FlimFlamm

This unfortunately cannot become a reality at least until after 1.0 by my estimation. The development schedule is already too strained to warrant it. :( That said, once modding becomes a thing, a larger map will be inevitable. Ideally when 1.0 hits things will be somewhat optimized and ready for more players and bigger maps... Some people might be worried about the community "splitting" over mods and maps, but in reality the highest quality handful of maps will be highly played, and so instead of one kind of map we will get access to more variety, which surely will include something very large... We still have to wait and see unfortunately, although It would surely be awesome if and when we get something larger, even if it's not an extended Chernarus.

Looks interesting. I'm curious to know if .62 will fix that issue where distant tree shaders flutter back and forth between various distance based blurry/more defined images.

This thread is a followup to "How Starvation Should Work" . Currently hydration in-game functions as a meter ranging from -1000 to +4000, and is helpful for preventing over-heating and necessary for regaining health and blood. When your thirst runs out, you will steadily lose blood until death... In the real world when you run low on water, the first symptoms to appear are thirst followed by headaches, tiredness, dizziness, and muscle cramps. When you run very low on water, rapid heartbeat, rapid breathing, and confusion also begin to manifest as symptoms Delirium and unconsciousness are the final stages of dehydration which finally results in death. If I was to sit down in the real world with full hydration and was fully nourished (staying seated to not tax my energy levels), I would die of dehydration in about 1 week (give or take a few days given different temp/humidity). If I had water to drink, I would die of starvation in about 3 weeks. Suggested mechanics based on this information: - The length of time it takes to die of dehydration should be roughly 1/3rd the length of time it takes to die of starvation (from average nutrition level and not accounting for environmental conditions and physical activity) - Dehydration should come in stages which apply certain effects as hydration level declines So, if the total nutrition bar for a player is 30k nutrition points (for example), then the hydration bar should be 10k points (assuming similar point consumption rates) Based on a theoretical 10k hydration bar, when your hydration falls below 5000, the first wave of status effects should be applied (sweat less/disperse heat less easily, slight reduction in sprint/stamina, increased gun sway), and when it falls below 2500, the second wave of status effects can also be applied (loud heart beat, loud breathing, more fatigue). Finally when hydration reaches zero, random unconsciousness, blood loss, and "delerium" status effects can be applied. Additionally, humans need to be well hydrated in order to fully digest the food we eat. The hydration bar could work as a modifier to proportionally affect how efficiently players digest the food they eat (the more hydrated, the more fully they get the nutrition out of their meals). Right now the only incentive to stay hydrated is to stave off eventual blood loss or to recover lost blood/HP (and to not over-heat, which is nice). By having status effects to simulate before the outright death phase begins, players will be incentivized to stay hydrated in a more realistic way which actually increases the value of managing hydration well. The penalties that players suffer by not staying hydrated will affect their ability to move around as fast as possible and to engage efficiently in PvP. Over longer periods of time these mechanics, along with a better starvation and medical system, will inexorably change the way players tend to behave as they refine their habits. Right now you can gear up and run around like Rambo on extended killing tours, taking damage and instantly healing it all, and allowing yourself to nearly starve and dehydrate to death just before taking a short break to max it all out again. Given dehydration status effects, the need to stay well hydrated will need to more consistently be reckoned with in order to make such a play-style effective. Realistic penalties and food/nutrition intake requirements will also achieve the effect of perforating the monotony of running n' gunning. Since the trends in outcomes of PvP encounters will be affected by these kinds of health states, this makes food resource management a much larger part of being a skilled and robust player and an integral part of playing the game. This fits in with a vision of a more difficult and unforgiving and realistic DayZ. As the suggestions in this thread stand, not dying from dehydration is made a bit easier, but when hydration is neglected it makes everything else more difficult, which makes hydration more important to manage, which makes survival more difficult to manage overall. In a way these suggestions amount to only minor changes from a coding perspective, but the numerous long term effects they could have on game-play are massive.

