SMoss

Greetings Survivors, As most of you may know, last week saw 0.55 pushed to stable branch. This build featured the initial implementation of several key systems to DayZ, and in turn their behavior is as expected very early prototype. As the Early Access of DayZ continues, more of the core systems that comprise it will be merged into the main stable branch. It goes without saying that iteration will both be required, and occur as these are merged in. For 0.55 lets take a look at what systems had their initial implementation, and how their behavior is as of this status report: Central Economy: The Central Economy functions as the core control over item type quantity, location, and region spawns. Moving away from the original placeholder system, and implementing this is the first step towards agile, rapid balancing of item spawns within DayZ. The initial implementation only defines the location of firearm spawns and types, further iteration will begin to define items past firearms - and later region control across the map.Infected & Animal A.I.: A well known fact for awhile now, the original prototype A.I. that was deployed with the DayZ Early Access was not robust enough to support the design of the title. A complete rewrite from scratch on how the title handled this was required. The most obvious change on stable branch is in the detection, and quantity of the infected. The new system, although clearly in need of iteration and expansion - supports proper stealth mechanics for both A.I., as well as more resource friendly sensors. The design and programming teams will continue to iterate, and balance the infected across the coming months as well as address core functionality issues such as positioning during pathfinding, and proper audio alerts.Per-Instance-Persistence: Part and parcel with the core design of DayZ is the global persistence of items (loot) in the game space. Be it long-life persistent objects such as those used in base building, or more short term such as items dropped on the ground and spawned by the central economy. 0.55 saw this roll out to Public Hive servers, with Private Shard support soon to follow. It is important to understand that this feature, just like all of the Early Access has no guarantee of bug-free behavior. Like anything within the development builds, bugs are both possible, and almost certainly will occur. Equally as important is that those who encounter issues file proper bug reports on the Feedback Tracker (feedback.dayzgame.com)Diseases & Disease Transfer: Another very early implementation that made it to stable branch with 0.55 was the global spread of cholera across Chernarus. Paired with the transfer between players and objects, and thus player to player disease transfer. As iteration upon this system continues you will begin to see a more diverse catalogue of diseases and corresponding symptoms.Moving past the 0.55 build new system implementations we hit a rather hot button topic as of late, and one I promised to speak on earlier this week. Just how hard is DayZ supposed to be? What is the targeted experience here? How valuable should items, and thus what I carry be to me as a player? I like to think we're pretty up front about exactly what DayZ is and is supposed to be, and as we move closer to 1.0 more and more of this will begin to take shape. Once, when asked how valuable tools and resources should be to a player - on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is finding everything you need without issue, and 10 is elation over finding a can of beans (I'm paraphrasing here) Dean was quoted saying an emphatic "10". Some folks have expressed concern that the increasing difficulty in surviving and combating the environment would hurt player interaction. To which I say.. Sure, it will hurt player interaction if by player interaction you mean folks wandering up and down the coast, wearing pink dresses and chasing each other with fire extinguishers. However I firmly believe it will -drive- and foster a different type of player interaction. Interaction between players making their way across Chernarus, scavenging to survive. Players who enter a village and have to make a hard decision - do I use what little ammunition I have to kill and steal from the survivors already in this town? Do I instead avoid the risk of death from attacking another player, only to potentially risk death by starvation or infected as I make my way around the town? Is the cost of expending my resources in either choice too great? Make no mistake, DayZ is and always has been intended to be an unforgiving, brutal fight for survival in a harsh post apocalyptic landscape. Obviously we still have a long ways to go to get to that point, but as we move forward more and more systems will be introduced that support that experience. Balancing and adjustment will have to occur, as the intended experience is not to ensure starvation on the coast, but instead foster the ability to spawn, gather the basic supplies required to move inland, and thus begin the real DayZ experience - your story, your struggle for survival. And the beauty of it all? If this is not the experience you're exactly looking to have with DayZ - then another core pillar of DayZ's design will bring you exactly what you seek. Our full support for modding via the Steam Workshop. It is going to be an exciting year survivors, and I look forward to experiencing it with all of you. - Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

I talked to Eugen, and persistence wipes will no longer be part of regular wednesday maintenance. However, please do keep in mind that persistence is not yet completely pat down, so items can still be lost along the way due to bugs and such.

