chambersenator

- waving one or both arms above the head - a knocking animation (not punching) that could be done with the left hand without have to completely shoulder/drop your weapon. The weapon would be momentarily lowered, and would require a brief moment to bring it back up after the knock is complete. Not just for knocking on doors, but could be used on any surface you are next to and are looking at (floor/wall/tree/road/cooking pot/dumpster/etc) to create a sound for use in various forms of nonverbal communication between friendly players, or to attract/distract others. - holding a weapon/item horizontally above your head when activating the 'surrender' animation when there is something in your hands (at that point, one could either double click that button to drop the item from the hands without lowering them, a single click would return the arms to the normal position)

I would assume the wipe with every patch is due to various tweaks to the CLE, and you don't want the data from previous patches interfering with the changes made with the current patch, as well as looking closely at how players are behaving as fresh spawns with the new spawn points. Is that anywhere near a correct assumption? Would it be possible in the next SR to have a segment that summarizes of what kind of challenges/issues you've been dealing with with the .61 CLE (since the last SR) and what changes the dev team has observed in player behavior with the new spawn points that were either expected/unexpected? Apologies if I missed any earlier statement about this since the last SR.

I've been doing that far too much in the past year, and I think I've become 'too good' at avoiding people and only engaging when I am deliberately looking for a fight or a possible friend, but I am trying to change that. I had my go-to low-traffic places I could go when I was in the mood to be a hermit, and when I felt like exchanging words or bullets with others, I'd go to the regular high-traffic areas. This new spawn and tent configuration has changed everything about that for me. It seems like almost everywhere could suddenly become a high-traffic area now for a few minutes at least. There are no more 'fairly safe spots' for me now, nor is there be a 'somewhat safe' route to them if there were any. I am constantly on guard and watching my back (in 1pp, doing that all the time really wears you out). Just getting geared up and going halfway across the map is surprisingly more stressful as a lone wolf, and actually tires me out IRL after a few hours. And you know what? I dig it. Thank you devs, for forcing me out of my comfort zone, and removing the idea that there is anywhere on the map I can truly relax. "The fear" is back in a way I was not expecting.

That's why I only hunt bears with light field artillery. My grandfather used to go bear hunting in the 1930s-1950s with just a Model 1892 25/20 lever-action Winchester. While to me that sounds like madness, he rarely came back empty handed. I tried to find a decent size comparison picture, but as that caliber has fallen out of popular use, the best I could find was this. The 25-20 is the third one from the left. From left to right - 44mag, 357mag, 25-20WCF, and 30 Herrett

I think the gun looks fantastic, and the two kinds of mags are a nice touch as well. I'm curious as to what are the zeroing options going to be. But the questions I have really come down to what happens after I pull the trigger, but that has a lot to do with aspects beyond the rifle itself, such as optics, velocity, and the differences of ballistics with A2/A3/SA, etc. I'll make a separate thread about that elsewhere on the forums for that. Also, one other thing: Great comment, -Gews-, that's the kind of in-depth stuff I hope to find each time I come to this forum.

The new spawn points, FOBs and tent redistribution has thrown a monkeywrench into most people's go-to looting routes that haven't changed all that much in months/years (depending on how you usually play). I've seen very few players as well, but I am seeing an increase in certain spots as people adapt. People will adjust, and new routes and hotspots will emerge in the coming weeks, but the 'main destinations' are still along an imaginary line going through Stary/Vybor/NWAF/Novya Petrovka/Tisy. Tisy seems to have significantly more action with the new tents and loot opportunities, but from what I've seen, most people aren't staying in Tisy very long right now (as most people still need to get to know the most likely places to watch out for an ambush/sniper to attack from, so many people are very paranoid about hanging around there right now for any length of time). Also, the areas of Staroye & Gorka are seeing a lot more frequent traffic it seems - the people I've been seeing have been a varied mix of the well-geared and the barely geared. The new camps and spawns change things up a lot, so abandon your old tried and tested routes, and expect to start running into more people moving between those locations listed above more than at the locations themselves.

I had this problem, and I was able to resolve it by doing the following: Removed all Battleye files (IIRC, one in in programsx86/common, the other is in your hidden appdata/local folder in your user folder, and the one in the steam/steamapps/common/DayZ folder) then verify the game cache. If you dont see BE files in the appdata folder, don't worry. Don't start the program until you complete the rest of the steps. Temporarily uninstalled my antivirus program (not just disable, but uninstall) I had Symantec Endpoint Protection (I know, it sucks, but it was leftover from my previous job that required it) Uninstalled any remote access software, such as teamviewer. Try running it - if there is still a problem, Complete reinstall of graphics drivers and associated apps (geforce experience, for example). since you already did an OS install, you may want to try using the previous driver release instead) Somewhere during this process, I was able to start the game, but it would close when I tried to connect to the server. Doing all those things fixed it though. Also, I should say that I was able to run ArmA 3 fine, so it seems like it is specifically related to the whatever DayZ specific BE files were sent out. My guess is that the BE client doesn't like something it sees, and quits out rather than telling you about it. I think this bug happens when it finds files it doesn't like, but have been deactivated (services stopped, etc) and since there's no running app to tell you about, it gets confused and just closes the app.

