SMoss

The team is already on the case (leg breaking/instant death): http://feedback.dayzgame.com/view.php?id=5169

Survivors! This Wednesday's Experimental branch update should be downloading to your PCs now for those opt'ing in to this branch. Most of this weeks work has been on the programming and animation side, so you won't see any of that today. However there are several security, and content changes in today's branch update. Including, but not limited to: Improvised ghillie head pieceImprovised ghillie chest pieceImprovised camoflage for riflesServer side memory management bugfixingAddressed several issues with throwing of grenadesGeneral bugfixing for gameplay systemsAs well as plenty of other changes, enhancements, modifications, and bug squashing that we'll let you all discover on your own. Experimental branch servers are temporarily not announcing restart schedules while we update the scheduling system to adapt to server side changes - so be careful out there! Per usual, every experimental branch update also includes a purge of the experimental hive - so don't be too concerned if you spawn in fresh.

Now that 0.50 has rolled out to stable branch, the focus of the team shifts to the incremental roll out of 0.51 for November’s monthly stable branch update. As with any monthly stable branch update, this comes with several new features, functional changes to existing systems, and its own unique collection of bugs and general game play issues. Those who encounter any frustrating blockers to their gameplay experience on either stable or experimental branch are encouraged to utilize the DayZ feedback tracker at feedback.dayzgame.com. Looking towards the 0.51 update and the Christmas break, in addition to the obvious feature and functional goals - Server side performance is paramount. Addressing critical issues and blockers in releasing 0.50 on schedule has resulted in reduced server performance and with our end of year feature/functional goals coming up the programming team is focused on ensuring a smooth and solid server side frame rate. Experimental/Unstable servers will be used to profile and test 0.51’s performance throughout the month, so if you are looking to participate in this stress testing - make sure to opt into Experimental branch! On experimental branch this week we’ve pushed out several new security related hotfixes, as well as pushing BattlEye’s upcoming changes. As always with security, working in tandem with our external partners (BattlEye and VAC) as well as observing exploits and behavior on experimental and stable branch servers allow us to iterate, and address via experimental > stable branch update paths. It is important again to understand that during the Early Access Alpha period of DayZ’s development vulnerabilities will be introduced as the engine and systems surrounding it are created. Addressing these vulnerabilities and iterating via the experimental > stable branch update path is a constant tug of war. Through utilizing the DayZ feedback tracker to properly report valid information and issues encountered surrounding these areas, we can more quickly “patch the holes” This Friday (the 14th) we had the first of our “dev play sessions” on experimental branch and the footage captured during this stream will be edited and commentated over in next weeks “dev experimental branch discussion” video to be released in next weeks Status Report. It is our hopes that combining general developer experimental branch gameplay with a “directors style commentary” alternating weekly will allow both the light hearted side of seeing the team play and experiment with systems in development, and the more serious gameplay and design oriented development discussion that the dev experimental branch discussion videos will allow. This paired with the upcoming restructuring of the Dev Hub, as well as moving the Status Reports to Fridays and rolling out “Update Notes” for Wednesday experimental branch releases (via the dev hub) will be the first step towards increasing community/developer interaction moving forward into 2015. Don’t forget about our private shard contest, announced during last weeks Status Report. Submissions are still being accepted! - Brian Hicks / Lead Producer Peter / Lead Game Designer “Not much has changed since the last status report update on our front. Vehicle implementation is still flagged with the highest priority. There are of course some issues down the road which needs to be tackled to some extent so it can be considered ready to go for public testing. We advanced a bit as we were passed the vehicle physics parameters in configuration to set up car behavior correctly which is not an easy task and can take countless hours of tweaking and balancing to get the feeling right and believable. For example we already had iteration where our beloved “V3S” was acting like a boat or was falling on its sides while steering. At Thursday and Friday we had a visit from part of the Bratislava team here to talk about features and design. It was nice to have them there and discuss things in details - like animals, cooking and horticulture. In meantime we’ve added MP-133 with pistol grips and fixed walkie talkies. We also added one more way to gather meat. Apart from that there are some new issues with restraining and struggling which we are taking the care of now. We are also revisiting the way how the suicide was supposed to be working and if everything goes fine it will be seamlessly integrated into the gameplay at the end. Come get some… see you in Chernarus folks!” Chris / Lead Artist “This week, I’ve been working closely with Peter regarding design of the V3S and will be working on a high quality interior of the V3S with functional gauges. The initial implementation of the V3S will have some placeholder interior as the high quality version is being created. We have also finished the prison uniform and are closing in on finishing the prison complex, which will be an interesting area to explore. We plan to also create prison-themed zombies which you will have to face if you want to explore the facility. The Steyr AUG model is done and we will soon send it for animations, cfg, and sounds. I am optimistic that it can be in for next stable release but its worth saying that it will be the base version only. We are looking into swapping barrels to convert from the standard AUG to an HBAR version. The military tent is also finished. I expect it will be found in next stable release.” Standup Notes for the week of 10 Nov 14 (Note: Standup notes are not a change log - they are a quick high level look at tasks the teams worked on throughout this week) Art: • Prison Complex • High fidelity V3S instrument panel • Steyr AUG • Prison-themed zombies Animation: • Mp133 Pistol Grip Reload Animation done • Player Suicide Animations in Progress • Vehicle animations • Throwing in crouch and prone • Animation changes for new controls • Zombies with new AI • Vehicles Design: • Configs and scripts for new items (V3S Praga, MP-133 with pistol grips) • Fixing restrain/struggling • Fixing walkie talkies • Fixing suicide • Vehicles • Horticulture • Cooking • Damage system Programming: • Critical inventory fixes • Vehicle settings for physical simulations • New gamecontrols • Loot distribution improvements • Zombie/Animal AI • Player connection issues (possibility of attacking players before they can play) • Character duplication fixes

