FlimFlamm

Actually, 1km is not nearly enough of max altitude. Aircraft engines can often be heard for long distances, especially where there is little other noise pollution. The first main reason to go very high is to be practically undetectable to people on the ground by sight or by sound. Secondly, the sky is not always a friendly place. Having many options of altitude to choose from means you can avoid running into other aircraft whose occupants might want to shoot at you. At least 4km is required for this to be feasible IMO (experience coming from extensive use of aircraft of all kinds from the mod). That said, the skybox is basically unlimited, as is the debug zone and the ocean surrounding chernarus. You can basically just keep going out into it... For this reason the skybox in DayZ was actually always the defacto maximum altitude your aircraft could achieve.

Still not sure which lore cannon you fired from :D I'm only half with you about preferring a new map. I want maps to supplement what Chernarus lacks, not to make it obsolete and create unnecessary division. It saddens me that the Devs don't plan to expand Chernarus but i'll never give up on our current marriage! We can make it work! We can change! THINK OF THE CHILDREN~!

I've never heard of the Arma storyline being DayZ cannon. AFAIC unless it falls out of Rocket's (or now at this point, Hick's) mouth, then the lore is really up in the air. This interpretation does make sense, but it does not necessitate that Chernarus be attached to a mainland. For me the written language everywhere is what makes me "believe" that I'm somewhere in the Czech republic, that's just me though. Regarding chopping the map and altering what is currently within game bounds, I'm against that. What I proposed was expanding the game-play region and modifying only the terrain that is currently in debug territory (adapting it and slowly lowering elevation until a coast). It would make the map much bigger, at least 20% bigger, which for me is worth it alone regardless of canonical lore. In addition, playable waters in 360 degrees solves the debug zone eye sore problem entirely while adding 50% more playable ocean terrain, in addition to a possible steady stream of small and unique islands being added. The lore argument is indeed weak when faced with the amount of benefit to playability that such a change would bring in the long run.

My goal is to play DayZ in windowed mode in a resolution and aspect ratio lower and different than my own monitor. I have a 1680x1050 (8:5) monitor and I want to play DayZ in full screen in any resolution lower than that which is a 16:9 aspect ratio without my entire monitor being used. If I can get this working, there would be two black bars at the top and bottom of my game so that I would be left with an un-distorted full screen 16:9 aspect ratio. I want to do this because i cannot limit fps in windowed mode, and I want to stream in a 16:9 resolution instead of a 16:10 resolution. Any help would be wonderful. (my gpu is a radeon hd770)

There are two methods of limiting FPS that I know of, but both of them only work when in full screen (Vsync and hardware based framerate capping) Here's my dilemma: Twitch.tv has a default 16:9 aspect ratio web player (16:9 is the most common aspect ratio). My monitor is 1680 x1050 (16:10 or 8:5 ) and so when I stream people see black bars at the side edges of my stream on unless they also have a 16:10 monitor and are watching in full screen. I overcame this by forcing DayZ into a 16:9 resolution in windowed mode, and just broadcasted that instead of my entire screen and this seems to work fine... However, I'm trying to improve the quality of my stream and the most glaring issue I can identify right now is the fact that my frames currently are out of control and fluctuate wildly (from 60 in cities to 170 when looking at the ground to 1500 in loading screens (good work devs, but seriously, i need to limit these bad boys)). If anyone knows how i can limit frames in windowed mode I would be forever grateful. (I have checked but it seems like my GPU does not have dynamic vsync enforcement) GPU: Radeon HD 7700 CPU: i5-3570k

Well, sorta it does. Call me a stickler, but aircraft tend to have maximum reachable altitudes. This altitude is stupidly high for large and powerful aircraft, so high that nobody is going to ever go up there for any justifiable reason, but for smaller aircraft, which can go "high" by ant standards, have highly varying maximum altitudes. Here is a very crude approximation that shows the relative maximum altitude of a real world Little Bird Heli: The max altitude it can reach is around 5km or 18000 feet (the green line) Thee grey plane represents the play area of Chernarus, 15km squared.

Hopefully they good men (and women?) working on the renderer are able to come up with a good implementation of long range light source rendering. It's one of those finishing touches that would really positively impact the DayZ experience, game-play, and aesthetic.

