Hicks_206 (DayZ)

This would be possible for a project that was being developed traditionally - and becomes significantly less plausible when you toss in engine development. We can only branch so many times before it becomes a complete and total mess to test, and manage. Especially moving through .60, .61, and future updates that include massive technology changes such as the animation system and related player controller, user actions, etc. Like I've been paraphrased saying before - Quicker iteration will become more of a possibility when the major engine modules are completed and merged into the Steam branch. Prior to that - it just isn't practical.

I'm definitely with you there - it should definitely be possible to make a fire inside large open air structures!

We put out Status Reports every 2 weeks - and the post discusses exactly what issues we are working on right now. Please keep the discussion relevant to the topic, and not asking for things that we have been very clearly communicating our stance on.

You're asking questions not related to .61 - please toss those over into the Status Report thread!

Well, we're currently fighting some issues with collision detection, and poor internet speeds - however that said.. I've not seen a single example of actual desynchronization in the current build. No breaking your legs climbing stairs, that sort of stuff. Player position is actually *where the player is* - and not where he thinks he is, vs where the server says he is.

Initially we wanted each player to add to the count, but the more we looked into it - the meta game potential was so high, and the chance for abuse was also pretty high. Right now it looks like we'll stick with each area having their own min/max - regardless of player count. Predators are not player spawn triggered right now, they operate in specific areas much like deer, etc. I'll ask the programmers responsible for their behavior for more specifics ala hunting deer and such.

While there will be changes to the economy (which can happen in a matter of seconds, without an update to Steam being required) - don't expect weapons on heli crashes for .61. Support for limiting item types per event just isn't there yet, and we don't want to have heli crashes full of SVDs. All the weapons that would spawn on them, do however spawn normally in military structures.

Disabling the physical sim on those objects is definitely going to happen, but more than likely not for .61. Sorry!

Ok - sorry for the delay in posting dudes and dudettes. We've been grinding away at the blocking issues - most attention obviously played to position sync, and infected AI related stuff. I put together a brief (ok not so brief) video of the other night. I was up in Vybor after testing some network bubble related stuff with one of the guys from the Survivor GameZ. I made the mistake of not having proper gear, and getting caught in a fairly heavy rainstorm. I wasn't carrying enough food, and my core temperature started to drop fast after becoming drenched. Fortunately, I was able to find shelter up in Vybor Industrial - and the video details (it jumps around a bit mind you, because it was 14 minutes long) my struggle to create a fire under shelter, dry off, and raise my temperature high enough that I stopped dying to hypothermia. I've mentioned before the attention the design team is paying to addressing the overheating issues in .60, as well as trying to get modifier tick rates at a level in which the cold, and the environment become a struggle for .61. I firmly believe this is key to .61 being an enjoyable *survival* experience. We'll see how it operates when the testing pool increases 10x fold on experimental. As you can see in the video - I start out in the high 3000s blood wise (5k cap) and hypothermia over the span of 10 minutes or so gets me right on deaths door down at the low 800s. I really managed to pull a rabbit out of my hat there - any lower and I would have passed out and died. To give you guys some perspective, we've been focusing a lot on the issues mentioned above. Player to player position sync, Infected AI spawning and aggro issues, and of course ensuring server performance is high enough for the experience to be fun, and the game to run properly. We've made a lot of progress over the last week, but QA (as is their job!) has found some nasty repros on nasty bugs - so we're still cracking away at it. As well, I'll slap a few screenshots in here of some chemlights at night time that I thought were pretty :) Hang in there everyone!

Haven't forgotten about you guys - will have more to share shortly.

Keep in mind, just like the warnings and the store page point out - the title is in development, will be for some time, and you should expect to run into bugs and interuptions of gameplay. That said, this is a known issue that is called out in the Status Report. In the future, please do not come to the forums demanding fixes during development - open a bug at the feedback tracker! feedback.dayz.com

To be honest guys - there is a *lot* of balancing that needs to be done in beta for all of this, including projectile balancing. I wouldn't sweat it *too* much right now - just know we are aware, and fully plan on tackling this stuff once we reach that point.

You can't stop metagaming, all you can do is work to curtail it and make it as minimal as possible. Especially in an open sandbox type world, much like how players will always be a bigger threat than any AI - because AI can be studied, and their patterns figured out. So, that said - we most definitely are interested in minimizing the metagaming ability of the systems as much as possible. Setting the event spawn radius at distances at or near the network bubble, and so on. We're still deciding if we want dynamic infected triggers to be based upon an area maximum, or scalable per player. Right now we are leaning on an area maximum - to reduce metagaming potential.

We have discussed this, and it would definitely be interesting - however, we have bigger priorities right now. As far as when you'll see an item - keep an eye on milestone goals, and that will let you know when it is pending!

Things will be done properly, not quickly. Rushing game developers has never worked out.

It is very important you guys don't get confused here. We are *not* using the old mod system. The mod used scripted triggers assigned to structures. We are not doing that at all - the new dynamic spawning is tied into the Central Economy, is assigned to zones in the zone generator tool - and the system distance and quantity are configured in the central economy.

Tiger - ease back with the negativity. If you don't like the title, fine - there is nothing wrong with that.

Definitely not locally - all of that is server side, as it should be. The *perception* (much like in the mod) hopefully should result in people feeling like there are more.

I would not expect so before we start hitting a focus on optimization on server side. That said, our infected count globally is still higher than the glory days of the mod - so what I'm *hoping* to see is a more intelligent usage of what we have. (Should be around 500, but we need to see how .61 performs under these criteria) So in short - keep your eyes on the forums and Status Reports.

Have you tried pressing your ~ key?

Lets keep it on topic and constructive. Thanks guys and gals.

Just an automated job, we'll let you guys know when we get close to being ready for exp. Which is not now.

As mentioned yesterday - here are those snippits from yesterdays testing run I participated in:

No Igor, I did not forget. However that is much easier said, than done - when dealing with the amount of legacy systems that are present in current steam builds. We can only go back and try and fix things that are going to be replaced so many times before we really start getting concerned with wasting limited time and resources. The wolves in the screenshot are that way because I had funneled them through that doorway, and they were trying to surround me. However, we'll see how it ends up working out.

As I've said before - do not expect vehicles in the first few experimental updates. Persistence is not an issue with .61, sync and physics are. As far as wolves go, we'll have to continue testing and see. You're asking me to predict the results of a QA pass - and I'm just not okay with doing that.