As 0.50 is pushed to stable branch today, it is important that survivors understand a few key points about this latest update in the DayZ development cycle. 0.50 and features specific to this update, as are as always - very early prototypes. While we do iterate weekly on experimental branch servers for both functional, and gameplay reasons many systems behave very differently when exposed to the much larger audiences on stable branch. Additionally, as we blaze ahead towards our end of year goals we will see performance server side bounce back and forth. We here on the DayZ development team endeavor to finish off the year with not only the additional features mentioned in last weeks status report, but with a healthy and steady server performance rate. As always, please use the feedback tracker when reporting issues and make sure to work with your game server provider's support if you are a DayZ server operator. That said, lets revisit last weeks comments regarding changes to how project updates and development info on DayZ is communicated to the Early Access survivors. As mentioned last week, we will be rolling out some changes to the DayZ.com website: Project CalendarExperimental & Stable branch updatesDev StreamsMaintenanceStatus ReportsEventsDev Hub will be moved to the landing page of DayZ.com to allow easier access to the latest news and updates about the development of DayZServer Status widget/block - (This displays the current status of Stable and Experimental branches eg: Online / Offline)In addition to the changes to DayZ.com - we will be reapproaching how we handle the dev streams. We will continue with the dev team play sessions - however we will replace the alternating week play session / Q&A frequency with a dev blog / commentary style video that covers the teams commentary on the previous play session as well as discusses and shows things upcoming to experimental branch. As we roll these changes to DayZ.com and our dev streams / blogs out we will as always engage the community for feedback at the official DayZ.com forums. Lastly, as many may be aware - our game server partners recently started rolling out support for the renting of private shard servers on stable branch. To celebrate this, and coincide with the upcoming Christmas holiday we are looking for the best / strongest / most epic / generally most awesome communities. Do you have a DayZ squad, clan, server community, or otherwise group of rag tag survivors? We want to hear about it, and you. Tell us your tale at [email protected] and the top three entries by December 1st will win free server hosting for their group for a year from Multiplay Game Servers, as well as the option of private shards (also free) to go with it. (Subject: DayZ: Private Shard contest) Winners will be announced December 3rd in that weeks status report. - Brian Hicks / Lead Producer Peter / Lead Game Designer "With the delay of releasing stable version caused by crashes last week we entered a data freeze mode thus not many new things went into the experimental - mostly safe fixes or tweaks from our side. However work didn't stopped for the team. Currently we are working on enhancement of horticulture with fertilisers and protection against pests. Cooking is being prepared for refactoring and at the end gas cooker and fireplace will offer similar possibilities. Apart from that there are ongoing discussions about construction (base building), zombies AI, inventory and other aspects of the game. Vehicles. As nearly everyone is looking forward to them so I would like to disclose the current status of them a little. Vehicles implementation in the engine itself like handling, physics and other parts was completely written from scratch. We (design) finally got our hands on them as the programmers finished their work on basic needs and they will continue further with their work in parallel with ours. So far we have a driveable V3S with basic configuration in game along with some basic controls and our main focus now is to bring the initial implementation to the public as soon as possible. Of course as it will be just basic stuff for now I would like to point out that it will be not wise to await advanced features like complete repairing with full controls, all parts, upgrading, mounting points, shooting from vehicles and such. All this and much more will be ongoing iterative process like with everything and it will take a while to reach the final implementation so bear with us. Meanwhile you can refresh your knowledge of traffic rules... see you in Chernarus folks!"

Greetings Survivors, Over the next few weeks you will hopefully begin to see some small (but effective) changes to how the Status Reports, Dev Streams, and DayZ website are laid out. In order to facilitate this, the traditional format of our dev streams will change and the Status Report will begin to focus more on the tech side of DayZ, as well as the existing discipline soap boxes, and stand up notes. The DayZ website will soon feature an "Early Access" calendar covering our intended experimental and stable branch updates, play sessions, dev talks, special events, and consumer show attendance. That aside, this week hopefully sees the release of 0.50 to Stable Branch on steam. Paired with the recent support of private shards for consumer rented DayZ server instances and the ongoing drive for server performance enhancements we hope to finish off the first year of development on DayZ with a strong support for player communities. Persistent storage stability, as well as transportation, and A.I. redesign are goals we aim to be able to begin implementing into our steam branches before the Christmas holiday. As always, we will discuss the progress of these goals in our status reports and external communication moving forward. UPDATE: As mentioned via the DayZ Dev Twitter (@dayzdevteam) we are currently working to address issues encountered during pre release testing for 0.50 to stable branch. Current goals are aimed at a release during next weeks regularly scheduled maintenance, however we will keep you all updated as to the progress. In the mean time, experimental branch is updated with the latest 0.50 build - for volume and stress testing prior to next weeks maintenance window. Make sure to check the DayZ dev hub weekly, and keep an eye out for the changes to DayZ.com - Brian Hicks / Lead Producer Peter / Lead Game Designer "The end of the month is around the corner and that means only one thing: After the three experimental releases in a row it's a time to deliver the latest stable branch update to DayZ. The Last few days we were fixing the last few issues here and there and polishing current state of the internal dev branch version so it can be distributed to stable branch and shine there for another month. As well I can tell you that you will have plenty of stuff to try and do. Let me recap quickly the features and content added to the game this month for you. With proper tools you are able now to plow the soil in the greenhouses and plant the seeds which will grow into plants and produce crops which can be picked. For this initial iteration of horticulture we went with tomato plants and with the fixed placement, in the near future we will add more plants and planting spots will become arbitrary. After doors were re-implemented in the engine we were able to add opening/closing sound effects to them as well as locking/unlocking their locks with lock picks which is the very first basic iteration of barricading. Doors can be also unlocked with brute force so don't worry that someone will lock you up and leave you for dead. Taking care of your character was also extended with shoes degradation which is dependent on shoes durability, surface roughness they are used on, movement speed and distance walked. Character exposure to weather, temperature and wetness was tweaked and with addition of heat packs even snipers must not fear they will freeze out during their camping. Also other features were expanded as well, repairing items and clothes with duct tape and leather sewing kit. You can also use sewing kits to stitch your wounds. New animals were added as well, you can meet new the goat and hen now in Chernarus. As far as new items goes I just mention some of them. From weapons there is a set of long awaited ones containing MP-133, R92, AK-74, AKS-74U and as a bonus the handy Derringer. For melee usage there is sledgehammer, and brass knuckles. Clothes were enriched with now complete firefighter uniform and other pieces. Backpacks have also some newcomers like SPOSN and waterproof backpacks. We fixed some ongoing annoying issues like struggling from restrains, seeing thru burlap sack when logged in with it on head, unconsciousness compatibility with both states, character drowning, fireplace and tent placing, container inception and many more. I teased you in the last status report that I'll write something about the upcoming new inventory. Current inventory is good and is doing fine but there are some little flaws. What I especially like is the micromanagement of items in given space which provide nice immersion - it's not just some text list and I also like easy usage of it with drag and drop functionality. We would like to expand on good sides and rectify not sufficient ones like virtual hands slot or some inconsistencies in manipulation with inventory in general. With new inventory system we will be able to do things like creating container on any object, locking it, dynamically change it's capacity, dynamically change number of quick-bar slots according to given container and a lot more, maybe rotating items will be possible as well. Our senior designer Jan Tomasik is currently playing with GUI layout of inventory screen and here is what he has to say: "Horizontally oriented inventory uses better screen space of nowadays 16:9 monitors. This layout reduce necessity to scroll through inventory to minimum and doesn't obscure view on players character and its surroundings. Player has better overview of items he posses and time for all management of loot is significantly reduced. Inventory is fully modular so it fits even on 4:3 and offers future possibility to be even organizable by players themselves. All slot sizes are same through whole UI so player is always sure whether item fits in slot or not. Player can choose whether he wants to have avatar panel on left or right side of the screen and can also organize order of containers.". You can see Jan's concept of horizontal layout in attached screenshot, of course the visuals are just temporary mockup. Enjoy the new stable release and in the meantime... see you in Chernarus folks! " Viktor / Lead Animator "The animation team has been busy bringing new animations to the game like reloading for derringer, wringing clothes, using grenades, flares and chemlights and other. We have also slightly redesigned the sitting animations. The new pose greatly reduces amount of clippings when holding pistols, one handed and two handed items. There is also progress with the new zombies as they are internally running around using new systems. The animation graph and AI now has to be improved so it can start using new animations. Last weeks we had many discussions about some great stuff coming to the game. One I am most excited about is the injured player also known as limping animations already showed a while ago. It wasn't the right time to bring this to the game yet because it is very tied to many systems and most of the default animations have to be done and finalized first. We have agreed on how many injured stages there will be and also we would like to represent some illnesses with an animations like cough, sneeze, fever and more. To be clear this is something we won't get sooner then sometime next year. But I'm sure it's worth the wait." Standup Notes for the week of 27 Oct 14 (Note: Standup notes are not a change log - they are a quick high level look at tasks the teams worked on throughout this week) Design: Bugfixing before stable releaseConfigs and scripts for new items Polishing current state of things Loot tables maintenance Loot distribution Crafting Controls Inventory Vehicles Zombie AI Programming: Critical inventory fixesVehicle controlsNew gamecontrolsDoor states persistencyLoot distribution improvementsZombie/Animal AI

