alderous (DayZ)

I was wondering if it would be beneficial for the mod to replace loot piles with various containers. I don't mean only chests and boxes - these could be a fridge, a cabinet, a vending machine or a cupboard, but technicaly they would be like an ammo box in ArmA2 (so you can pick up or put something in without item's 3d model actually "appear" in-game). I guess it would require placing them properly inside houses and a general makeover of the loot spawning scripts. On the other hand, as far as I know, it is the creation of objects out "the thin air" via scripting commands, that cause lots of problems with data synchronization and lags. I think adding and removing items from "containers" (inserted on the editor level) would be smoother and safer then creating everything "on fly". I know its not something that can be done easily and in near future, but maybe for a standalone its worth consideration.

Similar idea appear from time to time, but I dont want to create safe zones, protection from bandits or anything like that. Just giving some idea for discussion. Its about creating sort of camp protected by npc, who shoot everybody except ppl who created that camp. Actually it should be something like a sandbag bunker (plenty of models already exist in ArmA) and require certain materials (for example: sandbags, wires, tank traps) to create and also some maintnance (take damage over time and can be repaired if materials are available). Besides being a storage just like a tent, it would allow creation of certain number of npc sentries. Those npc would spawn if any player come close enough, and start patroling around. Of course its not like you just hit "create npc" button and get it. To create sentry you would have to find weapon and ammunition for him (probably also some bandages ect.). Those npc would have to be supplied by canned food and soda cans to remain operational (if not they would not spawn). Moreover they could be killed which means that their equipment is lost and and they will not respawn (well, maybe consumption of bloodbag from bunker inventory could prevent their permanent death). As far as I'm concerned only sentries with "civilian" weapons should be available (makarov, revolver, m1911, enfield, winchester, doublebarrel). The hardest part is to make them friendly to their "creators". Making them hostile to every survivor is easy - if they are on the "east" side, game engine will do the rest, because survivors are "west". Fortunately there is setCaptive command in ArmA Scripting language, which makes all sides friendly to the certain unit. It can make certain players (and only them) friendly to sentry npc's (all, not only theirs) when they approach bunker and make them enemy again if they move away. But its just the beginning of the problems. I can think of a some problematic situation. For example: -> two camps are created close to each other, so owners of one of them can recieve "captive status" and safely loot other camp. I think it can be avoided if we actually dont change captive status to true" or "false", but change it to opposite - (so if status is "true" its changed to "false"). -> logging out while inside camp could allow you to retain captive status (technicaly you didnt leave camp, so it is not changed to false). Solution is simple - always change player captive status to false upon logging in. -> camp is created in the town. If someone enters the town, both zombies and sentries would spawn. Making npcs ignoring zombies (and vice versa) would look stupid. I think its possible to make npcs (east side) hostile to zombies (civilian side). Probably dev team could also make the zombies attack npcs. Eventually npcs would run out of ammunition and be killed by zeds, since zombies would respawn ad infinitum. Its basicly stupid idea to crate such camp in the town and waste of resources, but people do lots of stupid things all the time. Anyway problem of assigning players to the camp remains. I think its possible - we have tents assigned to certain person (only he can pack it up). Probably some sort of "camp administrator" have be created who can add and remove other players from "do not shoot" list (using player id maybe?) and also transfer his "rights" to other person if needed. That would be hard to achive without creation of some sort of "camp menu", but this is possible. I know that this idea is hard to implement, but in my opinion it would make end game more interesting. Ppl have to gather resources to maintain their camps and guards (That would also prevent overcrowding maps with such ai defended camps). Camps could be nice target for other bands of survivors - it would be more fun to lunch organized attack on defended camp then just find it and loot it without any opposition. Since its no longer possible to set up a camp outside of the map borders, npcs would give some degree of protection (probably only against lone survivors, and even they have a chance to sneak and steal something). PS. sorry for my bad english. I hope its possible to understand it at least to some degree...

Well closest and pretty safe is in Polana. As for the animal, they don't spawn in random places. I think there are wild and domesticated animal spawns (not sure but probably poultry have their own spawns). Only type of the animal is random.

