WhiteZero

So because something isn't done now, that means they are purposefully being slow with their work? That makes no sense. Major things take a long time to finish.

Really living up to that "Live Test & Support Lead" title. ;)

Thats fine. But I don't think a day or two with Dean and Hicks being gone is going to cause the development machine to break down.

Eh? Teams are not like a gear mechanism. People are capable of operating just fine on their own. For example, where I work, I maybe see my boss once a week.

Hicks is Sicks https://twitter.com/ctorchia/status/507947446925017088

Guys, semantics arguments don't really add to the conversation. Obviously its a game, it's something you can play right now, it's just not a finished game.

Anger and let-down expectations can get the better of anyone. I think having the proper expectations is key to sticking with an Early Access game like this. We all pretty much deal with the same problems. But it's those of us that have the insight to see the probable future that can easily shrug off those negative experiences. If you ever get mad at a game in development like this, take a breather, maybe stop playing for a few weeks or a couple months, whatever you need.

Helicopter Hunter is my current title, my username is WhiteZero. :) Yes, I've provided words, the words of the developers. We've seen various results from them in this time, from 64-bit servers, to navmesh, physics and ragdoll, etc. The thing is, these are relatively small implementations that don't take nearly as many manhours as the changes that are still coming down the pipe. And 9 months is nothing in terms of engine development. "Then honestly, can you really believe they will have been working on the core since January 2013" Yes, because you're otherwise calling them lairs and I have no reason to believe the team is being willfully dishonest with us. Shit happens during development, you set milestone dates/goals and un-forseen complications can popup that throw that off. I've seen enough games built from the ground-up to witness this. I remember Natural Selection 2 was quite the long-haul when they made an engine from scratch, that took 4 years.

The core server and engine components are being constantly worked on. Like I've pointed out several times, there are dedicated teams for this work. Do you want the texture artists, modelers, sound engineers, gameplay scripters, etc to stop what their doing until the core is totally bugfixed and optimized? Because that makes no sense whatsoever. As Eugen has said when asked about the status of these core modules: It. Takes. Time. And content production should not stop during that time.

You have to consider that this is Bohemia Interactive, they've made their own engines before, why would they outsource the engine when they can make it purpose built? It might take more time, but it better support the team's vision.

Correct, you need constructive feedback. It's just a pity most of the "feedback" I see on DayZ is complaining about the same known issues or calling the Devs lazy. Maybe 20% of the feedback I see is constructive.

I guess you've overlooked this part of the forum? http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/forum/138-devtracker/ But yes, communication from the team is very important, and I want more of it too! As Hicks said in the last Status Report: "Starting in September, several new initiatives to increase transparency and accessibility into the development process will be rolled out, including the dev team twitch stream schedule located on devhub.dayz.com. (twitch.tv/dayz)." I expect to see this fulfilled soon, now that they're back from PAX.

I hope I'm right too! :D In-town FPS drops will probably be helped quite a bit by DX10's improved occlusion culling: Predicated Rendering allows drawing calls to be ignored based on some other conditions. This enables rapid occlusion culling, which prevents objects from being rendered if it is not visible or too far to be visible.... among other likely renderer improvements. As for "focus on the engine," there is basically a dedicated team doing that. Work on other content does not need to stop in the mean time, because that is the job of other teams: modeling, scripting, sound, etc, are not part of engine development.

That is a silly thing to ask for, because just about every game when you switch from DX9 to DX10/11, it is enabling lots of extra effects bells and whistles that skew the result. If you could switch from DX9 to DX10/11 with the same visual fidelity, you'd see a performance increase. Regardless, all the developers tout this upgrade as being a performance improvement. I'm more inclined to believe the guys actually working with the code. Rocket: "DX11 certainly provides dramatic performance increases in scene rendering. In addition during the process of rewriting the renderer it can be written specifically to deal with DayZ's use case". Maybe the current DX9 renderer is just so bad that DX10/11 can only be an improvement? ;) Until we see the new renderer in action, it's all conjecture coming from our perspective.

No, no, no, and no. Thats not how it works at all. Component systems are being developed. You can look at my previous posts in this thread with quotes from Eugen on how these systems affect things like Zombies. You don't just "fix zombies," they rely on several systems that are still in development. Almost no one feature in DayZ, or most games for that matter, are mutually exclusive. They almost always rely on several components that affect other features. Game development is from the ground up, not top down, that would be asinine.

What makes you think that if Dean/Hicks are incapacitated that everyone stops working ("progress suffers")? The rest of the team can keep working without these two being in the office for a couple days. The only thing that "suffers" is getting the Status Reports written.