The inspiration for this thread came from thinking about boats and the ocean, and about how pointless/useless they are going to be... It really would give boats immense utility, even if there are no massive islands. I would be OK with a couple more islands the size of skalitsky and a bunch of smaller islands to give players something to dream about. I would also be interested in a small island that has an un-scaleble coast, requiring aircraft to get onto it. Islands have so much possibility...

Alternate maps are going to make an appearance for sure with beta modding tools and sometime after 1.0 is released and the devs run out of work to do, so why focus so much on improving Chernarus? Having more maps is good; I'm with you 100% there, but at the same time, having the absolute best possible default map can only be a good thing. Having played DayZ basically since it was released as a mod for Arma 2, I have developed a love/hate relationship with Chernarus; my interest in the land stagnated. When they first started heavily modifying Chernarus (into Chernarus +) I felt indifferent, and I was screaming at the top of my [Caps Lock] on the forums about how we need to put Utes off the coast (I still would not mind hehe) and wanted the devs to instantly begin coding new maps... But now thatChernarus + is at where it is, I cannot get enough of it. The amount of improvement and addition they've achieved is massive and I find myself exploring new and modified areas with wide eyes just as I once did in my DayZ youth. In short, more maps are valuable and desirable, but what is perhaps even more valuable and desirable is first and foremost having one very refined, and very large, standard map; making Chernarus expandable in 360 degrees seems like a great way to encourage a future of this. If we also desire and value "newness", then expanding Chernarus by whatever means would serve us just as well as making an entirely new map. P.S, as far as realism and immersion goes, sprinting through a woodland forest at less than realistic speeds feels like nothing compared to emerging from said forest only to find and endless barren wasteland with no unique graphical features whatsoever. :D

The only thing being mutilated is my immersion when I accidentally wander too close to the debug zone. This unnaturally straight line is not to be passed, or even approached or looked at; it is not a playable region. I hate having to constantly consider this when I look at the map or navigate near the debug zone. Arguably Chernarus + is more and more evolving into it's own thing and away from the stock Arma 2 map that it once was. Cutting away the debug zone and replacing it with more terrain and a playable coast is not a mutilation, nor is it a hack job. The current debug zone is a literal hacksaw approach that was used in a game where full blown geographical realism was not an issue because the game was mission based. If you ask me, cutting away the debug zone would be quite symbolic of the devs and artists "making Chernarus their own"; professional and of the highest taste... You can say that a face lift is a mutilation, but sometimes what already exists can already be considered a mutilation. Well, the debug zone is the most notable "unrealistic" aspect of the DayZ world. The DayZ SA devs did not design Chernarus from the ground up, but if they did, I'm sure they would have not chosen such an unsightly geographical feature. This does not mean that they cannot decide to keep making improvements on it though. They have not had the time to do a lot of things they wanted to given the unending litany of programming dilemmas that DayZ SA is heir to. But why not continue to strive for greatness? The future holds infinite time for programming!

I bet modders will be all over underwater game-play if the devs don't get to it. They probably won't put it in for 1.0, but after then they plan to continue adding features. In a particular way making Chernarus an Island seems like it would be limiting it and making it smaller, but in so many more ways it would be making it larger and opening up years worth of possible offshore map additions.

I love this idea! If only it were physically possible. In order to do this we would need a giant invisible barrier that planes and helo's would just crash into on the regular. making for a hilarious but ultimately displeasing game experience. You get the point though; do away with the geographical eyesore that is debug zone!

An airborne virus has turned everyone into ravenous idiots. 5% percent of the global population is immune and you are one of them. You wash up/turn-up on shore (somehow) in Chernarus, a region in the Czech Republic. It's Day Zero of your survival; how long can you last? Basically that's all the definitive lore we have so far, and even that is subject to change. Everyone agrees though that it is not day zero of the actual outbreak because of all the damage across Chernarus, but instead that it is day zero of your own survival.; death in DayZ puts you back to day zero. When it comes to zombie lore, according to Rocket's brother (IIRC), the infected are not actually dead; they have a virus that makes them stupid enough to forget they're human, but smart enough to wander around eating things (but not each other cause pharamones or whatever) and to not instantly get themselves killed by walking off cliffs. Because of this, it cannot be years after the outbreak otherwise most of the infected in places like Chernarus would be completely wiped out. The way I have heard it put before is that Chernarus is stuck repeating the same day over and over, about one month after the outbreak. The army tried to contain it, failed, and here we are. When 1.0 comes out I'm sure they'll craft some official cannon lore. But do you know what is bad for lore business in the first place? Giant wasteland debug zones attached directly to the game world...

Well, maybe. I'm not sure :D. What I am suggesting is that when we are looking towards an object which emits light (and that object is further away than it is practical to render light sources) then instead of seeing nothing (no object and no light due to being too far away) we would see a simplified "glowing sprite". Basically a lens flare/orb looking thing that is unaffected by darkness and shadow, so that it stands out against dark backdrops but generates no actual light of it's own. When you get close enough to the object for actual light to render the sprite would fade and vanish and things would render normally as they do now. The point of this mechanic is to enable players to see light sources over long distances when in the dark as we can in the natural world; a fire in the distance, a lantern making it's way up the mountain, vehicle lights, flashlight Morse code!!! (When it is light out this mechanic perhaps should not function) I only know a little bit about programming, but I do know that having things render over long distances can be distinctly resource heavy . Where light is a seemingly dynamic entity, it has always seemed to me that the reason it does not render as far as trees do is because it's not yet possible engine/resource wise. The utility in this solution comes from the fact that the "glowing sprite" could be a much more simple entity and easier to render over a distance and in large numbers than full blown light sources. (I might be totally wrong about this though as really I've no sweet clue how light actually works in DayZ) So, If a way to have full blown light render over long distances can be figured out without needing to resort to this kind of duct tape solution I would be more than pleased, but if it turns out that light rendering distances would create too much of a graphical strain, then I'm sure we would all settle for fuzzy glowing orbs as indicators of light sources and light intensity. Intriguingly, human eyes often "render" distant light sources in a very similar way to that which I am proposing; something like this: The actual lit surroundings of these light sources are highly obscured and would only be discernible with magnification (a telescope). This is the sort of effect that could possibly be at home on the enfusion engine. As a side note, light render distance is one of those mechanics that seems like a small feature but ends up having a shockingly large impact on the overall experience of DayZ and how the game is actually played. For instance players would much more easily be able to find and signal one another (at night if they decide to risk creating light) given that a camp fire in a high place would be visible over a circle with a 2km diameter: If you have any idea about the options we have with the enfusion engine that would be delightful! On a side note, according to the lore, are our "zombies" attracted to light?

Would it be possible to give objects some sort of glowing sprite (like helicopter lights at a distance on the mod) so that even if we are out of the actual light rendering distance the object would still be identifiable as something emitting light?

I support all this. Have been thinking about it recently myself cause my fireplace keeps vanishing and he dam jerry cans are too large for conventional storage. Let's think of other things which ought to be persistent (like tents) but aren't: Fireplaces (reinforced with stone only, so regular fireplaces cannot be spammed) Gas Cans Tires (when placed by a player, like barrels) packed tents (when dropped by a player) ?????? Can't think of other right now but I will probably make a bug report about fireplaces and maybe gas cans too!

O.O Are you talking about the conflicts in and over Ukraine? Or a source for DayZ lore which proposes a fictional civil war? I admit that I've never encountered such a story, not that Ive encountered much DayZ lore whatsoever though. (as you say it's severely lacking). To be honest I really don't like the idea of pitting Czechs vs Russians against one another in the lore unless we absolutely must; it's too political. In a civil war we would indeed expect to come across large stockpiles of food, weapons, and clothes, but there are no large stockpiles in DayZ aside from player accumulated ones; survivors scavenge bits and bobs from hundreds of buildings in order to get the gear they want; resources are sparse and scattered. I think it would be a much better conceptualization of why there are scattered guns and supplies laying around on the ground in barracks and shit to simply envision what would have taken place in an actual global zombie apocalypse. Outbreaks would spread from one region and expand, pushing survivors, including military not willing to waste ammunition on the walking dead, away from the major population centers and towards countrysides, like Chernarus. The prevalence of both Russian and NATO weapons can be explained by Russian and NATO forces deciding to work-together and hold out at the military bases of Chernarus (hence they brought with them their guns, clothes, gear, ammo, and whichever appropriate vehicles), before finally succumbing to the airborne infection once it reached them. ------------- Lore aside, Right now when you come to the edge of the game world, you see a wholly unnatural line which is perfectly straight and delineates life and no-life. It's incredibly immersion breaking and there's no point in ever going out into the debug zone other than foolish or morbid curiosity. If the suggestion of this thread were implemented, instead of coming to the existing straight unnatural boundary of life and death, you would simply keep going as there would be about 20% more actual land mass (the world would be bigger) and instead of coming to an unnatural and hellish sight you would come to a beach. Not so immersion killing when it's put this way... You like larger worlds by the sound of it, so why not? This would also enable a possibility for 360 degrees of islands, large or small, being placed off the coast, which further enhances the playable world size. There would be no one "end game island" (save for maybe a defacto largest and most resource plentiful northern island), they would all be a part of the same open and freely explorable world with no unnatural boundaries.