When persistence is on, tents and garden plots should still remain on the server even after server restarts. However, there are issues with persistence at the moment. Please have a look here: http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/223597-service-alert-private-shard-persistence/ http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/223221-attention-persistence/ Also, don't be shy to ask Brian or Eugen directly in the Service sub-forum: http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/forum/148-service/

While the weight of gear has been mentioned before, it does not look like it will be affecting gear individually as such: http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/220780-status-report-17-feb-15

"... nothing is final", I think that's the key word here. Having a look at Peter's Twitter account for example, you can see that the guys are still working on the central economy/loot system: https://twitter.com/PeterNespesny

Afternoon gang! Chris Torchia has decided on the first winner of his Fanart Friday contest: "dayzprint" by Bleckplump: Our first pick for #FanArtFriday. Upon seeing this piece, one of our designers, Martin, exclaimed "would hang that on my wall" It certainly would spice up the bland walls in our office a bit... Bleckplump can be found on twitter. "Moon, Chow, Kiwo, and Dimitri taking a break" by InVenatrix: She writes: “I’m a 22 year old concept artist and illustrator and I am a huge fan of DayZ and the community surrounding it...A huge part of what I think makes DayZ special is player interaction and how heavily it influences the player’s experience. I love the storytelling opportunities this game delivers and love seeing the product of those who really know how to utilize it...I did a scene set at Rify; one of my favourite places in Chernarus, and wanted to include some the characters (content creators) that really inspire me and help fuel my love for DayZ and its community." This piece reflects real tallent and a good eye for composing a scene. Check out her DeviantArt page and website for more or follow InVentrix on Twitter. DayZ/Chernarus themed cast metal coins by Alan_Smithee: This is just really awesome. I wouldn't even know how to go about making a cast or working with metal. Alan_Smithee writes: "In the summer a couple of friends and I plan to make a trip to the Czech Republic to visit the "Chernarus" area (we're from Germany, so its not that far). Among other things we want to plant a GeoCache there and use this coin(s) as a custom trackable GeoCoin. Eventually I want to make more Coins themed with other famous chernarussian sights to have a whole collection." Make sure to take a look at the process he used to make the coins here. Honorable Mention: Trust by Glitch Bakers: This DayZ Live Action film was a great effort by Glitch Bakers. We really loved the location and gear which was chosen for the DayZ-inspired film. Its really spot-on. While the story is, perhaps, predictable, the overall production must have been a massive undertaking and I'd love to see more from this team. - Chris / Associate Art Director

