mariush

The average patch size is 8 MB ... even at 32 KB/s, it means the patch will be downloaded in 8 x 1024 / 32 = 1024 / 4 = 256 seconds = 4 minutes If the server is on a 100 mbps port, than the server could handle in theory well above 80 mbps after deducting overhead and tcp/ip stuff, but let's be pessimists and say it can do 80mbps sustained... so it could handle about 80 mbps / 8 * 1024 / 32 = 320 users concurrently. With gigabit links, you're well over 3000 users. 320 concurrent users is NOTHING for a well configured web server, serving a 8 MB file that's completely cached in memory by the operating system (and you have GB/s read/write with the current computer memory) I downloaded the file from the FTP with about 80-90KB/s so I can only assume the server is capped to about 100 concurrent users. later edit: HTTP server would also give you the ability to show an error message saying the download is not available right now, or redirect the download to an Amazon cloud server when your server is overloaded. As it is right now, it's just not user friendly, the connect refusal confuses browsers which then ask for passwords that don't exist.

The arma2 patch server is overloaded as usual, when dayz releases pop... get it from here if you want: http://savedonthe.net/a/ARMA2_OA_Build_94876.zip for the life of me can't figure out what's the point of limiting the maximum users on the ftp... better cap the download speed than limit user count.

This is the first time I heard of this. I made a fire, cooked some meat, turned off the fire... went on to explore the nw airfield, disconnected, came back a day later, went back to the fire about 2 km away from airfield, turned it on, cooked some more meat. Why not ask the developers of BI to disable Alt+F4 (lots of games do it) by showing up to abort message with confirmation, then change the abort message to have a 5-10 second delay until OK can be clicked? As a developer, I believe the Alt+F4 issue could be fixed in about 20 minutes but I guess in depends on how the game code is written. The timer on one of those windows might be trickier but can't see it taking more than 2-3 days of coding and testing... Of course, now the user could always run a small application in the background that sets a global hotkey which, when pressed, could kill the process or simply enable a firewall rule to block network transfer for the game. It would get the same result - user eventually disconnects. The servers should report to the database the connection was lost or user disconnected... Then run some scripts at the end of the week on the database logs and whoever quits or loses connected within 5 seconds or so from a shot on him, penalize him.

You were supposed to be able to play already with this 1.7.2 version. Would you feel better if two-three more versions are released and you still can't play? While a small minority of players can't even play the mod, a large majority suffers from players abusing the bugs such as disconnects or alt+F4 to get out of a situation where they might lose, thus making the whole experience bad for everyone. I know it's frustrating you can't play, but it's an alpha - you were never guaranteed that you'd be able to play with that Arma X game.

IMHO Rocket should hold on the next update and take advantage of his position at BI to ask the other developers in the company to fix the more serious issues with the game: * make the game no longer react to Alt+F4 - should be easy to do, most games do it. If not possible to ignore it, at least pop an "Are you sure you want to quit?" window with a 5 second timer until the "Yes" button can be clickable. Players currently abusing this will get shot in those 5 seconds. * make it respawn button ask for a confirmation - lots of players accidentally click on it when going to Game options or whatever. * change the abort button so that when it asks for confirmation, it shows up a 5-10 second timer until the Yes button is actually clickable. - As the window with confirmation message is "modal" (aka not letting you move the character in game) this would fix the issue where hurt players disconnect. This should fix a lot of issues and make it harder to get out when in a fight. Next, make it impossible to play with a different version... don't just show a message on the screen... if it's not possible to do it, then if they don't get out in 10-20 seconds, show a message saying "your character will die in a minute" and after a minute kill them, or just make them bleed... --- PS. I agree that the silence treatment is not a nice thing... sucks that Rocket and Dayz staff asks for suggestions and feedback but hardly ever aknowledges that these messages are read and noted somewhere. It really isn't so hard and time consuming to go through these and note down the bugs reported and push them into that bug reporting site and once a week or so post a message with a line for each bug users reported and the link where the bug is posted

You need pictures or movies showing admins doing bad things, otherwise it's just "hearsay". The sniper weapon could have dissapeared when you connected due to this 1.7.2 version being too aggressive with the anti cheat stuff - it's known some sniper weapons get removed when you connect to a server. I lost a sniper gun I took out of a bus' gear and put it on my backpack - when I reconnected to the server the backpack was without the sniper gun. Server getting closed and then started again could be a coincidence - it may restart regularly every few hours, or administrator may have restarted it to install arma2 patch or something else.

There's another issue probably known regarding crowbar... If you have a hatchet equipped as primary weapon and you TAKE a crowbar, you get the crowbar text and its "ammo" on top corner but still the hatchet in hands. Then if you click on Drop on the hatchet in the inventory, crowbar drops (or disappears) , hatchet still in inventory in the primary weapon... it's like having crowbar stacked over the hatchet in the primary slot. I don't actually find its use, the crowbar... the hatchet at least gets wood... maybe the crowbar could be used to unlock crates in warehouses, where you might get binoculars or maybe ammo boxes...

I was driving the bus on a country road in a straight line and all of the sudden i got the hourglass and bus stopped and I popped by the side of the bus bleeding and with 3k life, from 12k Chances of me being shot by a sniper were minimal, it was 3-4 am in the game on a server with about 7 players on it and I was in the middle of nowhere. Used a bandage and ate some steaks and continued on. The only thing I could think of was the drink icon turning to full red - while i was driving it was a red-green hue. - Anyways, i went to the nw airfield but pretty much approached it from north west side, where the two lone hangars are. I must say it was VERY hard, even crouched and walking the visibility was 80-100 meters due to the cement ... on grass near the hangars it was 60ish .... which isn't conforting considering they spawn about 30-50 meters ahead of you. So I had to go prone and by the side of those hangars to get inside and... didn't find anything in those two barns. Even so I managed to agro a few zombies at the corner of the hangar... killed them, got out in prone, went back towards the back road, aggroed some more walking in crouched position, decided to just run and as I went through some bushes they lost me. That was a relief I must say... So yeah... quite challenging... it was a veteran server so maybe that also mattered a bit

You still have quite a bit to catch me... (click to zoom) I know... it's a childish thing to reply with... Carry on...

K,,,, had a bit of fun with this 1.7.2 Was lucky enough to close the game a day before at the edge of a field in the tree line - when I spawned on the server I was 100-150m or so away from a downed chopper. Nothing around it... made 2 steps and about 8 infected came as if they were pouring out of the chopper. I mean all from the same place, and started spreading out on the field around the chopper. So from 100-150m away I pulled out my Lee Enfield and shot about 3 of them before the rest aggroed, and they were relatively easy to handle ... by the time they approached me I shot two more with the lee, then switched to makarov. The problem is... finished them all, crouched and basically ran to the chopper, started to look around and go prone to scan under it ... probably not even 2 minutes passed and a couple of soldiers spawned probably 5 meters away from me. Shot one of them with the Makarov and retreated to the forest with the second chasing my ass and as I was watching behind about 4 soldiers spawned again, about one every 3-5 seconds. So it feels like they might respawn a bit too fast after they die. But not sure if this is a bad thing, maybe choppers should be a bit more hard to loot if you're a single person. Digging the variable visibility now, I could pretty much go around infected but the visibility variable in the debug box definitely helped to assure me I can't be seen. Near house walls, I can see the visibility going down but there are certain places near the corners of the houses where it seems the decrease is cancelled out. Strictly on the limited play time (about 5 hours) I would say if the visibility values are decreased by about 5-10% when running crouched and about 10-15% when running straight up, it would be just right. Even walking crouched is a bit hard in cities, near the north east airport more or less i had to go prone to the mall in that town, which makes lone players quite vulnerable to snipers. It felt a bit smoother but I wouldn't know if it's game or me messing with the graphics options. Oh... the UAZ or what it's called (the Jeep)... it felt to me like it was having a hard time (more than before) when going on grass. Same with the buss, it was going kinda slow on those country roads. I was lucky to find a bus and an atv in one place and the jeep in another place so I tried them all. I also saw one hit the fence on the ne airport and explode his atv :)

That's quite all right, no need to thank me. I'd actually feel better if you don't even post my username/nick in the annotations. I'm just glad to help and didn't to it for credits or fame. For me, as a programmer (but mostly software, not games), it's always interesting to see how people think and experience an application or a game for the first time or if they have little experience with that genre of game and your videos were really nice from that perspective.

Nice videos ... it definitely shows why some developers (Like Valve for example) spend a huge amount of time teaching new players how to play the game, so that they won't become frustrated and abandon it too early. There are a lot of things in ARMA and Dayz that are not quite so obvious to new players that simply jump in the game. I've commented on your Youtube videos about how to walk and about the right click and inventory, hope it helps.. I believe this is the tutorial video I was talking about in the Youtube comments :

It's a bad idea because the time will be wasted on this... When rocket optimizes the code well enough that he'll be able to make the animals move and attack you, the code will have to be taken out or modified again. Right now I guess it's hard to do because infected are stressing the game servers already too much. Otherwise, I'd like to see you kill a cow with that kitchen knife. In real life, unless you hit the cow straight in some vital organ, it will probably start running across the field until it bleeds out.

Somewhat unrelated, new patch for Arma 2 released, 94444 : http://www.arma2.com/beta-patch.php Maybe the patch was delayed for this... lated edit: the ftp server is already overloaded

So now you're an expert programmer now? How would you know how that string is used internally by the mod? Maybe it's stored in a database and there are some assumptions about the length of the string which screwed up the mod in some way. Can't tell for sure without access to the code so shut your mouth. You don't HAVE TO play a game. You were never promised this mod would work with Arma 2. In fact the simple fact that it's an alpha tells you there are NO GUARANTEES. He doesn't owe you shit. It's a free mod, it's alpha. The players that can actually play it do their job: playing the alpha and reporting issues. There's nothing to fix. The current alpha version works fine, is stable, people are reporting and should keep report issues with it. This is a thread about a potential future version, which will be made available at some point in the future. If rocket decides an hour from now that he no longer needs to release apha versions, the world will not end and you don't deserve anything from him or the team. Oh you bought a game and you can't play it? Tough luck... I'm sure there's at least one person that bought the right game but has a crappy integrated video card and can't play it... it doesn't mean rocket should now make the game work for ALL people. What trust? You don't trust him enough to leave him alone for a week. So what? You think the homeless will stop waiting in line or coming to that soup kitchen because the volunteers are serving food slower? Geez... the entitlement some people have. At best this is a PR problem. The only thing rocket should have done is to be more proactive and post a tweet or something every now and then.

IMHO chat was useful if some guy got broken bones somewhere far from hospitals. It was also useful to help new players understand some things about game controls and where they are on the map. A sort of emergency signal/beacon device would be useful to replace it - other survivors with a radio/map would see the location on the map and could come to kill the player or help him out, or bandits could use it to make ambushes for other players. Maybe you would get a humanity/karma increase if you bandage/heal/morphine other players and this karma would make you "luckier" as in give you better chances to find good loot. Rocket was talking about baby monitors and short range radio communication in a live stream - would be awesome to have loot/weapon stashes hid away in forests or towns that can only be detected by their beep which goes stronger as you get close to them ... sort of like the Morse code radio stations in Fallout 3 or the modern geocaching. It wouldn't be unrealistic for other survivors to have started to hide for themselves weapons and excess food at various places in the island.

Yeah, it should never hurt to update the arma2 game to the latest beta, unless rocket explicitly says you shouldn't do it. In theory, game servers should let you connect if they run an older beta version and you run a newer beta version. The other way around (you have old beta, server has newer) shouldn't be possible and servers admins should handle this case because that can cause issues like the other players being invisible to you or not finding loot and so on. disclaimer: not part of dayz staff in any way, but i'm a programmer so have a bit of know-how.

The arma2 beta patch fixes stuff in the game and adds functions in the game code that the dayz mod depends on. As rocket works now with the guys that make the arma2 he can ask them to improve stuff in the game code to make the mod work better.

Most servers are generally restarted every 8-10 hours otherwise they become laggy or players have low fps. When they restart' date=' the loots are popping up all over the place. So look for servers with a lower number of players connected - that may indicate either it's night time on that server, or server just restarted, or server is about to restart. [/quote'] The server browser is total crap, it should have a more standard look and feel. Show me settings, time on server, up-time, version etc....not just a big long string someone types that more often than not isn't even correct. I just go in the game, click on multiplayer then on the Filter button and instead of {Dayz} i enter there 94103 or whatever the current beta patch version I have installed is. Basically 99% of the servers are already dayz so the filter by default is useless now, by setting it to my current beta patch version I make sure I don't connect to servers with different patch version, so I won't get invisible players, spawn in debug forest and other bugs. Then I just sort by ping and wait a few seconds, click on ping twice to have the list resorted, repeat for a couple more times with a few seconds between clicks until all servers are pinged by the game. Now I have all servers sorted by ping, so I can scan the list from top to bottom looking at the players connected / players max column. When I find one that has few players, I scan the description to make sure it's 1.7.1.5 and the right time zone (don't like playing at night) and connect. It's not rocket science.... no pun intended. later edit: the description for each server is repeated below the server list. Well, basically you see there if it's Regular or Veteran or expert and that text is not user/admin controlled so it can't be wrong... Regular servers by default have crosshairs (I like playing with crosshairs). So if the description doesn't say anything about crosshairs but at the bottom it says "Regular", there's a high chance the server will have crosshairs.

Why not add fishing wires so we can put them across a road and decapitate people on bikes? :) (as long as we're on the "stupid ideas for the game" page)

Most servers are generally restarted every 8-10 hours otherwise they become laggy or players have low fps. When they restart, the loots are popping up all over the place. So look for servers with a lower number of players connected - that may indicate either it's night time on that server, or server just restarted, or server is about to restart.

You couldn't defend you viewpoint in your last discussion' date=' so now you try to start a new one? Smooth. [/quote'] The way i understand it is that the infected have an extra variable... the longer you sit or hover in their vecinity, the higher is the chance they'll see you or hear you better. In very simple terms I think it would be like... you can be crouched in front of an infected and walk about 40-60 meters in front of him and he currently doesn't react. If the infected keeps going slowly towards your direction or he's stationary but you remain in his line of sight, the longer this persists the chance he will detect you increases. Sort of like what would happen if you'd step from grass to road or start running all of the sudden. Right now, if a zombie is in a barn and looking outside to you from 50 meters and you're crouched, he won't attack because you're like an invisible person. With the new update, it would be like your visibility or noise levels very slowly increase even when you're crouched or prone but in his line of sight. Or you may think of it as smell - the longer you stay near a zombie, the chance of the wind blowing your smell towards the infected increases and he gets a clue of your presence.