace up my sleeve. Also helps to illustrate that I could have easily killed them by now if that's all I really wanted to do, a fact I often bring up to help cut any tension that arises. If, however, I don't particularly *need* anything at the moment, and just happened across someone on the way into town for a general lootgrab, I prefer to remain invisible unless I can confirm a recent friendly interaction as per Step 1. 4. Sizing up the individual The sort of gear my new contact is running around with is honestly one of the last points of consideration I make. I've been known to wear everything from bright rainslicks to military camo, and my attitude regarding interaction never really changed based on the clothes I had on. If I can tell that they're only packing a melee weapon, though, that dials down the threat level pretty significantly, and I'll usually make a callout to see if there's anything they need. I also don't know of too many people that would bite the hand that feeds them, so the same applies to folks that are running around bleeding or have a horde of the undead lumbering after them. If they're ill-equipped to even take care of themselves, I doubt they'll be in a rush to "take care" of me-- though it's admittedly bitten me on the ass once or twice, I consider those exceptions to the rule, and it hasn't really turned me off from offering aid again in the future. --- In your case, I probably wouldn't have shot the guy; if there was some reason for you to initiate contact with him, I would have had one of your buddies make the callout (since you were in the best position to take the shot, that immediately means your position is the one that has to be held secret.) I definitely wouldn't have turned my back on him, either, unless he was moving in a manner that implied he was actively trying to outflank the rest of the squad. Honestly, if the guy ran right past your position without notice, it's just as likely he had no clue your buddies were even there. Keep friendlies apprised of an approaching contact, keep him in your sights if worse comes to worse, and don't hesitate to pull the trigger if that's what it comes down to. I certainly don't fault you for taking the shot, because he posed at least SOME level of threat to the remainder of your squad, and the safety of five is worth the price of a bullet... Just possible that it wasn't a necessary course of action. :D

That actually makes a fair bit of sense, purely from a hit-detection perspective. If I can fire a 7.62 round through two wooden walls and still hit the mark, it makes sense that it isn't just gonna come to a screeching halt once it hits your squishy bits. This may be purely anecdotal, and moreso even a once-off occurrence, but I had one instance of friendly fire gone wrong where our sniper sorta dinged me in the head with a Mosin while I was prone, and it wrecked EVERYTHING I had on me, save for my weapon. Helmet, vest, backpack, pants, and all the contained gear. Reviewing the shot, sure enough, he hit me from an elevated angle, dead-center; bullet trajectory would have pretty much run the course of my spine, and that was reflected in the container damage. Now, the one realistic argument would be that a center-axis shot like that wouldn't really affect a vest, but item-by-item hit detection really isn't a gamebreaker for me personally. I'm just as happy using location-based detection (hit in the torso, anything on the torso gets ruined) is a happy medium IMO.

Makes perfect sense, I was overassuming about the RV engine's network handling, but nice that they still have the ability to specify ports! UPnP wouldn't do anything if both inbound and outbound requests are all using common ports, +1 for knowing the engine better than I.

I still lean towards a routing issue; I would recommend playing with UPnP settings and the like on your device. You may even want to tinker with your network adapter settings in your OS as well. The likely scenario is that you can both send traffic to the server, which it receives, but all responses are addressed simply to your WAN gateway, and the router doesn't know which of the two clients to pass it off to. My knowledge of networking is limited enough that I don't know if port triggering would help to alleviate this issue or not (Similar yet different from port forwarding, as I *think* it keeps a seperate client table for port triggering requests, though please don't take that as fact!)

Check your latency and desync values in the player list (P by default, click on yourself) I don't have any canned recommendations, but that may at least give some of the more engine-knowledgeable folks around here a good starting point to help diagnose the problem.

My only complaint, if there is one, is that there's no visual indicator for which mode you're in! I'm almost scared to go semi, because if someone comes rampaging at me with a fireaxe and I get blindsided, I don't want to point my M4 in his general direction and expect a spray when I actually get a "Bang! ... ... ..." Oh well, it's surely not a major programming feat, so I'll cross my fingers for the next few patches. ^_^

I absolutely disagree! One of the reasons I love Rocket's design philosophy for SA is that content is slower to be integrated, but it's often in a close-to-complete form once it's introduced. I would much, much rather have content integrated slowly, in a stable platform, as opposed to an alpha feature rush where everything's half-assed and even more time is spent down the road making it play nice with other inclusions.