Indeed. This was intentional because it's too difficult to say exactly how long it should take to starve and dehydrate to death while in game. As a mechanic, turning up thirst and hunger speed, or turning it way down, really drastically alters how players can play. With long lasting hydration and nutrition players are free to roam far and long focusing on other things entirely, and with short lasting hydration and nutrition players become more restricted due to the more constant health needs. Where the perfect balance actually lies is not easy to fathom without actual in-game testing, and individual servers might be able to tweak such settings. As a standard though, however long starvation and dehydration takes to actually kill you, dehydration should take roughly 1/3rd the time that starvation takes. Right now dehydration and starvation are already spaced out over only a few hours. If I had to throw out an initial value, I would say that making the processes a bit longer overall than they currently are would be in order. Yes you would need to manage hydration more often to avoid the ill effects, which is more annoying, but it's also decidedly more realistic than suddenly losing blood and dying.

Je pense que vous besoin d'attandez pour quelque mois quand l'equipe development n'est pas preoccupé avec autr chose... Desolé...

Really solid work as always Tatanko! I like the timing of this as lately I've been thinking a lot about our damage system and where it ought to be headed (see my recent thread on starvation). As far as I'm aware an improved injury, damage, disease, and health system is set to be designed/implemented at some point in the future so I reckon it might be a good time for some community input in that regard.

For now, if need be, in the wasteland zone behind a hill!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not that I've ever needed to resort to that, but in the past I've basically looked for the unobvious nooks and crannies that people otherwise ten not to hike to. While it's true in the mod I had my pick of a new mountaintop each night, my plan is to be more group reliant and to use fortifications, traps, and mechanics like removing batteries and other vital parts to have sustainable ownership.

.62 is set to be an important update but in theory won't last long before .63 is moved to. That is unless un-forseen obstacles blocking the visual update arise. All said, I'm actually patiently waiting the implementation of the single feature which for me makes me want to play DayZ long term. Aircraft. Those who know me know my obsession with aircraft... Has there been any info whatsoever on them as of late? Any guesses where they fit in to the build schedule?

Currently we have an "energy" statistic which spans -500 to +20000 in variance. When your energy is below 0, you steadily lose blood at a set rate, until death. When your energy is at 4000+ (and you are hydrated and uninjured) you will slowly gain blood, (and when your blood is full you will gain health). The first problem with this system is first that there is no distinction between "fat" (energy above 4000), and the daily food-intake requirements of actually having energy. A player can over time max their energy bar and then spend a ridiculously long time drinking only water while suffering no detrimental effects. In the real world, you can survive on fat and water only (while fat stores last) but you will be in a state of reduced energy throughout this process. Furthermore, when fat stores run out death is not quick. People in extremely malnourished states languish for a long time in a state of severely compromised energy levels, (and symptoms including compromised immune system, extreme sensitivity to cold, hallucinations, and more). Right now the incentive to be well fed is to heal/replenish blood, but other than that the only incentive to eat at all is to not die. It should be such that being consistently fed means you have top notch stamina, top notch ability to resist cold, a top notch immune system, and can build a "fat" statistic which will determine how long people can last without any food intake. When starvation does occur, it needs to be slow and painful instead of quick and easy. This gives players a greater chance to come back from starvation, but also makes it an inherently more painful and difficult experience: a reason to not flirt with malnutrition for those who want to stay alive. So here are some proposed mechanics based on this: Energy bar: [0 - 4000] This is raised by food consumption, and is constantly being consumed (more or less depending on physical activity/environment temperature). Fat Bar: [-5000 - 25,000] This is raised when the energy bar receives surplus, and is lowered when the energy bar is at 0 (more or less depending on physical activity/environment temperature). When players have some fat and some energy they are healthy and experience no penalty. When players run out of energy and start consuming fat their ability to sprint and/or their movement speed is reduced, their immune system is weakened, and they have increased sensitivity to cold. When players eat food from this state they gain some energy and thus regain the ability to sprint for longer periods, to resist cold, and immunity strength. When their energy bar runs out again they revert back to consuming their fat bar and accompanying penalties. When players have a fat bar that is below 0, they are emaciated. This means their organs have begun consuming themselves, which results in a very compromised immune system, extreme sensitivity to cold, and an inability to perform overly physical tasks (I.E: sprinting). If players eat while in this state they can regain some movement speed while their energy bar lasts, but the detrimental effects of being emaciated will not go away until players actually gain weight by maxing their energy bar and then continuing to eat until their fat bar is above 0. When the fat bar is at -5000, blood and health start dropping until the player dies, by which time should feel like a sweet release. This simple system could be tweaked by tying scaling cold resistance, scaling melee strength, (and body-weight) to the fat bar so that as it falls toward unhealthy levels slight penalties are increasingly felt. Additionally the fat bar could go even higher into "over-weight" territory and have trade-offs of lost movement speed for increased strength, cold resistance, and of course a longer lasting fat store (great for hermits and base-keepers?). Further tweaking can be determined by associating fat quality with individual food types such that some foods (like meat) give a much easier time of adding to fat stores while others are better for energy on the spot. This would force survivors over time to actually have a somewhat balanced diet and actually somewhat simulate real world nutrition. ----------- Some immediate benefits to a system like this will be to create advantages and disadvantages in PvP confrontation which can be determined by how well each player performs over the long term rather that just what gear they are wearing at the time. "PvPers" will have to contend with diet in addition to getting and storing good gear, which over the long run will separate the better organized, better prepared, healthier players, from the sickly ones who live only on sugar and Spite. This gives more value to hunting and farming, and also to cooperation and base-ownership for the purpose of building balanced and high quality food stores. It becomes harder to stay in top condition by requiring steady food intake in addition to steady water intake (as god intended), gives incentives to stay in top condition, and prolongs the experience of starvation which makes it more painful to go through but also more surmountable in the long run (at least from a moderate beginning state of health). All of the numbers can be tweaked for balance along with fat/energy consumption rates and additional status effects could be considered Thoughts?