It would be funny if these PvE servers were created and suddenly it would turn out that about 80% dayZ players prefer to play on them :P

So one day when the whole society will collapse and crazied cannibals start running around you will grab your walkie talkie and call your friends who will accidently in the same time will have their a walkie talkies (and will be in range). I guess you are carrying your radio with you all the time (and your friends too). But wait! You can climb a tall building and shout so they will hear you, wherever they are.

You forget about one thing - in "a real zombie apocalypse" you wont be able to use "a magic communication" (called teamspeak, skype or whatever) and you wont be able to call your trusty friends to help you. If you want a friendly soul to make survival easier then you will have to take a risk a befriend some stranger. Otherwise you will have to be alone and staying alive would be hard (even harder then in the mod right now - for example you wont be able to log out).

I threw an empty whiskey bottle while staying inside a building (hoping to threw it through the door and distract some zombies outside). It was veteran server so no aiming while throwing and somehow the bottle hit me instead (bounced of the wall?), I felt unconcious and bled out. Lessons learned - don't try to throw things inside enclosed spaces.

I do it like this: 1. take an empty can 2. stand in front of the glass doors (not windows) and throw a can - one is enough to break glass 3. ??? 4. profit No noise, no wasted bullets

This works for me all the time

I was thinking about a solution for this and I think that making tents "mechanic" more like vehicles could solve many problems. Right now there is fixed number of every vehicle type on a server. I'm pretty sure its because they are not created during play, but are "placed" while the mission is initialized. So basicly they are placed in mission editor on their spawns and every time server restarts they appear there - if they are saved in the hive then they are immediately "teleported", changed and filled with saved stuff. In the other words an every vehicle is unique. On the other hand tents not exist before they are created (out of thin air). Every time a tent is pitched its created via a arma2 scripting command as a new entity and if you pack it up and set it up again its not the same tent. So how about making tents like vehicles? I mean make a limited number (100?) of tents per server, spawning in certain location. You would be able to pack them up and set up, but they would be "moved" not "created" - So its like: you find a tent and pack it up (the tent is teleported 10 meters below the ground and a packed tent is added to your inventory), you go somewhere and pitch up the tent (a packed tent dissapears from inventory and the orginal tent is teleported form his "grave" to new location). I know it wont prevent duping but limit it at least to some extent. There will be less tents (so less place to keep stuff) and they won't be duped and more valuable. Also no more problems with tents showing up in places where they were disassambled previously. I suspect they would be more relaible in terms of keeping items too.

We play a supposed zombie survival simulation and people consider a dozen fully-automatic weapons as invaluable. I find that really amusing :D Oh! The fact that someone can actually easily gather such an arsenal of weapons is funny too.

Actually he is :D http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=2196 http://www.armaholic.com/forums.php?m=posts&q=1646

I haven't follow all interviews with Rocket, but I guess that standalone DayZ would be something like Iron Front: Liberation 1944 so it will still use ArmA (3?) engine. Hopefully the BIS guys said that they will try to make things easier for zombie apocalypse sim in their new engine. This game wasn't developed for a hand to hand combat or a excessive use of building interiors and thats why zombies cause so many problems. Actually they dont use game AI and everything has to be "ordered" to them. It would be awesome if you can just order them "attack this guy" and they would figure out that since their attack range is 1 meter, they have to get closer and "fire". Right now you have to tell them to go where player is (several times, since player is changing position), to turn so they face player and to play "attack animation". They dont use some sort of "a fist weapon" - damage to the player is applied via script and that is way they can attack through walls - script just check if player is close enough and apply damage. As for passing through player created barriers problem is similar. AI will "see" obstacles which are there in place when the mission is initialised, but will ignore those set up during play. Even funnier, if you place some obstacle while creating a mission and delete it while playing, AI will still act like a deleted obstacle is still there. Probably BIS is aware of these problems and will adress them in ArmA3.