I think this is still very subject to fine-tuning; IMO, the ideal behavior is that Saline Bags should help restore conditions that encourage the natural restoration of Blood over time, whereas Blood Bags ought to be an instantaneous injection, no waiting needed, even if your conditions (dehydrated, starving) would otherwise discourage Blood regeneration. Logic would also follow that a Saline Bag would only be helpful for someone that ain't already on death's doorstep. If you've been riddled full of holes and are bleeding out, that Saline injection probably isn't going to be enough to keep you in the pink, there's certainly some threshold that ought require a true Blood Bag to be effective.

Not only just more colors of clothing, I'd also love to see more camo patterns incorporated. Nothing wrong with TTsKO (Though I bet I just murdered the capitalization) but I'd really like to see some urban, desert, jungle camo patterns integrated. That way, you don't rely on a completely garish color that clashes against your efforts to remain hidden. I mean, I'll readily admit that the easiest way to ID friendlies lately is a giant purple backpack, but it kinda throws our whole camouflage scheme to the wayside. ;) At least if you had a dedicated scheme-- say urban pants with DPM tops-- you'd at least have more variety to your group's "uniform" while still retaining at least some of the camo properties.

I will say, though, that my standard rules of engagement now dictate that I'm never the first person to call out unless it's to my advantage. If I see you, but you haven't noticed me, there's not a snowball's chance in hell I'm gonna tip you off that I'm around, unless I'm rolling with a handful of buddies and there are at least three guns trained on you. Now, if you say something first, and I don't have a bullet in my dome yet, there's a good chance that I'll respond-- preferably once I break sight, because you can never be too damn careful. I've had a number of positive, no-shots-fired interactions where I've had an abundance of ammo to trade for your abundance of meds, but unless I'm in dire need of something, I'll just announce my intention not to dome you and expect you to leave me alone. If I break sight and you come around the corner, you're gonna get lit up; you don't need to see me to talk to me. It's not paranoia when they are out to get you. :|

Some conditions I've gathered from the primary weapons causing you to stop vs. continue movement: 1. Stance. You will ALWAYS come to a complete stop when prone or crouched. Only when fully upright will you continue movement. 2. Current Gear: Depending on what you already have equipped, you often are forced to stop to put away your current item. This applies to ANYTHING that fits 'within' a container-type item, whether it's an assault vest, pants, hoodie, or backpack. For example, if you currently have a pistol equipped, even when fully upright, you will still come to a complete stop in order to put the pistol away. If, however, you currently have a melee weapon equipped, you can continue moving and sling it onto your back, then pull out your rifle in one fluid motion without ever stopping. This applies to any current equipment: compass, canteen, handgun, you name it. If it has to go back inside something, you'll come to a stop in the process.

I voted for the last option, but ours is a decidedly more menacing game. We play a modified form of Russian Roulette, but instead of guns, we go the Mad Doctor route and administer random blood transfusions. You might be left in a healthier state than we found you, or you might have a violent rejection that ends in your ultimate demise... Bonus points when we can find an entire gaggle of fresh-spawns, and then begin randomly handcuffing and transfusing among them. (Of course, medical respirators and disinfectant spray are requisite-- always sterilize your needles, kids!)

If you have your existing weapon slung onto your back, you can pick up a second primary into your hands. If you switch back to your first, you just drop the other, but it can definitely be done.

I'd like to see a unique bind for struggling out of them first. As it stands, even when you're just walking, you're considered to be struggling out of them. What kind of sense does that make if I want to take a prisoner and march him across the countryside with me on a pleasant sightseeing tour? Regarding the poll, I've had pretty good luck with Pristine quality taking awhile to break out of, but I agree the other states (Damaged, Worn) could use a slight longevity increase.