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: -Balaclavas (Color variants) -MP133 -Sledge hammer -Brass Knuckles (Color variants) -SPOSN backpack -Derringer (Color variants) -Improvised Fish Trap -Waterproof bag (Color variants) -Leather sewing kit -Tomato seeds -Gardening lime -Lockpicks -Rossi R92 -Rabbit snare -Rangefinder -Heat pack -Metal wire -Medical thermometer -AK 74 (Color variants) -AKS 74U (Color variants) -Welding Mask -Firefigher Uniform (Color variants) -Firefighter Helmet (Color variants) -Firefighter Pants (Color variants) -Skater Helmet (Color variants) New Mechanics: -You can search for feathers in chicken coops -Water and energy consumption tweaked -Player can be put to unconscious while restrained and can be restrained while he is unconscious -Two handed item throwing -Loot table changes -Barricading (First iteration, you are able to lock doors, state being persistent) -Horticulture (You are able to use greenhouses when you aquire seeds and fertilizer to grow plants) -Soaking of items in backpacks -Waterproof items -Wring items -Player temperature -Shoe degradation and comfort -Duct tape repair and crafting -Improved weather system -Drowning -You can stitch wounds now -Riders jacket, military shoes, combat shoes, leather shoes, working boots can be patched using leather sewing kit -New animals (Hen, Goat) -Server time affects temperature New Animations: -New holding animations -New unarmed sprinting animations -New grenade unpinning -Wring animation added to wring clothes -New handgun animations -New restrain animations -New sitting pose for pistols, two handed and unarmed -New bow reload animation -Prone move with pistol polished Towns and Villages: -New village "Belaya Polana" -New town "Novaya Petrovka" + surroundings -New village "Topolniki" -New village "Svergino" -New village "Berezhki" Locations: -New Kamensk mine -New Military Base near Severohrad -New Svergino castle -New "Pobeda dam" -Krasnostav Airfield now has a new Hangar and Office -Others: -Food and News Stands has been added -Bug fixing -Map optimization -Barrels was removed from map Fixed: -Fixed Shadows -Eject Buckshots option for shotguns -Fixed Shadow Issues -Fixed Client Crashes -Fixed Server Crashes -Antihacking measures -Visor for gorka helmet now shows bandanas/balaclavas -Fireplace works at high altitude -Fish trap works with bait as well -Leaving unconsciousness while having burlap sack will keep screen dark -Smersh vest without backpack appearance fixed -You can no longer place hacksaw and sickle on shoulder -Telescopic baton damage texture -Telescopic baton won't reset its damage after open/close action -Breaking from restraints is now done through repeated alternated pressing of A and D keys -Animation and cancel action added to road flare ignition -Animation and cancel action added to chem-light ignition -Feathers combining and splitting added -You can add kindling and sharp sticks to fireplace -Performing other environment actions while on ladder or swimming removed -Breaking from restraints fixes -Attachment slot removed from skate and firefighter helmet -Message spamming reduced -Temperature is now affected by movement -Safer heat comfort calculation -Skinned animal now hides correctly when the process is completed -The process of skinning can be cancelled at any time -Status message for drowning -Shoe damage/wear reduced -Rangerfinder measures distance properly -And a lot more! Known Issues: -Items do not update their state properly (durability/wet). Moving them, or relogging will refresh. -Server crash -Performance deteroriation Discussion and feedback

The subject of the central economy has been one of varied opinions within the community. The idea of centralized control over both rare items, and quantity control over more common items of loot is very polarizing. As we look towards the remaining months left in 2014, the team has been discussing our intended goals and level of functionality desired from the loot spawning system, and the central hives' control over it. As the current behavior for the spawning and respawning of loot is a placeholder system and the limits of this form are very visible when observing the current behavior on experimental branch servers we have outlined the following goals for the final functionality with the programming, and design teams: Control over quantity per server instance for rare / high value items (Eg: M4A1, SVD, etc)Loot table control per region/area type rather than per building class nameEven distribution of loot economy across the whole of ChernarusAs work moves forward on deploying the intended functionality into loot spawning/respawning, server side stats analysis will allow fine adjustments to the system to be made, and experimental branch updates on a weekly basis will allow us to iterate, and volume/stress test against a large user base. Status reports throughout the remainder of the year will keep people apprised on the progress of this new system. - Brian Hicks / Producer Chris / Lead Artist "This week, I'm taking a look at our skybox and lighting settings to see if there is opportunity to improve the experience visually - particularly at dawn/dusk and night. I'm hoping that we will find a way to add the milky way spiral arm visible in the night sky to our game. Work continues on several new character pieces (women's clothing, prison uniform, medical scrubs, craftable clothing and new zombie types) as well as various environment models which I have mentioned previously (new heli crash site, objects for the NEAF, building signs, other props). The Derringer, AK74M, AKS74U and MP133 with pistol grips have all been passed to the animators, designers and sound team for their part to be completed. We are still be on course to add 5.45mm ammo and the AK74 before the end of October." Peter / Lead Designer "The art team has completed several new weapons and delivered the assets to the animation and design teams. One of these new items is one quite a special case, which we need to figure out how to do properly and it's a flare gun. So in the meantime you will get other dangerous toys to play with. By the way do you remember that little useful item from the mod which was used to heat yourself up? Character exposure mechanics were expanded again and good old heat pack is back and it's better than ever. When you use it, it starts to produce heat to warm you up as long as the pack lasts. With advanced weather impact we had introduced also some meaning for shoes you are wearing. But that wasn't enough for us within scope of the survival. Shoes have potential to became very important part of your clothes to take care of as they are gets damaged now depending on movement speed, surface type and distance traveled and eventually hurts your feet. Previously, I had mentioned the new controls system which is currently being worked on and we have working prototype of it already. You are probably curious what changes it will brings to game and way it's played. We are focused to make the controlling of your character as fluent as possible so there will be no immersion breaking due to clunky controls. That means we want to eliminate user action menu, or at least have this possibility just for very special cases. Usage of items will be driven contextually, let's say you have an apple in your hand and you invoke action by pressing and holding use button - if you are pointing on someone you will start to feed him while you are holding the use button, if not then you will start eating it by yourself - when you release you will stop the action. You will be able to use items even during movement. Still have that half-eaten apple in hand when zombie suddenly appear? Just hit him hard with that apple in your hand - yes all items (of course firearms too) can became melee weapons. New controls allow us also to expand melee system which we are considering to do with addition of two types of attacks - fast and charged, or to add push instead of fast attack. We will see how the prototype of these goes and how it will play with server performance and synchronization in general. Next time I will talk a little bit about the new inventory too. As usual apart from such exciting stuff we made some fixes such ammo-box container inception and other smaller ones. I nearly forgot that we spent some time on defining what animal companions should be, but that's something to talk about later. Choose your footwear wisely... see you in Chernarus folks!" Standup Notes for the week of 20 Oct 14 (Note: Standup notes are not a change log - they are a quick high level look at tasks the teams worked on throughout this week) Art: Improvements to the skybox and lightingMultiple crafted leather itemsWomen's shorts, sweaterPolishing bush rag and 3D camo for weaponsPrison Uniform PantsMedical ScrubsSteyr AUGLarge TentVarious new environment modelsAnimation: Sitting gesture changes/polishingProne animations with pistol polishingsNew hand poses for itemsWring clothes animation doneBinoculars animation graph tuningBow reload animations in progressDesign: Bugfixing (tent pitching, repairing leather items, struggling, containers)Configs and scripts for new items (heat pack)Shoes and foots damageExpansion of weather impactLoot tables maintenanceDamage and destruct texturesAdvanced meleeBarricadingAnimal companionsLoot distributionInjured characterControlsInventoryVehiclesProgramming: Critical inventory fixesUnintenional weapon switchingNew gamecontrolsLoot distribution improvementsGameplay statisticsDoor states persistencyImplementation of the V3S vehicleZombie/Animal AI