Fair point - The 'bullet sponge' aspect is something that needs to be addressed that I did not mention. I was thinking of the challenges that people with little to no gear face with wolves as I was writing that, rather than a well armed person facing a pack of wolves. While there should still be a fair chance of being overwhelmed if too many of them get too close, and even keeping a lesser, but still decent chance of them one-hitting you, I completely agree that bullets should be doing what they are supposed to do when they hit living things..

There seems to be a common thread in these comments where there is an expectation that challenges/difficulties in DayZ should always have some method/tactic/item/knowledge that will offer a high probability of overcoming it in the name of 'balancing the game.' I disagree. To me, there is significant value to the concept that sometimes, due to bad luck, being at the wrong place at the wrong time, or by acting unwisely, you can end up in a situation where you do not stand a chance. Without that, DayZ loses one of the things that, to me, makes this game special. Without that near-constant feeling of "I'm screwed. I'm not going to live through this," DayZ becomes just a hollow combination of puzzles (find item X to deal with Y, so that you can get to the point where you can find item A to deal with challenge B), luck, and RNG. If almost all situations have a solution, where is the fear? Where is the hope that you just might get lucky and miraculously survive? Where is the dread that comes from hearing the distant calls of the wolves, and knowing you are in no condition or armed enough to face them head on? Where is the amazing rush that comes with beating the odds and surviving? Sometimes, things just don't work out, and you discover that the purpose of your character's life was merely to serve as a warning to others. That said, wolves, and in the future, bears, need a bit more adjustments and tweaks - certainly aggro/detection levels could be adjusted, to account for wide variances in the aggressiveness between packs. Some may be far more likely to attack humans due to hunger or an overly territorial leader, others may be more timid and avoid humans/zeds because they have a weak leader and a full stomach, etc. Certain items can be added to give a small to moderate chance to distract them (find a large box of ground pepper in a kitchen, and when needed spread out the contents of it behind you in the hopes of masking your sent when being stalked, or also giving a chance to lose them if you run through a stream and they do not have LOS on you, for example) or offer a means to ward off most (but not all) attacks from the front with the flaming torch (fairly ineffective on open ground, since they will attack from all directions, but may be of use if your back is to a wall, cliff, or a building as a way to hold them off for a moment to give you time to get to a doorway of a house and close the door, or give a friend time enough to help you, or simply a moment to think. However, it's vital that the chance of surviving a situation where you are vulnerable or otherwise unprepared to deal with a pack of wolves remains extremely low. As an aside, I grew up in a very rural area where there was a very infrequent, but very real danger of running into a pack of very aggressive wild dogs, who had no fear of humans, and would stalk, attack, and eat anything up to the size of a horse or cow. While not wolves per se, having been stalked by them twice in the forest, and barely escaping an attack the second time I encountered them (I barely got to my truck in time, and one of them punctured a tire with their teeth as I was starting it, and ruined the rim driving on a flat tire on a dirt road for a two miles in order to get away), I feel that experience gave me a damn good reference point as to how wolves should behave if they decide that you are worth eating.

No guarantees that it will work with this patch, but I have come across a way to fix it under certain circumstances in previous stable/exp patches. NOTE: the following is what I have been able to piece together from my own experiences with the status bug, and what appeared to work for me. Since I have not been able to test this 'solution' thoroughly enough to say "this will fix it" with any confidence, and only can judge by what I can see on the client side of things, and their could be multiple causes and fixes for the status bug, consider this more of a "it's worth a try" solution. It seems to me that usually the status bug will not fix itself until the server that you are on restarts. However, if you can find a server (that's attached to the same hive, of course) that has restarted AFTER the point where you first caught the status bug, your status will become unstuck. For example: Let's say the server restarted at 12AM, you joined the server at 12:30 AM, and noticed your status was fine at 1:15AM, but now it's 1:20AM and it's now bugged. At 2AM, you leave that server. If you move to another server, and it's been up since 12AM, your status will most likely still be bugged. BUT, if you can find a server that restarted AFTER 1:20AM (due to a crash, perhaps), your status might just return to normal. This is where it gets confusing - it's also possible that if you log into a server in a different region of the world - from an NA server to an EU or AUS server, or from an EU to an NA server, for example - it may also fix your status, but not always. (I suggested this to TheRunningManZ during one of his streams, after he had tried multiple EU servers, and switching to an NA server did fix his status bug.) I'll skip my reasoning as to why this might work, as it's just a fraction of an inch away from a wild guess. I just hope that when the status bug is fixed once and for all, that the devs will share with us what exactly was going on, and how they fixed it. I'm really curious about the nature of it, as I'm actually looking forward to seeing how ridiculously incorrect my theories are.

