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Which now in terms makes me wonder, if we will see infected that are still carrying their guns/rifles. Imagine how funny it would be, if you have maybe just an axe, but there is a military zombie, who drags an M4 around with him; maybe the belt wrapped around his ankle. He'd probably not be able to shoot his gun, but you'd still have to kill him silently and get to the weapon. It's almost like infected can become a kind of puzzle element. Maybe you can separate them by aggroing only them with a silenced weapon. Maybe you can lure other infected in the area away to get to the ones you want. I really can't wait until that becomes a factor, and I do hope the infected will occasionally carry weapons, too.

You know you can make a new character on any private hive, right? If you play public server you can jump between all the public ones, if you play on private servers, you can play only there (with that same gear). If you play 1p you can only play 1p, same goes for 3p-servers. So if you are afraid to lose any gear, you might as well start a new game on one of the other server types and keep your geared character for later. Don't forget the servers you played on though, or it can take a looong time to figure out, which ones it was ^^

Where is your question? Please stick exactly to the format of the thread. There should be little to no text ALWAYS a question and then the next question(s) you want solved, repeated. This thread only makes sense (for the devs), if they aren't forced to read blocks of text and can easily filter out the most popular questions.

Mods will always make the core game better. Let's face it vanilla Arma is shit. Even in Arma II I needed modded missions to really enjoy the game. The singleplayer was buggy and broken even a year later (probably the only game I got shot at during cutscenes). So it dreads me that Bohemia actually wants to give a singleplayer story a go in Dayz. Bad idea. Dayz will need a good workshop model. That's something to think about. Modding is split these days, into those who do it for cash mostly (workshop, item-shop), and those who do it for the love of it (total conversions). The latter takes years to work and the sooner we'll see modding tools, the sooner, people will start. I'm sure those of the old mods are already waiting to release Overpoch style weapons and gameplay to the standalone. And herein lies my problem: I don't think any of the mod versions of Dayz should be brought to the SA. Not even Namalsk or the Taviana Map. Because they belong to the mod and unless heavily modified, they would still feel like the mod (often non-enterable buildings, too many weapons spawns, AI-vendors etc.). If the community was smart, it would seek out new mods. I've stated numerous times that I would love to see a Jurassic Park total conversion with realistic predators. Dino model packs with animations are dead cheap in Unity store, so the content is in parts already available, there. Or how about a pirate mod where pillaging and stealing is the objective? Or a camping simulator, where you hook up your trailer and visit the island with your family? The options are there :) It doesn't have to look like Dayz at all and maybe we'll see some of these TCs turn into standalone games at some point. Some moddest and small, some large and ambitious. I expect missions to be one of the first useful things in Dayz modding. I would like to write a mission, too. I write novels and screenplays, so why not. But the big goal would be to see something so alien and new that neither me not you thought about it. Dayz's engine has a place in my heart and I'm willing to learn it over, e.g. Cryengine. I have some experience developing games (commercially), but I retreated from the industry, because it's an industry. Even in a niche game like Dayz this shows. The pressure is there and creativity suffers. FPS-MP-Games today rely more on perks than skills, so Dayz is a refreshing change and could be a basis for more skill-based shooters and survival games in the future. Just how these looks and play, depends entirely on the community. As much as I loved them when they were fresh, the old Dayz mods should not see a return on the new engine. Instead we should look at other options and see what is unique about the engine and tools. We need to be able to create custom classes and tweak their behaviour without skimming through thousands of lines of code. Fact is: mods have never been more popular than now. But they aren't the same as when I used to play mods. Killing Floor was a mod for UT2004, Natural Selection was a Half-Life mod. Both of those were total conversions and pretty much took ages to develop with a non-commercial team. Now things are even more difficult. Even though we have more helping tools, a lot of processes are still very time consuming. People always name motion-capture when it comes to animation and think it's as easy as that. But motion capture data needs cleanup and skilled techs to use them properly. Just as an example. Animations are still a major time factor when making games. But they create the realism of our characters. I'm wondering, if maybe there is a way to create a team that survives on donations and perhaps crow-funding, i.e. to pay the people working on the project a small amount of money for their effort. Modding cannot monetize and that's okay if you do it for the love of it. But it seriously sucks that many projects get abandoned, because the people working on them simply needed to be paid or had to find work in real-life. I'm not expecting a salary out of it, but I think if there is an interest in a topical game and people are willing to pay someone to develop it, this should be possible. In terms of facilitating modding, the Dayz devs could perhaps look into options how teams could present themselves and their work in a framework provided through Dayz (some kind of newsfeed site for Dayz-mods, which bundles all the modding developments). And how to give the most promising teams wider access and support, so they can finish their job faster. It would be a kind of "official mod", but chosen by popularity vote. These modding devs could be former professional digital artists, aspiring ones or simply knowledgable researchers, 2D artists, coders. I've build several modding teams and know that it is almost impossible to get good people from the start. These teams grow over time, but if we could find an incentive (like getting paid even a little), a lot of people would try harder and finish their work. Which would lead to faster mod releases, hopefully. Which then again could be picked up by Bohemia, expanded and optimized and then released. It's a veritable business model, providing the modders work well enough and are modest enough to accept the conditions of the agreement.