A zombie running through the fences or walls? As far as I know It happens very rarely. Of course they run through barbedwire and sandbags which are installed by players, but those already on the map are blocking their path. As for the doors yes - zombies wont stop because you close them. Anyway that stuff is the ArmA2 engine fault - Rocket cant do much about it.

I think that implementing some sort of "insanity system" would be great and as far as I know Rocket thinks the same. Actually it is kinda weird that this is not present in DayZ. Survivors have to face: complete collapse of society, mence of crazed, murderous cannibals, lack of food and water and in fact there is no hope for situation to change - thats more than enough to start losing your senses. Unfortunately most players see this only as a form of punishment for PKers or a tool to limit PvP, which in my opinion is very unrealistic. I don't see why a ruthless person would become insane faster than the one with a strong moral compass - I think it would be otherwise, because "a good guy" would be ridden with guilt while he eventually has to do immoral things to survive. I wish a sanity system would be a kind of new challenge for a players. More connected with excessive stress and a zombie mence than just PK. I imagine it as a something similar to a temperature already used ingame, so not like "your sanity drops to 0 - game over", but rather "your sanity is low - you suffer from bad side-effects". As for side effects I think they should be generally connected with being louder (player will start muttering to himself or can't help making involuntary noises) so it will be harder to sneak or with a auditory hallucinations (visual ones are to hard to implement, while I'm almost sure sounds can be played client-side only - so no one except you will hear them). Just imagine such in-game situation: In the middle of the night, you come across a muttering fellow with an axe in his hands. Other example - you hear a zombie snarling loudly behind you while nervously checking some empty house but when you turn around in panic, no one is there. I think it would be cool and add more immersion into the mod. I propose as follows - you lose sanity (or rise your stress level, whatever..) when you are: 1. -> ...around zombies. If player is closer than lest say 20 meter to zombie he start (very) slowly losing sanity. 2. -> ...being attack by a zombie. Probably easiest way to implement would be binding it with every single zombie "punch", so every single attack takes away a small portion of insanity 3. -> ...witnessing a survivor death from the hands (and jaws) of zombies - his scream will hunt you in your dreams. Player has to be closer then certain distance when death happens. This could be pretty high stab to a sanity. I wish the amount of sanity loss would depend on how long player survived. So the older character is the less he is shocked be 1,2 and 3. He simply get used to this (to some extent at least). 4. -> ...killing other player (doesnt matter in which circumstances). 5. -> ...inspecting the body of survivor (not sure about that really) Here is a tricky part. The the amount of sanity loss from 4th, should depend on how many survivors player killed so far - first murder might be hard for a bandit, but after a few he souldn't feel any guilt (hance no sanity loss). It could make a good guy life harder cause he will have to defend himself sooner or later and killing will cost him sanity, but there is a trade-off connected with regaining sanity. So you could regain sanity by...: 1st. -> ...hanging around with other survivors - just stay close to them and you will slowly regain sanity. 2nd. -> ...eating and drinking while the icons are flashing - ever eat a meal while you were very hungry? It really lighten up life a bit. 3rd. -> ...smoking cigarettes - it will be consumable and you will need a matchbox. Smoking near zombies not advised - they have a sence of smell, you know. 4th. -> ...drinking whiskey - should give temporary side effect that makes you slightly louder for a period of time. Drink too much and vision gets blurry and/or you will pass out. 5th -> ...taking tranquiliser pills. Consumable, found mostly in hospital or military spawns. Should gives the best effect. 6th -> staying inside a church for some time. I'm not very religious person but I think its an interesting idea. As for the 1st. it would give results only for player with low PK (the less you've killed the better). The ruthless murderer won't relax around people because he expect the same from them - bandits dont have friends but rather partners in crime. As a result there will be a trade-off - you can minimise losses of sanity from PK just by killing players, but in the same time you will lose that one way to regain sanity (luckly there are plenty others).