Unfortunately, due to new crash related issues caught during last minute testing of patch 0.50, we'll have to push the update back to a later date. Stable branch servers will roll back to version 0.49 and Experimental branch servers will be updated with todays build to gather more data for particular crash.

This week we'll talk about infected AI, and our plans for the next few months regarding these systems. Looking forward towards our October stable branch update (0.50) and on-wards to the November update we plan on slowly implementing the next iteration of A.I. for the infected into our experimental and later stable branches. The intent with this iteration is focused on several key points for gameplay: Stealth as a viable method of tactics vs infected A.I.Vastly reduced range-of-visionSmaller corner to corner cone of visionInfected hearing ability refactored to compliment stealth as viable gameplay methodThe impact of the intended new behavior extends past the obvious gameplay areas and into server performance and navmesh compliance. As the gameplay programming team begins the process of implementing this new system into DayZ, so will begin the process of removing the legacy A.I. system used prior. Starting fresh with this new system should reduce the load on the DayZ server process and allow us to begin experimenting with new methods of distributing the infected, as well as increasing the amount of infected spawned per server instance. As well, the changes in A.I. navigation in complex scenarios should have a strong positive impact on the positioning of infected A.I. when players attempt to trap/ditch/elude them in and around structures and terrain features. On the service side, the architecture has been completed to support and rent private shards of the central hive. We have updated our DayZ server rules for the public hive to reflect the differences between public hive and private shard servers - both of these rule sets can be viewed here: Public Hive - Server Rules Private Shard - Server Rules Once our partner game server providers have completed the final touches on supporting the rental of these new server types in each of their systems, you will begin to see private shard servers show up in the in game server browser. - Brian Hicks / Producer Chris / Lead Artist Tech: To follow on from last time, I received word that the bug preventing shadows from being cast onto our prototype bushrag was fixed so we will begin polishing it and generating any other assets needed for its crafting. Weapons: Work continues on the AKS-74U and AK-74. I decided with Peter that we will keep the AK101 in the game for now and visually distinguish it by the black furniture and dark-plum magazine. By contrast, the AK74 will be given wood furniture and a brown magazine. The AUG needs a bit more time but I can tell you we have pretty big plans for it. We're exploring the idea of converting your AUG from carbine with the AUG built-in optic to an HBAR with an ACOG if you find the right parts. We'll keep you appraised of the latest developments. Character: Work continues on women's clothing and new zombie types - in particular, a farmer zombie. He's a little pudgy but can still pack a punch. Peter / Lead Designer "We’ve got a lot of things in the pipe right now. We’ve taken a look at some of the remaining issues with struggling from restrains and burlap sack. We’ve fixed them and they look good to go. No more simple holding of the key to set you free from your restrains. No more reconnecting with burlap sack on head with ability to see through it. We will also add the possibility to restrain survivors with rope, duct tape and even wire, which was added recently for use with snare trap. We are also looking at how to implement muting of the player when he will be wearing duct tape over his mouth. As well duct tape will have some usage for repairing stuff, unfortunately it's not visualized but we will research what we can do to deliver also some visual feedback to patched items. Apart from that we fixed plenty of smaller issues down the road and added some touches like proper animations for some actions. A good amount of new feature work is in progress - first working iterations of horticulture and barricading are ready and will be in the game in upcoming experimental version available for you to try out and meanwhile we will iterate and build upon them further. Right now there is tomato plant that may be cultivated and harvested for its crop, and lock pick which can be used to locking and unlocking doors of structures. Interesting things are happening right now. The gameplay programming team has started work on several key issues for their area - new controls and new inventory. Both of them will take a longer time to implement but it will be worth the time and effort invested to their implementation. Both features are very vital for the game and make it a lot more fluent. I will talk about them in little more detail next time. For now we have managed to make first prototype of controls working which allowed us such things like charged melee attacks and also possibility to use melee attacks with firearms. Also we are working on new sensors for AI, so prepare yourself for proper AI of zombies and animals in the future. We all know that stealth approach was one of the most crucial mechanic in the mod and personally I really missing it and I'm looking forward to some tension and raised heartbeat while I will sneak behind their backs trying to be as quiet as possible." Standup Notes for the week of 13 Oct 14 (Note: Standup notes are not a change log - they are a quick high level look at tasks the teams worked on throughout this week) Art: Multiple crafted leather itemsWomen's shorts, sweater.Polishing bush rag and 3D camo for weaponsDouble pistol grip MP133Prison UniformSteyr AUGZombie skeleton tweaksNew Signage for buildingsAnimation: Player Unarmed Sprint polishingPlayer animation graph bugfixingZombie hits processingWring clothes animation in progressRestrained struggle animation changesDesign: BugfixingConfigs and scripts for new items (small stone, seeds, wire, radio)Patching items with duct tapeDoors damageLocking doorsTemperature and wetness tweaksAdded loot to new structuresDrinking from both wells behave the sameCannot use object/surface actions while throwingAdvanced meleeHorticultureBarricadingAnimal and zombie AIConstructionControlsInventoryProgramming: Critical inventory fixesUnintenional weapon switchingNew game controlsServer performance issuesGameplay statisticsLoot distribution improvementsDoor states persistency

