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Ok, I play 0.59 experimental now and some of the soft skills are in the game. So I wasn't sure if I should make a new thread. I just wanna write up some stuff, before I forget it. First of all, we have some level of soft skills now, but only when it comes to harvesting and skinning. I thought about future healing softskills and how they could affect the PvP gameplay. This idea/method could be expanded to all levels of soft skills. First off I list the example and then I'll explain: A) Symptom/Sickness : B) Effect - C) Cure - D) Slowed Down By brain prion desease: shaking, unsteady aim, blurred sight/flashes - Bandaging others, Clean Blood Transfusion - Saline Bag, Sleep, Vitamins (from cannibalism) The goal is to achieve some balance between hunter/prey, scavenger/bandit gameplay. Of course any player can play any style, but cannibalism has consequences, which living healthy doesn't have. If you start to lose concentration and balance or aim, you need to counteract the effects of cannibalism by playing more cooperatively. Even if that means you shoot someone, just to bandage him afterwards it's better than the current KoS-situation. Secondary effects to actions like healing other players could mean that e.g. the person who heals improves in both, their healing soft skill and also gets rewarded with slightly improved health (catches breath faster after running) or steadier aim in general. This could even work in bandit groups, as they would also benefit from the effect. The idea is that you receive an instant perk (even if is just a slight one) on top of improving your soft skill. You benefit in more than one way by playing cooperatively. Following these measures some other mechanics would have to be updated, like tying someone up or running with a broken leg. First, tying someone up should count as a positive thing. You didn't kill the person and allow her/him to continue. This could affect your overall quality and give you more energy from eating food for the next two hours ~ something like that, it's just an example. A lot of things you do are more than a one-cause action that way. You can actually actively influence, which qualities in your character you want to foster. In order to keep people from just shooting their mates, quickly healing up and shooting them again, some of the inuries need to be tweaked. It would be good if healing broken limbs had some actual consequences. Like limping and decreased movement speed; probably a need for painkillers and rest. It should be a lot more difficult to heal from a broken limb than what it is now with the splints. So, I didn't think much about this idea and just wanted to get it down. I think the depth of the soft skills could be layered in a way that it affects across more skills of a person than just the one they were doing at that time (e.g. hunting->skinning=become better at skinning); that just won't do. Plus you can actually create reasons to play cooperative without taking away from the game. There is always the option to get better again. Should you survive the process of playing nicely for a while that is.

Shame to give up the gear, but I hope next update comes soon. From 0.59 experimental. He's obeying my avatar picture ;) I can't find magazines for the Dragunov in 0.59, so I have to single load it. Here is one with better lighting: The Vintorez has a strangely low res texture for me, ingame. Looks alright on the character screen. I don't use the scope on it right now, but I wonder if it would show on the character screen. Usually my attachments are gone (however they do show on the Dragunov).

How on Earth did you spot the last guy? I've been trying to see him and can't spot him when you shout out. That was very Mafia with all the door shoting :) I wish there were penetration effects, but anyway it was cool. I hate the airfield. I usually go alone and I'm always happy to get out alive.

M4 is not some kind of wonder weapon. Granted, it looks very nice, especially when scoped, but it doesn't mean you'll win a firefight with it. In fact, it usually helps me in a fight when I know I'm a little underpowered; then I take more caution. It also seems you are pretty limited to one area of the map and to chopper crashes, if you're in need of ammo/mags for it. You'll find one eventually, once you know your chopper spawns - but it's more fun just exploring. Some lucky guy caught me carrying a Steyr without ammo. So that can happen too. I'd rather have a gun with ammo than a slightly nicer one without.

Heheh that was your video? So why do you say the bullets are pristine, if they are ruined? Did you not think about that then, but figured it out in the meantime?

Jeez that's stupid! You saw that video, too? I didn't think about the ruined bullets then, but you'd think this guy would have tried that. Isn't it also like if you rightclick on a stash of bullets you can "sort out damaged bullets", or something like that? I only did that once after I got shot, but I remember it worked. Good to know man! I honestly thought auto-rifles were broken when I watched that video yesterday. On reddit there is info about weapon related issues, but I guess that just concerns the new reloading. Awesome that everything works and only people are being stupid ^^

It's because nails are zinc-coated. Zinc is actually used for dying stuff, so they did some good reasearch. Oak trees are easy to find though, if you don't have nails. They are almost everywhere on the map and you can also use birch bark. Just use a knife next to the trees and "cut off bark". I just made a "black" leather bag myself, works flawlessly. The only leather that doesn't work tanning - at least not for me - is the fox pelt. Tanning takes some time, after it's done you can open the barrel again.