I had a really good time with the new exp patch today, and the status update was exceptionally good too. It covered a lot of the 'under the hood' topics I was wondering about lately (though I always end up hungry for more with about a dozen follow up questions after reading SU's like those), and I really appreciated the general breakdown of the nature of the problems they are facing - the zed vs player physics, especially. I also really dig the idea of spreading out the military tents instead of adding a whole bunch of new ones. While I don't know where they all are yet, I hope that in the future a way can be found to make Novodmitrovsk a place that will attract players to it, rather than it often being a town that many just pass through. It's such a beautifully designed place for extended PVP both for snipers/countersnipers and CQC alike. Given its general proximity to the coast, its going to be difficult for it to find a military loot balance that makes the journey worthwhile to those on the western half of the map, and not make it an easy, one-stop gear-up spot for those just passing through, and over-militarizing the NE corner of the map in general, which IMHO should remain as more of a backwater wilderness as possible. If only Novod and Severograd were swapped somehow... but I digress. The animation sample video was really interesting too. The animations themselves look great, and appear significantly more natural, but does anyone else feel that the raise/lower weapon movement seems unusually fast? I assume that it will be adjusted as it develops, but that was the only nit-picky thing I noticed. One question though - while I seem to be able to cancel most animations now, I have been running into an issue when drinking from a well that I need to look about 30 degrees right or left to get the option to cancel. In what way is that action different from other actions - is the 'action area' (for lack of a better term) of the well model involved in some way, or is it something on the player's side of things? In this new patch, I noticed that you now seem to be restricted to certain trees when harvesting bark (IIRC, that was either present in past versions, or intended to be). At first I thought it was a bug, and the new autumn foliage changes made it a bit harder to figure out for a minute or two, but if that is what is intended, I like it. I have also heard that one can see burning fires from much further away now. Do we have any general idea of what the range is now? Also, does this increased visibility distance also apply equally to seeing the light (and smoke) from fires that are burning inside the fireplaces of houses, as well as the light eminating from gas lanterns? I also have encountered a new bug (it may have been in the previous patch, but I'm not sure) when attempting to skin a chicken I killed. I have only been able to test it twice myself, but it seems that after you kill a chicken, and switch to the knife to begin cutting, the only option you see is to hide the body. The way to get around that is to first approach the dead chicken with your knife in your hand, and when you see only the option to hide the body, place the knife back in your inventory, then back into your hands, and the option to “Skin and Quarter the Animal" is then available. All in all, I am loving .61 - IMHO, it's a great step towards having a much closer balance between PVP & PVE, without compromising either of them in the process. I know this was a long comment, and there's no easy way to make a TL;DR that covers the points and questions without nearly doubling the length of this. I'm just a long-winded kind of guy.

I think it's safe to say that nearly all of us at one point or another have fallen victim to another player that is glitched inside a building. While certainly not a game-breaking issue, it is an irritant that happens frequently enough that players have to adjust their behavior when near these buildings to minimize the risk. We all know that the problems with those buildings will be addressed in the future, and to do a full review and overhaul of those models takes time - time that right now, should be spent on higher priority issues. However, waiting for the fixed models is not the only option, and if a significantly less time-consuming alternative is possible as a temporary measure for at least some of these buildings, the overall benefits to the everyday player experience could arguably make it worth the time of the dev team. Rather than rattle off list off a bunch of buildings, I'd like to just focus on what seems to be the most problematic and well-known building - the "camo building/military jail" (IIRC, it's called Prison or Command Center in the assets - pic here). The loot spawns were removed from this building some time ago, which did help the situation by reducing player traffic inside the building, but it still meant it could be used and exploited against players outside the building. My suggestion is this: why not simply replace the current building model with the ruined destroyed model? There would be no new models to make, as there are two models to choose from - the original ruined model from A2, and the 'enhanced' ruined model in SA, which can be seen just north of the ATC tower and Fire Station at the NWAF, or in Turovo. No loot spawn points would need to be removed or disabled, as that has already been done ages ago in .56. I've been around ArmA & DayZ long enough to know that "an easy fix" is as rare as hen's teeth, and something that seems as simple as a changing a model from 'normal' to 'ruined' sometimes can open up a surprisingly huge can of worms. Only when compared to the time required to overhaul a building model would one feel fairly safe suggesting that it's at least 'significantly easier.' As I understand it, once you change the model, a certain amount of internal QA would need to be done to ensure there's no surprise problems (players getting stuck, or perhaps even glitching through the ground and dying, for example). So to reduce the total amount of time spent on this for the maximum benefit, it seems logical to focus only on the locations where they are the most problematic. Out of the 9 places that there are intact Prisons/Command Centers, changing only 3 of them would give the most benefit to the players (listed here in descending order of importance). - NWAF, by the northernmost hangar - Zelenogorsk, by the barracks - Bashnya, north of the NWAF tents The remaining Prisons/Command Centers can wait, as their location, terrain, surrounding structures, and frequency of player traffic around them make them less attractive to those that would seek to exploit them. The ones at Balota and the SW corner of the NWAF I would be nice to see, but nowhere near as important as those three. If this or something like it were to be implemented in one of the patches in the (hopefully near) future, I have little doubt that the player base would consider it time well spent (aside from the glitchers, of course) I would welcome any input/corrections/explanations from the devs and those more knowledgeable than I about the process, problems, and feasibility of this proposal.