With the experimental branch updates on 0.50 rolling out this week, Raist and Eugen have worked together to deploy additional data tracking methods that should aid fine tracking and design adjustment related to player movement. Previously the team had focused most of our data tracking methods on loot distribution, spawning, and so forth - as we move closer towards the deployment of vehicles, expansion of existing persistent objects, and the central loot economy we will continue to use experimental branch and official stable branch servers to guide the design of gameplay mechanics via player movement, death, and camp analysis. The above image shows the concentration of player deaths within a 12 hour period on one Experimental Branch 0.50 server. As you can see, the expected large amount of player deaths occur along the player spawn points. However, what is increasingly fascinating is the large spread of unique player deaths across the map. From as far out as Kamenka, to Tulga, Skalisty Island, and Devil's Castle. I like to imagine the lone player death at Green Mountain was an epic last stand gun fight, but we may never know. In addition to the obvious value to the data above, analyzing data like this will become increasingly valuable for the development of core gameplay systems, as well as Chernarus Plus over the coming days and months. In addition to the work done on player data tracking, the gameplay programming team has worked hard on increasing server side performance optimization as well as server side security updates related to player position tracking. 0.49 introduced a good deal of server side performance enhancements, and addressed quite a few critical issues with stability. However, with these fixes came several new issues that we hope to see resolved with the stable release at the end of the month. We hope to finish out October with 50 player servers, persistence enabled by standard, and faster server performance across all servers on stable branch. As we progress along our goals in October, the status reports will keep the player base updated on these goals and any potential blockers or delays. - Brian Hicks / Producer Chris / Lead Artist "Tech: Work continues on fixing the graphical bug associated with our 3D camo and it has turned out to be more troublesome than originally thought. While the programmers were tinkering around with the shaders in search of a fix, we were able to have an additional channel added to the shader used for most of the loot items which will allow us to procedurally change the color of objects via config. The designers will evaluate how and when to implement such a feature but I am hopeful it will lead to a lot more color customization options on a lot more items than we currently allow. We also got support for a colorize in the grass shader so that we can vary the color of patches of grass in a large field, adding some visual flare to the environment. Character Art: The first women's clothing item is done: 3/4 length pants. It will be added in the no-so distant future, along with women's shorts and a sweater. The prison uniform, which was paused pending a few high priority tasks, is WIP again. We will have to pause the creation of new zombie types temporarily to work on some tweaks to the skeleton, which were asked for by the programming and animation team, related to new zombie AI/animation triggers. The team in Bratislava is working on various crafted items from leather which I hope will be interesting to people who like to play in more of a PvE style. Weapons: The Derringer art is ready and will soon be ready to be passed along the chain: animations, sound, cfg. The AKS74U and AK74M are being polished along with the art assets related to 5.45mm ammo. I have set this as a goal for myself - that by the end of October the AK74 family will debut on experimental. " Viktor / Lead Animator "After introducing one handed pistol animations many visual bugs had to be fixed to provide smooth and polished experience. Part of that is polishing and replacing some unarmed moves while standing. First of upcoming minor changes is a new unarmed sprint and unarmed run should follow. When we finalize those we can polish other animations like running with binoculars, pistols and other one handed items. We are still processing the last mocap animations as these should be ready for improved zombie ai. Many new attack for zombies are being created so we can prototype and test different zombie combat situations. We already have a first iteration of tools for new animation system and it looks great. If all goes as planned we would like to introduce zombies on the new system as soon as it will be possible. After all, we already have a deer running around using new system (just internally for now) and it's already visible improvement. But it is still a long way to go until we can use all of the great features of the new animation system." Peter / Lead Designer "Last week was pretty hectic. We brought a bunch of different assets from our backlog to the game like the leather sewing kit so you can finally repair your leather clothes and shoes, RDG2 tube also known as smoke grenade, sardines - this time alive not canned, welding and firefighter helmet to cover your head, brass knuckles and sledgehammer to crunch some bones. All of these things should spawn in game along with long time awaited MP-133 and R92. As well, a good amount of bug fixing tasks were addressed. For example better placement of tents which takes surrounding collisions into account to allow for more intelligent pitching of tents in wild places. Proper placement of wrecks created by dynamic events. Allowing or forbidding of fireplaces to be ignited in some places. Temperature and wetness fixes and tweaks. Apart from that we also opened discussion which will help us to outline construction design and it's mechanics. We are analyzing what's possible and where the borders are so we can decide upon crucial things like how they will be placed - freely or grid based? What the granularity of objects will be - down to logs, whole walls or perhaps complete floors? How the crafting of these objects will be done - just a recipe or actually stacking. There are many important things which will define player experience of creating, using and ambushing bases. Interesting times ahead, probably we will need some dungarees in the future... see you in Chernarus folks! " Standup Notes for the week of 06 Oct 14 (Note: Standup notes are not a change log - they are a quick high level look at tasks the teams worked on throughout this week) Art: Multiple crafted leather itemsWomen's shorts, sweater.Procedural color changing for loot.Polishing bush rag and 3D camo for weaponsPlants for horticultureCraftable vest and coatVarious car partsPrison UniformSteyr AUGZombie skeleton tweaksLarge military tent Animation: Player Unarmed SprintPlayer animation graph bugfixingZombie mocap processingLowered one handed Pistol Animations PolishingZombie AnimationsPlayer Pistol AnimationsDesign: BugfixingConfigs and scripts for new items (lockpicks, rangefinder)Configs and scripts for hermit zombieConfigs and scripts for MP133, RepeaterWeather impact on player and carried itemsVehicles and their partsHorticultureBarricadingAnimal and zombie AIAdvanced melee combat string tableProgramming: Critical inventory fixesUnintenional weapon switchingIssues with animation sychronizationServer performance issuesBroken door states in navmeshImproved persistance savingServer performance issuesData/Common Stats trackingLoot distribution analysis

Over the last week (and throughout the next few) a good deal of work has been done to gauge current server side performance, player and AI limitations, and the immediate steps required to increase the current limits. In tandem with work done with BattlEye, our game server provider partners, and our internal security team we have also continued work addressing immediate security concerns and ways to mitigate them in order to provide an enjoyable player experience. Players will begin to see these appear in the following ways: Experimental Branch will begin operating at 50 players per serverWith the short term goal of deploying this to stable branch servers as wellExperimental Branch will deploy and test new forms of detection from BattlEyeOver the next few months we will use experimental branch to roll out changes to Zombie AI & Sensor functionsWithin weeks you will begin to be able to rent private shards of the central DayZ hive along with your DayZ server instance from your preferred game server providerIn October and November you will see experimental branch servers rolled out with varying player counts as the team tests optimization measures aimed at server performance and data managementPairing this work with work currently under way by the design and programming teams to support the upcoming experimental release of both our first vehicle, as well as the first iteration of barricading via locked doors and the methods to break them down will greatly expand the player experiences as we close out 2014. It is important to pay attention to the project status reports, and developer streams as well as participate in discussion on the official forums to maximize your engagement with the development process. - Brian Hicks / Producer Chris / Lead Artist "I'm happy to say that our programmers are looking into a bug which was preventing us from creating better looking 3D camo so with any luck, I'll be able to show you some in-game pictures of what we came up with in the next couple of weeks. Planned is to include wearable active camo, and some which you can craft onto your long rifle. I was pleased to see the overwhelmingly positive response received from the first pics of the hermit zombie in last week's report. We have devised a scheme to create a set of zombie 'dolls' which are skinned already and will allow us to rapidly iterate new zombie types by 'dressing the dolls' with new or existing survivor clothing models and baking them to a new texture. Work continues on vehicle parts, new survivor clothing models, and the new weapon models (Derringer, AUG, AKS74U). The release of the MP133 and Repeater were held up pending creation of sounds as, rightly so, the new door sounds superseded weapon sounds in priority." Standup Notes for the week of 15 Sept 14 (Note: Standup notes are not a change log - they are a quick high level look at tasks the teams worked on throughout this week) Art: Prototyping procedural color changing for weaponsPolishing bush rag and 3D camo for weaponsRangefinder Optic viewNew fishing related itemsPlants for horticultureCraftable vest and coat3/4 length women's pantsVarious car partsMedical ScrubsSteyr AUGZombie 'paper dolls' for rapid iteration and creation of new zombie types.Prison UniformLarge military tent​Bugfixing character art and environment modelsAnimation: Player animation graph bugfixingZombie mocap processingUnarmed player sprint Lowered one handed Pistol AnimationsZombie AnimationsPlayer Pistol AnimationsDesign: BugfixingConfigs and scripts for new items (lockpicks, rangefinder)Configs and scripts for hermit zombieConfigs and scripts for MP133, RepeaterWeather impact on player and carried itemsVehicles and their partsHorticultureBarricadingAnimal and zombie AIAdvanced melee combat string tableProgramming: Inventory fixesSecurity on player location updatesDoors locking and destroyingZombie phantom soundsPerformance issuesUnintentional weapon switchingBroken door states in navmeshImproved persistence savingDiagnostics for debugging