As we look forward to Q2 of 2015, we'll take a look at the goals and objectives internally for the first quarter of this year. From initial implementation of new A.I. for Infected and Animals, to the Central Economy and more. Q1 had the first appearance of some very important work on the road to 1.0 for DayZ. Basic VehiclesCentral economy (advanced loot distribution)New rendererNew Zombie AIBasic stealth system (zombies, animals, ...)DiseasesImproved Cooking & HorticultureAdvanced Anti-Cheat (Dynamic BattlEye)Basic Vehicles: Praga V3S & Vehicle Simulation With the first implementation coming in very early on in Q1 - iteration followed throughout the rest of the quarter. Starting from scratch with the physical simulation, the engine and gameplay programming teams paired with the design team brought the first of our basic vehicles to stable branch, the Praga V3S. Looking forward into Quarter 2 - further iteration will allow us to expand into more vehicles, introduce vehicle inventories, and required vehicle maintenance/components. In addition to the creation of the new physical simulation for DayZ's land based vehicles moving towards a "DayZ" specific feel to handling, design and programming work progressed on manual transmission support. From both the technical engine side, and player controls and overall system design this will allow us much greater customization of vehicles, as well as a more in depth and immersive experience than with traditional "push W and go fast" vehicle control models. Central Economy: Item Quantity Central Economy. One of the terms most people are still a bit confused by. The Central Economy is DayZ's backend control over the quantity, type, location, and region of the item or "loot" spawning system. Work continued on this throughout the entirety of Q1, and the first implementation was seen later in the Quarter on Experimental branch - pushing towards the 0.55 release at the end of the quarter. Moving into Q2 - this system is also tied into server side persistence, item cleanup, and proper item respawning and will be iterated upon frequently. As we push this system from experimental branch and on to stable, it will allow us fine control over the in game economy, and thus how the flow from the coast to the north progresses. As well as allow us to push players more towards alternative food gathering resources such as horticulture, cooking, and hunting. New Renderer One of the longest duration core engine tasks for Enfusion, the base engine technology being developed in tandem with DayZ - is the seperation of the existing legacy renderer from the engine side simulation, and the creation of a brand new rendering module. Critical for the flexibility and life of the Enfusion engine - this task is arguably one of the most paramount technology upgrades for DayZ moving forward, and was much more of a task than we initially expected (having been pushed beyond its intended experimental branch date several times). As Q1 draws to a close we are within weeks of the completion of the module itself, and the analysis of time required to implement the currently used DirectX 9 tech was undertaken. Internal review has shown that the additional time spent to hook DirectX 9 into the new rendering module is near identical to the time that would be required to add in DirectX 11 support. As the original intent to support DirectX 9 in tandem with DirectX 12 gave way to increased DirectX 12 support within the industry, the decision was made to ditch DirectX 9 support for the new rendering module and move directly into supporting DirectX 11. As supporting three seperate platforms (DirectX 9, DirectX 11, and DirectX 12) is not feesible, DirectX 11 was the clear winner for the "mainstream" platform target. What does this mean for you, the average survivor? We'll be moving forward with initial support for DirectX 11 only, with DirectX 12 support following eventually.Windows XP will no longer be possible, as it is not capable of DirectX 11 support.Windows XP has always been below minimum requirements for DayZ.With a time estimate of approximately 2 months to complete the last required changes for the new rendering module, and support DirectX 11.The initial goal is a 1:1 visual parity with the original simulation tied renderer.Once implemented, the design team will have access to more robust and complex particle effectsSystems such as bleeding, fires, flares, etc will receive the proper visual attention they requireVolumetric fog will be possible within the world of ChernarusEstimated completion date of support for DirectX 11 is mid to late May 2015.New A.I. & Stealth (Infected & Animal) Fairly early on in DayZ development it was fairly apparent that the existing A.I. we had inherited from previous titles using our original tech base was not going to be able to deliver the infected and animal experience we wanted to deliver. As Q1 for 2015 comes to a close, we've been slowly implementing very early versions of entirely new A.I. built specifically for DayZ into experimental branch. With 0.55 we'll begin to see early versions of both enter stable branch. Obviously very core to the DayZ experience is stealth when avoiding or approaching both types of A.I., as well as intelligent behavior and navigation. It is critical to allow the player to both feel like the hunter, and the hunted. Thus work on the A.I. side of the engine during Q1 focused heavily on begining to allow the player to feel as if they could escape the infected using only their wits, rather than brute force - and use that same stealth tactic to hunt and kill wild animals when exploring the vast fields and forests of Chernarus. As 2015 continues and we enter Q2, the existing systems will be iterated upon and expanded to offer an even more immersive and complex DayZ experience. Diseases Be it person to person contact, consuming contaminated water sources, or the cost of a comprimised immune system exposed to the harsh conditions of Chernarus weather - the risk and costs of maintaining player characters health has been something long anticipated. Hitting experimental branch late in Q1, the initial implementation of communicable diseases made its arrival with cholera. As development continues this initial implementation will of course expand into a more complex system. Fully integrating with the medical and health mechanics currently in game, and expanding into more complex diseases such as influenza, typhoid fever, and many more. Wrapping up Q1, stable branch will see the bodies of water across Chernarus carrying a chance of the presence of cholera. Survivor immune systems, as well as water purification tablets will be crucial to surviving as you trek across the map. Improved Cooking & Horticulture Living off the land has been an evolving goal (functionality wise) and Q1 saw the expansion of both the horticulture options, and the hunting and cooking mechanisms. The long awaited expansion on the original early cooking implementation finally made an appearance - with a more complex and in depth expansion of campfires, cooking tripods, and furnaces. The more complex cooking allowed the heating (and in some cases - side effects) of the heating of most items, including the popping off of firearm ammunition, and compressed containers such as the spray paint cans. This also expands into the progression of raw/cooking/cooked/burnt and so on states for most all vegetables, fruits, and meats. As the Central Economy implementation evolves, we'll begin to see player farms, and cooking stations such as the fireplace and furnace be tied into the server side persistence on a full time basis. Advanced Anti-Cheat Working closely with BattlEye over the quarter, the programming and production teams have implemented a more proactive BattlEye to DayZ on Steam. In addition to preventing all traditional external forms of cheating - Over 4,000 cheaters have been banned from DayZ since the begining of February. Obviously this is one in a series of steps in an ongoing battle. No title is without its vulnerabilities, and developing DayZ and its engine platform in the public eye opens us up to a number of security issues. However, the initiatives with BattlEye paired with upcoming additions of a more robust VAC support look to provide an ever evolving aggressive stance against cheating in DayZ. For Q2 and beyond, in addition to the steps mentioned above the gameplay programming team has and will continue to investigate and address legacy vulnerbilities in the engine powering DayZ. Throughout the remainder of DayZ's Early Access you will see an ever evolving movement against any and all cheating. It is core to the gameplay experience of a title as inherently competetive and persistent as DayZ that the users be provided as "fair" a playing field as possible.

