Fraggle (DayZ)

It's hard to define. They used the TOH engine as a base but are making/have made sweeping changes to it. TOH uses the RV3 engine as does Arma 2, it's just a newer version of it. Most "new" engines in games are just different branches or iterations of a pre-exsisting one. You could say Arma 3 used the Arma 2 engine as a base and so on, so really it's just the "DayZ" branch of the RV engine now, the number is irrelevant. It's very rare to see a truly new engine being used in any game at all. To use two common examples, Call of Duty has been using the same engine (IW) as base for all of it's games since 2005 and GTA has been using the RAGE engine since 2008 (or before if you include a little known table-tennis game) and that engine itself evolved from the "Angel Game Engine". People that are getting hung up on numbers/versions etc and think the SA is using the Arma 2 (or the TOH) engine don't understand much about gaming engines in my opinion. Using their logic you could say that Arma 3 is using the original OFP (RV1) engine from 2001 where as those of us with eyes can clearly see that's not the case. There are just different versions of the RV engine for different purposes, including the ones the militaries use for training purposes. Those versions of it are referred to as the VBS (Virtual Battlespace) engine and cater to the needs of the militaries that use them but essentially they all come from the same place. So really names and numbers are only really useful to describe the core engine at a very specific point in time.

No idea :/ Censorship panels aren't famous for applying common sense that often.

I think it was discussed a while ago and adding child zombies to the mix would mean that DayZ could struggle to be released in some countries. If that wasn't an issue though I like to see them in-game.

Can everyone here do the OP of this thread a favour please? Go and read the original question he asked and respond to it. Thanks. Soz to be a grouch but the whole KOS debate is currently being discussed on many other threads. I don't think the OP's intentions here were to start yet another discussion about the KOS mentality in DayZ. It's probably THE no.1 most discussed thing on the forums, no need to turn this thread into another one.

Arma 2 is commonly accepted as a badly optimised game, even by it's hardore fans and the developers themselves. If you then modify that game and add tons more too it (zeds, loot etc.) the result is always going to be messy. In my experience Arma 3 runs way better. My rig is old now and I average around 40fps on high settings. I know some peeps wouldn't be happy with that but considering my poor specs I was surprised i could even play it at all. Considering how much more is going on graphically in Arma 3 I was genuinely impressed with it and they're still optimising now before the full release. There's no avoiding the fact though that it will always be an intensive game. I have to take one issue with the OP's original post though. Firstly, not every engine can run a massive open world game with accurate bullet physics, especially in a multiplayer setting. I'm not saying the RV engine is the best in the world, of course it isn't but saying they should just "buy one" is naive. That can cost millions. The fact that BIS have developed their own in-house engine that's as impressive as it is (and gets used buy various militaries around the world for training purposes because of it's capabilities) is something that any PC gamer with a little knowledge of game engines should be impressed by.

Game/engine optimisation comes later on in the development process.

Ok mate chill out, I was asking a genuine question :/ You said he's "promised a release within the next 10 days" and in your next post quoted him as saying "he'd like to release it in the next 2 months" (as of E3). Those are two very different comments. One is a promise (that he never made) and the other is his thoughts on something he'd like to see. As of now there is no releases date set (publicly) He's made many posts, tweets and a devblog since that quote you're citing from E3, many of those aimed at clearing up any confusion about the release date speculation and to make the point that there is no date. They have milestone targets, when they reach those it gets released, that's the simple facts of it. I'm sorry if I upset you. I'll go now.

Wow, is that what he said? i think I missed that one :/

Well the quality of a forum is calculated by the sum total of the quality of the posts within that forum. I'd say you're lowering our batting average.

I agree and I actually like player tuts, I might even make some of my own when the SA hits. I don't consider loot tables tutorials though, it's like being allowed to peek under the hood of the game, I'd even consider using them an exploit although maybe a harmless one. What I don't like is people unravelling the game to the point where they know the exact percentage chance of certain things and the exact amount of bullet damage for every gun etc. I know it's unavoidable but the global loot tables will be a step towards forcing new players to have to figure at least certain things out themselves and keep things exciting for the more experienced players. In a game where scavenging/looting is a key element, anything that can keep that part of the experience fresh for people for some time is a step in the right direction.

Nice one! Well good luck. Just push everyone else out of the way ;)

Are you a journo or an optimistic DayZ fan?