If you submit a ticket at http://feedback.dayzgame.com, we can have someone from the support team take a look at your account and see if it's character related.

It seems like there are general performance problems in 0.49/0.50: http://feedback.dayzgame.com/view.php?id=17013 In case an update of your drivers does not alleviate your performance problems, then you're most likely experiencing low frame rates due to the game not being optimized yet during development.

I found your ticket osno. All you have to do is provide a dxdiag report along with the files you already uploaded, and the devs can then investigate the cause for the freezes.

You can also submit a ticket on the feedback tracker. Then the support team can see if it's possible to "reset" your character: http://feedback.dayzgame.com

Ticket #17013 regarding this topic has been filed on the feedback tracker (http://feedback.dayz...ew.php?id=17013). Please feel free to follow that ticket for any further development.

Ticket #17013 regarding this topic has been filed on the feedback tracker (http://feedback.dayzgame.com/view.php?id=17013). Please feel free to follow that ticket for any further development.

If you shoot across a support ticket on the Feedback Tracker we can check and see if the problem is related to your character in the database: http://feedback.dayzgame.com

Hey gents, for crashes/freezes, please file them on the feedback tracker and our support team will take a look at it. Please refer to the excellent post Accolyte made for info on how to report your crashes: http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/186540-my-dayz-crashed-what-do-i-do/

Over the last week core members of the development team have been focused on investigating, and addressing server and client crash issues introduced with 0.49. These include issues with the processing of persistent objects on server initialization, player rag dolls, and the clean up of trash (expired) objects. In addition, the programming team continued their work on addressing exploits related to rapid player position updates. (Sliding/Teleporting) As these updates make their way to stable branch we are also working with our game server providers to put the finishing touches on the systems needed to properly support the renting of private shards of the central DayZ hive. As mentioned in previous status reports, this option will continue the initiative to progressively increase the customization options allowed to server operators and communities, while still protecting the core vision of DayZ. This tied with our continued collaboration with these game server partners to analyze and track data related to the optimum software/hardware configuration for DayZ server instances should allow us over the next month to greatly improve the play experience on all DayZ stable branch servers. Throughout this process we will endeavor to share data and statistics related to this whenever possible in our weekly status reports. Those experiencing issues with respawning, or spawning into (any) servers should also head over to the official DayZ forums and read the information contained in this post. Anyone still having issues is strongly encouraged to reply to said post, so we can continue investigating the root cause of the issue. - Brian Hicks / Producer Peter / Lead Designer "Weather impact on the player character is still being worked on and body temperature is now dependent upon character movement. Drowning characters also received some attention and is now working like you would expect. There is also a new waterproof bag, so anyone who happens to find your soaked dead body will be able to use your dry things. There are two traps ready to be released shortly - snare trap for small game as I already mentioned and one used for catching small fish. Apart from that we are refining design for barricading and vehicles. Some nasty bugs which were affecting gameplay were fixed, such as the lack of ability to be in both restrained and unconsciousness state at the same time or endless usage of consumable/food/drink items. By the way if you missed live stream of Brian, Chris and I playing DayZ head over to our twitch.tv channel and check it out... see you in Chernarus folks! " Chris / Lead Artist "Much of what I wrote about last week is still WIP and there isn't a whole lot of new stuff to talk about right now. The prison uniform and medical scrubs are almost ready, as well as the first item of woman's clothing - 3/4 length pants. The art and design teams have agreed on a series of sketches related to the creation of leather craftable clothes so work on the models is underway there. We decided to make a command variant of the V3S and work continues on the vehicle parts. A hermit zombie was completed and I think the first time you see him coming at you, its going to be good for a scare. We're also working on a lock picking kit related to the barricading feature Peter discussed during the Friday dev stream last week. Also, a new large, military tent is WIP which you will be able to persistently store your gear in." Viktor / Lead Animator "Last month we added new zombie run variations. Now we've started to focus on other areas. After going through many already mocaped animations we were still missing some important moves we want to improve the zombies with. To be more specific I'm talking about zombie attacks and hit reactions. The mocap session happened on tuesday and we have mocaped some awesome attacks and reactions for zombies. I truly can't wait to see it in game. This will be our immediate goal. At the same time we have started changing pistol moves a bit. Although it will take some time to have it fully polished there is a new pistol lowered pose and moves for standing, crouched and proned player. And one more thing... it's one handed! The MP133 reload animations have been finished, however there are some minor issues we need to fix. And as usual we are looking into bugs. Last week many minor issues in the animation graph were fixed." Standup Notes for the week of 22 Sept 14 (Note: Standup notes are not a change log - they are a quick high level look at tasks the teams worked on throughout this week) Art: Prototyping procedural color changing for weaponsPolishing bush rag and 3D camo for weaponsV3S Command Vehicle variantNew fishing related itemsLock Picking kit55 gal drum for dying leatherNEAF modelsVarious car partsMedical ScrubsWoman's clothingSteyr AUGOld man ZombiePrison UniformLarge military tentNew outdoor (picnic) table​Bugfixing environment modelsAnimation: Player animation graph bugfixing Rifle raised walk MP133 reload animations polishing Zombie MoCap Processing Lowered one handed Pistol Animations Design:Bugfixing (restrain issues, endless usage of items etc.) Configs and scripts for new items Traps for small game and fishes Drowning playerWeather impact implementation Vehicles and their parts design and implementation Horticulture implementation Barricading design and implementation ​String tables Programming:Client and server crash fixesDoor reimplementation (bugfixing)Security on player location updatesPlayer respawn/connecting fixesTents positioningNew basic zombie behaviorSound-over-network enhancements & optimizationServer fps optimizationsSupport for better weapon animations

Hey there gents, The problem is due to misconfigured servers. As soon as anyone encounters this problem, please file it on the feedback tracker (http://feedback.dayzgame.com) and we'll perform a quick investigation as well as contact the respective GSPs. Also, please remember to include both the IP address as well as the port number when reporting these servers.