Absolutely. As a longtime ArmA/DayZ player who enjoys learning whatever I can about what's 'under the hood' in these games, and trying to figure out what can and can't be done on our end, it's easy to fall into the pattern of thinking in terms of workarounds, as the 'root issues' are often inaccessible. Also, while we know the new player controller will be the foundation of a system that will solve so many issues and open up a vast array of new possibilities, it's not easy to wrap our brains around the full extent of its capabilities and reach. We know it should effectively address a great number of issues and open up new possibilities (with the understanding that this is only the first public version of it). However, I suspect that many of those like myself who try to keep themselves fairly well informed and have full faith in the project and the dev team, and understand the importance and significance of the player controller at a general level, we'll only really start to understand the full extent of it once we experience it for ourselves, and have those limits pushed by the dev team, and modders later on. In a lot of ways it's similar to how one can say the Sahara desert is big by looking at a map, but not really understand how big until you try to walk from Morocco to Cairo.

Well then, I feel rather silly. I'm really surprised I missed that. Usually I'm the one that is citing dev reports/updates to people's questions. In any case, I'm glad it's part of the new controller and won't require a overhaul of the models.

I am aware of the persistence wipe on the patch from June 7th, but was there a persistence wipe on exp with the patch from ~12 hours ago? I usually try to keep at least one barrel with some random worthless stuff in it, hidden in areas with the lowest traffic, to keep an eye on any persistence/inventory/placement/collision issues I find on exp. Today it seems to be missing, and while that's no big deal (and the contents were expected to be lost anyway), it would be good to know if there was a wipe. If it was found I'd be surprised, as it seems a fool's errand for someone to start searching for camps on the exp branch so soon after an announced wipe. It's possible, of course, but just seems less likely than usual.

I can answer that, I believe. To the best of my understanding, this kind of issue has already been resolved. You might remember about 6-8 months ago, there was a huge issue regarding accelerated time and the thirst/hunger system, where people were suddenly dying of thirst and hunger about 10 minutes after spawning. IIRC, it turned out the timer for the consumption of food/water somehow got directly linked to the 'ticks' of time on the server. So accelerated time = accelerated digestion. It didn't take long for the issue to be fixed and the timers separated, so one could assume that the timer for this proposed idea would be separate from the server's accelerated time as well.

Seconding Funkdoc's recommendation to check out the ACE medical system (both the old A2 and new A3 versions). The ACE med sys can give you a reasonable idea of what is generally possible with the ArmA engine. Even though SA has a number of 'under the hood' differences, you'll be able to see more of the overall logic of both the constraints of the engine and the clever workarounds they were able to create. I wouldn't want to simply see an ACE med system clone become part of 'vanilla' SA, as I think the system might go a bit too far for the general player base (though I wouldn't mind it being part of a mod for SA when that time comes). However, I think there's a reasonable balance between that and the current system that would be really nice to see. I like your ideas, and have a few thoughts on them Separating the different kinds of wounds (slashes, punctures, bullet wounds with either significant or minimal internal damage, 'gut shots' that would bleed slower but nearly guarantee sepsis, compound fractures, etc) that require different kinds of attention would require a ton of work by the devs, but could be worth it if designed so that it can be added in increments over time with minimal re-designs of the system at each stage. Something that complex may have to wait for a mid-version expansion, if they decide to to that. That said, I think there could be a significant amount done with the current system just by clearly separating the levels of blood loss from wounds into two categories - heavy and light - and make the player aware of which one they have. Heavy bleeding would require a pressure bandage, made either by your suggestion of gauze+rags, but also by using either 2 bandages or two rags. Using only one bandage should slow the bleeding rate somewhat, but would 'consume' the bandage at a faster rate, and even faster if the player is running in such a state. The bandaging animation for heavy bleeding should take at least 2x as long to vaguely simulate the additional time required to apply pressure to the wound. If necessary, the animation could be cancelled at any point by the player, but rather than a binary 'bandaged/unbandaged' state, it would at least count the time you were bandaging/applying pressure so that you could reduce bleeding in 25% increments, depending on when you cancelled it (this would be similar to how the planned 'partial eating/drinking' calculation for actions cancelled in mid-animation would be handled). Additionally, at heli crashes and some military sites, there should be a relatively rare, 6-slot 'military medkit' that spawns, that in addition to the standard medkit items, includes some form of pressure bandage with a coagulating agent and either a morphine injector or some form of topical antibiotic that reduces the chance for infection/sepsis (anything from old sulfa-based powders or sealed alcohol gauze/swabs). An improvised (but of course, less effective) method should be available as well, in the form of high-proof alcohol or even honey, to be used when changing bandages of serious wounds. Of course, the key here is to balance the realism with practical gameplay. A serious torso or leg injury with heavy bleeding should require only two actions - one right after the injury, and later on, one bandage change (requiring at least 2 bandages again) with some form of antibiotic agent added, if available. Constant running while so injured should significantly slow the healing process, consume the bandages faster, and if ignored for long enough, the wounds open and bleeding begins again. The player should get messages throughout this process, such as "my wounds are bleeding heavily, my wounds are bleeding less, my wounds have stopped bleeding, my wound has re-opened, my bandages are drenched in blood, my wounds seem slightly/somewhat/very infected, I'm feeling light-headed, etc. I also hope that SA will include different kinds of walking/jogging/stumbling/running animations that would work with this sort of medical system. IIRC, there has been some mention of this in the past. I hope at least we can have something that replaces the 'morphine and splints makes all the boo-boos go away and we can instantly start running on leg we just broke a minute before' situation we have now. Even just forcing a stumbling/limping run for 30 minutes after 'fixing' a broken leg would be great to see.