You are only allowed 50% complaining/ranting in Beta, as opposed to 15% in Alpha. RC your allotment is 75%, and Full Release is 95%. ;)

Yeah, modding an existing game is quite a bit different from changing out engine components and hard-coding what was once scripted events. We're also in a position as Alpha Testers, not Full Release Players. All of use are suppose to be familiar with and accept the circumstance of that. Shits going to break or not work as it will in the finished product. The issues with Melee, Zombies, Desync, etc are not gamebreaking in the sense that they totally shut down the experience, and the team needs these iterative changes tested and data to be gathered. I understand that you're upset with the apparent sluggishness of development. But you have to keep in mind the scope of work being done here. As Dean said before Alpha release, "this is a true-blue Alpha," not the wattered down later-Alpha/Early-Beta that most games make available as "Alpha" for just a few months. We're in for the long-haul here. And yeah, the length of Alpha has probably been extended by maybe 6 months from the original projection. That happens when the scope of the game is expanded from "mod adapted into a standalone game" to "redoing everything from scratch." To give you can idea of the scope of the engine changes, there is a great historical write-up here.

Oh the irony of this statement. Or you could stop being so narrow minded and realize that development is an iterative process. New features introduced (persistence, etc) can cause issues with other systems (cause desync that causes zombie/melee issues). But I guess you can't help but be "narrow minded" if all you're looking at is whats in front of your face and not the bigger picture.

Just because an issue hasn't been patched publicly does not mean that the underlying issues are not being addressed internally. Go read these posts from Eugen: http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/2e6el9/are_the_broken_zombies_fixed_in_49/cjwi079 http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/2euy4v/049_zombie_melee_hitboxes_are_not_fixed_confirmed/ck3t7lx http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/2f8wwu/when_is_persistent_set_to_hit_stable/ck7xi0u

"Lighter"? Say what? DX10/11 have more efficient rendering paths to hardware, and are able to take better advantage of modern hardware, compared to DX9. EDIT: Some reading material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct3D#Direct3D_10 Lots of pipeline and rendering improvements with DX10/11

Stupid unfinished gameplay components. Why don't they just FIX them already? /s Go read my post: http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/209847-september-rant-topic/?p=2102487 Yes, as long as we're in alpha, and the engine is still be worked on, we're going to have long-standing issues. Get over it already. If you can't handle that, you should leave and come back after Beta. You also don't seem to understand how the PS4 version is a branch off of PC, worked on by a separate team, and PC still as the lead platform? Also, the network bubble "buzzword" you're trashing was a pretty big netcode and engine change and a big departure from how the ARMA series works. http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/1kxwuj/ I've come to the conclusion that everyone whining about the state of the game is willfully ignorant of the circumstances.

About the new status report: http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/2fgsnw/any_word_on_the_status_report/ck91v75 Rocket:

Zombies themselves are not "placeholder," some of the systems that run them are placeholder however. Again, like I said in my previous post, zombies and other issues are multi-faceted. Please go read these threads with comments from developer Eugen http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/2e6el9/are_the_broken_zombies_fixed_in_49/cjwi079 http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/2euy4v/049_zombie_melee_hitboxes_are_not_fixed_confirmed/ck3t7lx http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/2e6el9/are_the_broken_zombies_fixed_in_49/cjwjxgc?context=3

These things are being addressed. But contrary to what a lot of people want to think, no one issue is something that "the team" can or should focus on. Various members of the team are working on various components of the game. And more often than not, these kinds of issues stem from multiple components. Just read some of Eugen's comments on Reddit (One, Two) "Fix desync!" Ok? There are a lot of components of the client/server model that need to come together to improve that. Fixing this is an iterative process. "Fix zombies" Again, several systems have to come together for zombies to work fluidly, all of which are under heavy development. You don't "just fix zombies," you fix the several underlying systems that different teams are working on. "Fix the ambient sound issue!" No one even knows exactly what causes this, its under investigation still. "Fix the controls!" Again, controls are going through iterative changes that improve over time, not all at once. Too many people assume that because a certain bug, imbalance, or exploit isn't fixed in the newest patch, that the team isn't working on it; some think that patches contain everything that the team has worked on since the last patch. This is false, of course. Patches contain only what is ready to be released to players for testing (even if that content isn't finished or buggy). Meanwhile there is a lot of other progressive work going on behind the scenes. You're not going to get instant gratification on any issues when the engine that runs these components is under heavy development. Please go read one of Eugen's recent Reddit posts: