rocket

Perhaps, but I'm steering well clear of the term "realistic" because it's a loaded term, we will be aiming for "authenticity". I.e. The experience should model the thought processes, feelings, and emotions associated with a similar situation - but it need not follow the exact "how it happens". This means we will model the tensions required to make the player make decisions that somewhat resemble those they might face in a real situation. It's really an extension of what was done already with DayZ, but with a proper team and genius engine programmers instead of, well, me.

Exactly, the idea is to merge the changes together and give the community access to the central hive so that things can be improved together. Many hands make light work. That also means I can actually focus my attention. Because the standalone is now getting very serious code wise, the repositories for them are totally different and I get confused very easy working between the two.

I'm really hoping that this community centered effort takes off, because I am absolutely swamped with standalone at the moment.

I think that it is not achievable for us to completely cut hacking and duping, but we can aim to achieve two things: 1. Make it much, much harder so that the chances of you encountering a hacked or duped weapon are very rare. 2. Setup auditing systems to detect hacking and duping after the event (much easier than entirely stopping hacking). Rollback changes associated with this and issue bans/warnings where situation is clear. As you mentioned, if we can do this then things will end up in a much better situation. Still, I think some of these limited changes will have a huge, huge impact on the style of play and the experience of players.

Attachments were only listed as an example here, attributes is really the best word to use. An assigned attribute could be anything from batteries for an NVG, through to the amount of water in a canteen (or the quality of water in the canteen), or how perished a food/meat item you have is. Attachment could also be the magazine that you have for your weapon, both it's quality and the amount of rounds that it holds.

I think that the changes coming with regard to weapons will require a massive and complete rebalancing, and a resulting change in the entire way DayZ is played. In simplified terms, currently ArmA2 stores your current weapon as (for all intents and purposes) a string reference. I.e. you have an "M16". This isn't strictly accurate, as it stores it as a config reference but I'm splitting hairs there... We are moving dayz to a more object oriented reference system for weapons and equipment. For example, weapons will be an object, which means they can have references and attributes unique to that instance of it. So that M16 you are holding could have an attachment, say, that increases it's accuracy or reduces its muzzleflash. Or, your night vision goggles have batteries "attached" that get used over time. When you drop the object down or put it in your back, the information isn't "lost" as it would be currently. This simple change might not seem much, but when tied with attributes such as weapon condition, you could see significant changes in play style. Pistols, in my experience, were a much simpler weapon to maintain than a rifle such as the Steyr AUG or the SAR 21 (two weapons I am very familiar with). DayZ will replicate this with its object oriented approach to weapons. Catastrophic failure of your weapons is unlikely but your weapon would jam much more if it is deteriorated. Furthermore, for electronic items such as Night Vision Goggles or range finders, durability becomes extremely important. I have been experimenting with tying this into the damage system also, with good results... i.e. shoot someone in the head and cause huge damage to items on their head. So I guess, to answer the question: the changes with standalone entirely change the relationship between equipment and the player. These changes as first seem rather trivial but quickly you can see how these will have very significant flow-on effects to the player. Hence, I am not spending any time at all focusing on re-balancing the weapons currently, rather focusing on increasing the authenticity using a few simple, yet wide-reaching, mechanic changes to "add" to the game rather than nerf something because it has an undesired effect. (I hope this ramble makes sense!)

*shrug* They just want me to make a good game. If I were them, I would prefer that I wasn't such a cowboy - but I'm kinda a package deal.

That has an official industry term, it's called time-to-penis (TTP).

golbal ban? gooby pls...

What i'm saying, is not that I don't care at all. I'm also not saying that I don't care about money. I'm not some game development hippy or anything. But what I am saying is that I'm not going to tell people what they want to hear - which is that it's going to be fixed, and that it's going to be fixed fast. It's not. I think the standalone is going to be orders of magnitude better, but the standalone is a few months off. Until then, people are just going to have to deal-with-it.jpg. I can put any number of words around that but that is just the truth, if that means I "loose some customers" or "loose some money", well shit, that's just the way it is and I can put some wanky PR speel around that but it won't change anything. And my second point is that even if that is the case, does it really matter to you OR me? When i look at games sales, I see that any game with hype sells at least a few game, because we (me included) can be really retarded about the games we buy. So that means that no matter what, DayZ will sell okay. I could make the largest pile of steaming crap in the history of gaming, and a number of people will buy it. Probably not many, but some. Now that doesn't mean I should be lazy, far from it - it should be motivation to make a great game. But what it does mean is I should stop worrying about money (delicious money) and ego and just do what I did when I made the mod, except now I have the source... oh hai 3 amazing programmers! oh hai big artist teams! oh hai industry experts helping me, advice, support at every corner (thanks valve! ccp! notch! + many more). I started out trying to make something that I wanted to play. That is why I only really make open-world games, if I made a story game. I'd play it and know everything. With and open world game I go in there and I'm like "fuck yes". That's why DayZ has no admin tools at all, no nothing. Hell, I can't even access the central server properly. That means the game is as much mine as it is yours. I see a good idea here and I'm like, "yeah maybe that will work" and we try it on. Sometimes those ideas are terrible, but maybe we get some more ideas out of it. That's how it all works. So, in summary - I don't think you need to worry about me getting enough money. I'm pretty sure I am going to be totally fine, in all honestly I pretty much am anyway. And if I ever feel ripped off I'll do the usual dicky thing of doing some stupid expose story about how hard it is not getting more rich when you're already rich. Contrary to popular belief, it would seem. I am not superman. Anyone familiar with game development (or development at all) would know what I am doing is completely insane. I am pushing out a completed product in a few months. This. Is. Madness. I cannot do that if I focus all my efforts trying to fix something that is fundamentally broken but that kind of works. I am at the limit of what I can commit too, in terms of time, so a "zero fucks given" approach from me is being taken to the integration of the mod-game development team. I will continue to release some updates for the mod, but it is really up to you guys to take the mod forward because i would break my back if I carried that burden any further. We're doing that, everyone is doing what they can. So, if it were me, i would rename this thread: How Hacking Costs Rocket (i.e. Bohemia) Money, and why that doesn't matter