You are talking about zombies or players? According to this chart it has a power similar to 5,56 mm assault rifles. I think that hitting something farther than 30 meters is hard (no real ironsights)

Instead of adding a pile of 3d models with textures (someof them with a lot of polys - like weapons), I propose adding a single 3d model (in most cases 3d box with texture). Also that single 3d model is added when mission is loaded, not while playing. So for example in the city there will be 50 "boxes" (lets say 20 poly each - so 1000 polys overall), instead of 50 piles (lets say 3 items per single pile and every item has about 100 polys - so 15000 polys overall) which have to be created "on fly". In the other words, a lot of items wont be "existing" in-game "physically" until someone drop them.

Well...I dont want to get rid of them.

Well in real life you cant keep aiming and reload crossbow at the same time. In case of the Enfield it is possible at least to some extent. BTW Enfiled is not only a bolt action - its magazine-fed too. The Reload action in ArmA2 means "change magazine" rather that actually "reload".

I dont think enterable buildings and player created structures are related. \ Not to mention that the first ones are doable now and the second ones are just a concept (which is "interesting" or "fascinating" but there is no real plan how to implement it)

No. You proposed a one inventory slot item with 5-10 arrows, which would be technicaly magazine. If 5 rnd. mags would be used for the crossbow then it would be a sort of repeating crossbow - no need to hit "R" button after shoot. You didnt write a word about converting ammo.

I dont think its possible. Every arrow is actually a one round magazine for a crossbow, so you have to reload after every shoot. That quiver would have to "work" just like a backpack and I'm afraid that its impossible in ArmA2 to have two "working" backpacks at the same time. The only solution I see is to allow converting some numbers of arrows into a new type of magazine much like it goes with 2nd rnd. slugs and M1014 Slug. This "new type" won't be used by any weapon, so it has to be converted back into arrows if needed. That way it would be possible to carry more arrows then now.

I would rather go with sth like this : Military - only he can use military gear and weapons (at least majority of them). Start with a camo clothing. Medic - only he can conduct a blood transfusion. Maybe also ability to recover some blood if using a bandage. Start with a morphine and a blood bag. Hunter - only he can gut animals (and probably cook them too). Harder to spot for infected. Start with knife. Technician - only he can repair all vehicles (other ppl can repair a bicycle), setup/remove a wire fence (and the rest deployable). Probably also other stuff connected with "creation" which are planned for the mod (like power generators, player created towns ect.). Start with a toolbox. Of course its pretty harsh, so maybe it would be better if everyone could do everything but some "classes" are better in doing certain things for example a hunter gets more meat from gutting or a technician have 100% chance for succesful repair.

true but still an axe hit result in more serious injury thana blunt metal bar hit. Maybe giving a crowbar higher chance to stun (always present and not related to victim's blood level) would be good idea - instead of hacking someone several times with the hatchet, you could sneak behind with the crowbar and *wham* - stunned for 3 minutes (enough time to get his stuff and run away).

Actually it has. Well at least it uses Level Of Detail, so when player is far from the building the interior is not rendered. Anyway I wonder if it is possible to make at least some of the buildings enterable - mostly those small, single-level houses. I'm not sure if there is a way to swap current 3d models with "modified ones". I guess it would require messing with pbo file that keep 3d building model or the one with the island config files. It would probably create some of problems with those BIS signatures. Still it would means much less work then creating a map and buildings from a scratch. What makes things even worse, there is no way to modify 3d models of Chernarus buildings. It is because these models are in ODOL format - you cant open them with oxygen2 PE (it's a program you use to create 3d models for ArmA2). BIS never released any of ArmA2 3d models in MLOD format (except some human models) which can be open in o2 and modified. To sum up - I don't really think this would be possible without help from the Bohemia Interactive Studio. Would they offer a helping hand if Rocket ask them? Maybe they would, but I dont even know if Rocket is interested in this stuff. As far as I'm concerned it would be good to check how a large amount of enterable building would affect gameplay (zombies easier to avoid? More time needed to gather basic gear?..and so on). Anyway creating an interior for those small houses would be a piece of cake (I'm not guessing here. I've made some buildings for OFP:CWC - buildings and static objects are the easiest to make addons)). Too much loot is not a problem really - it can be removed from places like outhouses or an entrance of non-enterable builings or simply "% chance of a loot" can be lowered so the overall amount of a loot stays the same.