whatup2003

I have no problem to just "have fun" in a game instead of chase after some numbers, but in a game with such death punishment, getting killed over and over again by people simply because they turned shadow off would be pretty much a buzz-kill. Like I said, most of games can limit how much people can adjust some game-changing settings to a reasonable level. A level where game still looks kinda decent but still allow people with different hardware setups to play the game. Why can't DayZ?

The fact is that DayZ is poorly/hardly optimized. Even a good rig can give you bad performance in game.

Whenever I alt+tab out of the game, the game freezes for 10-20 seconds, then it minimizes and switches to another program. When I switch back to the game, the same thing happens: 10-20 seconds of freeze then I can start interact with the game again. My PC spec: Intel i5 2500k @ 3.4GHz Nvidia 770 2GB Intel SSD 240G (the game is installed on this SSD) Anyone experiences the same problem or have an idea of the cause? :(

I'll try it tonight. none of the other games on my computer does this. On the other hand, alt-tabing on my work PC works perfectly fine...and the work PC spec is: Intel Xeon 3.07 GHz Nvidia 460 4GB HDD instead of SSD also the game starts a lot faster than my home PC. Weird...

BTW, the graphics driver is the newest

Well I guess the bottom line is: BIS allowed Rocket's time-off, so I'm not gonna argue any further. Let's just settle it with different opinions. :) All the best with Day SA nonetheless, and I know I'm gonna enjoy it when it comes out.

I can respect a life-time goal if one make a clean choice. For example, one my colleagues just decided to quit his job and travel the world for a year. But as long as one is still on the duty, a certain working ethic should be followed. I'm not saying this is a completely wrong thing to do. I'm just saying that this is not exactly a proper act in terms of working ethic and professionalism. Imagine in the middle of the battle, while your army is overtaking a city, your commander suddenly says, Ok boys, I know we are in the middle of war here, but I gotta go ahead and pursue my personal goal. I trust that you are a good company and you can conquer the city without my command? Now does that sound like a perfectly right thing to do? I'd bet the differ. I'm not complaining about the delay. In fact I want a polished game as much as the next rational fan of the game. But does it mean I have to agree with everything that Rocket does? Nope. Only fanboys do that and I'm not one of them.

Chill out. I'm just pointing out the fact. In the gaming studios I've worked in, no1 has taken a vacation more than 1 week during the heat of production period. Let's not forget Rocket is the lead of the whole team, so his role is the most important in there.

I don't mind waiting, but going on a big vacation during the heat of the production is not very professional, speaking from a game dev's point of view.

I don't know why but I get slight motion-sickness while watching this video in full screen which I never did while playing DayZ in first person or watch other youtubers playing in first person. Is it the FOV? the FPS? or maybe Rocket should avoid quickly turning around as much as possible. Might be something to keep in mind when making next video.

Well keep in mind that DayZ is not like most other MMOs. Most MMORPG games have a targeting system while DayZ has real-time aiming and shooting mechanics. Thus you must consider what advantage 3rd person view gives a player while fighting against others.

MMO means massive multiplayer online and has nothing to do with whether it's FPS or TPS or both. FYI you can get rid of the head bobbing in game settings. Seeing your character and getting unrealistic viewing angel during battle have to reach a middle ground. Many suggestions have been made in the suggestions section so I'm not gonna elaborate here.

Despite that none of the official blogs ever talked about removing 3rd person, how's removing 3rd person making the game NOT DayZ? Just because DayZ mod kept the mechanic that's in Arma2 originally doesn't mean it's a core mechanic of the game. Personally I like first person view because it gives better feel of immersion, and 3rd person view allows people to look around corners or look beyond covers.

oh ok. my bad. :P

- The current mod has all kinds of lighting bugs/problems. The most obvious one is the over-blasting indoor lighting. The new lighting system looks much better in terms of proper gamma, contrast, AO, lightmap, etc. Keep in mind they just updated the lighting system, for best results they still need to spend a lot of time tweaking the exact lighting value of everything. - The medical book example sounds like a feature that can fit DayZ. I'm sure once SA is out, all kinds of feature suggestions will be considered. For now, something they haven't mentioned or thought about doesn't mean it won't be implemented later. - Since not much info has been given about disease or virus, you shouldn't jump into some kind of negative conclusion, should you? :) We'll see how it is when it's out, and we can always criticize it after we have actually tried it.

- As I said before, the lastest screenshot comparison is for lighting change and skybox change ONLY. No model or texture changes were involved. If you can't see the lighting improvement, you do have untrained eyes. - When you say character progression you mean levels, skills and such? Sorry DayZ isn't that type of game from the start. If you practicing shooting and spotting other players more, you will eventually get better with it. That's the only character progression. It's in fact your own progression. - A disease system is to add more survival aspects to the game. Pretty sure if a corpse is infected with disease, there will be visual signs on the body for people to actually tell. Don't judge something that you haven't even seen or tried. And doorway breaking legs was just a old bug in the mod. It was never intended. - Release date will likely be set after the internal test for the base structure. You can't estimate the finish date on a new, experimental project. With a project which has tested, proven working base structure however, a release date is likely to be estimated earlier on. For example: CoD series after CoD4:modern warfare.

QFT. People need to understand nowadays' tech limitations before making unrealistic wishes. Not only that, the team simply doesn't have enough manpower and time to make full-fledged cities.

