SMoss

So far it does not look like DayZ will support VR. As with just about anything else though, if this changes down the line, we'll make sure to let you all know.

It should be up to each individual player how they would want to go about interacting with the environment or other players, and last I heard, Brian still wants us to eventually value each and every resource we find. What I think this means is that if you choose to play PvP style, you can do so, but you'll have to take your resources into account way more than what is the case now. Does this mean that PvE is favored more than PvP? Not necessarily so. The player wielding a functional gun and a bit of ammo might have to consider resources just as much before deciding to take shots during hunting or when defending while being hunted by predators for example.

I know you're specifically addressing Brian here, but I'll throw in my two cents just the same (had a somewhat similar question just a while ago). I'd definitely say that focus is still on developing a gritty & unforgiving survival game. Currently, this is not necessarily what we're seeing across the servers, but I do think it has got a lot to do with work on the PvE aspects (and the systems that support these) is still incoming. All things considered, development of DayZ is not looking like it'll take a turn towards becoming a full-on PvP title any time soon. Will DayZ be split up into two types, as you mention? Not as such. A single player mode has been announced a while ago, so I suppose that would de facto be a PvE only DayZ experience, but there has been no mention of splitting up the multiplayer part of DayZ into two different modes (which I think is what you meant).

What's with the childish business here? When making an estimate, there is an unknown factor that we can't calculate for: Testing. While I'm sure the leads have a good idea of how long work tasks require, they would have no idea what QA can dig up during testing. Severe bugs quite easily increase dev time significantly which cause us to go beyond initial estimates. When these extra tasks have piled up, testers do not put down controllers/peripherals and lean back in their chairs. QA keeps on churning, and in that process even more severe bugs might turn up which increases dev time even more. When we aim for a release at around a certain time, we don't take in hope as some kind of magical factor. We all know that those who live on hope alone will die starving. Pray if you must. We'll keep working instead.

Nobody is holding back on development here. As fast as tasks can be knocked off the check list, they will be. It's understandable that delays are not going to sit right with just about anyone, but I hope that you'll believe me when I say that estimations are done with the info we have at hand. What we don't have readily at hand when giving out an estimation is test data for example. Noone deliberately gives out bogus estimates on any work tasks or releases.