Security. This is the topic of this week’s status report. As we move forward with development on DayZ past 0.49 and into 0.50 this is one of our primary focuses. Throughout our Alpha and Beta phases the core engine that powers DayZ is created. During this process new engine functions are introduced, deprecated functions are removed, and the general nature of how a great deal of systems operate can completely change. Within normal closed development this would not be an issue, however developing DayZ in the open and updating the primary branch with any reliable frequency can leave us vulnerable at times. Individuals focused on identifying, and exploiting vulnerabilities during the development process -will- find holes. No amount of closed testing within a time scale that allows us to update the primary branch with reliable frequency, and keep to our target of a two to three year development cycle will stop this. However, Early Access does offer us an unparalleled opportunity to identify, and address potential vulnerabilities with how DayZ functions prior to the 1.0 that traditionally we would never have. Vigilance as these vulnerabilities are identified, and addressing them is critical to the stability of DayZ 1.0, and will serve to make the final product that much more of an enjoyable experience. That said, over the next month these are our security goals. Purge of the stable branch hiveThe intent here is to purge existing large volume magazines and legacy items from the economyWorking with BattlEye to deploy a new, more comprehensive method of detectionCloser collaboration between our internal hacks/exploit team and VACAddressing at an engine level current methods of rapid player position updatesRolling out private shards for player rented servers with our game server provider partnersPrivate shard servers will offer the additional protection of server administrator level bans, password protection for private shard servers, and whitelist supportAs 0.49 rolls out to stable branch today, the most obvious change with this update (aside from the stable hive purge) is the move of the initial persistence feature for rented DayZ servers to an opt-in selection with each game server provider. Given that consumer data, and player storage is such a valuable and key feature to DayZ, and still very early we want to ensure that the system is a physical choice each game server administrator makes. While this system is refined, each game server provider operates a last known good fail-safe for servers opting in to persistence that will restore the storage from the last successful startup in the event of any unforeseen failure. Moving forward into 0.50, we intend to move persistence from this opt in system to all stable branch servers. - Brian Hicks / Producer Chris / Lead Artist "Character Art: Since my last report, we wrapped up on bugfixing some of the character art (for now anyways) and began working on medical scrubs, a prison uniform, and some new women’s clothing. Yes, soon you will be able to don a skirt as you mow down zombies, fulfilling that weird fantasy we all have. Work continues on the new civilian zombie and so far it’s looking quite nice. I’m looking forward to getting some feedback from the fans about him. Vehicles: The base vehicle model will be finished this week and we have begun working on the various parts which players will need to find in order to repair and maintain a working vehicle. Weapons: We’re polishing up the AKS74U and the SVD of old, since we’re closing in on a centralized economy to regulate the number of them on the map. The MP133 and Lever action are waiting on sounds. A new weapon you can expect in the not-to-distant future is a Steyr AUG. One of my favorites." Standup Notes for the week of 15 Sept 14 Art: Prison uniformMedical ScrubsFemale clothingAKS74U and SVD polishingSteyr AUG modelCivilian Airfield structuresLeather craft able itemsVehicle componentsDesign:BugfixingVehicle component & servicing designImplementation of waterproof containersDesign on snares/trapsImplementation of drowning on playerImplementation of prototype wildlife trapAnimation:Various reload animations polishingRifle aim walks in progressMP133 reload animationsZombie movement design & prototypingMotion capture sessionMP133 reload configProgramming:BugfixingServer/Client crash triageDoor reimplementation & bugfixingGame control redesign implementationRemote player movement enhancementsSecurity triageSecurity on player location updatesZombie behavior & AISound-over-network enhancements & optimizationPlayer respawn/connecting fixes

Focus for the development team over the last week has primarily been on resolving server and client crashes discovered during internal testing of 0.49. Rather than address the crashes with a potential hotfix after the update (given the impact of the associated central hive reset and the steps taken to address the more prevalent duplication and abuse methods) the choice was made to unlock the update from our regularly scheduled maintenance window of Wednesday and rapidly iterate upon experimental. What does this mean for the average chernarusian survivor? We will be pushing rapid updates to experimental and iterating 0.49 until the build is in a state ready for stable branch. We believe this will only be a matter of a few days. When the build is ready for stable branch we will work with our game server partners to bring stable branch offline, and update steam. Additionally, the programming and design teams have been working together to investigate and resolve several key cheating and bug abuse methods including but not limited to: Server/Character force re-initializationRapid micro player location updates (slide/glide teleporting)Community interest in exactly how the northern regions of Chernarus will be developed has been ongoing, and after discussion with Senchi our Lead World Designer we've put together a rough guide for the development of these regions. As you can see looking at the map above, the environment team has a clear plan for developing the north and inland regions. When work on the northern corridor has completed the environment team will begin revitalizing existing legacy villages and towns throughout the map. This means that once the villages and towns of the north listed in the above image are completed, the team will begin renovating the original Chernarus towns and villages to bring their look, feel, and layout more in tune with the reality of a post-apocalyptic world. Lastly, this Friday will be the first of our now weekly dev streams on Twitch.tv. Head over to twitch.tv/dayz at 18:00 GMT +2 this Friday and members of the development team will be playing DayZ and answering questions from the chat. -- Brian Hicks / Producer Peter / Lead Designer "This week there has been ongoing work on advanced weather impact, which is being expanded, partially rewritten and tweaked to provide better utilization and feeling. Also newly added mercury thermometer comes in hand if you are unsure about your body temperature. The prototype of the dynamic events system - the UH-60 gets company from the eastern camp, the well known Mi-8 helicopter. A few new items were added recently from the PAX showcase, such as the stun baton and balaclavas and they will be available for public in next experimental version. As well hunting will be expanded with the useful snare trap shortly. We are currently focused on cleaning and redoing configurations for all doors as their handling was fundamentally changed in the game engine. Improvements which will be noticeable at first is the easier interaction with them - forget about nightmare which door to choose from action menu to open those you want to while you are standing near to more of them as now it takes into account what your cursor is aiming at and it's not proximity based. The second welcomed change is related to the audio side - sounds of doors opening and closing are possible now and are already plugged in and you can really tell difference. (Although the variation in sound effects are not quite there yet) More sounds will come later for example for locked doors because with recent door improvements we can finally start working on barricading. We have already done some design outline and analysis toward barricading mechanics - to allow you to take existing structures and occupy them for your needs. First thing to come will be (un)locking the door's lock with a lockpick which will be expanded with different padlocks and even combination ones. Later the wooden planks, nails and other material come to use in combination with tools which gain other purpose aisde from melee only. Keep your ears open while looting... see you in Chernarus folks!" Chris / Lead Artist "Character Art Since the last update, the biggest change with character art has come with the creation of a new base body type with is ~10% more slender than the previous. It is more fitting for somebody surviving in a harsh environment and will help reduce the number of clipping errors between clothing/player bodies. Because of this and recent changes to how characters are assembled and to their animations, we have been doing a lot of bug fixing. Unfortunately that means pausing the creation of new items by some of our artists to fix the worst of these issues immediately, however, we're mostly past this and will begin again on some new clothing “sets”. Work on reshaping other items to reduce the severity of clipping will be ongoing. Weapons (or the AKS-74-and-U) Many of you were happy to learn about the AKS-74U and many asked me on twitter and on the DayZ forum which caliber it will be chambered for. Surely, we would not add a 5.56mm AKS-74U, right? I mean, they never *really* made a direct AK100-series equivalent for the AKS-74U after all. Well, you'll be happy to learn we are, in parallel, working on art for 5.45x39mm ammo. In other news, The MP133s animations have been finished and are now pending sounds and the lever-action repeater is ready to deploy, following implementation by design. Vehicles Friends, I am happy to report that we have officially begun working on the art for our first vehicle. Until this point, our working prototype has been an old vehicle from ArmA2 but now, we are working on a brand-new V3S with many of its components (i.e. wheels, doors, etc...) separated into different meshes to work in a similar manner as weapon attachments." Standup Notes for the week of 08 Sept 14 Art: V3S Transport TruckNew civilian zombieNEAF civilian hangarNew 55-gal drumDerringerAKS74U5.45mm ammoRadio Cassette playerRGD2 smoke (white, black)Waterproof packable bagWaterproof backpackAnimation:BugfixingGrenade, chemlight, flare related animations finishedRepeater reload animations doneThrowing animations in progressMP133 reload animation in progressArming/Disarming animations polishing in progressDesign:bugfixingconfigs and scripts for new itemsadded mi8 for random spawningadvanced weather impact on playerreconfiguring doors and adding sfxbarricading mechanic outline​finalizing new controlsProgramming:Character and inventory items duplication fixingMelee combat tweakingShotgun shooting over network fixDoor reimplementation (now in internal testing and bugfixing)New gamecontrolsForced reinitialized playersDesync issuesBetter sound over networkCentral economy (type related cleanup and respawn, dynamic tweaking)New basic zombie behavior​Partial reworking of respawn / cleanup system according to required type-related implementation