My first player interaction (outside of the buddies I was playing with) actually happened some time after I was in-game; I had never played mod, so as the resident newbie we started on a low-pop so I could get the hang of things and do a bit of exploring. Once we hit high-pop, we were all relatively geared, but in desperate need of medical supplies. Cherno hospital, ahoy! Our five man group was fairly intimidating, but still cautious, so I was part of a two-man team sent up to investigate the hospital stairwell while another two held perimeter, leaving our fifth on overwatch. As soon as we hit the second floor, we heard some chatter over Direct and fanned out for immediate cover. Overwatch reported movement in the offices, but we were trying to avoid KoS mentality, and instead attempted what I shall henceforth refer to as "Bandit Diplomacy." Essentially, 'Hey, you've obviously cleaned this place out already, but what you got happens to be what we're after. Fork it over, everyone leaves alive.' Sadly, our olive branch wasn't met with much cooperation, and they encouraged us to come try take it... In hindsight, this was a poor decision on their behalf. Perimeter was still secure, our stairwell team became the breach team (Because yeah, that's EXACTLY where you want to put the newbie!) and overwatch managed to take one down before the real firefight even started. We're patient people, so breach team was happy to sit covering the exits when out of nowhere a nearly-fresh spawn, carrying a baseball bat and gushing blood, comes barreling out of the urban wasteland towards us. Perimeter watch did not take kindly to this, and immediately ordered him to freeze and get down; apparently, when four guys with automatic weapons issue commands, it only takes a cursory glance at your baseball bat to realize how much negotiating power you have on your side. It must not have been his first stick-up, because he dropped to his knees and put his hands up. Having no real reason to kill him, one of our guys slapped some handcuffs on him and got him bandaged up, but for our own sake, he'd have to remain handcuffed until our little standoff played itself out. So we've got one confirmed kill inside the office, two more confirmed hostiles that learned from their deceased buddy's mistake and stayed away from the windows, and some poor pantsless fellow handcuffed out in the street that happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. The waiting game pays off, and some guy with a Mosin decides to peek around the hallway entrance; I don't think he ever stood much of a chance against a noob with an itchy trigger finger. In what was an otherwise poor decision, I let my impatience get the better of me and decided to escalate after taking him down; on turning the corner, I proceeded to gleefully full-auto his pal still sitting back in the office. We take turns perusing the corpses for anything of value, I picked up a couple bags of rice and topped off my ammo supplies, deeply saddened that the ACOG which one of them was carrying was in Badly Damaged condition. Once everyone had a chance to pick over our kills, and our medics got a trove of the supplies we came for, we had a quick conversation with No-Pants McGee, and for being a good sport, he was welcome to pore over anything else that was left once we were out of sight, and once we had safely disengaged, we'd keep a watchful eye for anyone trying to sneak up on him. He was true to his word, and stayed prone in the street until we ducked behind a building, then went in like a hungry vulture. The last thing we saw before we moved out was our buddy strutting back out into the street, holding a beaten-but-usable Mosin, and even found himself a pair of pants in the process! He put up a hand to wave goodbye, and it's the last we ever saw of him... See? Even Bandits like us occasionally have a heart. Unless you've got cool shit. Then you're still good as dead. :D

Perhaps the term has fallen out of favor, not sure; many moons ago it was used to refer to any system that based the direction of bullet travel on the vector of the barrel. I.E. In Red Orchestra / RO2, as you pan the camera, your rifle moves faster than your POV. While you could still hip-fire weapons, if you were panning hard left, your bullets would actually be fired nearly out-of-view because it was based completely off the weaponmodel with dispersion of none to minimal. It also used to rule out hitscan ballistics, but luckily we've all but eliminated those in most modern engines. Core distinction I was making in this case is that most vector ballistics models rely solely on the model, and minimize or eliminate the CoF.

