whothe

Hey there! Thanks for your awsome work! 1. How do you balance realistic animation (weight) vs. immediate player feedback (instant movement)? To which side do the animations lean after the integration of the new controller? Which are the deciding factors? 2. How much do you want the animations to be readable? ([Player A] always knows what [player B] is doing?) Do you exagerate some? 3. My guess would be, that the smooth transitions of the new controller make it harder to distiguish different animations? Would you fight this? How? Non issue? 4. Do you seek to reflect the newly introduced skill mechanics in e.g. the walk or run animations? (Or at all for that matter :D?) How manydifferent runcycles will you include, if more than one at all? 5. Are you planing to achive variations with procedural methods (retargeting/curve falloffs) or are you all about keyframed animation? 6. How long does it take to produce e.g. a runcycle or a ladder animation from start to finsih? 7. How many animations are 100% hand animated? 8. Which are your favorite animations? Looking forward to read your answers to our questions! Thanks again!

Great idea! Would be the perfect spot for defibrillators, bandages and antibiotics. With a lot of new disease in the making, medical supplies will become more important than ever...

I personally would like such mechanics. For me player interaction is one of the key elements of the game. Having more means of communication would definitely be an improvement. In addition it might even motivate people to use TeamSpeak a bit less... That said a smoke signal would attract me just out of curiosity :P #easy setup