The following contains a great deal of guessing, conjecture, and memories of information I heard second- and third-hand years ago. If there is a dev or anyone else who can correct me, I'd appreciate it. In the very early days of the alpha/pre-alpha, if I remember this right, there was sort of a two-part plan in regards to map development: The first was to add the new towns and generally expand the 'civilized' parts of Chernarus, and the second was that the overall map size was going to be increased to the north and west, so that SA would not only have a more developed areas in the north, the map size expansion would add more wilderness as well to balance that out. However, that idea was thought up a long time ago, and from a practical point of view, doing both at once just wasn't possible. What they have done to the north of the map so far is a beautiful piece of work, even though I too miss places like Skalka, Podeba Dam, and the expansive forests of the original Chernarus. The wilderness is still there though, maybe not as much as I'd like, but for now, it'll do. We still could see an expansion of the map size in the future, though, but I strongly suspect that it's not just as easy as simply adding more terrain. From my understanding, everything in the map is tied to a coordinate reference point - in this case, the reference point (IIRC) is in the NW corner of the map. Every piece of map information, from the several layers of terrain data to every tree, house, and spawn location share this reference point. So, I'd venture to guess that this setup gives you two options. The first is to move the reference point to the new NW edge of the map and then adjust every piece of position information to account for the change (no small feat in itself). The second option is to just add the new areas and keep the reference point right where it is, and it simply is not in the far NW corner anymore. Now that second option seems easier at first glance, but I have a suspicion that a good many old chunks of code deep inside of the good old ArmA engine might have a problem with this, as the new coordinates may have values it was never expected to handle when it was written. While it still may be able to be done this way, you'd probably end up with an enormous amount of debugging, correcting and/or replacing a ton of little problems, and what you may end up with is a patchwork of fixes and workarounds that are designed for an engine that they are working on replacing/refitting/modernizing anyway. If what I just said is anywhere near correct, an expansion of the map size could be a long way down the road, perhaps as either part of some sort of expansion DLC 18-24 months after 1.0, or for a sequel, perhaps combined in some way with a release of ArmA 4. I don't see BI just abandoning Chernarus after SA runs its course, either. Chernarus is a big country, and we've only seen a tiny fraction of it. Chernarus is simply too valuable not to expand upon, and as time goes on, we might have an engine that could handle something several times larger.

I thought the devs somewhere mentioned during a larger announcement a couple weeks ago about having some form of discussion with Sumrak specifically regarding Namalsk as a possible alternative map for modders, post 1.0 or even just at the beta stage. While not specifically an 'officially supported' map, there is some logic to having Namalsk updated, prepped, and debugged a bit before making it available. There will be a demand for new maps when mods become allowed. Namalsk was extremely popular with the DayZ folk, with Taviana the only alternate map that was more popular. If BI was going to have an alternate map available at some point, Namalsk makes a lot of sense - low building count to make replacing buildings with enterable versions easier, manageable and FPS-friendly map size, and a place to test an expansion of a mechanic - in this case, freezing to death, snow, and high altitudes. If BI works with Sumrak in some form, whether by outright contracting or just by offering some QA checks and access to a limited set of building models, everybody wins. BI can hold off any release/approval until they feel that its ready - as long as things work like the did in A2, and any updates for basic compatibility issues are addressed (which are almost all building-related, at least from what I have heard when the map was ported into A3). This probably means Namalsk won't be available when modding is opened, but when it comes to the point where alternate maps are allowed, Namalsk seems the most logical choice. It not only means BI's time/resources investment is minimized, it also helps ensure that modders are starting with something acceptably stable to work on, and avoid wasting time trying to figure out if a problem is due to the porting process/legacy bugs or actually something in the SA code.