As always, we will be watching server data, and the feedback tracker for any potential severe issues and will address them accordingly with a hot fix. For any bugs/issues you run into, please let us know by filing it on the feedback tracker: http://feedback.dayzgame.com New Items: -Bear Trap -Landmine -.308 Ammo -Oak bark -Birch bark -Chainsaw readded New Mechanics: -New Zombie AI (combat/roaming behaviour) -Horticulture Update -Cooking Update (visual cooking states) -Stealth -New Animal AI -Central economy -Fireplace Update -New Icons -Player control changes -New Crosshair -Diseases -Increased Zombie Count -Changed Zombie Spawns -New idle animations (main menu) -New UI (main menu) (use -newui switch to try it out) -Forced Persistence -Weapon rebalancing -Zombie Rebalancing New Animations: -Lot of new animal animations -Total rework of Zombie animations New Locations: -New camps Map: -Road improvements -Grassland improvements Programming: -New Sensors -New Zombie Controller -New Zombie Physics -Noise system Fixed: -Vehicle bugfixing -Zombie bugfixing -Animal bugfixing -and a lot more! Known issues: -Visual bugs in zombie animations -Sound issues with zombies -A rare server crash -Items not spawning at proper places Discussion

Hey survivors, As the bi-weekly Community Spotlight starts rolling, it's been interesting sifting through the vast backlog of player creations across Youtube as well as jumping between the massive amounts of Live streams that popped up during the past two weeks. It seems like with other types of entertainment, there are several different categories of content. There are videos that explain the player's thought process behind actions, videos that showcase content / mechanics / features, and there are videos that feature entertainment in the form of roleplay for example. This week we'll have a look at the works created by: SepticFalcon! Among other things, such as videos showing pvp and other random goodness, SepticFalcon has created showcases of both Stable as well as Experimental updates for quite some time now. These videos serve as really nice informational sources for players that have just set foot on Chernarus soil, or players that return to DayZ after having missed previous updates for example. One such video is SepticFalcon's showcase of the current 0.54 Stable branch version wherein he highlights what has been introduced and/or reworked in this Stable branch update. As mentioned, SepticFalcon does also do creations other than showcases of Stable/Experimental branch updates. A nice example is the video called “A Bad Negotiation”. This video is from SepticFalcon's great locker of videos that show his DayZ pvp skills – as well as a bit of bad luck for his adversaries at “6:05”, heh. Fending off foes while moving around and chambering rounds for each successive shot is no small feat (especially when you manage to still be standing at the end of the encounter). SepticFalcon, the guys at the office salute you! As always, if interested in more, please feel free to follow SepticFalcon via the following social media accounts: Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/SepticFalcon Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/septicfalcon Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Septicfalcon

Getting to see the old car factories would be a treat though!

Yeah, I'd be proper surprised if someone actually did, haha. How's the weather? Mmmmm, inconsistent(?). A bit of sun in between spells of rain/snow/hail. Say, did you ever visit Detroit since you're in Michigan?

That'd be bad seeing as the Prague offices are probably not too hard to find...

It looks like it might go into overtime. The new estimate is for around 18:00 CET. Apologies for the delay!