Hi everybody, Although there are different topics about related themes, I couldn't find any posts about this particular mechanic I want to talk about. Anyway I will provide relevant links at the end of this post. If I have overlooked something important, please merge my post with the existing content. What I am suggesting is an endgame mechanic. Pleas keep this in mind while reading. If you are not sure what "endgame" means here a link for an example: http://www.wowwiki.com/End-game Companion animals Over the course of this post I want to take a look on three different animals. Those are horses, hawks/hunting birds and dogs. The human civilization has a long history of using tamed animals for certain tasks as hunting, transport, searching and many more. So it seemed only logical to me that, when modern society collapses, people would fall back to older and more reliable methods. As an endgame mechanic neither of those animals should be easy to obtain nor should it be possible to have multiple companions(to keep the value). As supposedly nobody would enjoy companion animals interfering in every situation. On the other hand taming an animal is hard work in real life, which I would love to see reflected in the game. However I have tried to balance playability and realism, so don´t expect a taming simulator. Considering all this I would expect a tamed animal to require a good deal of time and a advanced set of equipment. Horses As it has been quite a while since the outbreak horses should only occur in free roaming herds. To catch a wild horse the player would need to slowly get closer to the horse of his desire. Fast movements or loud noises could scare the animal away. The first required item would be a rope, used as a lasso. Thank for the new physic engine this could make up for a fun but difficult throwing game. After successfully catching the horse, it would be added as a element of the character profile. From this point the horse would spawn and despawn with the player. The horse now displays in the inventory and has different values assigned. The two factors the player has to bother with are "thirst" and "trust". Food can be supplied by the animal itself, as it has done before being tamed. It still can be fed by the player to gain trust. Water on the other hand is bound to the location, which is now dictated by the player. Trust can be achieved by feeding or healing the animal and will be lost by attacking or not caring for the animal. Now the player needs to gain trust before he tries to ride the horse. If he attempts to ride the horse before he has enough trust, he will be thrown off with the chance of a broken leg. A failed attempt to ride should also decrease the "trust" value. To expand the difficulty a rideable horse could also require horse tack. After the first successful mount the player needs an ash stick, a rope and a carrot/fruit to move the horse. In this state its only possible to ride in a moderate speed and weapons should not be accessible. As the player has gained enough trust, he can ride the horse without limitations. The horse then can provide way higher speed and endurance than humans and shouldn't even need a command to pass over fences and small obstacles. The player now can shoot while riding and put small bags on the horse. Still horses will panic under attack and might even throw the player of to run away. If on their own, horses will avoid zombies and run away from possible threads. Hawks/ Hunting birds Birds need to be cached in a trap. There for the player should require items like wooden stick, a net and a rope as well as a bait (like raw meat). The trap needs to be monitored the hole time. As the bird is caught, the player should quickly get to the bird and retrieve the animal, as it will hurt himself more and more, trying to escape. At this point the player needs a burlap sack to put the bird in. The bird becomes now added to the inventory. The player then can place the bird into his backpack to calm it and gain trust. Whenever the bird is in the backpack, the player should not try to sprint, as it might make the bird feel uncomfortable and will lead to a loss of trust. While running the bird will neither increase nor decrees the trust value. In this state the player should also search the bird for injuries from the catching process. Now a special glove for birds is also required. The bird needs to be fed, till he is ready for a flight on a rope with a harness, which also would need to be crafted. If tried to early this can also make the bird hurt himself. While on the harness the bird can fly in a small area around the player and sit on his glove. With the bird on the glove, players can only equip one-handed weapons. For going indoor the bird needs to be on the glove. In this phase the bird also shouldn´t be directly confronted with gunfire. If the player or a player near him is firing a gun the bird should be in the backpack. Last but not least the bird needs to fly free for the first time. If this is successful the bird can unfold its full potential. If however the bird has not enough trust or is not used to gunfire the bird will fly away and be lost. A fully trained bird will fly free and return on command, which should be a whistle all animals share as a command to come back. The whistle only works on a certain distance and can also be heard by other players. The bird could also have a small bell around his ankles, which could be noticeable over quit some distance, making it easier to determine where the bird is. The bird should have the ability to see everything on the ground in a big radius. To hide, players could go inside or stay under a tree. For detection the bird could use the shadowcash, which is also used to determine where rain falls. Using this method should require little memory, as its already implemented. As the bird sees another player it stays over the player flying in small circles. This could be a deadly weapon when combined with a sniper rifle, but could turn against you, if you are facing an enemy who watches the sky carefully. If the bird detects wildlife it will act like seeing a player. Small animals can be caught by the bird itself. If the player wants to go inside he can again call the bird to sit on his glove, leaving the player only with one-handed weapons or decide to leave the bird outside, making the player vulnerable to hostile players who see the bird from a distance. Dogs Dogs should roam free but should occur mostly in the near distance to villages. Dogs should not attack players no matter what, as this would probably prove to be impossible to balance. If facing a player, dogs will growl and eventually start barking when the player is to close. Barking should alert zombies in a short range. To tame a dog the player should lure the dog into a save zone. There the player would need to place food on the ground and back of. If there is not enough distance between player and dog he will flee. Only when the dog trusts the player enough to eat from his hand(similar to "force feed"), the dog is ready to get his collar. With this and a rope the dog can be carried around in a close distance. Again this disables players to use two handed weapons. As horses dogs can be told to stay on spot but run away when feared or under attack. When fully trained dogs can deliver multiple information's about then surroundings. As their main sense is smelling they should be able to smell players, zombies and animals over about hundred meter in wind direction. They should also have a very good sense of hearing and a enhanced night vision. On command they could track animals, warn against Zombies with a whimper and growl or bark in presence of a player depending on his distance to the dog. Still all this should deliver a more or less obvious sound to other players. If and how dogs can attack zombies would probably need to be tried out in game, as it has a major impact on zombie balance. Implementation Here some general ideas how to approach some mechanics or additions I thought about in relation to the topic. - Animal interaction (except calling) could be handled over the action wheel. - Inventory as well as thirst and trust values should also be accessible over the action wheel. - Players can examine their animals, resulting in a status message like:"Your dog has a broken leg" - All animals can be told to stay at one place, but will flee when scared. (You can call them back to the location) - A player will lose his companion, if it is not close while despawning. - Birds also could track animals/players as some actually can see ultraviolet. - Dogs could search for equipped items in their smelling range.(might be OP) - Alternatively to bells hawks could have painted rags around their ankles. - Rags knotted around a body part or at an animal could give good feedback for wind direction or strength if animated or dynamic. - To make things harder, animals could require special medicine - Information´s about taming could be included into readable books. Links Companion Dogs http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/165084-companions-like-dogs/?hl=companions Leathal creatures http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/169840-lethal-creatures/?hl=%2Bhunting+%2Bbird#entry1726873 Tracking http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/188207-tracking-the-grass-method/?hl=tracking Horse (perfect vehicle) http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/165450-horses-the-almost-perfect-vehicle/?hl=horse Traps http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/188851-setting-up-rat-traps-gave-me-an-idea/?hl=animals Animal tracking http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/175608-animal-tracking-funcitonsuggestion/?hl=animals Useful books http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/186316-useful-books/?hl=books Ok, that are my thoughts. Of course I know that an actual implementation is going to be difficult, but I would love to see something similar to this in the game. I also read some were the devs had made a statement that such features are unlikely to make it into the game. (You might find the related post in the Links above) But as there still is room for endgame mechanics I thought this might play well with the coming hunting feature and I just wanted to share my ideas. I hope you had as much fun reading this book as I had creating it and I am looking forward to see many ideas for additions or improvements in the posts below. Good evening.

great idea! i would love to be able to gain some ingame infos by reading a book i find. This could range from a "personal notebook" about zombi behaviour to a "flora and fauna book" telling me which berrys are eatable and where i find good places for hunting. I agree - it would also come in handy as complexety rises with the ongoing implementation of things to craft... It simply breaks emersion totally every time i have to TAB out of the game to get certain information about items or gamemechanics. It could also help the lack of explenation to new players, as still there is no tutorial or any other form of direct information to unexperienced players. keep up the good work!

Great idea - there are already some footprints in place for a short time, if you walk over the streets coming from the fields. A mix of both aproaches would be perfect. I think it is critical to ceep a certain amount of difficulty in such a mechanic to prevent massive abuse on this. Anyway i would be surprised, if this feature wasnt added together with the huntingsystem. If it would be possible to differentiate the appearance and visibility by including factors like "type of footwear" and "weight of person" that would be great.

The idea is great. Dayz is far more than a huge scale deathmatch and what people can achieve and create together with simple tools (like a guitared) can exeede even the imagination of the devs. just look at minecraft!