Afternoon Survivors, Brian, Mirek, and Viktor will be giving us a bit of info this week in regards to subjects such as current blocker issues, work on spawn systems and network code, and the new animation system. Contents This Week Dev Update/Hicks Dev Update/Mirek Dev Update/Viktor Community Spotlight: Tom's Story Dev Update/Hicks Greetings Survivors, Hey guys, its that time again - Status Report day. I know you all wanted to hear some crazy hype tastic reveal like - FREE OCULUS RIFT HEADSETS UNDER EACH OF YOUR COMPUTER DESKS OMG YAY (but more specific to our upcoming .60 experimental push) but I'm afraid I don't have that for you today, and we don't do hype like that anyways. While we've made strides in client side performance functionality, we're still chipping away at blocking issues in the following areas: Inventory UI With the move to Direct X 11, we'll no longer be able to support the legacy user interface. Thus, functional parity with the legacy UI -has- to be achieved on the new UI. The design team are currently working on resolving the last few bugs blocking us from having that parity. Reload mechanics The move in .60 to involving manual bolt cycling, as well as misfire and jamming management via the charging handle on weapons such as the M4 has an impact on every firearm in the game. We're currently working to resolve some functional hiccups in the switching between magazines, and the need to chamber twice before firing from a new magazine. Character Loading/Saving A very large volume of unneeded traffic was discovered when investigating issues with character loading - a rewrite of the methods used to save and load from the central hive. Once we restore proper functionality, this area will no longer be a blocker. Tasks Completed: - .60 Build Optimization Pass (Performance in cities increased by 50% from initial build - optimization is ONGOING however) - Cleared Rendering Test Pass list of visual/rendering based bugs - Renderer settings UI Current Focus: - MSAA Hardware Multisampling Support - Alpha to Coverage GPU Feature (Which will increase quality of vegetation rendering) - Finalization of In-Game UI Features We've heard a lot of feedback wanting some changes to how we're communicating development information over the last year - and we started steps a few months back towards adjusting to try and meet some of these requests. We've expanded the community team and put processes in to ensure that regardless of development tasks, the Status Reports will come out on schedule (Tuesdays, BiWeekly). In addition, we've begun using our YouTube channel more - to show upcoming changes to DayZ as they are developed. (Status Reports talk about development progress, and what changes are planned in the future - where as the YouTube channel should show what is coming in the next build - when it is functional enough to demonstrate) We'll also be trying a team Q&A type video where folks can ask questions about what its like to work on DayZ, work at Bohemia, and such - our first video on this from our Quality Assurance team should be coming shortly. Our Community Manager Smo55 is ramping up his presence on our subreddit and official forums, our new Brand Manager DHawkz is working with Bohemia Interactive publishing to expand the options for DayZ merchandise on the BI Store, and a redesign of DayZ.com, as well as working with our hardware partners to create opportunities for raising awareness of DayZ as it moves towards our Beta, and Release goals. I'll be discussing some of the systems and pending changes tied to the new animation system and player controller over on the official forums later this week, and next up for the YouTube channel we're working on our next Dev Log video on .60 covering performance comparisons between Direct X 9, and Direct X 11 rendering. Once .60 hits experimental branch, we'll start putting together our first "Whats new with .60" video - where DHawkz, Smo55, and I go over the changes in .60 and what to expect gameplay wise - for our YouTube channel. Lastly - as .60's time on experimental starts to draw to a close - we'll be bringing back the official DayZ survival gaming e-sport, The Survivor GameZ. The Survivor GameZ VII Qualifiers will be a fantastic way for us to stress test .60 before it hits stable, and to see how the new inventory, and reloading/chambering mechanics work in a high stress situation. Keep an eye on the official Survivor GameZ and DayZ twitter accounts for more info on this - twitter.com/survivor_gamez and twitter.com/dayzdevteam - Brian Hicks / Lead Producer Dev Update/Mirek Last two weeks, we spent our time mostly on bug fixing of some critical issues like client/server crashing or issues with weapon reloading, because we want that first release of 0.60 experimental will be in the best state as possible. Designers have started to use new damage system, so we have few requests on improvements, but they aren't blockers. A lot of issues were fixed in loot distribution and some new features were added. For example random loot spawning in world containers. This new feature is now moved to designers, so they can set it properly. We have also prepared new Infected/Animal spawner, but this won't be ready in 0.60 as we need to do some work in AI simulation. We will talk about this new system in next status report. Maybe the most interesting thing is that we've started to rewrite some core parts of network code, which should improve desync issues and server performance. I hope that we will be able to show these improvements in 0.60, but I don't want to give any promises, because it's possible, that first iteration will break the game even more. - Mirek Mañena / Lead Gameplay Programmer Dev Update/Viktor The ongoing work on weapon animations is still far from finishing. As there are more ways in which state gun can be when player will initiate the reload the proper animation has to be created to provide a corresponding reload action. Some reloads are being replaced with more polished ones and many new animations are being created to support possibility to load a chamber with single ammo. The animation sets for each gun now have magazine reload animations, manipulation with weapon mechanism, chambering animations and more is still to come. The main player graph now contains most of important functionalities but we are constantly going through existing animations and filling out some missing ones or replacing with more polished versions. Also the wounded character now has some sets implemented as a prototype (some walks and runs) but we will have to wait for all the animations until we fully introduce it. The previously mentioned improvements to pulling out and hiding of weapons was slightly polished in past week. We have achieved what we were aiming for. While standing still you can start arming a gun, begin walking and meanwhile change stance to crouch - it will just work, oh and of course you can stop while doing that anytime. This of course means a lot to other player actions like for instance gestures or eating as can be seen in the video capture from our animation editor preview. - Viktor Kostik / Lead Animator Community Spotlight: Tom's Story. Wow, a friendly user of our forums sent through a link to the following "real life" DayZ video: While watching the video, I keep wondering where the film locations are at since it could be awesome getting to see places like that (probably just a matter of asking the guys who made the video). Aside from that of course, you can't help but be amazed at the effort the creators must have gone through in order to make a video like this come together. On top of that, it turns out that there are three more episodes in the series which is available through the following Youtube channel: Denny Onex, and according to their Facebook site it looks like there are even more episodes to come. Very well done! As always, in case you also have a nice video containing DayZ related footage you'd like to share, or if you have an upcoming event of some sorts, don't be shy to post it on the DayZ Forums. Header image credit: DOS_v1.05 - Michael aka SMoss / Community Manager