But... that's just mean :D

I appreciate the message in the image above, but at the same time, I doubly swear that it is no april fools' joke. The guys are currently working on deploying 0.55 on Stable branch :)

Greetings Survivors! Let's start out this week by recapping what was shared via the Official Forums, and Dev Hub. Andrej our Sound Designer shared some work in progress versions of the new infected sounds over on the development board. The ones shared are obviously only the male infected sounds, but are give a good representation of the direction the sound department is headed with their side of the new infected work. Dev Hub - WIP Infected SFX As well, Andrej, Peter, and myself headed down south to Moravia to visit an open air shooting range with the Arma sound team. New sound effects for a wide array of weapons were recorded for both titles. Obviously a good deal of work will have to be done to prepare them for use within each title, but it is an important step towards driving the authenticity of the firearms within DayZ. Viktor, our Lead Animator shared a work in progress video of the new player controller, and some of the gestures/movements possible with it. Obviously it goes without saying that this is still very early, but as development on both DayZ and the core Enfusion engine progresses - more of this work gets merged into the stable branch. I for one cannot wait to see survivors interact with the new player controller. Honza T, and Peter our Lead Designer have been over on the Official DayZ forums (and the Dev Hub) to discuss the potential evolution of the 3PP Camera - how it will effect gameplay, and gather feedback on the prototype work done so far. As mentioned prior, this is all prototype work - and something we've wanted to address since long before the Early Access began. 3PP camera allowing you to see things that are outside your line of sight is a huge pain in the ass for us. I'm confident we'll be able to address this smoothly, without compromising the visual enjoyment many folks get out of 3PP camera perspective. Looking forward towards the 0.55 Stable release work continues on the Central Economy, Group AI, and the new player controller. For 0.55 though we do have a nice list of content, as well as the initial implementation of the new infected AI. This should allow us to greatly increase the amount of infected spawning per server. (Roughly triple) Now, this won't get us to where we want to be at 1.0, but it is a strong step forward. Obviously a more robust system for where, and how the infected spawn - as well as plugging it into systems such as the dynamic events to allow us to spawn hordes is the end goal here. The ongoing work with the Central Economy will (when pushed to stable) allow us far more granular control over what spawns, in what type of area, and in what quantity. This is a huge step forward for us in terms of pushing DayZ closer to the punishing struggle for survival that is intended to be. As well, when fully functional it should allow the environment team a much broader canvas to where they place structures, and free the economy from defining a broad scope per building type. Lastly, work on the security side is always ongoing. Several new ban waves have gone out addressing some new issues - and on the engine side, the bigger scope tasks of addressing legacy vulnerabilities continues. In April we hope to announce a few new initiatives that will allow us to fully take advantage of the valuable in-development time that DayZ Early Access provides us in order to have a more secure title at 1.0. On a personal note, I recently encountered an amazing fan made intro for a DayZ content creator's twitch stream that is -amazingly- well done, and really drives home the style of play this content creator produces. I strongly encourage you to take three minutes of your time and check it out! I hope to see you all in Chernarus, and don't worry - I have a mic. - Brian Hicks / Lead Producer "The animation team has recently finished some major tasks related to the new zombie implementation. Our next focus is improving these and adding some advanced behavior. We will look into improving hit reactions by adding directional hits. One of upcoming updates will also include crawling infected. Besides that we are working on the new player character, which is a huge task divided into many small parts. Currently, we have basic movement for unarmed, rifle, two handed and pistols working. That means we can walk and run around when holding this items. Unfortunately there is big load of work left. We are still missing attack animations, aiming, reloading, special moves, item usage and many other specific actions. On the other hand, we have already managed to bring some improvements in. The most notable one is synchronized animations when running and walking. That means when you switch from one move to another there is no glitch. New animation continues where previous left. Another important addition is using gestures while moving. Yes, finally you can wave and run around. On the same note is switching weapons. Player is able to take or hide gun while moving and any time you stop running the character will stop, but arming/disarming will continue. And last but not least, we have now falling and landing animations. It is a placeholder in current state, but the idea is to have different landing animations depending on the height of the fall." - Viktor Kostik / Lead Animator Standup Notes for the week of 24 Mar 15 (Note: Standup notes are not a change log - they are a quick high level look at tasks the teams worked on throughout this week) Animation: Support for new player character systemUMP 45 Reloading Animations New Mocap List WIPSVD Reloading AnimationsBugfixingDesign: Central EconomyBarrel CraftingInfectedDiseasesTriggersPlant PestsFireplaces3PP Camera PrototypingVehicle TransmissionProgramming: Inventory refactorizationDynamic EventsVehicle Transmission bugfixingInfected/Animal AINew Player Character controllerAdvanced Loot Distro bugfixingNetwork and Memory OptimizationsA.I. Lure prototypingAdditional Server.cfg variablesAI Noise modifiers for weapons

