tux (DayZ)

I hope that this becomes the standard every time a new feature is introduced. Great status report - can't wait to hear more about the upcoming scrums.

On the topic of persistence, nobody's seem to have gone in depth about this yet. Some developer (Hicks, I believe) said that they were working on a way to refresh an entire camp, opposed to requiring the need to interact with each individual object in order for it's cleanup timer to reset. This isn't that important with the current base-building system, as there are only really tents, barrels, and vehicles that make up the camp. Once barricades and those sand filled walls are introduced, interacting with every single one to prevent them from being cleaned up would be too tedious. EDIT: From the dayz subreddit on dyes:

This is your only answer. @ OP: I would say that 0.58 (the current stable patch) has had some of the most important updates in a while. The new CLE system is still in early iterations, but being able to adjust the frequencies of certain loot spawning on the fly circumvents the need for a big patch, meaning devs can fine-tune the loot distribution for desired player progression. Devs have talked about adding hoards of zeds, but due to performance issues, there's no sign of infected AI across the map. We had zeds in 0.58 EXP for a while, just not to the extent the dev team is shooting for, quantity wise. 3 new vehicles should be on the way in 0.59, and with vehicles requiring additional parts, should make for a pretty interesting patch. Even persistence is assumed ON, and issues with large camps and the despawning of items are being addressed in 0.59 EXP (coming soon...); another sign of the new CLE. Regardless of certain issues (i.e. lack of zeds), the development of this game is making great strides towards the perfect survival game. The latest status reports have the answers to all of your questions (which have been asked a million times in a million different places). Welcome back, it's a great time to be a survivor.

A dev talked about implementing better occlusion culling a few months ago. Can anyone back me up on this? Would this help with the problem that some people are describing, or are the items not rendered anyway because they are stored "invisible" inside of it's container? Either way, occlusion culling seems like it would be more of an "optimization" task, and be saved for beta in 2016.

Actually found a few cows just south of Berezino on the coast. Never seen any wildlife that close to the coast, but there were 5 or 6 cows.

This. Plus, until you can actually see where someone has used a bandage on themselves / someone else (which may never even be implemented, or may be coming with the QoL changes coming in the next few patches), there's no reason to have any color bandages, as you'll only see them in your inventory anyway. Also, how would combining different colored rags work? Hopefully more coloring options are added (you can already dye armbands different colors using plant material). Maybe some sort of headband would be cool. Having the option to be able to create armbands out of materials other than the raincoats would be neat too.

Stone knives can still be crafted in no time. It is an essential 1-slot item that can replace many larger items. As Grapefruit kush said, almost all sharp objects (including stone knives) can be used to tear the less durable clothing items in the game.

I absolutely can't wait for the megaphone and maybe some PA systems, being able to broadcast something loud. The problem would be the people spamming the microphone instead of using it for RP to enhance the immersion. OP: Having a working radio at spawn, although being sort of unrealistic, would definitely improve player interaction at some level. Your bullet points are spot on :beans: , though you'll have to add a 5th bullet point for "griefers"

Until some desync issues are fixed, or I get better internet, I will never feel comfortable driving a truck. I'm a very good driver, and when driving solo in a more empty server, I can make it almost anywhere without flipping my truck. However, especially with the V3S cargo, I've been running into the problem of not even being in control of the vehicle during bad desync, and flipping the car without even realizing what's going on. Obviously if we were able to do more while riding in a vehicle (e.g. accessing inventory, shooting from windows, hiding in "boot"), the issues with passengers seeing the vehicle doing flips and rolling all of the time, despite the fact that the driver is actually perfectly on track, will have to be addressed. As for flipping vehicles, it would be cool to have some way to get a group of people, and use materials to upright a vehicle. Maybe some sort of jack for adding tires. Can't wait for exp 0.59 which should have the 3 new vehicles.

Thanks for posting here. This is a very interesting read. I wouldn't have seen it on reddit, as I don't generally frequent the subreddit.

One thing I wouldn't expect to see is a lot of zeds. Due to unexpected performance issues, the zeds in 0.58 exp were removed for a while, and now they are spawning, but in very low numbers. I assume we'll see the same thing one 0.58 hits stable. The good thing is, we'll be getting persistence back, 12 hr restarts to go along with it, and hopefully working CLE (loot spawning & despawning). Survivors will now need to do more than memorize V3S truck spawn locations, as they are dynamic (I might be wrong on this), and require vehicle parts found around the map to start any vehicle. With the CLE beginning to shape up, we'll no longer see lootsplosions, which allowed a player to quickly get full military-grade gear on the coast. The loot spawning and allowed number if certain items can be changed without any major changes on the part of BI, so they will be fine-tuning the inland / northwest push from players spawning the coast via loot control. The game in it's current experimental state is also has shown a lot of performance changes. Personally, I've seen growth in FPS on my very low quality rigs, which really helps make the game more playable. Hopefully this is the new performance benchmark that the team wants to have every stable patch candidate meet; once the too many zeds problem is solved, we'll be able to see hoards of zeds without much performance loss. TL;DR: What everyone else has been saying. Wait around a week for stable to come out, or play the experimental branch now, as it's practically a stable patch (has been stable for most of the 0.58 experimental run), and should be pretty close to what we'll see as a full stable branch.