Do you both get booted?

Thanks for your support :) While I don't know if the weather "cycles" will be fixed for 0.60, I can tell you though that the team also has eyes on this part of DayZ.

I wouldn't exactly say there's a narrow focus on guns: New user actions framework in Enforce Script has been completed and while all actions are being rewritten into it they rely on a connection to the new player and new animation system, we have also looked at crafting processes currently used in game and usage of activities available in DayZ such as preparing fireplace and cooking, creating electricity system, construction of non portable structures, vehicle maintenance, growing crops, placement of objects, weapons handling, interacting with objects in world, doors barricading and others. With such wide spectrum of different activities which were continuously implemented through the development and honestly most of them ended in prototype, unfinished or experimental state is easy that their usage can become inconsistent especially when we were trying different approaches to it over time. Now during general rewrite of scripted game systems and mechanics to Enforce script and overall heading towards Beta release it's a great time to overhaul everything which makes sense to overhaul and can be reasonable achieved in tight timeframe. Our aim is to bring as much consistency as we can into very different behaviors to unify and simplify them thus they become much more clear and understandable to players. I'm very proud that vision of physicality, tangibility and strong visual feedback through the whole game and it's actions and activities is becoming the reality which is, to be honest, quite unique in games nowadays. For example you can look forward to reinforcing the rule of hands even in crafting which become really close to user actions, or stretching the functionality of quick slots beyond their usual behavior seen in games. For greatestest experiences it's immersion that matters... See you in Chernarus folks! - Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer That there's a system in place which allows for a small risk involved in introducing a new gun in DayZ does not mean that focus has shifted towards that. As has been mentioned before; first priorities are not always first deliverables. Is DayZ in it's current state optimal for fans, me included, of ingame (pve) survival? No, we won't disagree on that, but I can guarantee you that pve survival elements have not been dropped on the floor.

Hey everyone, just in case you missed it, and all that:

As regular as possible, when having info to share.

