SMoss

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: support@battleye.com 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

"... Let's see what happens" - completely agreed. I'm sure the designers will be able to balance out the amount of zombies if their numbers (be it either too few or too many) turn out to impact gameplay in a negative way. Give it some time, play those future Experimental/Stable builds and shoot across feedback so the team will know what's up.

That's right, the complete roster is available here: http://survivor-gamez.com/forum/index.php?/topic/1654-dayz-survivor-gamez-vi-qualifiers-roster-and-info/

Haah, that's brutal!

Don't worry, the team is aware of the desync issues (known issues section): http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/221302-changelog-stable-054126645/

I managed to down a guy with one shot from the mp133, but I wouldn't know if he was at full health of course.

Also, the team is looking at deployment of a hotfix for 0.54, so the servers will be down for a bit longer today.

No!

agreed, rp servers can definitely be really good fun when looking for something else than laying around in the bushes, waiting to poach people.

Greetings Survivors, As we move towards the 0.54 stable branch update, I’d like to cover a few points that you all should know. As with all updates during Early Access, this is a development build and thus has its own issues, bugs, and so on. If you encounter any of this, please open a ticket over at feedback.dayzgame.com. More specifically, for those who may be experiencing issues seeing servers in the server browser – please make your way over to this thread on the Official DayZ forums for instructions from Community Manager SMoss, and BattlEye developer Bastian. Part of the 0.54 is the tech required to support the redesign of our user interface. This is just the initial work required to support said changes, not the changes itself. Thus everything will –look- different, but not necessarily how we intend it to look by the time we hit 1.0. The user interface is just one part of the evolving technology coming in from the engine and gameplay programming teams, and will be iterated throughout Early Access. As well, with 0.54 comes the initial implementation of the new animal A.I., this system is still early on so odd behaviour will be encountered. However even with the system in this early state, this is a strong step in the direction of a more robust, lifelike animal behaviour system. I for one look forward to the hermit-hunter lifestyle the next time I log in on my public hive character. In addition to a large amount of new content to explore, new enterable structures, villages, redesigned areas and more – 0.54 features continued security enhancements, bug fixes and more. Over the coming weeks SMoss will also be rolling out some new features over on the community side of DayZ.com, including a weekly Community Focus that showcases user created content, streams, art, and so much more. Head over to the Community hub at DayZ.com and take a look. As always, developers are on hand to take your suggestions and feedback on the Official DayZ forums at forums.dayzgame.com. Brian Hicks / Lead Producer "As we are getting closer to the release of the next stable branch update of DayZ with version number 0.54, we are focusing more on tidying up and fixing the most annoying bugs and issues instead of working on new features or expanding existing ones. For example we identified and fixed a long timer related to synchronizing the temperature of objects, which was consuming relatively large chunk of communication between server and client. Fortunately it didn't happened often or in large scale but it's really great to have it fixed now with upcoming refactored fireplace which will become more usable with more items thus used by survivors. There was also few issues which was fixed related to the independent liquid types we introduced in last version, one worthy to mention is the issue which completely breaks character stomach, energy and water statuses. I already mentioned the fireplace which is undergoing a refactoring for some time now and it's getting seamlessly to the fixing and polishing stage. Now when there is the solid foundation of the system the next step is the cooking process in general. With plenty of the different food available in the game and three distinctive food processing types, to name them - boiling, baking and drying, things can get out of control really quickly. Well at least especially when we want to stretch the possibilities and interactions to the maximum and want to visualize the outcome of the process. What will happen when food is already baked and you start to boiling it? Do you need to pre-process the food before drying? What about moldy food? And plenty of other questions related to that topic which needs to be answered beforehand. 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. Most of you are probably waiting for the enrichment of the vehicles controls - manual transmission. We had some quality time already while trying it on our internal build, but it needs a little bit more time to be tweaked into the state which is safe for public release. Good thing is that with its implementation some of the issues with vehicles behavior were properly addressed so little bit of waiting doesn't hurt. As far as vehicles parts goes I owe you at least quick update, their functionality is dependent mostly on the new inventory system that is currently being implemented and of course on the support from the extended vehicle simulation itself. Last but not least we are making steady progress on the new AI for infected which is getting along nicely and I hope you will be able to experience it and its benefits soon on experimental versions before it hits the stable release later on, however animal AI will be released beforehand. Start preparing your nerves for some intense encounters... see you in Chernarus folks! " Peter / Lead Designer Standup Notes for the week of 24 Jan 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: Trumpet reloading animationWinchester reloadingZombie attack animationsV3S AnimationsMoCap SessionDesign:Manual transmissionFirearms DamageV3S CargoGas cooker refactoringFireplace PolishingDiseases transferNew script languageCentral economyBugfixingProgramming:Inventory refactorizationLoot distribution per buildingsZombie/Animal AICharacter controller (animations & physics)Vehicles - Manual transmission and bugfixingFlaregun ImprovementsSecurity Bugfixes

Absolutely true, but this does happen during development. Sometimes issues like these do not get discovered within the internal testing environment/testing on Experimental branch for example and get "caught" once they reach Stable branch even. As with other bugs/issues; the team is aware of the problems, they're pulling data in order to gauge the scope of these problems and they will act accordingly.