If it was easily possible to give players an overweight or skinny look to reflect their nutritional health, that would be really awesome, but it might be too costly or tricky to implement. Even if no visual indicators of weight are available it will still be worth simulating it's effects. Examining another player up close could reveal their rough body size though. Hopefully we get some versatile food mechanics in addition to the medical system. I do hope we get as in-depth a simulator as possible even in these regards because of the possibilities they open up for diverse in-game experiences.

The significance of this cannot be understated. Those with any modicum of common sense (the 1%) have been saying for years that the amount of "under the hood" work on the new DayZ engine is the main reason why content addition has not been fully possible. Reassured by statements like "this opens up DayZ to the modding community", I'm completely confident that it will all have been worth the wait. Also, I can't wait for new grass and trees! Please devs, keep stream encoding in mind if there is any way to reduce the traditional blurry grass that is prevalent on any DayZ stream!

Any tips for improving the quality of livestreaming when using OBS for DayZ? (just curious...)

Having only the rudiments of a thing doesn't mean you actually have a functional thing. For example, persistent vehicles alone means little to long term players if you cannot park it behind a locked door or some other such obstacle. It's as insane as loading up barrel after barrel when any fresh spawn with the location can turn it into their personal cache with zero effort. Having a chicken in your pot and a car in your garage is valuable in and of itself (or will be when vehicles actually work right and nourishment/food scarcity is balanced right), but being able to build a base around that home and garage (your tent and barrels) gives way to a much more interesting end-game: Designing, building, expanding, fortifying, improving, and defending that home, whilst managing it all in the changing and dynamic server/community it happens to be located in. The reason why there is not much long term play right now is very simply because there is no way to create adequate security to make that kind of play stable enough on the whole.

It's impossible for that to happen. If DayZ vanilla is the best DayZ then there will always be people playing it; no possible amount of modding fiascos will ever change that. All it can do (by virtue of being optional content selectable on an open market) is give us access to more content or modified game experiences which will either enhance the original DayZ vision, or exist happily along side it. In the days of the mod, then epoch, over-watch, and then over-poch came out, almost everyone was playing these mods because they significantly enhanced the game, but there was still a dedicated (and there still is) playerbase which remains stoically loyal to the pure vanilla. Now... If we never had the additional mods, all those extra players would not have magically be funneled into vanilla servers, they would have in all likelihood played something else entirely. Mods increased the lifespan of the game immeasurably where otherwise it would have fizzled quickly into obscurity. Mods are a win win.

Absolutely. Everyone is out killing everyone else right now because that is the only existing end game. That's the entire reality of it. With base-building and vehicle permanence the kind of group play that inherently stifles PVP will emerge. People will have a reason to group up and cooeprate. Instead of running around looking for pvp ation these groups will run around looking for food, tools, medicines, vehicles, vehicle parts, building materials, and new recruits. These groups will PvP with eachother once multiple groups emerge on a single server, but the good news is that it's entirely possible inter-group alliances will form when these groups get tired or think better of constant mutual destruction.

