AV8R_Six

FISHING Basket Imagine if we could make this!

Totally! I saw one post where if they took out all the easy stuff to get or reduced it, people wouldn't have time to PvP camp cities and troll survivors...they'd actually have to cooperate to survive and work to earn their meals!

I just fished for the first time yesterday...great work DayZ Devs....I hope this game goes BETA sometime!

Fresh off the press...I helped develop the earlier versions of this in the 80s and 90s and this new reference is updated for modern considerations that can be applied in DayZ! http://static.e-publishing.af.mil/production/1/af_a3/publication/afh10-644/afh10-644.pdf

B.L.I.S.S Although SERE training has evolved since my days in it in the 80s and 90s, the BLISS can still be beneficial to someone trying to avoid detection. It stands for a five letter acronym representing Blend, Low Silhouette, Irregular Shape, Small, Secluded Location. B - You'll want to blend in with your surrounding. Standing against a forested background with a pink raincoat or red mountain backpack will surely make you stand out. Simple things like moving in the shadows, avoiding sunlight or moonlight illumination, or staying in clutter or avoiding open flat terrain is crucial to avoid being spotted. Along with blending, your movement speed can cause the contrast of the environment around you and your texture being different from that. Usually, the faster you move, the easier it is to see you. L - Staying Low makes you a smaller object and often you can use gullies, valleys, and ditches to move through to avoid standing out in nature. This can also apply to urban areas where drainage lines, culverts, and spillways help hide you from the normal lines of communication. Avoid running on the road, sidewalk or any open flat terrain that offers no concealment advantage. I - Irregular Shapes are things that contrast nature or the settings and surroundings in a given area. Humans make a distinctive shape in contrast to nature. The inverted V of the legs, a round feature on top of the torso, and parallel limbs dropping down from the shoulders is rarely duplicated in nature. In the real world, we would use green or sage parachute material to make a skirt that broke up our legs. In DayZ, the gillie suit improvisation helps but at the expense of overheating and limited storage. Wearing a helmet and having a big backpack only further compounds the contrast to nature. In most cases, you'll be mistaken for Bigfoot and still be seen. S - The first S for Small...the smaller you make yourself, the easier it is to hide or blend in with surroundings. The bigger backpacks are great for hoarders, but realistically, you only need to keep your food, kit, medical, a few rounds of extra ammo as your surviving to make it to the next resupply or back to your stash. S - And the final S is for Secluded Location. Otherwise, this means to stay secluded as much as possible until you know the area is clear for looting, food and water procurement, and general movement. This can also be considered a Double-Edged Sword so to speak, as many players are also looking for the secluded spots for survival or to search for hidden stashes. I have a rule, I only build a fire to cook if it's in a well secluded low spot, or in a house with a fireplace that is off the main lines of communication. I prefer houses as I can usually go upstairs, close all the doors and hear someone walking in on the boarded floors. This gives me time to defend my spot and besides, the fires last longer in enclosed fireplaces than out on the open ground. The risk in houses is that the smoke during the day, and illumination at night can give your position away, but it makes for a great screenshot! ENJOY! Stay Alive...

Last week I found someone's barrel stash and it had a crafted bow and even crafted arrows. I left it intact as that's the essence of Survival. I also agree that forcing survivors to focus on medical, shelter, food and water and maintaining 98.6 would discourage the KOS instant gratification...I feel we have a situation now where no one trusts anyone and most people are shot on sight because they can't know if that person is going to kill them first. Part of my realism settings is to slow down, glass an area before I go into it, avoid detection at all cost, survey the lines of communication and stay alive by avoiding contact with others. One night, I was just South of Vybor getting water when two players approached and I saw them coming...I backed into a bush about 15 feet from the pump and just watched and listened...they didn't even see me (darkness and lack of movement helped). For about 10 minutes I watched them eat and drink, shuffle their gear, talk and depart. I later ran into them (husband and wife playing together) and they didn't shoot at me when I ran...I heard over VON if I needed any help and then I heard a woman's voice and figured they weren't out to cut my throat...the entire ordeal had my heart pumping and the suspense was awesome! They are now on my STEAM friends list. Keep the realism tips coming...next post, I'll share the B.L.I.S.S. principles we taught in USAF Survival and it actually works 80% of the time due to limitations of the graphics engine in the game.

@Kopo Exactly! I used to teach Aircrew Fire By Friction and that is the hardest way to start a fire. You actually have to have a division of Hardwood and Softwood and spend several minutes and lots of energy to get the friction to the point of embers so that the very delicate fluff tinder will ignite. All of this is followed with many careful minutes of blowing and cradling the embered tinder. Flint and Steel is almost as challenging and you have to have carbon charred cloth and the right steel to make it happen. Lighting a pre-burnt candle wick with a metal-match and knife blade is cub-scout easy compared to the two methods above. In the text "Fire By Friction for Aircrews" developed by MSgt Rocky Mullen, he tells of an account of two Japanese soldiers stranded on a small Pacific Island for a dozen or more years after WW2 was actually over. The two had plenty of ammunition so each time their fire would die out from a storm or inattention, they would use a shaft of wood and a piece of wire for friction (rubbing the wire up and down the stick) and would uncap a cartridge and place the powder on their tinder and touch the red-hot wire to the mix for a flash-start of their fire. Come to think of it, my fire kit box has steel wool and battery, birch bark, pine pitch sticks, candles, lichens and moss, and even a plastic spoon for shavings...there are many, many ways to start a fire that could enhance DayZ. The new game engine, and a true effort to push this in the right direction of a Survival Sim would make the Standalone so much more than ArmA with a MOD or a mistaken FPS, Kill On Sight kid-game that most people seem to take it as. Next post, I'll expand upon shelter-craft (Base Building) and Evasion considerations...all within the scope of programming capabilities. Cheers,

Amazing how far we have come from the original MOD...the Zombies aren't the real issue anymore, it's all the PvsP Kill On Sight mental subjects that treat DayZ as a FPS instead of the cerebral survival simulation it deserves to be...

Agree with you both, but from a Survival Standpoint, there are so many more possible in-game processes that mimic-real world survival techniques which can be encoded. A lot of them are already in. Say Wow, look how fast you can grow crops! ;^)

Thanks Kopo...just wanted to be in the right forum thread without duplication and to make sure it is read. Cheers, I have a ton of ideas but would like to get a think-tank together to pan some of them out and into Gold!

Point me to the right forum for recommending realism considerations well within programming capabilities. - Birch Bark (scrape it with your knife and use as pain reliever) - Russian Helicopters and US Helicopters, reserve those loot spawns for specific equipment that would be found in each...example, Russian equipment for MI8 and US equipment for Huey. - Diarrhea (Use fire pit ashes to relieve diarrhea discomfort from eating bad food. I'd be glad to chat with the DEVs and Encoders/Artists on DayZ realism inputs via Skype or other modes. I think I could help you come up with several quality realism situations that would boost the game and help it finally get into full production. Don Welch, MSgt, USAF (Retired) Survival and Rescue Operations