I remember very well Rocket said when standalone was just announced that standalone in the beginning will be very identical to the mod itself in terms of features, but now they are working on new cloth system, new weapon system and such. So I can tell there has be a change of direction in development for sure. Maybe it's because of the WarZ incident that Rocket decided to push more distinct new features into foundation release? I can only guess so. Again, from screenshots you can only see the cosmetic changes. There are tons of changes that screenshots can't show. The latest screenshot is meant to show the change in lighting which it clearly shows that in the old one there is no shadow, no AO, and the overall lighting is too blasted. New buildings, new towns are essentially just new models. They are easy to add but takes time, so they can add those after the initial release with updates. Why can't I get this idea through your thick skull?

Regarding to the delay, Rocket has said in the previous blog post that at first he just wanted to some "patchwork" on existing Arma 2 version of the RV engine and make it DayZ SA, but later he decided to do a thorough job and rework the base structure of the engine to build a solid base for the future development of DayZ SA. This is why the early patchwork and release estimation all went down the drain. This is a good call made by Rocket even it means the game release will be further delayed because let's look at the fate of WarZ: a game which is quickly modified from the game War Inc. , trying to ride the success of DayZ mod, failed miserably, because they didn't spend time to rework the base structure to suit a different game type. I'm sure if Rocket decided to do patchwork like WarZ did, DayZ SA would be out way before 2012 ends, but that DayZ SA is not what you want, is it? DayZ SA isn't gonna be completely new for sure. They simply don't have enough time to do so. On the other hand, why bother to reinvent the wheel? Stuffs that worked should be kept in the game while they can spend time on making new features like new UI, new inventory system, new weapon system, new lighting system etc. Once those are in place, new maps, new models are just a matter of time. Even the old Cherno map has tons of potential. There were 70% of areas without any structure or place to explore. Towns, villages were too small and a lot of buildings were not enterable. Not to mention underground bases might be added in the future. Anyways, from what I see from the updates, DayZ team is focusing on making more new features than doing mere cosmetic changes(stuff like models, textures, maps). That is good because this is like laying the groundwork for a building, and stuff you mentioned are like buying new furniture or painting walls, Those can be added easily after the main structure of the building is built and you are start living in it.

Do you know anything about game development like you think you do? I'm a game dev myself and I can assure you no game in the world would give the public a release date when they are still making structural changes. When do most of games announce their release dates? It's when at least 80% of content is finished. Of course DayZ SA is not like traditional game releases (minecraft model), but the base structure must be tested before the release date is estimated. Why is it difficult to estimate a finish date before base structure is completed you may ask? Because unlike adding content, if a base structure fails they may have to scrach and restart a lot of things. It could be 90% "finished" in one day, then 20% of the stuff that turns out not working going back to the drawing board the other. That's why Rocket said in the blog post that only AFTER the structural test is done, an internal release date will be decided. All these being said, I'm not saying Rocket did everything properly. Back when he promised there would be a 2012 release, I said to myself "that can't be good." Given the ambition of the project, there is no way it would be ready for foundation release in a few months. That's probably why Rocket has learned from his mistake and hold on to giving another release date before he's confident enough to do so. Finally let's talk about engine. I'd like to clear out some misconception about game engines. It seems a lot of people think "Arma 3 engine" is totally different from "Arma 2 engine" because they saw the Arma3 gameplay/tech demo videos and see a lot of improvement. Well a game engine, as the name suggests, is only the core of a game, like a engine of a car. How a car looks or works depends on not only the engine, but on a lot of other parts as well. Under the hood, all BI games use the same engine： Real Virtuality. The engine will be improved over the years when they make new games, but still basically the same engine. So when people ask why won't DayZ use the "Arma 3 engine", they are already using the base engine that's used for Arma 3. However they can't take the exact version that they tailored for Arma 3 to make DayZ. Why? Same reason they can't take the exact version for Arma2: DayZ need the engine to be optimized in different ways because DayZ and Arma have different game structure and focuses. So people should stop refering DayZ engine to be "Arma 2" or "Arma 2.5", It should be called "Real Virtuality - DayZ edition". Everything BI learned over the years to improve Real Virtuality to make a awesome looking Arma3 will likely to be translated to "RV-DayZ edition" because same people who made the changes are helping improving "RV-DayZ edition". So as long as DayZ project gets enough support and attention from BI's main development team (and it should), I'm sure DayZ will enventually look as good as Arma3 or even better (because DayZ will continue development after foundation release as the RV engine continue to improve). That is all of a fellow game dev's personal view and attempt to clear out some misconception about DayZ. Thanks for reading.

Most comanies have their games on TBA until much later in the development stage. DayZ SA is at the stage where they are still working on some basic stuff of the game (zombie animation for one, I read Rocket's twitter saying it's getting redesigned), asking a public release date would be unrealistic at this stage. I'm sure they have an internal goal for release, but such info is never shared with the public in any companies.

Yes, I only use 3p view to get on the even ground with other players or friends wants to play with 3p view.

I won't mind if I find a Vocacola instead of Cocacola as long as it quenches my thirst.

This is getting old... It's out when it's out. Be patient. :) I hope Rocket isn't planning on going to Everest before release though. :P

The point is not to have a perfect anti-hack system. The point is to show dedication and determination to constantly battle hacks, which means to frequently updating anti-hack software, to process hack report and ban hackers swiftly and severely (Permanent bans, IP bans, MAC bans, Credit Card refusal, etc.) You can't stop hacking completely, but if you make the stakes of hacking high enough, people who intended to hack would think twice before they hack, thus reduce the percentage of hackers in the game. DayZ SA must put much more effort into anti-hack than games such as CoD or BF since the death punishment is much more serious than those games.