I pictured this when I first read your comment, not instinctively knowing what a chainflail was:

Personally, I don't think we'll get any sort of weather, beyond rain, temperature and wind, until modding is supported. Hopefully wind becomes more of a factor, to not only affect your character's temperature, but also affecting the ballistics of a bullet.

Maybe there would be a random chance that a pump wasn't working, or you actually had to do something (e.g. turn a pipe valve nearby) to get it to start flowing again. You could also turn-off valves if you didn't want people to use a pump. Boobytrap the valves somehow. Love the idea of needing a rope and some sort of container to hold the water in to use a well.

How does allowing other people to modify this game affect you negatively in any way? If somebody wants to create an ArmA 3 mod for DayZ SA, why shouldn't they? In fact, I'd say that allowing modding will get even more people interested in the vanilla DayZ SA, assuming the dev team keeps providing updates and content past release; though some will argue that it would be spreading the community apart. Think about if you were watching a Twitch stream of a DayZ SA mod. Say you didn't know what the original DayZ SA was, but you really like the mod that you are watching. You go and buy DayZ SA, install the mod, then realize that you really like DayZ SA vanilla a lot. Alienating the modding community, ironically the same type of community that started the ArmA 2 DayZ mod, would only take people away from the game.

On the subject of barrel contents being persistent in 0.58 EXP: We're seeing otherwise, and have been for some time now. Any way we can get this checked out so we're on the same page?

Yes, there are large bugs that the dev team are working to fix by 0.59 - 0.61. However, the flaw in your thought process is that these are the only bugs, and that no more bugs will arise between now and beta / 1.0 release. We're almost guaranteed more bugs to pop up, just about every time that a new feature is implemented. The alpha stage in development is for adding new features, so we'll be seeing bugs throughout the alpha process, and likely through the beta stage as well. That being said, I don't entirely believe that all bugs will need to have been fixed before modding is supported. We may see the ability to create our own mods before full release, but it's better not to count on something like that. I too am very interested in creating mods for DayZ SA; this will be the first platform which I try to create some sort of mod for. The thing that you have to keep in mind is that we are a long way off from being able to modify this game, so it's better to just enjoy the ride and at most hope for fully supported modding tools somewhere down the line.

I'll double check tonight, but I believe you ;) I hope that the intent is lots of barrel spawns everywhere. We already see those blue barrels (in groups of four) everywhere, and even some single barrels lying around in some places, so the interactable barrels shouldn't be uncommon, at least compared to tents. Do you have any thoughts on providing a large capacity container that you can move while filled (aside from vehicle inventories)? A wheelbarrow comes to mind. Maybe even once item weight comes into play, you would be able to carry a barrel with things inside of it, as long as the contents' weight wasn't above the amount you could carry in your arms.

Last I checked, barrel contents weren't persistent in 0.58 EXP. Can anyone who has played in the past couple days confirm?

Nothing really new, mainly just reiterating the points he's been making in the past few months. It's a great reference to help answer a lot of questions newer players might have about where the game is headed and why it's being developed this way. Honestly could've just been Hicks talking the entire time; either "host" didn't really contribute anything to the conversation other than a few basic questions that everyone seems to have. Regardless, thanks for posting. It's always nice hearing from devs about how things are going.

What about something similar to the compass, where the watch could be placed in your hotbar and updated in real-time? Assuming they keep this compass-hotbar feature.

Desync fixes and no "ghost sounds" will be nice, but I'm most looking forward to respawning loot and persistence. Great status report. Can't wait for more changes to 0.58 exp!

Ouch, no need for personal attacks. We're doing nothing but addressing every single one of your assumptions with facts. Being hostile towards people who are helping won't get you very far. As for how loot is spawning, it's been changing in every single patch. In 0.57 they removed the new CLE system and had loot fully respawning at server restarts, because they wanted to test how and where certain items were spawning. What you are saying makes it sound like this is how it's going to be forever, which is far from the truth. Once the CLE (central loot economy, this status report goes in-depth into what CLE means) is working correctly, there won't be a single spot where the "best" items spawn. This is a better approach; you'll actually have to survive and play the game as it's meant to be played, instead of hitting every single server on your list, visiting the same building to get every end-game item in the game. We're trying really hard here to help you understand the direction this game is going, regardless of the fact that Dean left the development team. Nobody is trying to make you look foolish or single you out. Everyone will enjoy this game more if we all understand what our role is as alpha testers; bashing the people trying to help is only going to make this game less appealing to you once we're in a more finished state.

Wouldn't really be a survivor if he got infected now would he? You'll have to record yourself singing it so we can get the cadence right... for science.

V3S truck spawns are still static in 0.58 exp, and the batteries / glow plugs / wheels (everything needed to get one started) are all spawning in sheds. Not to take away from your point that the experimental is phenomenal, just wanted the correct information to be spread.