As work progressed on dialing in the remaining critical issues with 0.49 (eg: Body temperature variations, duplication bugs, etc) the programming team has continued iterating upon our centralized loot architecture, as well as the major tasks such as ongoing work on replacing the renderer, replacing existing door mechanics, and the entire list covered in the stand up notes below. Lets take a quick look at the distribution of ammunition, and the top 10 items that currently (as of 0.48 / Stable Branch) spawn. Please keep in mind this is very, very rough data. As we iterate upon the system, we will introduce more granular control over the quantity of each type of item that spawns, and what location in the world they are allowed to spawn in. Looking at the above image, you can see that the highest quantity of spawning items is easily canned food goods. As we push more on the survival mechanics, and the centralized loot control - we’ll see these item quantities begin to drop, and hopefully the amount of base survival items such as fishing hooks, rope, burlap sacks, and tools increase. It is interesting to see the high quantity of ammunition such as 357 Magnum, and Shotgun so prevalent currently. We expect this data to shift greatly as we focus on supporting the -chance- for magazines to spawn with weapons. (Note: Chance, not all the time - but given the randomness of every weapon spawning across Chernarus, at least a few should have magazines and or clips) In addition to this, the production, design, and environment teams have discussed the issue of player spawn locations - and the lack of traffic through the classic DayZ cities such as Chernogorsk, and Elektrozavodsk. The initial push to restrict player spawning in these regions was tied to the design of the Chernogorsk area, specifically the new tenement structures and the Balota airfield. As we move towards fully implementing centralized control over the economy this will become less of an issue. With this in mind, the Balota airfield as been redesigned and a new, further inland military base was created. As 0.49 hits stable, players will begin to spawn all along the coast from Chernogorsk, to Novod. The reaction to this will be monitored, and the spawns will be adjusted accordingly. Finally, as mentioned on twitter, the team has identified a bug with the game server that we’ve noticed being exploited on stable branch. This bug is related to character/server initialization, and is a top priority issue for us. - Brian Hicks / Producer Chris / Lead Artist ”Character Art The firefighter helmet and SPOSN backpack are finished and are being tested currently in-game so they should be showing up in experimental shortly. We’ve begun working on the first new civilian zombie in quite some time and are looking into expanding the number of zombie heads for models so that they’re not quite so repetitive. We’re also working on some waterproof containers to keep player’s gear dry during the frequent rain experienced on Chernarus. Work has also begun on the craftable player gear and items related to that system. Weapons The Rossi R92 is finished being animated. We’re just waiting for sounds and then it’ll be good to go. The animators also began work on the M133 earlier this week so it won’t be too far behind the repeater. Something a bit newer is an AKS74U which is a work in progress by one of our talented artists and I, in my spare time (of which I do not have much), have begun a labor of love – a Derringer pistol. I was also happy to hear that the cattle prod and stun baton are functioning. Finally players will have an alternative to using lethal weapons to temporarily incapacitate other players in unsafe situations, rather than simply kneecapping them. Environment Not a whole lot new here. We’re continuing work on the civilian airport structures to replace objects at the NEAF. Mario, one of our senior artists began doing some planning for the long-abandoned prison complex which will be something worked on in between higher priority tasks and will take quite some time to finish. We’ve also begun discussing ways to introduce some visual variability of the numerous small villages since they contain mainly the same, rather small, number of house models. “ Viktor / Lead Animator "In the last couple of weeks we were busy with various bugfixes. Besides small gestures and bow related polishing we have fixed some major issues like players falling after drinking bottle, taking item in hand while handcuffed and other. One of new additions is the possibility to run up and down stairs. This was mainly a programmers task since it had to be changed in the engine. After we added running while restrained we focused on crouch restrained player. Now there are two crouch restrained poses - one after someone forces you to restrain and one when you move. Yes that means we introduced restrained crouch walk, so you can take your captives with you anywhere now. Another big area we started to improve by the end of august are zombies. First we are still in process of designing and preparing for the new advanced AI. We’ve discussed and designed the new zombie AI with programmers and designers but it will take some time until we see it in the game. Until then we have added a few small improvements. Now there are different zombie runs, walks, idles. That means if more zombies are chasing you, each will move different. We already have some more ideas that will significantly improve the experience.” Standup Notes for the week of 01 Sept 14 Art: Firefighter HelmetNew civilian zombieSPOSN BackpackNEAF civilian hangarNew 55-gal drumDerringerAKS74UAK101 retextureM4 Drum MagPack of cigarettesSkate helmetBottle of vokaDime bagRange FinderLeather walletRadio Cassette playerRGD2 smoke (white, black)Waterproof packable bagWaterproof backpack Animation: BugfixingGrenade, chemlight, flare related animationsZombie variation animations doneBow animations polishingsRepeater reload animation in progress Design: General BugfixingScript/Config work for additional weapon typesVehicle classification prototypingVehicle component prototypingHorticulture design/bug fixing Programming: Sounds for melee weaponsMelee combat tweakingDoor reimplementationNew gamecontrolsInventory bugfixesThrowing items fixes Dead zombies disappearing fixesCode cleaning and optimizationsLoot statistical data collectingGraphical representation of statistical dataType related loot cleanupRead on Tumblr

The stable branch and experimental branch databases will always be seperate even if they share the same version number. For example, if both stable and experimental branches share version number 0.48, it should not have any effect whether or not you have opted into the experimental version; the Steam client will be the same either way and you will be able to enter both stable and experimental branch servers.