Until base-building and larger permanent groups cheezy, pvp is pretty much the end game (regrettably). But regarding the boats, they have already been mentioned on roadmaps and what not. They might get dropped from the drawing board but as far as we know we're getting vanilla boats as it is.

If you think about it, right now boats are more or less worthless except for three and only three functions. Getting you to the prison, getting you to skalitsky, and using it to pick people up or be picked up from the coast (to be brought NE along the coast). Really this is a severe lack of actual utility for a full blown vehicle entity... If Chernarus was an island though... Boat travel actually would become useful and safe as you could get from one side of the map to the other and avoid zombies and players The added possibility for additional islands and more and potentially unique terrain in the north for me would be immeasurably game-changing. I'm with you though, HELICOPTERS FIRST!!!!! :D

There's a cool phenomenon that we could use to find out. If we had around 100 or more guesses from forum users, we could actually take the average of all the guesses and we would be accurate to within less than two jellies! (or something impressive like that) It's called "wisdom of the crowd". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd Therefore, we could get 100 guesses about when DayZ is going to be released and we could take the average XD . WE WOULD THEORETICALLY BE ACCURATE TO WITHIN TWO CANS OF BEANS!!! Beta is going to come out sometime in the beginning of 2017, or maybe at the end of 2016 if we stay on our absolute best behavior. When 1.0 comes out is pretty much impossible to say. When beta comes out with modding and a shit ton of features DayZ might be altered so heavily that there's no telling how long it might take to completely finish the job.

Honestly, an expanding of the tracks, these kind of turntables and track switches, (and a few rail cars (maybe a motorized one too)) would be incredibly interesting. People could use them as high risk transportation to and from coasts, and also use them to haul raw materials to and from construction sites!

Personally I would be against spawn location on the northern coast (I like the SE -> NW map progression). However, progressing along these new coats could potentially prove more dangerous/hazardous than the freshie coasts currently are. Cliffs at various points would force inland travel, in addition to being fairly well out in the open.

Absolutely not trains... But.... HAND CARS!!!!! Just because they're hilarious. "A handcar (also known as a pump trolley, pump car, jigger, Kalamazoo,[1] velocipede[citation needed], or draisine is a railroad car powered by its passengers, or by people pushing the car from behind. It is mostly used as a maintenance of way or mining car, but it was also used for passenger service in some cases. A typical design consists of an arm, called the walking beam, that pivots, seesaw-like, on a base, which the passengers alternately push down and pull up to move the car." The thing about these is that the more people you have operating them, the faster you can go. Observe: But if you get a bunch of old timers together, then this hilarious shit could cross your path: I would support one or two of these being available per map. Self-servingly this idea would play well into my suggestion to make Chernarus into an island (probably never gonna happen :D ) and to extend the tracks to encircle the whole island.

I was also thinking that this new more extreme north would be ideal for all kinds of bases, large and small. I would also be interested in some sort of unique terrain features which could make traversing and navigating this area extremely difficult, like a shit ton of contaminated areas, extreme mountains with sheer cliffs along parts of the coast, changing temperatures due to altitude, a lack of civilization aside from a few hunting cabins, and maybe train tracks along the coast (and a train tunnel through the parts with cliffs?). If I was a dev I would be mostly concerned with the extra server load that might be created by needing to add in a shit ton of new buildings each with item spawn locations and zombie spawn locations, etc... But even still any kind of usable terrain at all, even if just barren hilly forest with no zombie or item spawns for miles, would be really very appealing.

In the most remote and desolate location I can get to, with a tent, a fire, and my trusty Auto-Gyro! Location wise this used to mean at the north east corner of the map, But to be honest I'm not sure anymore, Chernarus + is ever become a mysterious and unknown place to me!