I get where your coming from, and that is one way to play it. There are also other completely valid ways of looking at this game at this stage of development - to understand as much as possible about what is going on 'under the hood' and why, and be able to identify when things are not behaving as they are supposed to, and help the development process along by reporting it and discussing suggestions and their merits and problems. The question is valid, and such questions do not always mean the person asking is looking for tips to exploit the system. Finding exploits now means they can be addressed and fixed so they can't be used later on, making the game better AND more organic. All these coy, joking responses... it's disappointing. Oh well.

I hope so, as leviski's comment is baffling without more context. To explain: The infected citizens of Chernarus see things in the same way as any human, only that their sight appears to be impaired to varying degrees. That means there are three primary ways they can visually detect, track, and identify objects - Color, Movement, and Shape Recognition, all of those affected by Focus Ability. All four of those can - and should - be part of the zombie AI 'visual detection' section, and vary in quality depending on the already planned zed "types" - (old, fresh, strong, etc). Here's how I could see visual-only detection working in the finished version(s) of DayZ SA and how zed's changing and degrading physiology might affect them. The infection has affected both their bodies and brains, and therefore (this rough outline - I expect no real similarity to existing or future code, but I think you;ll see what I mean): Color - Some zeds might see color normally, while others may have a hard time seeing certain colors, while others may have lost almost all color detection and see the world in more of a grayscale manner. Perhaps the decline in vision follows the same pattern in all infected humans and progressively gets worse over time. Countermeasure - avoiding bright, shiny, or colors that contrast strongly with the background. A zed should, like anyone else in most situations, have a harder time seeing a guy with a green raincoat and green jeans than a guy with a bright yellow raincoat, bright orange backpack. Movement - Already implemented to a degree, and also the most obvious method of detection. Modifiers to this would be both distance and the ability of the zed to Focus (explained below). Countermeasure - Seems silly to mention, but move slow to reduce the chance. Shape Recognition - Zeds still know what living humans and animals look like and can tell the difference (when not bugged, of course) between a living human or animal and a scarecrow, a pumpkin on the ground, a dead human, another zed (at least before attacking somone), statues, and pictures of people on billboards. Put aside the "of course, why would you code that? That's mostly wasted processing resources." question for a moment, and consider what that says about how zeds should behave in an ideal, finished state. Countermeasure - A ghillie suit, of course, is the first thing that pops into most people's minds, and it makes sense. However, this is where the Line of Sight system really can be expanded upon. Picture this scenario- I'm in a town walking down the middle of the street, and aggro a zed 20m away. I immediately run through a building to a grassy backyard, and spot some bushes 10m to my right, so I duck behind those bushes. Luckily, I'm only wearing a green raincoat, black jeans, and wearing running shoes. The zed say me run into the building - LOS is broken, but even the existing AI knows to follow where I went and begin the 'search' stage. Maybe it might have been close enough to hear my footsteps inside the building, but since I'm not wearing heavy boots, I'm probably under the threshold for making detectable sounds after I exit the building. The zed runs through the house to the other side, and without any more info, searches around. The bushes should give me almost perfect concealment - I have no bright contrasting colors, I'm not moving, and the bushes are probably better than a ghillie - I only have to worry about sound, as scent detection is not a priority for the foreseeable future. Focus Ability - degrading bodies mean degrading eyesight, and that means an overall decline in range of detection that gets progressively worse, both as zombies 'age' and the state of the human before getting infected. I would think that as vision gets more blurry, the first to decline is Shape Recognition, followed by Color, and finally Movement with ever-decreasing range. A mid-stage zed would find it harder to tell if something is a tall bush or a unmoving human at 100m, but it might still be pretty good at seeing a high-contrast blob of color moving across a street or a field, though at that distance it might be really hard to pick up on a slow moving, crouched survivor wearing colors that don't contrast as much with the background. Under 40m-50m, it could see just as good as a fresh zed. Countermeasure - Try to figure out what kind of zed is after you, and exploit any possible weaknesses So how can all this translate into a system that doesn't generate an insane amount of processing? As I don't know exactly how it is coded right now, they way I would try to do it is with 4 sets of reference values, and only 2 for actual calculations to determine if the player is detected once LOS is present, and recalculated if LOS is broken and the zed moves to the last known position and the zed's 'aggro search mode' begins to try an re-aquire the player. First, a player's clothing and exterior equipment is added up and given a 'base visibility value' based on Color and Shape Recognition qualities. The different types of zeds each have an overall 'Focus value' that sets their maximum detection ranges. A player's movement, obviously, alters their 'base visibility value'. Using the environment for concealment, such as hiding behind a bush, can be calculated by using a modified version of the already existing code that tells the client you're close enough to pick berries or chop kindling, where it would decrease the 'base visibility value' - more/larger bushes in close proximity enhances the modifier, for example. What it all comes down to is adding/enhancing two modifiers to the LOS calculation only during the detection stage - one for the 'see-er' and one for the 'person being seen'. It should only have to kick in when LOS begins or when LOS is broken and the zed arrives at its best guess as to where you are, and does not require more of an active calculation while the zed is aggro'd. For all other times, the existing LOS system is fine and is progressively improving. The devs are clever fellows - I'm know something like this has been considered before and even tried in multiple ways over the years, or even already in there for the most part. Who knows, maybe just framing it in this particular way sparks an idea for a method far better than this. I just couldn't understand the idea that "Clothes should never affect visibility"