That knight helmet makes me smile :) I got clubbed in Zelenogorsk today too. I haven't seen that many infected anywhere else yet. About the AK's: I've seen a video yesterday and the guy's rifles jammed all the time. He tried several different AK's and nothing worked for him. I now wonder, if maybe his magazine was damaged, because it seems you have no problem with misfires or jamming. Did you have any trouble shooting the gun? Cool to see people talk that casually and run together. A lot of kids just play for griefing or teabagging and being dicks in general. Respect to Mr. Knight! Generally, if it's just one player, chances are he's friendly. I never managed to talk to 2-3 people without getting shot. NEVER :)

You need to download the exp Version of the game. In Steam, rightclick on DayZ->Properties->BETAS->select experimental. And you're set. If you want to go back to playing stable, just repeat and change the version back from exp to stable.

They were also attracted to sound, which is why zombies at the coast/sea were always facing the ocean and shuffling around/towards the sea. At least on the Taviana map, near the village Seven that was very obvious. I mean - we all know they are attracted to gun+engine sounds, but I was happily surprised to see they reacted to other conditions, too. It also seemed like they were less responsive to humans sneaking by when it was raining. Weather + Daycycles have a lot of interesting features with respect to infected reactions. I hope we can use them in our gameplay to our advantage even more in the standalone. The most obvious use would be to "disguise" as a zombie, similar to the beginning episode of Walking Dead where they had to cross through a bunch of zombies. That should wear off quickly though and rain should wash it off. I think this features is in Dying Light, too. Unfortunately that game is banned in Germany, fuck knows why. About light: definitely a good idea. Let's hope night becomes more playable with the new renderer and lights more useful. I think at the moment everyone who doesn't want to be at a disadvantage just raises their gamma. I've never used a flashlight in DayZ, except to test it. Nights could be the best part of the game. Sneaky, scary, cold.

Camp Car Tent :) All barrels are full to the brim and the car tent has a few spaces left. This game turns me into a serious hoarder ^^

The broomstick handle! You're right - what's the point of the P1 now? The Mauser C96, or Red9 was produced earlier as far as I know, but with a ten piece mag and the buttstock as rifle substitute it is probably a lot better than the P1. Probably better than it was in reality. Really cool pistol though, wasn't it also the model for some Star Wars blaster pistol? So I just got to find the pistol and then can feed 9mm ammo directly into it? awesome. That makes it almost a bit too OP.

What the hell kind of server is that? Walking into Cherno and chatting with everyone? Whenever I try this I get shot at and have verbal poo flung at me ;) Nice video! I didn't know you can stick pumpkinz on a stick like that, but it makes sense for cooking. Well kinda makes sense - haven't seen a real life pumpkin BBQ yet.

Believe me, in this engine you want to lead any target. They are never really exactly at the position you are shooting at. So shooting in front of where people run is gonna be more successful than shooting at where they are/were.

Ice bucket challenge DayZ? ;)

It doesn't look like a perfect shot to me in the first gif. You didn't lead the shot, so it passed him and probably the engine registered a strafing shot to the back or shoulder. It's always hard with the desync to tell where a player actually is. But aiming where he's going is never wrong. The one where you blow up the gravel from the ground is kinda the same. Player goes backwards, yet you shoot in front of him. No perfect hits and a part of the buckshot went off into the ground. It just looks a bit weird. I don't know when I ever used a shotgun, I usally don't even pick them up - maybe I will when zombies return. At most I have a sawn off shottie as my backups backup, because I too get better results with a pistol. Shotgun shells are a bit easier to find, but the CR75 is really no problem either. I won't argue with you about how shitty shotguns are, hence nobody uses them. But I don't see perfect hits in your images, either. Shotgun should do alot more splash damage and knock out, but I think weapons will get a massive overhaul in the Beta, since now they only do damage based on caliber. Perhaps we'll get better shotguns then.