Afternoon Survivors, For this week, Brian Hicks (Lead Producer), Peter Nespesny (Lead Designer), and Miroslav Maněna (Lead Gameplay Programmer) will let us in on details regarding the CLE, the new engine + renderer, and upcoming plans and work for the damage system and Enforce script among other things. Contents This Week Development Board Spotlight Dev Update/Hicks Dev Update/Peter Dev Update/Mirek Community Spotlight: NinjaYourself - One Life Series Development Board Spotlight Dev Update/Hicks Greetings Survivors, As mentioned as a high possibility, we ended up passing our internal goal for putting 0.60 in consumers hands. However, this was expected as a high chance. We are of course working hard on getting it ready, and on to experimental branch as soon as possible. Our work currently is focused on optimization of the performance inside major cities in Chernarus. New Chernogorsk has caused us some performance hickups we want to resolve to an acceptable playable frame rate. The engine team has a daunting task ahead of them, focusing on the last few hurdles to unlock the capabilities of the renderer while still combating and improving legacy engine scene management. With trouble areas in the DirectX 9 area dipping as low as the mid teens in some situations, we consider it critical to isolate those areas and ensure we can hold a stable 30fps (In Direct X 11) in them. Globally, frame rates on average can be in the 40 to 60 range on average - so obviously our focus right now is in those major cities. It is key to keep in mind as said many times before - this is just the first iteration. In addition to continuing bugfixes on into beta and the 1.0 release, the new renderer technology will open up many new particle effects to the design team, and we'll be working with GPU manufacturers for cross testing to isolate areas in which hardware specific optimizations can be made. Tasks Completed: - Implementation of all base renderer features - Simulweather/True Sky Implementation Current Focus: - Optimization of major cities - Dynamic Lights - Finalization of New Renderer Settings UI/Options - Implementation of New UI - Bug Fix, Bug Fix, Bug Fix I'm confident that a global increase in frame rate playability, as well as a huge upgrade in the visuals in DayZ are going to be well worth the work that has gone into the part of the Enfusion engine, and I can't wait to share it with you all. While .60 obviously focuses most heavily on implementing the engine's new renderer - .60 also has continued iteration on the Central Economy (something I think many people don't realize is VERY critical to the DayZ experience) with the audit mentioned in previous Status Reports complete, as well as changes to the tagging for weapons. Changes to vehicle spawn points, initial attachments, and finally - weapons are both spawning with random attachments AND a chance to spawn with magazines that have a random amount of ammo inside them. Beyond .60 - the teams next major updates focus is primarily on the new animation system and player controller. For the end user, it is important to understand these large engine changes have been holding back fixes on a lot of legacy issues with the title, as well as much larger over all changes to how DayZ plays - including, but not limited to DayZ's new user actions - something that I feel paired with the renderer, and new UI complete a 3 part massive change to how DayZ *plays*. In addition, the gameplay programming team's work on the new damage system - which will be explained in a bit more detail below by Lead Gameplay Programmer Mirek. The members of the programming team focusing on the Central Economy also continue to work on the deployable version of the CLE & Database structure for use by both mod authors and private server operators alike - as well as functionality for DayZ's local offline mode. On the Early Access / Community side - our forum transition is complete, and DayZ.com forums are back online. As some of you may know the feedback tracker is offline while we transition to a new software option for it. This shouldn't be down too much longer, as it is critical to providing an outlet to those testing DayZ's development builds to communicate the issues they encounter while doing so. We know that members of the community have wanted to see an increase or change in the format of our outbound communication, and that too has received some love this month. We've done some restructuring in the processes behind these, as well as the structure of responsibilities. We're hoping that over the coming month you'll all enjoy the changes in this area - and we'll be keeping an eye on your reactions. - Brian Hicks / Lead Producer Dev Update/Peter New user actions framework in Enforce Script has been completed and while all actions are being rewritten into it they rely on a connection to the new player and new animation system, we have also looked at crafting processes currently used in game and usage of activities available in DayZ such as preparing fireplace and cooking, creating electricity system, construction of non portable structures, vehicle maintenance, growing crops, placement of objects, weapons handling, interacting with objects in world, doors barricading and others. With such wide spectrum of different activities which were continuously implemented through the development and honestly most of them ended in prototype, unfinished or experimental state is easy that their usage can become inconsistent especially when we were trying different approaches to it over time. Now during general rewrite of scripted game systems and mechanics to Enforce script and overall heading towards Beta release it's a great time to overhaul everything which makes sense to overhaul and can be reasonable achieved in tight timeframe. Our aim is to bring as much consistency as we can into very different behaviors to unify and simplify them thus they become much more clear and understandable to players. I'm very proud that vision of physicality, tangibility and strong visual feedback through the whole game and it's actions and activities is becoming the reality which is, to be honest, quite unique in games nowadays. For example you can look forward to reinforcing the rule of hands even in crafting which become really close to user actions, or stretching the functionality of quick slots beyond their usual behavior seen in games. For greatestest experiences it's immersion that matters... See you in Chernarus folks! - Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer Dev Update/Mirek The legacy Arma damage system was designed only for ranged weapons, which means that every hit was an explosion. But when we've added close range weapons, we've found that this system isn't suitable and it's difficult to balance properly. It was hard to set up how much damage will be applied to different parts of character's body, and how this damage will be modified when characters has different types of armor and so on. We’ve decided the best solution is to write a completely new system for this, which will allow us to have several different types of hits and wounds, which will allow us to add more game features and easily balance them. Together with this, we're changing the process of damage synchronization between client and server, so this new damage system will be more efficient for server performance and network traffic, and be secure against the possibility of cheating. The new damage system is now pushed to our designers, who are creating the initial setup, at which point we will begin testing internally. The team is also working on performance and network optimizations and bug-fixing some major inventory issues. - Miroslav Maněna / Lead Gameplay Programmer Community Spotlight: NinjaYourself - One Life Series How long can you keep a single character alive? Depending on playstyle, that might vary quite a bit. This week we'll have a look at NinjaYourself and a series of videos he's created, "One Life Series", in which he showcases the many encounters, both friendly and hostile, of one of his characters. Part 3 @9:33 - That is one big bunch of team members! Taking the amount of encounters into account, it is quite impressive that NinjaYourself managed to keep that character alive for that long. Well done sir! As a content creator, there is of course a lot of material available on his Youtube account, and you can follow his Twitch account for updates and news in relation to new videos that he pumps out. http://www.youtube.com/user/ninjayourself http://twitter.com/NinjaYourself In case you also have a nice video containing DayZ footage you'd like to share, or if you have come across some DayZ footage from other content creators, just post it in the Gallery section of the DayZ forums and we'll be more than happy to have a look. Header image credit: Lucy ☕ away - Michael aka SMoss / Community Manager

