Derleth

Hey, I have a couple of thoughts about the state of in-game lighting. Something I've noticed is that indoor spaces are illuminated according to the outdoor time of day, not by actual light sources such as windows or doors. Hence a completely closed off space without windows, such as the base of the Green Mountain radio mast, will be bright as day even if the doors are shut. That space should be pitch black dark, possibly with some light spilling in through ventilation slits, yet it is always illuminated, even at night with closed doors. Same goes for any other building, they are nearly always more bright inside than outside which is absurd, since there should be no light sources inside. Any light inside a building should be what comes from windows and doors, or light sources brought in by players. This is all very immersion breaking since it nearly eliminates the need to use light sources. When I go into a house to loot in the middle of night I should NEED to use a light source or not be able to navigate or find anything at all. Is this something that will be looked at or is it a design choice with the game engine? As for outdoors, I'm feeling that nights are just not dark enough. Most bright surfaces seem to always reflect a lot of light, even on moonless nights where there should reasonably be no light to be reflected. This has the effect that the ground is always illuminated and because of that navigating at night is just too easy, you never really need a light source which is just wrong. I thought this might just be settings on my side, especially since screenshots tend to be much darker than what I was seeing in-game when I took them, but I've tried messing about with settings without finding a way to make it any different. Is this just how it is now?

Hahaha thank you. I haven't actually messed around with any settings at all before this. Well, I did have a problem earlier with all colours - especially deep dark colours - having a washed out greyish look to them. That caused me to have constant night vision in 0.62 and I didn't even realise it until I watched some streamer stumbling around in complete darkness trying to light a torch, whereas I had never needed a light source since I started playing the game. When I tried to get the game to look like that (with the in-game settings) it was impossible, so I started googling and found out about the Nvidia HDMI issue. After I fixed that, nights in 0.62 looked fantastic but then in 0.63 I received night vision again, only now it's just the ground and objects that are too bright, not that washed out look... Anyway, I'm going to try going through the steps you described above, but I'm fairly sure that just about everything is already on factory default (except gamma that I pulled down from 1.0 to 0.85 yesterday.)

Me too! However, I kinda suspect whatever is making me see the world too brightly lit at night will count as gamma abuse so the countermeasures kick in... Which is only fair in that case, but I would like to know whatever the fudge it is that causes it instead. At the moment I have pulled gamma down on the video card instead like Pilgrim suggested. Not to 50% since then I couldn't see fudge all at day even - or indeed on my windows desktop - but to 85% or so. It looks better now, but the boring thing with pulling gamma down is that it dims light sources too which is not right. The night should be dark, the flash light should be my tool to manage. And yes, DayZ looks absolutely stunning in nearly all other aspects. I even appreciate that annoying effect at dusk where you are blinded when looking at the still bright sky while the shadows are deepening. That effect is impressive, just way too strong just now. You just don't get full on blinded like that every day when the sun goes down...

Well it is already happening. Personally I haven't set foot on public servers since the server files were published and servers with increased zombie spawns started appearing. Why the heck would I? I want a proper zombie apocalypse feeling, you don't get that with two or three dazed infected staggering about a town. With dozens roaming the streets you do... I don't give a flying toss about base building, vehicles or all the missing weapons - or indeed player population to be honest - I just want the game world to be actually challenging in itself. Now if vanilla delivers that I will stick to vanilla servers, but if it doesn't I'll play whatever mod that does it best and never look back. And if vanilla should deliver that brutal, gritty, and scary zombie apocalypse/survival experience, that I so dearly hope it will do, it will probably (hopefully) offend the more trigger happy, KOS-loving parts of the playerbase that have so far been playing the standalone as a deathmatch shooter. Should they migrate en masse to modded deathmatch/battleroyale/whatever servers, that would only benefit the remaining community as far as I'm concerned. I won't set foot on such servers, but since many players enjoy and prefer that way of playing the game, then all the better that there will be mods catering to that playstyle.

I wonder if it is a monitor thing? But the contrast/gamma settings on it are by default controlled by the gpu software so it's my Geforce running the show, and I have not raised gamma on that. So I just don't know what it can be.

Yeah, since Xbox servers are still being restarted too frequently for the night cycle to be allowed to run its course, the sun doesn't move much in the sky. Once stability is better and restarts won't need to be so frequent, you'll get nights and all that comes with it :)

Bag spawns on public servers in the current experimental build (0.63.148873) but the vest does not. However the vest is in the files and the blocker can be removed by server admins on community servers. On Dwarden's experimental server (3PP ip 85.190.150.213:3302) I'm currently running around with the vest and bag attached. :)

Okay lads and lasses, I've officially found weed. Now where is a box of matches when you need one? (Encountered on Dwarden's experimental server)

I think your wish has come true, I killed this guy near the Olsha chapel on Dwarden's experimental server a few minutes ago. He was wearing the robe but no headwear, sadly there were no more clergy zeds around Olsha...

YES and YES!!! I really hope the infected in current experimental are nowhere near finalised. I want them to do all the stuff you describe above and more. They should hear players talking, they they should eat people and animals, they should break down doors or climb through windows (when there's more than 5 beating on that door e.g. and it should take them a while), hell I think they should even occasionally figure out how to climb ladders... And flies, oh yes. Bring back the flies! I heard flies yesterday down by the shore, so the sounds are in at least.

It was on the Outbreak RP server. It is a roleplaying server and passworded, they want more players so you can hop in on their discord and read the rules. If you agree just @ Bruce and you should get an invite. https://discordapp.com/invite/g5errAk I got a bit careless last night when looting in Elektro and had to barricade myself in the police station, it looked like this from the roof:

In those cases you can always crouch for the time being. That drains way more energy than walking though :-/

Indeed. Anything that makes dead bodies lie around a while attracting flies would do for me. And as for zeds I agree, they are slow to react to gunfire, don't give chase very long and appear to have gone nearly blind, since you can move around in the open quite near them without them seeing you. Apart from animations, infected were actually far better in 0.62 if anyone asks me, they were more aggressive, fast, didn't give up too soon, came running from everywhere if you fired one round and their attacks made you bleed. Sound effects were more scary too, the stupid "rhaaaaawr" in 0.63 annoys me to no end. I know it's a placeholder, but it's just so cringy. Couldn't they have just kept the sounds from 0.62 instead of that? Infected were better at the start of experimental but changed for the worse with the content patch I think. Hopefully these are things that will be adjusted, might even have been some tweak for one of the pvp-centered stress tests that someone forgot to un-tweak? Anyhow, for more infected, go ahead and try one of the "pve" modded community servers that are out there. I've been playing on one with proper hordes around any military camp and sometimes in towns as well. It is great, you have to be careful when moving around, plan your approach, stay in cover and have an escape route planned if you mess up. I've been killed twice by infected the last week, something that hasn't happened since the first two weeks I played the game. Loving it! Below picture was very dark, I have cropped it and increased brightness to make them more visible. Zoom in and start counting infected...

Yeah, while probably very good for server performance, quick despawning of corpses really breaks immersion and makes the game arcadey. Really, in the perfect game they would stay until eaten by infected/wolves/wild dogs or simply rotted away (could take e.g. 24 hours in-game?). Something like that is not possible in any game where server performance is a factor, but I believe putting a ceiling on number of corpses allowed, and despawning the oldest when new are created, would be better than timed despawns. That should allow bodies to degenerate and attract flies a while even on busy servers...

There is also bullet penetration, so depending on trajectory while the hit was visually shown on the elbow, that could have been the exit wound meaning the bullet did all sorts of damage on the way through, explaining the oneshot. (Maybe a magic bullet too, like the one that had to go back and forth in JFK to make Oswald the only shooter...) The damage system is taking vital organs into consideration, that's why someone can still be standing (but bleeding a lot...) after being shot six times while the next guy drops dead after one bullet. The first only got hit in soft tissue while the next got hit in the heart. There might of course be some unknown bugs created in the porting process to Xbox, but on PC the system seems to be working really well.

Walking is in, it's just that on Xbox you don't have a button for it yet, probably coming with the controller overhaul they're working on. On PC the toggle is broken in current experimental, so you have to keep CTRL pressed down constantly if you want to walk...

Awesome. I will make it my mission in life to whinge and nag until that is put back into the game...

Omg, that was in the SA earlier? What build? And most importantly, will it be back?!? AAAARGH!!!

Modding tools are not officially released yet for DayZ, so I guess the modding being done already is done in Arma3 tools?

I was exploring some community servers tonight when I came upon a horde of around 30+ infected shuffling about a small village. I also found a bottle of vodka and a pack of cigarettes, so the days of the Healthy Apocalypse are soon gone... Drank the vodka but didn't get any effect to show intoxication, and I had no matches so I couldn't try the cigarettes. (I suppose there is a good reason the items not spawning in experimental aren't spawning. Found a pack of cereal and puked after one bite...) The horde gave me quite a scare, but with the short aggro range of infected on current experimental they looked more dangerous than they were.

Oooh, never seen those! They were in the mod?

Aaah, they show up fine in the top post of this thread, but on the blog page linked from the title page, the images are still not visible.

After a bit of messing about I got it to work now too, I had to wipe my login cache and relog to the forum page, then it all came up. Edit: Looking good! Although seeing a car get rammed by two others and end up rolling away without (visible) damage was a bit jarring. No biggie, DayZ isn't trying to be Flatout after all. But still, are there plans to have visible dents/damage matching the "health" of the vehicle?

You sure? Gifs still not showing for me :( (Cleared cache etc, so shouldn't be that)

Oh I agree. A LOT. Here's a can of beans! Bodies need to remain for a much longer time and (after a while) have flies around them. Possibly they could remove the timed despawn entirely and instead implement some kind of ceiling on how many bodies there could be at any one time. Once the ceiling has been reached, the oldest body would despawn whenever somebody dies. Would be cool if this was combined with visual degeneration of bodies with time, so the actual appearance of a body would give a hint on how long the guy has been dead. And I still want infected to eat bodies. I know they are not walking dead, which means they are in fact living, and they are (apparently) too deranged to cook or recognize canned food and fruit for what it is - so they need to eat something, right? I often see them chasing animals around, so it would only be logical if they'd sit down and eat whenever they kill an animal or player. Would be awfully cool, and scary, to see a group of infected feeding on a dead player in the street. It would most certainly reinforce the apocalyptic horror aspect of the game. Just do it!