I've just been going over the latest W.I.P. features videos and I've been wondering if they were taken in Enfusion/new renderer? It might just be my gfx settings, but it looks to me like the material definition is a bit better than what I get. Metal looks like Metal, skin looks soft, partially translucent and overall the image colors look a bit better. However, I usually play with AO turned off (it doesn't really look good) and my settings may just be lower in general. It still looks like a slight graphical improvement to me, though the post process makes things look a bit fuzzy and blooming; which makes it hard to see things in detail. Also, we were told parity is the graphical goal, not improvement. Would be interesting to know if the new features come in pair with the new renderer. It's been talked about so much and with the issues with rendering and zombies, I don't really see how they would make a return without updating the rendering. In case you don't know which videos I'm about, they're from the recent update, like this one: http://www.dayztv.com/video/dayz-accelerated-skillset-growth-w-i-p-preview-dayz/

The thing about vehicles in engines is that they often feel "like" that engine. I mean, almost every game I played on Unreal Engine, I could always tell it was on Unreal Engine, because of how the vehicle felt. And the physics are great, they are just somewhat similar for all vehicles. On ARMA it always felt like driving on rails, but that was okay for me. The physics now feel like the compromise between PhysX and old Arma simulation, so the Donuts in the video actually looked a bit out of place for me; like a mix of real physical behaviour and simulation. I'm curious how far they can get it right, and I'm looking forward to manual transmission, too. I only played the ArmA III lite version a while ago and thought the physics were pretty good. At least when compared to ArmA II. At least the suspension seemed realistic and taking turns was a bit less "on rails". I guess the new system is gonna be better yet, but I'll just have to wait on what they release next. So far, vehicles have improved quite a bit, but it is really important we get to drive something else than a truck now :) Anyone else feel like this year went past really quickly? I can't believe we are in Q4 for this development. Overall, I had a lot of enjoyment with the last build, but when you play it so much, you notice more and more small things that don't work yet and hopefully will be dealt with in the Beta. I think this game will not be feature complete before going into Beta. Didn't they even say so on their spreadsheets?

Cool, I am not alone ^^ It's a start. What fascinates me about dinos in this engine is that they could actually behave like Dinosaurs (Hunter/Prey). Their behavior patterns could become part of the player's game, e.g. by luring a prey towards a herd of predators you can pass through their area; or you could hide along Brontosaurs to evade bigger predators. ARK dinosaurs have the hunter/prey mechanics, but they don't really wander or actually feed on plants. It would be much more interesting to see this on a large scale world with adequate dino behavior. You could also have different "Biomes" on different islands, parts of the park infrastructure and other parts that are just jungle; so vehicles would be quite important. It's a pity Trespasser is still the best dinosaur survival game out there, but it does a lot of things (looting/survival) that could be done better and with more freedom in the DayZ engine. Give it a different name and this might even become a huge franchise. Plus you could leave out the annoying kids from every Jurassic Park storyline ;)

Ok cool, haven't read the latest one, just the charts from the PAX presentation. There is probably some interesting info in there, if it deals with player controls and hit detection. The main problem I see with Arma Real Virtuality is that it is a very complex engine for such few people to work on. I mean, look at Unity. Their business model was always to sell a framework of an engine (or give it away for %/profits) and to let the aftermarket deal with creating the tools. Some of the best addons for Unity are made by a single person or a small group, e.g. the node-based-materials Unity doesn't have by default. With DayZ they have to develop a whole suite of engine tools that better not be based too heavily on the old modding tools, because they are really ancient in form and function by now. It would be awesome if the engine could see similar developments like Unity, making it a truly modern game engine, which entails ease of use to me. It's already painful enough to model, texture and animate objects, I don't need to be fighting with a proprietary toolset that no other engine uses. Unreal and Unity are really similarly easy to use and what works in one engine works in the other, too; if it has been integrated, at least. I hope something similar will happen with DayZ, so modding will be less of a pain and attract more modders from other engines. I'm sure Bohemia is gonna expand and use this engine in the future, but I question how far its modding capabilities will go. Without source code access we'll be pretty limited to what the devs hardcode into the engine, as opposed to running yet another script for (insert "random activity"). I hope they will follow the Unreal and Unity model and release for free and public after a while, just so that other people can get their hands on the engine, in depth. We'll yet have to see how this whole Steam Workshop idea works with the game. In the end, Bohemia will probably want to hang on to their engine exclusively, since it is a bit different from the competition.