As some of you know, I recently was able to take a trip to Boston to represent DayZ at PAX East with Brian. It was hectic, tiring, and a bit stressful but also turned out to be extremely inspiring and humbling to interact face to face with fans, listen to their stories and to speak with streamers and content creators about what has inspired them. Some of the creations which have come out of the community completely floor us in the office. The live action videos, drawings, paintings, songs, animations and others are cherished in the hearts of developers as an outward expression of one’s affection for our work - even though they sometimes poke fun at our game’s shortcomings. One of my personal favorites is a series by Lilith Lucratea, whose work has previously been shown by her beau, and DayZ Associate Producer, Eugen Harton. Good art should not only be aesthetically pleasing, but also make you feel something and I think this work does just that: The dark forest and faded silhouette is somehow able to reflect feelings of loneliness and the idea of losing your identity or, perhaps, a life fading into insignificance. Since so many in our community have been likewise inspired to create their own works, I wanted to propose #FanArtFriday for DayZ. This will be an opportunity for artists to submit their DayZ inspired artwork. So starting Wednesday, March 25th I will open up a new thread in the forum here: http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/forum/144-art/ Anybody who would like to may submit their visual media there, along with some short bio and a link to your social media page/deviantart profile/website/whatever. I’d encourage everyone to swing by a few times during the week to “give your beans” to your favorite entries. After a week of submissions, I’ll lock the thread and on the following Friday of that week, the team will pick a few of our favorite entries and announce them to the community. I really have no idea how you all will respond so we’ll give it a try and, who knows, maybe rinse, repeat in the future. Chris (Scubaman3D) Torchia About Lilith: “I got inspired by DayZ, because of the atmosphere of the world, design and its visuals. There are really nice gems hidden all over the world of Chernarus. When I sit down to paint one of these, its a transformation of something that I can share and be excited about with others who share the passion. Its almost a photosynthesis :)” Chris / Associate Art Director

If no solutions turn up, you could try contacting BattlEye and see what their comments are on this subject: [email protected] Alternatively, you could also try to contact the support team for the software you purchased.

That would be the way to go for now, yes.

Just to be on the safe side though, I would still advise players to pick up their tents and such before the weekly maintenance.