I don't mind the map parts, but I forgot that the names on the map are not in Russian. That bugs me too. I wouldn't mind having both on the loot tables and the English one being crazy rare, though. Like most of the old-timers, we don't really need the map, but I like occasionally having one to plan out routes once I have collected the bare essentials, and not have to wait until I am not playing the game to do that.

While IIRC, there was a brief time, maybe 6-8 months or more ago, when there was an issue with combining maps, but that was fixed ages ago. However, combining maps still has rules: 1) Maps are spawned either in 2 parts (North/South, East/West) or 4 parts (NW, NE, SW, SE) 2) Any 4-part map piece can be combined with an adjoining 4-part map piece to create a 2-part map piece (i.e., NE + NW = North Map, NW + SE= East Map) 3) NOTE: 2-part maps cannot be combined with 4-part maps. You will never be able to create a 3/4 map, for example (i.e., West Map and a SE Map will not combine). You must combine quarter-maps into half-maps, and then combine the half-maps to create a whole map. There are only two things about the maps in SA that I really dislike. One, there are no markings for natural bodies of water inland, such as ponds. I have no problem with there being no markings for wells in the new version. Pond/lake markings were in the map in the A2 mod version, and their removal in SA takes a great deal of value out of having one. Two, the inward zoom limit is frustratingly restricted. I really can't see the value in not being able to zoom in closer - it's not as if the map is going to suddenly give you more detailed information, and why it has to block my character from doing something as natural and simple as moving the map closer to my face to focus on a small area is beyond me. Lastly, I hope one day the actual condition of the map translates to what the player sees. A damaged or worn map should look damaged or worn - varying degrees of holes, burn marks, tears, coffee stains, extensive fold marks that create narrow lines of featureless bumps, etc. Ideally there should be a set of different states and areas of damage that can be applied so that to some degree, different maps look different - One may be missing a corner or have a big ink or blood stain in a certain area, while another has some burn marks and a coffee stain that you can still make out what's underneath, but at times can be difficult.

You know that feeling of relief, a few minutes(hopefully) after you spawn, when you finally find something that's reasonably good at killing zombies? That little rush that comes with a momentarily realization that maybe, just maybe, you're not totally fucked? When the new zombies come, stronger and more numerous than ever before, and after you've died a half a dozen times or more in the first two minutes after spawning, and the game seems impossible now, that when you finally manage to get your hands on a badly damaged pickaxe or even some brass knuckles, that little momentary feeling of relief is going to be exponentially stronger, as if you were just given a shot of morphine. That right there is what's going to let you know that the sometimes hard to find 'old DayZ feeling' that so many pine for is back and stronger than ever. The newspaper joke is also in ArmA 3, where a newspaper's headlines talk about all the furniture on Altis and Stratis suddenly disappearing, and IIRC, the paper suggests aliens or some such nonsense are to blame. (For those who don't know, due to performance concerns, there is almost no furniture inside any of the buildings on Altis or Stratis.) NOTE TO DEVS: Please increase the spawn chance of bananas at the wreck of the cargo ship tenfold. Add crates FULL of bananas - hundreds of bananas - enough to make every player on a full server throw up several times over. With one little addition to those specific bananas - a chance of some variant of the infection, or whatever caused all this. Maybe identify the bananas with a different model, that looks the same but has some little sticker that you can only see if you inspect it. Watch what happens. People will be leaving infected bananas all around the map to kill unobservant players, or playing "Banana Roulette" or "Three Banana Monte" with captured survivors, mixing good and bad ones around in a bag, handing the bag to someone else, who randomly picks one and force feeds it to the prisoner. You're not giving away any critical backstory or saying "this is how it happened" - the newspapers added ages ago to the game already made the possible connection. Maybe they're just bad bananas with some tropical bug that has nothing to do with the zombies, who knows?