I hear you, and don't worry, info directly related to development of DayZ would never be replaced by such videos.

I could imagine that modding support would help in that regard though.

That is really nicely done, indeed.

No, not deliberately as far as I know.

I read through the correspondence and asked around in regards to policy on server logs. As it is, there is no policy from our side in regards to how big a time frame each log should cover, so we can't force the GSP's hands there. If development of DayZ has indeed all of a sudden rendered your GSP unable to have logs cover more than 24 hours at a time, then I'll have to admit that I wouldn't know exactly which specifics would prevent the GSP from having logs that cover more than 24 hours.

Got it. Thank you kindly.

Do you by any chance have copies of your correspondence with Gameservers? If so, you can send it through to support@dayz.com, and I can look through it, sync up with our server hosting policy owner dealing with the GSPs and see what's what.

Around the time when the server files are released for example there'll be changes to the setup of official/public/private/mod servers.

I get it that you're frustrated of waiting during development, but there's no need to deliberately trying to stretch and exaggerate your "arguments" and "timeline facts" in order to get your point across. Please play nice. Regardless of the timelines for other projects outside of BI, then yes, we're still in alpha (not pre-alpha), and as has been mentioned many times over, there are still some years worth of development yet to go.

Have you asked your GSP if they can investigate what happened with the persistence files? It is possible that something could have gone wrong here since items and vehicles are stored in seperate files.

In regards to the concern on future modded servers; there are of course plans for having un-modded servers.

As the infected, horticulture, crafting, basebuilding, and hunting for example gets more fleshed out, there'll be more for players to concentrate outside of hunting loot and then hunting players. Aside from that, once server files are released, there'll be a change in how servers are distributed across official GSPs and "personal" servers.

Sort of like a pre-Experimental branch? I don't think that'll happen. Before a build is ready to be released on Experimental branch servers, there are usually quite severe blocker issues (as you also mention) which would hinder basically any kind of testing, and as such there would be little to no gain in setting up an extra branch for this.