I'm really looking forward to the release of modding tools, the sooner the better. Getting into the old tools is something I simply can't get myself motivated to do. It's likely the DayZ tools will be similar, but for all the better reasons I'm waiting on official release info now. I think the current engine won't work well with many unique building and highrise buildings. It's just gonna become too complex for the AI to handle. On top of that Dayz is not a parcours style game, so the movement through and over houses would feel awkward. Better stay away from big cities for now. A rural setting fits the game best, since we need lots of space on the map, so Chernarus was a good choice. However, if you are like me you've been playing the map since its ARMAII days and are getting bored with it. Doesn't matter how much they add or change, it will always feel like Chernarus. So, in order to start a new map, I'd first say start on another "note". What comes to mind is either a change from East (Russia) to West (USA), since basically the US-infrastructure and building style is simplistic when it comes to modeling. Sure, a baroque city with a small castle would be awesome, but the modeling alone would be a killer. So secondly, I'd say its important to be efficient. If assets can be re-used from DayzSA and integrated with the new setting, that is a huge bonus, since you can populate a map with these assets first and use placeholders for your unique architecture; it will be much easier to prototype. Finally, scope is an issue. Nobody will build a map the size of Chernarus for a mod, at least not right away. I'm still extremely surprised how many good maps there are made for Arma II. Taviana, Namalsk, Napf and others are just very well crafted maps. However to start with, I'd just take an area 1/16th of that size and see that everything works on a small scale, first. Prototyping and some modesty about initial goals will be important for anyone planning to release a new map. At least that's what I will do, since I have no prior experience with Arma mods/future Dayz mods. So for me it's either: - islands map, starting with one island - similar landscape to Days (to re-use assets), different environment (e.g. modern western architecture, vs. post USSR eastern) I'm a bit curious how this will finally tie in with the Steam Workshop. In the past Dayz mods were free or at least for the regular client. It would suck, if people have to pay for that kind of content in the future. It would also suck, if we get overpowered weapons with 300-mags or just a flood of silly vanity items. I find its the right way to put Dayz on the Workshop, but I wonder how the microtransactions are going to work. I might make some money just selling skins for the game, while working on our mod. Donations would also be good to have, since there are product licenses, e.g. for Maya LT or World Machine 2 that could be paid for with donations. I'm currently struggling with what to mod, ARK or DayZ. I know I won't have time for both, but I know Unreal Engine fairly well, while Enfusion is still a mystery and doesn't even have documentation or access yet. I toyed around with Ark Dev Kit and it's very easy to use if you used UDK/U4. However, I am strongly drawn to DayZ and feel it will be worth my investment of time, because ultimately I don't want to make the easier mod, I want to make the mod that I will want to play, too. Not alone though. So the final point would be: build a team. Alone you can change the map, but you can't change the game.

Alright, thanks a lot! Seems like they have worked an aweful lot in the background, since if that info is correct we are not even playing the real game, yet. However, with that little time to the Beta and all the other things still hanging in the lose (functionality not reliable) the devs must be pretty confident that the final transition to the engine will be a smooth one. Rarely, in a game development, you'd see entire games ported to another, better engine. Often that takes long and can completely ruin a project. In this case it seems like the engine is slowly ported over entire parts of an existing game that then have to be rewritten to work with each other accordingly. I don't even wanna know how confusing that gets ;) Yet, with all said and done, it could still be the internal build, since these engines are bound to come together during the next few weeks. If we are indeed already shown stuff in the new renderer, I think there would be some word about that, though.

As Byrgesen wrote, game engines are modular and bricks and pieces get updated and exchanged. For this you often have to license expensive third party plugins, such as Euphoria (crowd AI - e.g. GTA) or PhysX (Newtonian Physics simulation). Arma III uses PhysX and their vehicles feel a lot better than the Dayz ones ever will. So not every change is going to make sense. I think what game engines like Enfusion need is better hit detection and player position feedback. For me, it always felt detached in Arma games, like you are floating around or rolling across a large terrain. It's getting better, though. Hopefully, some of the research done on this engine will help with future game development at Bohemia. It makes sense to have a versatile engine, because it needs to be customizable to fit a games needs. I don't think Arma games will ever need to spawn thousands of items/pickups or use a complicated algorythm like the CLE. But I do think this engine development could lead to further crossover, as with an engine like this pretty much every scale and type of game is achievable. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a space exploration game, like Star Citizen developed by Bohemia. Personally, I always wanted to see "Jurassic Park" made on that kind of a great engine.

I did skim over some of the documents, but I found no info about what is being used internally. Could be the Devs are already using the renderer for internal purpose only. It's not like there is any big difference, I was just curious. It's tiny detail. Especially the reflection of the skybox on the knife made me think: "hmm, my Dayz don't do that!" On the other hand, I can't really compare my game looks to anyone elses. Quite possible, somewhere I turned off reflection, most likely in the HDRI settings.

At least you got up on top of the next building. That is pretty good to lookout over firestation and Cherno West. If you can get over to the other side, I doubt that you can get back,