Greetings Survivors, Last week the 0.54 update rolled out to stable branch. As noted on the official DayZ forums – a percentage of the active user base are experiencing abnormal behaviour with this update. That said, work progresses internally on a hotfix for 0.54 aimed at addressing: Crash to DesktopLow-Poly TexturesLow FPS in gameConstant “Receiving” loading screens during gameplayWhile the programming and QA team members assigned to this hotfix push their work to experimental branch for testing, the rest of the team continues on with work on 0.55. The 0.55 update should be a fantastic one for the users of stable branch – with work focusing on things ranging from: Animal A.I. iterationHorticulture expansionsCooking expansionsOperational Fluids for vehiclesTraps/Snare expansionsTesting of Central Economy controlsAnd so much more..Work continues on larger engine based tasks such as replacing the renderer, work on the new player controller, new audio engine module, and related tasks. On an exciting note, as we look forward to what will be required to support Steam Workshop modding for DayZ teams have begun analysis work on both requirements for new content to be created, and legacy DayZ Mod content to be supported. On the legacy side – we’ve worked closely with Sumrak, the author of the Namalsk map for Arma 2 / DayZ Mod and have completed a basic analysis and test multiplayer session on Namalsk in DayZ. The road to supporting a proper ecosystem on Steam Workshop will take time – but our goal is to have a strong set of tools, documentation, and examples by the time DayZ hits 1.0 and leaves Early Access. We’ll be reaching out to more DayZ Mod content creators over the coming months to gather feedback, and discuss exactly what modding DayZ will look like. As always – head over to the official DayZ forums – Developers are present to discuss ideas, take feedback, and interact with the community. Brian Hicks / Lead Producer Back in the days when I was trying to survive and figure out how everything worked in the DayZ mod and apart from many other things I was also amazed with this simple one - during the idleness, infected were choosing their destinations on the fly. At first seemingly irrelevant mechanic makes out for me the dynamic stealth game which is authentic in any case. I cannot count how many times it makes my heart race when infected suddenly changed their direction while I was trying to sneak around them or how I was waiting for ages hidden nearby just to pick point the moment when to move to my desired location just to realize that more infected were coming to that area. This unpredictable behavior made me fear them, trying to minimize my appearance to become successful - to survive in a hostile environment and luckily find and get what I needed. Fast forward to the present, from the DayZ release infected was one of our main issue and we were very aware of it. Many of you have been disappointed how they work and lack of the visible progress. Hopefully we will revive your faith for proper working infected soon. With the most of the new AI, sensors and animation systems now being in their place we can finally begin to transform infected to the real menace as they always meant to be. Of course initial implementation based on the new systems will resemble the current state at first as we need to settle things down, catch and solve the most annoying issues and make proper foundation. So please don't expect instant switch to infectsomenauts. I can see you are getting afraid again, but hey we are still deep in the development and you can experience these changes hands on which is part of fun being involved in the early access to the game. I want to assure you that more advanced things will be rolled out continuously later as we progress with their implementation alongside with further development of AI, sensors, pathfinding and animation system. So what to expect from the new infected in general? At first which is very important is clearly the performance which allows us to add more of them in the environment. Very first test showed us that server performance is pretty solid even with 1500 infected on the map which is 5x more then it's usual on the stable these days. The infected are designed to be a threat for the survivors as their senses are more sensitive, they are moving fast on short distances and can be lethal in the close combat. You can encounter them mostly in the residential areas, the larger the area - the more infected are present. Areas can be purged which encourages to barricade structures and establish bases. After some time infected will be approaching the area again. As we want to promote stealth approach to encounters you can minimize chance of being seen or heard by wearing darker or camo clothes and light shoes, slowing down your movement, lowering your profile in crouch or prone, avoiding usage of lights and making noise and so on. Fortunately you can also distract them when they are wandering to unwanted destination with throwing the items witch makes noise, light or are somewhat attractive to them. You must be aware in such situation as they are quite interested what's going on around them. When you are focused they will try to hunt you down with no mercy while easily forming packs down the road. Even the doors or barricades cannot be trusted once they want to feed on you. They have fast acceleration but can slow down overtime or lost interest if you get too far after they eventually stumbled. In combat they are using different types of attack, based on distance and force, which makes the combat with them more interesting. To wrap up brand new infected they will also have new visual and audio appearance which will be released gradually and will replace old models, textures and sound effects. We get together 50 different types of males and females infected, and they will be dressed in clothes you can find around so they will no longer look inconsistent with survivors. Some of them will be generic citizens, villagers but you can also look forward to different workers, clerks, policemans, soldiers, firefighters, paramedics, prisoners, patients, journalist, survivors.. and plenty of others. Soon we will be doing rehearsal with adepts for infected voiceactors and I'm quite happy where sfx direction is heading as it will delivers some shivers and goosebumps. The dawn is around the corner... see you in Chernarus folks! Peter / Lead Designer Standup Notes for the week of 3 Mar 15 (Note: Standup notes are not a change log - they are a quick high level look at tasks the teams worked on throughout this week) Animation:Infected Attack AnimationsV3S AnimationsGestures bugfixingSupport for new Player ControllerSupport for new Infected SystemsDesign:Plant PestsBarrel configs & scriptsDiseasesSupport for new infected systemsTrigger systemsManual TransmissionCookingCentral economyBugfixingProgramming:Inventory refactorizationLoot distribution per buildingsZombie/Animal AICharacter controller (animations & physics)Vehicles - Manual transmission and bugfixingFlaregun ImprovementsSecurity Bugfixes