I must say, I found a lot more .308 when I was up in the northern part of the map. Now I am Westbound (and up) and the only .308 is in the FAL mag I found. It lasts a lot longer in the Winchester. I haven't fired a shot of it yet ^^ But yeah, the new great spot for ammo are train cars. Also the trains have some spawn points mostly at the front. Surprisingly often that I found AKM ammo or other good stuff at a train. I wonder if that changed, or if I just didn't check often enough before. Anyway, soon the guns have attachments - or a chance for them. And we'll see partially loaded rifles and scoped ones and other beautiful things. I actually think this is a great move, because which idiot has his gun lying around somewhere and keeps the ammo in a village near a pond at the end of the world ;)

I have a clock on the table, so I've been taking some times while fishing. The first minute I don't even check the bait. Most often the first time I check, there is some movement. If not I wait 20-30 seconds before trying again. After he "sensed some movement near the bait", I keep checking every 15-20 seconds, except when something is examining the bait. I wait ten seconds or less then and have to be really quick. But I caught four fish in a row within ten minutes with this method. I tend to think it works better, if you don't check too often. What I would like to see is fishing with the fish trap made from netting, sticks and ductape (I think). I've been unsuccessfully looking for netting every now and then. You can catch a Mackeral with that trap in the sea. I wonder if at sea you would also catch Mackeral with the rod? Puzzles me that I've never tried. Perhaps you can expand your fishing videos a bit ^^ I also know that with the small fish trap (cut a plastic bottle and put it in sea) you can catch Sardines. All I got was wet feet.

I assumed that in a Status Report that deals in large parts with 0.60 they would use some screenshots from the release candidate. But you are probably right, this is the current engine. Bit of confusion, because of the topic for me. Thanks for the observations!

It depends on when you play and what region. At weekends my regular server is almost always at 40/40 players. During the week and early in the day, that same server can have 2-5 people playing; it can even be completly empty. In the later afternoon it usually fills up, but rarely goes over twenty. But maybe you should try checking at different times and look for servers in your timezone (I join a server in Dayz and then google its name to find out where it is located). I also play on public servers more, but the private servers seem to fill up more reliably and often have a lot of regulars playing. BTW - great post Pilgrim! I read if after posting and it pretty much explains it all. I feel pretty happy now that at least my server choice wasn't completely shitty and somewhat lucky. I've not made half the horrid experiences other people have. Somehow Dayz seems to have a strong Swedish community; or at least servers hosted there. I like playing on these. Often met great people online and been able to already build decent camps for the public. I DO think that after the game has all its nooks and crannies (or most) kinked out, we will see a big change in player behaviour. I dislike it, but I almost agree with the people, who KoS. It's hard to go into Dayz and be inventive all the time. Plus, after you tried and got shot over and over again, it feels like giving up for now and join in the gunplay is the way to go. I understand the motivation, but what I dislike is often the attitude of these players. They don't even try. I've been in so many situations, trying to gesture or straight on surrendering and still I got shot. And most of the people won't talk, until after they shoot you. It's frustrating, because they don't get it. At some point we'll play this game at least partially together and bounce into people more than once before dying. I want this game to feel...long. I remember that Epoch mod had a "days survived" timer. And I was incredibly happy at one point, when my character had: "28 days survived". Needless to say, I soon got too afraid to lose my precious record and avoided all encounters. So that's not the perfect solution either, but I do want to have this feeling of a journey. My characters already last pretty long often. But I'm not playing very long sessions at the moment and am basically just checking my camps and looting on the way. It's not the journey I was hoping for, yet.

Well, no update today, but sometime soon. Which probably means not that soon ;) Why does night look like shit again on the first image? If I throw down a light/flare, it looks exactly like this in the legacy renderer. If you don't crank up gamma like an idiot, the nights don't get nearly as monochrome as some of the videos suggested. As for the first image: either the stars need much more brightness or the light needs a different falloff. Back from where we stand in this image the night sky should not be completely black. Maybe tweaking the falloff curve of the light would help, but most of all, it should not be this bright; why not? - because you get almost what looks like polarisation on the trees. Does this look natural to anyone? so, to summon it up: bigger radius for the flar, but softer falloff. Brightness reduced by ~30%, possible color change toward more saturated (unless it is a white flare; I take it these things are supposed to be red?)