There are certain concessions to be made between realism and playability; it's the same discussion that EVERY "simulation" based game has struggled with since... virtually forever. It's just as futile to incorporate unrealistic features, as it is to introduce features that favor realism but murder playability in the process. Bit of a double-edged sword, really, and after reading through the discussion here, both camps have valid points. On one hand, the weapon attachments really don't make a whole hell of a lot of sense, but at the same time, there aren't enough extraneous factors to make long-range shots challenging if weapons were as genuinely accurate as their RL counterparts. Ballistics: My personal take has always been in favor of vector-based ballistics-- which, before the OHNOES-NOT-AN-ARCADE-SHOOTER group jumps down my throat, allow me to explain some of the differences that complete the 'ideal' scenario. Also, I realize in advance how absolutely time-consuming it would be to change one of the core mechanics like firearms handling, but this is more for the sake of argument than the sake of implementation. First and foremost, weapons should be significantly more accurate than what they are now. Weapon dispersion is one of the things that I've never cared for, because as it stands, you can take plenty of time to line up a shot-- I relate this to an ambush scenario. I have a good idea what direction my target will be coming from, I know the approximate range they're going to come into view, and I have a pretty solid concept of how far I'll need to lead them at that range. Now, unless there's some other factor that makes that firearm unique (Bent barrel, bad rifling, etc.) then the round exits the barrel straight. Again, to save myself from the pundits, I have a reasonable definition of straight-- 2 to 3 MoA, something that still allows for minimal dispersion, but at realistic levels given a stable shooting platform. Not necessarily dead-set-center-straight every shot, but certainly nothing like the 2-foot spread that's currently present in DayZ SA. That's purely related to the ballistics model, but like I said before, it's a balancing act: If the ballistics model favors 'easier' gunplay, the handling mechanics have to add another layer of complexity to help compensate playability. Handling: In this ideal set of adjustments, native weapon handling should pose the true challenge, not a roll of the dice to see which angle your musket ball is going to veer off in. This would also give weapon attachments more meaning, as opposed to finding the set of gear that gives you the least dispersion. Where the handling model is concerned, I'm drawing on a well of both my own rifle experience (Not extensive, to be fair) and successful handling models from other games. One of my personal difficulties when shooting out of anything besides a prone position is muscle twitch. This presents another double-edged sword, because you don't actually 'feel' it in games and sims, whereas when it happens on the range I'm at least cognizant of it. Not that I can immediately correct for it, because I just ain't that good, but at least I have the neurological wiring in place that keeps me from pulling the trigger. The biggest hurdle in implementing this in-game is that for stable shots, the vector of the gun is linked to the vector of your viewpoint. When the gun shifts (in the case of muscle twitch, drift, etc) it moves not only the gun, but also your POV. In my opinion, it makes it TOO easy to correct for those slight adjustments, because all I have to do is move my mouse back to the desired facing. I can be sure the optics will still be linked to my vision, and as long as I'm pointing at the target, the barrel will be too. Now, if you've been following along up to this point, my next suggestion should be pretty obvious: unlink 'em. While I'm still looking dead ahead at my target, but not in a prone/supported position, model weapon drift that I have to be aware of: let the barrel swing left a little bit, and an observant shooter will see that the front post is no longer in alignment with the rear peep and need some adjustment. Two options from this point, you can make it an automatic adjustment, where the character will slowly bring the rifle back into proper alignment, or add another look modifier much like ALT moves your view independent of heading, some other button could be used to manipulate your gun independent of viewpoint. If you really wanted to up the challenge, the latter would be a pretty demanding firearms handling system-- so much that it could easily turn people off from the game. So I figure the ideal scenario is automated, where once your rifle is out of alignment to the target, you're going to sacrifice a few milliseconds of firing window while you wait for it to recenter. Attachments: The good news? Here's where weapon attachments can be reintegrated in a way that makes sense: A lighter handguard, bipod, or perhaps future inclusions like vertical grips can help either reduce the frequency of weapon drift, or accelerate the realignment of the weapon. Recoil can similarly be handled, where as you fire, you're going to get a rapidly degrading sight picture as the muzzle climbs. Behold, compensators are meaningful again! Could theoretically add a lot of value to holographic optics as well down the road, because while I've never used one, it seems like it would be much easier to judge shot alignment when the optics of the weapon help to reflect that. Conversely, I would expect that drift to be much more difficult to notice when using one-dimensional optics like the ACOG or Long-Range Scope, making the improved ballistics still a bit of a challenge when taking longer-ranged shots. Anyways, have at it. Pros, cons, feasibility, you know the drill. I'll again remind you I know of just how demanding this would be on development, and ALPHER is pretty well the only reason I'd even suggest something like this for consideration; it's still pretty early in the development cycle, so drastic changes like this are at least *possible* if not unlikely. I'll quit, though, before this post becomes something more transcendent-- and I don't even know what the hell 'wall-of-text' evolves into after the fact, but I don't want to find out either!