Sure, don't laugh though, I have PC spec envy: 6GB RAM, AMD HD5700 GFX, Q8300 Quad Core 2.5ghz. And I'm running Windows 7 64bit OS. As you can see it's a pretty dated system now, I literally haven't upgraded one single thing for 3 years (ish) and even back then it was far from a dedicated gaming rig. If I can play and record Arma 3 at decent framerates then you guy's shouldn't have any issues at all if you get it set up right. Here's an example vid (pretty shit) I made a little while ago. If you watch it you can see that I drop frames occasionally and it could be much quicker but for my old system I'm pretty happy with it. Having said that though I may try MSI Afterburner after what you guys have said to see if it improves. *Edit - Actually I just watched that vid back and the fps is pretty poor compared so some others I've done but you get the idea anyway :/

One of the guys on the dev team is probably the most experienced RV engine programmer in the world, he helped make it (As I understand it anyway).

Just to make your life more confusing... i got fraps recording brilliantly by recording to a partition on my main HD. When I was using an external HD it was slow as hell but it all depends on your hardware. My external HD is a cheap POS.

Don't forget to have a good defrag and disk clean-up too. If you haven't done it for a long time it can really help.

Yeh, that I think I have to agree with. Obviously we don't know the inner workings of the dev team or what they have prioritised and why so it's hard to be too critical at this point. I think most of us understand that the game is releasing in an alpha state which means features may be incomplete or missing but having said that I think it's also fair for us to expect them to be in a better state than the mod. Anyway, it sounds like they're looking for a different approach to solve the issue so fingers crossed I guess. I personally don't mind a small amount of clipping etc but the main thing that bothers me with the zeds both in the mod and the SA so far is the lack of feeling of weight/or momentum they have. The individual animations they have actually look pretty good but they just seem a bit mashed together. When they go from 0 - 60mph in 0 seconds and then turn on a sixpence it just doesn't look great and makes it feel very "gamey". Well, it seems all of the criticism and concerns for what people have seen has been listened to because they seem very aware now that peeps won't be happy if the zeds aren't improved in some way. There may be a lot of restrictions in what they can do due to this being a large multiplayer game but I think it's fair enough to expect an improvement. I guess the only questions that remain is how long that improvement will take and how much it is actually possible to improve.

Agreed. My point is thought that they'll be able to change/tweak it whenever they want. Remember also that the map overhaul is going to dramatically increase the amount of places loot can potentially spawn and they're adding more places of interest so that hopefully the playerbase will be slightly more spread out across the map.

Oooooh. I just had a thought.... Booby trapped bodies, 'nam stylee. Surely that's been suggested before, in fact it has to have been. I don't remember seeing it though, must have missed it. That'd make peeps think twice before running back to loot their own body, or not. Hmmmmm.

Yeh, I wasn't suggesting it's the most tactful way of doing things. It is fun though.

You can already "kind of" do it in the mod with satchel charges or even better a sneaky grenade drop. There's been a couple of times where I've lost a firefight and dropped a grenade at the last minute just to take them with me. Strapping them to yourself would be fun :)

With the new global loot spawn system they could change the positions of loot spawns every few days if they wanted to. Any guide published wouldn't be useful for very long.

Sorry to hear that mate. I have no idea why you've run into so many issues. Now days getting it running "should" be very straight forward. Well, if you have given up (and I don't blame you if you have) don't forget to at least give Arma a go. It can be a truly awesome game You paid for it so may as well enjoy it.

Please enlighten us. *Edit - Scratch that, actually please don't.

Haha, our love is strong. Loads of peeps are tired of waiting so no I don't blame you at all. In the long run though you'll be happy they're doing things properly and not rushing it out. Later on in development when they're adding things the modders could only dream of we'll look back and be happy that they took the time to get the foundations right to start with. I'd say 90% of the work so far has been on things we can't phsicaly see or really appreciate at this point without a degree in programming. Later on though, normal peeps like us will start to understand why they had to take this approach when we see the awesome things it's going to allow them to do. I was actually just chatting about it with SmashT. It seems to me that all of these "survival" games (DayZ mod spin-offs included) keep running into the same problems technically, they all have great ideas but keep falling down when implemented on a live server with lots of people playing and lots of other stuff going on. It's like a wall that stops these games progressing past a certain point. Rocket and co. are making sure that the basic foundations are firmly in place so that in the future adding content (the easy bit) can be done quickly and efficiently without running into constant technical issues. That's how I view it anyway, I may be completely wrong.