On the Steam store page for DayZ, one of the sections read “About This Game”... yep, it explains what DayZ is about. But, as that section on the store page explains more about the core idea and functions of DayZ, all players take it upon themselves find out what the DayZ experience is to them. In the process of doing so, you as players come across loads of bugs that we are fortunate enough to have filed on our Feedback Tracker, and in order to show our appreciation of your efforts in helping the team develop DayZ, we would like to feature as part of our status reports, players who have made the biggest contribution in filing those bugs. Now don’t worry, while we do appreciate as many bugs as we can get from you guys, the monthly bug filer will not be measured purely on the amount of bugs reported, but also on the quality of the bugs, the amount of duplicates filed and such. The bug hunters will be featured on a monthly basis, so roughly in every fourth status report. At the end of development, the biggest contributors will be featured as part of our Special Thanks on the credits for DayZ. Let’s take a moment to also mention all of you players who document your journeys through Chernarus. You, as content creators, show us what is available and possible with DayZ in terms of interaction and entertainment. You offer a glimpse of your experiences, your joy as well as frustrations, to us, the viewers that come across your media creations. Now, seeing as some of these creations being top notch, we thought it would be a great idea to also feature a special content creator as part of our weekly status reports. To kick off this bi-weekly feature, we would like to offer you a look at the work done by: TheRunningManZ! I had the good fortune of being entertained for the better part of a weekend afternoon by his backlog of great videos on Youtube. The reason for featuring TheRunningManZ is not necessarily because he’s got the largest following of viewers, but more because of the excellent information and entertainment value in his content. Take for example the video “The Dilemma!” in which TRMZ gives an explanation at the beginning of the video regarding the background of the events unfolding as well as the thought process behind his actions. Also, for some nice gameplay and a bit of elation, do have a look at the video “V3S Mayhem! The Truck Takedown And The Takedown Truck...” – the joy (and the jig) at around 2:15 is pure win!!! TheRunningManZ, the guys at the office salute you! If interested, please feel free to follow TRMZ via the following social media accounts: • TWITCH: http://www.twitch.tv/therunningmanz • YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/user/slinky9746 • TWITTER: http://twitter.com/TheRunningManZ - Michael aka SMoss / Community Manager

According to our friendly neighborhood producer, "Moving into the next experimental branch window, we'll be looking at pushing the early implementation work out to this branch and testing with varied numbers across all servers." So, it all very much depends on the "... if all goes well" part of your question. It's all dependant on how testing goes as well as the data pulled by Exp. branch, before deciding to push the horde onto 0.55 Stable branch (hope you meant 0.55 stable).

This will of course get fixed. In the latest status reports, the following points have been mentioned: Animal A.I. iterationHorticulture expansionsCooking expansionsTraps/Snare expansionsAlso, the following quote is from our lead designer Peter: "... After the intended cooking mechanics are in place and the central economy is working as it should, we can finally say good bye to the generous amount of spawned non-perishable food. " Couple this with the work being done to zombie AI/behaviour, there should be a good chance that in the future, you would have to rely more on the wild for your food rather than simply just stepping into Cherno and start raiding the houses for peach cans.

Greetings Survivors, As the 0.54 hotfix hit stable branch last Wednesday, work has continued on toward 0.55 and beyond. Over the last week with myself at GDC and PAX East, our Lead Designer - Peter Nespesny has shared some of the prototype functionality currently being worked on. From ongoing work with the infected A.I., to the many crafting options for your survivor base with the multipurpose barrel - the design team has had their plate filled with some pretty interesting stuff over the last week. Peter spoke briefly on the development board, and the official forums about the intended use of the multipurpose barrel. Beyond what Peter spoke of, the potential usage for a multipurpose barrel for player bases is extensive. Ranging from lightly effective cover from incoming fire - to the storing of fluids such as fuel, and my personal favorite - catching rain to increase your water stores - I think when paired with functional persistence and global cleanup, the multipurpose barrel will be a must have for any decent sized player encampment. Even more exciting, pairing with work from the gameplay programming teams - the design team has been able to get their hands on the early implementation of the new infected A.I. - Peter showcased on the forums a brief video of basic grouping and horde mentality responding to a players gunshot. Again - this is very early implementation, however as work progresses into the next week the design team are working on sneaking and stealthy tactics when dealing with this new A.I. system. Moving into the next experimental branch window, we'll be looking at pushing the early implementation work out to this branch and testing with varied numbers across all servers. - Brian Hicks / Lead Producer