Each and every one of the suggestions laid out in the original post of this thread are entirely acceptable and there's absolutely no reason why eventually they should not be implemented. Your presentation is excellent and your ideas are well within the bounds of what we all want out of DayZ (including devs) Great post, +1, it just might be awhile before the dev team gets to sit down and focus on polish and technically non-essential extras. But I have little doubt that eventually all or most of these will be implemented!

Zombification doesnt fit with canon and will never be good as a mechanic. All they need to do is polish the existing wound infection mechanic to make it more relevant (like having it happen with low chances on zombie hit, when using non sterilized bandages, when using non-pristine blood related medical equipment, when any wound is opened, etc....) Additionally I would like to see a "wash hands" mechanic that would prevent the chance of infection when using pristine blood related medical equipment.

So 95% of the player-base will play [CHEATS ON] death-matches while 4% play god mode RP only and the remaining 1% will just play vanilla... Those are some epic mods that you totally have the imagination to envision...

I can see what you mean, but at the same time it must be noted that the original charm of the DayZ mod only lasted for so long; there's only so many times you want to gear up, load up some tents, and just survive. In the end the DayZ mod could not offer what is required to make it a highly playable game over long periods of time. Admittedly the original mod itself wasn't really a mechanically polished or content laden game whatsoever, but it provided the bare bones for seemingly new kinds of player interaction, and that is the singular crux of what truly makes DayZ great. Mods like Epoch and Overwatch added much needed content to the game but more importantly provided a stimulating and rewarding reason to play DayZ over longer periods of time: base building/ownership. Without them, it's popularity would never have lasted so long. It might even be the case that the popularity of the mods were essential to drumming up interest in the DayZ standalone Discounting what are going to be invaluable quality of life improvements to the game in terms of animations and how we interact with the world, the new medical and injury system, the vehicle maintenance system, wolves, et cetra, already drastically alter the ways DayZ can be played. Since there was very little to do in the original DayZ other than kill people it was rather natural that this became a trend simply because it's stimulating. But in DayZ SA... People are going to be too busy building a fire to warm up and dry their clothes when they get wet because their raincoat got destroyed when the zombies attacked when they were eating the pills to cure the disease they got from the pond they had to drink from due to dehydration caused by an extended wolf chase which began with the necessary shooting of a hoard of zombies which had them cornered in the now looted remnants of their destroyed base. This is in my opinion a more fleshed out and detailed version of what the original DayZ sought (and party achieved) to be. It created a whole new genre of video games, and we complained constantly (we never stopped actually) in our thirst for better and more content, less lag, better mechanics. Some of the original DayZ mod mods took the easy route and more or less turned DayZ back into a pvp military simulator feat. sky-towers. I'm not gonna deny they had their place in the shortage of good DayZ content, but there were many thriving servers which managed to resist the allure of allowing cinder-block sky-scrapers and having [1000+ VEHICLES BONANZA SERVUR LEL KEK!!!!] mode turned on while still furthering what DayZ is great for: player interaction (beyond pvp in this case).

The only worry that I've ever had for DayZ is that the devs wouldn't be able to pull it off. The vision and direction we have right now however is impeccable and unquestionably excellent. My worries have been proven valid in that it has taken the devs much longer to progress than everyone involved hoped for, but like the humble turtle, slow and steady will in fact get you across the finish line. Regarding in-game content and people worrying that one element of gameplay will be focused on rather than another (example: pve and raw survival needs over hard core pvp), don't. What a lot of people don't understand about the once and future nature of DayZ is that it is modular and has extreme variety server to server. Vanilla DayZ servers are a brief beginning compared to how it will evolve and diverge, and as soon as dev tools are released for modulating private servers we're instantly going to get access to a panoply of servers which cater to all possible variations of play-styles. Don't like wolves? Some servers will turn them off and some will turn them up! Don't like MG's? same thing. Vehicle preferences? Don't even get me started. Without even broaching the subject of full blown "mods" which actually add content, it's pretty clear that servers will have an extremely easy time customizing their server settings to exactly the kind of community and game-play styles they want to promote. I can appreciate how difficult and complicated it must be to create a brand new engine, which is why you will pretty much never see me sprinkling salt anywhere regarding the time it has taken. But as far as satisfaction with what DayZ is becoming goes, I'm still just as psyched as ever because I know we're not going to get just one version of DayZ that caters to one specific vision; we're going to get them all.