After seeing the very promising test footage of the new zombies and the potential as they develop to create a truly insanely difficult apocalyptic world to survive in, I have been thinking about not only the challenges they will bring, but also how it will affect playstyles, strategies, and player behavior that would come long with it, as well as how such a drastic new development would create certain amount of complaints from a portion of the player base. Most of the reactions to the high zombie population, the swarms/hordes, and their strenghs I've seen and heard in various places have been very positive. There are some that think it might end up being too much, for reasons varying from 'too hard - solo survival will be impossible' to 'how will I be able to have cool squad/solo PVP action with all these zombies? I want to fight real people, not AI all the time!' I think these are fairly reasonable questions, and as development moves onward, I think there could be a better way to find a balance, test the limits of SA, and still have something for everyone, by making a separate set of 1st-only and 1st/3rd person hives that focus on high populations of the new zombies. To fully explain where I am coming from and what I am proposing, I need to say a bit about how I see zombies in DayZ as they are now, and how I would like to see them in the future. (full disclosure - parts of this are from a comment I posted on the DayZ subreddit (yes, I know) in reply to someone who was concerned of it becoming 'too difficult' and after I wrote it, I felt it was worth building upon and talking about here, where there is a better chance of having a good discussion about the pros and cons. My current post/comment count is low, but I used to be much more active on the old forums, and have been playing DayZ since May of 2012) First off, I want to be terrified of them - not distracted, not inconvenienced - terrified. The fact is the zombies won. We show up afterwards. Think about that. They defeated everything the militaries of Russia, the neighboring former Soviet states, and NATO's spec ops could throw at them. The assorted wreckage and remains of the fight are scattered all over Chernarus. However, they did not go down without a fight. Now you might say "but the infection probably got most of them before anything could be done." You're right - but it didn't happen all at once. There is a good bit of evidence that the whole thing took only a few weeks from the start - the scattered newspapers on the ground mention something about some contamination coming from a banana shipment (probably the last issue of the newspaper), the most of the camps and military presence were there before to deal with the rebellion (covered in ArmA 2), but the destroyed armor columns (such as the one north of Krasnoe) and the NATO and Spetnaz helicopter crashes indicate various failed reinforcements/recon attempts, the piles of burned bodies and disposal ops (such as in the underground bunker east of Kamensk) indicate they were not all taken by surprise and attempts were made to stop the zombies. The patterns of heli crashes and wrecks seem to indicate the surviving forces and civilians moved northward/westward from the coast, but the infection moved faster than they did. The infection and the zombies were able to do what neither Hitler or Napoleon could - defeat them on their own ground. That means these zombies have to be a lot tougher and way more numerous. For an area of the world that has a reputation of the centuries for being resistant to invasion and enduring incredible hardships to defeat an invading foe by by organized and irregular forces, that is no small feat. As it is right now, 3-5 civilians with small arms, 100-year old rifles, axes and fire extinguishers could easily clear Chernarus of zombies in less than 8 hours with barely a scratch (not counting respawns, of course). Even if only a single platoon or a couple squads from the military survived and rallied, they could probably clear it in less 2-3 hours with minimal effort by splitting into teams. So, to make the reality of the current situation jive with how things apparently went down, zombies have to be crazy tough and numerous enough to swarm and overwhelm most small forces. The ones we encounter are the ones that survived what the military threw at it - either by being strong enough to survive the fights, or not being in combat yet - that's why the varying levels of strength, age, and speed makes total sense. Surviving a solo looting trip to Cherno should feel like an insane idea and a foolish undertaking, and not a standard supply stop while gearing up or an easy PVP playground (don't get me wrong, PVP is cool by me, its just irritating when PVP is the only logical option). I say bring it on - bring the hordes, the swarms, the door-bashing down zeds that know you're hiding in that building and will not stop for anything. But I also can see such a crazy tough world being not for everybody, and that's OK. I'd love to see a third master hive set created once the zeds are worked out - a set of separate 1st/3rd hives with the zeds "cranked up to 11," alongside the 'standard' 1st/3rd hives, where zeds are still more numerous and stronger than now, but not as much as the insane, limit-pushing apocalypse of these new servers. Such a server set might be the answer to those seeking more than just PVP. This kind of tough situation would make finding another survivor a wonderful thing - together you just might live through the day, not to mention raising the stakes and tension when it comes to trust, betrayals and banditry. This idea gives something for everyone, I think. It perhaps offers a faster way to find the right balance of zombie numbers by having a set of high-pop and mid-pop zombie hives. It also gives the option to keep both sets once we're at a 1.0 version for a true 'hardcore' option. Each one will require new play styles, challenges, and strategies for the players that will bring about new ideas and methods neither the devs nor the players have considered. And simply from a PR/player politics viewpoint, offering the extreme high-pop servers as an option to explore rather than a 'command from on high' will make the transition to the newer, much more dangerous world a great deal smoother.