Some questions: Will I be a better developer if I have 300,000,000 dollars? So far the main change in my life is that now I can buy as many brand new DC sneakers as I want. There is only so many DC sneakers a man can have. Additionally, I no longer eat pringles or drink pepsi, as I am more health conscious, so there is that reduced expense. [*]Why does it matter to you how many people play it? This mod was made for 5 people... my friends... and me to play When I made it I always thought that we would end up with 2 or 3 fifty slot servers running, ideally one in the US, one in europe, and one in Australasia Do you guys really want me to start making decisions, and reacting based on what is needed to make lots of people play? Do you really think those decisions will lead to a better game? I don't, which is why I don't care about the statistics now... the point has been proven. I must stay the course and be the one person who no matter what happens, does not get distracted and keep that original vision in front of us. If I don't do that, then nobody will. If I loose sight of that and start going off and chasing money or ego... I could quite likely get them in the current situation - but the end result will be yet another disappointment. This started as an experiment and me saying "to hell with the rulebook" on game development and just being myself, being honest, and letting people see what happens - the ups and the downs. There have been plenty of fuckups and I have said and done things that I shouldn't, but I'm not pretending to be anything I am simply just being myself, a human being, and trying to make a good game by following my own judgement. That judgement has got me this far, so I figure I am going to keep doing that. My focus is to develop the standalone, and let the community be involved completely in the development of the mod - use the mod as a fusion between community and me until the standalone is available (maybe even after it) and the fusion can happen there (uber synergy™). Sure, I'd love to be uber rich, with a yellow lambo, sitting on "the daily show" crackin' jokes with my man Jon Stewart but... I'm in this position now, to make a damn game! So, please! Enough with the statistics! Enough trying to do my strategy, to solve the unsolvable. The game is pissing you off, don't play it. Or better yet - check out the ArmA2 campaign. I don't like the campaign, but I hardly ever play single player games so what the fuck would I know. Download the ACE mod, buy KSP, buy FTL, fap for a while... What. Ever. But if you're going to be here on the forums I'd rather that we focus on the achievable and not on how popular the mod is or could be. Because I don't think popular necessarily equals awesome, and I don't think I'm alone in that.

From memory I think anti-rocket is pretty solid, but I think some of the recent ones are really great too. We'll release some info to better help the design (some schema additions are happening to support dogs), so this should help a great deal.

It was also an extremely cockish thing to do, but I will abide many things... yet not made up statistics because it drives me bonkers

As long as you abide by the Bohemia Interactive rules, then you are totally fine. You don't need to pay or get any permission to use DayZ mod assets. But be sure to let us all know! I love seeing the user created content, some of it really outstanding.

I'm not creating anything, I'm saying that if there is a better hive, I'll support that officially and test my updates against that. We share the same dayz_code and dayz_server repo's so that I make sure that updates I make and add don't screw things up. Honestly, I don't have the time, capacity, mental space, or emotional power to get into managing and setting up all this - so the call is out to the community to rally and organize it. tl;dr - how? zero fucks given

Mean's my suggestion is maybe we should have one repository, or at least, any less than 10 would be better for everyone. Then I know when i roll out a new update, that it's not going to break all the private hives.

I'm thinking about it. But I SWEAR TO GOD that if people keep making up statistics I will move to TROLLCON 1

I made a graph of your made up statistics:

It's pronoucher "hecker", fyi

Should track your character fine, as noted, Steam will use the same key and dayz records your character off your key :) Good luck in the Army!

No, probably a public Git or something would be best. There are some issues, as I paid for some licensed source material. But the dayz_code file could be easily recompiled by anyone actually with existing tools and data. What we need is a team to volunteer - as I am totally overworked due to the problems with our colleagues being detained in Greece and just pushing on with standalone.