This should be in the suggestion thread along with all the other nutty ideas, but you're not actually crazy. Right now the devs cannot afford to waste time on extra goofy clothing, although once the game is actually finished they're going to steadily add all kinds of random knick knacks. Aan extremely wide variety of clothing is one way that they will achieve this. Not just clown shows. We'll take the whole clown lot. Clown wig, clown mask, clown shirt, clown apparel (water squirting flower?), clown pants, CLOWN EVERYTHING! Because why not? What's a few additional minor game assets in a sea of major ones?

I'm not exactly sure what the reason for this is, but it's incredibly difficult to shoot at someone when they're close enough to you to begin strafing and sprinting like a mad dog. The problem isn't exactly that they're too fast, (although instant changes in direction are unrealistic), it's that aiming the gun has the absolute worst responsiveness and so it's nearly impossible to track near targets while aiming. What this means is that unless a player has a fully automatic or a really good semi-auto then they are potentially at high risk even against stick wielding fresh spawns in close quarter combat. Each of us has likely experienced this handicap and have had to run away from a fresh spawn (until a safe enough distance is reached to turn and shoot), and it strikes me as not realistic but also peculiar as a mechanical feature of the game. When unarmed players are far away from an armed player, they are more in danger (up to a point) because retaliation is made more difficult and the armed player can safely take shots at them. The closer an unarmed player is to a player with a gun, the drastically more of a threat they pose to the armed player, which leads to an annoying game of cat-mouse cat-mouse. At 20 meters or so the armed player will have a chance to fire a shot, if only one, depending on the type of gun available, while the unarmed lunatic slaloms their way toward closing the gap. Once he is within 5 meters firing is too risky, and you have to turn and run until you can engineer some distance between the two of you, whereupon your gun will actually become useful again. I think the main reason why this is a thing is because of the inherent latency between mouse/visual movement and the angle your raised weapon points. If we could do away with this or even give a kind of stamina consuming "quick aim" feature then gun wielding players will be able to kill unarmed players in close combat much more easily (as the good lord Darwin intended). This might seem counter-intuitive, but making it easier to kill people up close with a gun could actually have positive ramifications on how players interact. Instead of killing people on sight and at a distance as a safety precaution (lest they get close enough to chase you around with a hatchet benny hill style), it will be much less risky to actually allow people to get close, and better still players will be able to deliver much more credible threats in situations where one side has firepower and the other does not, which will force them to be co-operative/obiedient/submissive if they want to live. Any input on this theory or at least advice on how to kill those pesky berserkers?

I cannot remember seeing any previews or reading any info about this. Can you recall the source of that info? I'm still pretty convinced that the delayed gun movement/aiming function is one of the main causes of this. When your arming at something far away, you only need to move your gun very slowly, which means that the "lag time" of your gun aim will be very low or marginal. But when you're up close you need to do turns and swing your gun like a mad man it creates a crap ton of aim delay. Tactics and combat skill can somewhat reduce the phenomenon of guns sucking up close, and ideally I would not need to advocate for "making the game easier" in any respect (I like difficult games), but in reality a change to the gun delay mechanic would make it drastically harder for unarmed players to take out armed ones with movement shenanigans, which is essential for social hierarchies and pecking orders based on having guns to be stable. (otherwise someone with a gun, to a fresh spawn, is just a piece of meat waiting to be charged, knocked out, looted, and executed)

Currently Chernarus (give or take): So there is this large desolate wasteland we call the radiation zone or the de-bug zone that amounts to a vast stretch of unusable terrain (the immediate terrain is also unappealing because it is right up against an inexplicably radioactive wasteland). My suggestion is essentially to reshape the northern and western extremities of Chernarus such that instead of wasteland there is coast, creating an island. In order to make the waters and coastline itself playable, the whole land mass of chernarus essentially needs to be pulled south east (or the game-play region delineated by the western and northern borders needs to be move north west). I have no clue how this stuff is programmed in the DayZ engine, but if it could be pulled off Chernarus + could become even bigger and a fair bit more dynamic. This is a primitive rendering of what Chernarus COULD look like: This gives 360 degrees of potential for additional islands and seems like it could be at least a 20-30% increase in the size of the chernarus land mass without increasing the size of the existing gameplay boundaries. Crazy I know, but what do you all think?

Go ahead and delete your DayZ.cfg (configuration folder) along with any custom launch commands (in dayz steam settings) and launch the game. I was getting stutters in the new exp too and this is what fixed it for me.