75: Q: How many people is working in the standalone atm? Not testing, but coding and such. A: We have about three senior programmers assigned to the project, plus myself, a production assistant (Matt), and then various microteams of artists (each about 4 people). 76: Q: Do you still expect servers to be fan hosted in DayZ Standalone? [/Joe Duck] A: I think unless we did something like EVE Online, yes, we would have to do that. I would see possibly us hosting a number to kick things off. 78: Q: Will any of the games hard core features such as realistic damage, perma death, eating, and open pvp be dumped to appeal to a more casual mass market audience like many other existing persistent world products?? [xXl Mr Two lXx] A: Absolutely not, or I will resign and you will know about it. I'm not saying it would be a bad game like that, I'm just not interested in making that kind of game. I think it has been done well by other products, such as L4D (which I very much enjoy). 79: Q: With the new alt F4 tracking going in, have you considered asking suma/dwarden/whichever sorcerer is making new scripting commands to add in an "isSuppressed" command to help identify those who are logging out under fire better? [TheCapulet] A: It's one of the many issues we're looking at with standalone, to see what the sensible approach is. We're asking the question "how best to solve this problem" rather than "what are our options" which is what we were doing with the mod. No answer to this as yet I am afraid other than to say it is on the list. 81: Q: Will the DayZ stand alone support the use of TrackIR? [skoaliosis] A: Yes. 82: Q: Will there be ability for you to track and block the servers with altered serverfiles? I joined some of these servers and they had either junk instead of loot everywhere, or "top" loot from the barracks in every house. [Denix] A: The server hosting process will be much more streamlined. We will probably define a few (2 or 3) agreed difficulty types and/or DayZ Modes. The servers will then cleary has these for filtering. This makes it much easier and removes the need for policing the servers. 83: Q: Rocket, please, can you seriously comment on the standalone release day rumours? They say it’s about to be released in September, but we all understand it’s unrealistic date. [shtirlizlive] A: Before the end of the year the initial Alpha will be released. 84: Q: Will there be more of the random events like helicopter crash sites? [qvrock] A: There will be more tools for the players to participate in the world, but I won't be scripting events. We do intend to have more depth, which kind of meets what you are saying. 85: Q: Are you planning to fix something to take out constant and total PvP on the servers? 14 of 15 cases players shoot each other without any reasoning. [_TONY_] A: I think the additional depth, such as the new medical system, enhanced with disease mechanics etc..., will give a clear passive incentive for players to be more social within at least loosely formed groups. It will put more players in a position where they need help. Also more end-game content such as construction/repairing vehicles and bases will add more incentive to group. So I'm not going to "fix" it by stopping it, I'm going to give the player more to do than just PvP as it is currently. 86: Q: Amount of DayZ weapons is very short compared to Arma2 arsenal. Is it possible to add all the weapons from Arma2 but with some definitely rare spawn percent. e.g. 0.1%? [FiCS] A: The weapons will be changed quite significantly over time with the standalone. 87: Q: Will there be any system to monitor the psychological state of your character? In reality all the murders, blood, body examinations, mass graves etc. influence personality very much. Even ingame it is influencing, I killed just one player in my whole game time and still feel guilty for it. [mel_F] A: We will track stats, have some kind of visual humanity indicator (facial expression is the current favorite as their is already engine support for it), and also have blood on you hands if you loot a recently killed corpse. I think having a hard effect of your characters psychological state is not within scope, as it kind of can break immersion. Some people can deal with almost anything. It would also be extremely hard to balance. 88: Q: Will we ever get a heavier vehicle sometime in the future like a Hummvee, a BRDM/BTR or even a T-34? [Tygrys] A: Yes I think so, but the new vehicle mechanic I have been designing will make this a real challenge. 89: Q: Is the Military Offroad still in game? [Nikolai] A: Honestly, I don't know. Someone who has sniffed the config file recently would be best to tell you. 90: Q: Can you think of any, at least approximate, ETA on the final product? The stable game without current bugs, lagging and armies of cheaters? [2006] A: Well, let me put it this way - I'm going back to New Zealand for Christmas, I have my exit medical for the NZ Army in mid December, and I need to squeeze in a training climbing trip in NZ before I leave in January, and then I'm off to Everest end of March. So things have to be done by then.

The community are maintaining the mod, and have done an excellent job of fixing the issues as you identify. What we need, is a robust way for those updates to be fed back into the main version of the mod. What we don't need, is for me to go and reinvent what the community are doing when they have already dealt with those issues.

If I could control peoples perceptions the world would be, well, a rather different place. Anyway, 1. So what am I supposed to do about it? My thoughts: Fix the issues and communicate the progress. I kind of think that's what I am doing, tbh. 2. If I am doing all I can, and still "loosing potential customers". Does it matter? What should I do? Cry myself to sleep at night? wake up in cold sweats? Or maybe I could just not really bother about what I can't control and focus on making a good game, and communicating with people in a way that makes that game better. Being constructive doesn't just mean being polite, it means having something purposeful to say.

There are no usage statistics. This is because it is too cumbersome to collect those statistics. Gamespy is probably the only one with any idea, and they limit the amount of queries that can be made to their system. Hence, nobody who queries gamespy's statistics has accurate values any more because due to massive amount of concurrents, they added this restriction. The only people who have current statistics are gamespy and I have not asked them for details because, frankly, other than stroking my own ego there is little difference now in what the numbers are. What matters if the work I do on the standalone, because if I fuck that up then we will all be disappointed and waste of a great opportunity for all.