That's a problem of the CLE and I think they make it look more dramatic than it is. Tweaking some values should fix that, or rolling back to the last CLE-version that worked. I doubt this will take long to fix and the update should have a priority; CLE is working fine in 0.59. By now they blew any chance to make it as good as they promised anyway. So just release it and post hotfixes, as usually. It's not like any of the prior patches worked flawlessly.

Guys, this is the important part :) Unless the new UI is holding them back now, there should be an update today! The other things sound great, but we'll have to wait and see. Firstly I want to see the renderer and fps improvements.

I wouldn't go that far. I think the game is there, but they now need to pour a shitload of manhours into it to make it work. Until the renderer is in, there should be 24/7 shifts working on this. When Bratislava sleeps, the outsourced parts of the studio need to work. Relentlessly! Because what we have now is a joke, and I doubt that Bohemia wants to be on the other end of it. It's clearly the coding that's holding things back now. And the crazy thing is that all the plans for Dayz sound great. Netcode/Hitbox improvement, human IK with blended animation, new renderer. All of it sounds great. All of the big engines I can think of already use comparable systems, so if anything this is an ongoing upgrade. But it simply takes too long. Without proper information we will never know how long. And I know this is difficult to calculate, but any producer can give a decent estimate, how long things should take. I feel like in the past this was arbitrary information, based on hope more than fact. I want facts about the development. I know there are blockers for the renderer release: how many and where? what's the biggest problem? In the future updates, this kind of info should be included and if they get it done right, the new updates should be much more in-depth, or at least more accurate than before. But these updates need to come in regularly and faster than in the past half year. The last proper update was in November (I think) and that is too long a time without information on why there is a massive delay at all. "Technical Problems, please stand by" Like I said - in huge parts the way this engine is prioritized over the actual game development is to blame. Can't make the game without the engine, but every new feature is a setback at first. It needs documentation and experimentation. Things that take patience and time in a development that is always trying to catch up to its goals and never manages. Tough development, but that can't be helped now. I just wish they knew how to resolve the problems on the coding side. And they should probably correct their ambitions for a Q2 release.

I actually watched that very thing when I chased some cows toward a city a week ago. Suddenly an infected was chasing them, too. He only attacked me, after I came too close (seems players are more attractive than cows). I was surprised myself - hadn't seen that in a long time. But I guess that's just because there are mainly infected in towns and mainly animals away from towns. If we ever see hordes and the likes, they should clash with animals and chase them far more often. The question is if they can ever catch them. It would need a lot more infected, since animals are mostly too fast to catch.

Meh - and now that server is dead...one week of preparation to make a camp for myself and people and the server disappears. I wish there was some info about how long these servers are rented for, but I guess that is impossible to display. Kinda sad when you make plans and then the server goes down. Ah well, maybe it is time for a true break, until 0.60. I feel like I've done almost everything I wanted to in 0.59 anyway. Tried at least ;)

That's true, but partially that is, because SC is so successful in crowdfunding and social media. They are watched more closely, but they are also quite efficient with their updates. Star Citizen announces a ship, then you can see it in the hangar, then you can use its buttons and turrets, then you can fly it. Imho that's a way better development model than showing videos of something that still is under work a year later. Small, efficient steps are better than big words. I'm glad though Dayz didn't get hyped more than it already is. The game has problems enough with its development. And most of all, Bohemia is to blame here. Who said: develop a new engine for Dayz, make the map even bigger, etc. instead of going for solutions that are already possible? This ain'T Skunkworks! That whole engine development is taken priority over game features and for the past couple of months, perhaps for over half a year, I haven't seen concepts that will improve the gameplay and balance. It's all just one big blur when it comes to the renderer: the mystical wonderlands starts henceforth. But now we see that the renderer causes problems (which weren't mentioned to that extent before). It's not the magical solution to all Dayz troubles, but development must go on. I'm really at a loss, why it is impossible for the team to at least make weekly newsposts about the problems and delay. Why all these eleborate plans for wider information and feedback when all we need is honest info and info that is to the point. I don't want to read about what the Q+A people do. I don't care. I want to know why, week upon week the renderer is delayed, if all that was hindering its release since December last year are "a few blockers"; this is more and bigger than a few problems, or else we would have seen a release by now. If after Wednesday there still is no 0.60 update, we need a proper, reliable estimate on when it will happen. Having us hang here week after week is just indecent.

Interestingly enough, my reply to that thread seems to be the only one that got erased, as well as a slight adaptation to the tone of the original article was made. At first, this post made it sound like it's our fault for taking the goals and disclaimers too seriously. I complained about that stance, since from the onset the handling of news was with delay or simply unreliable. I complained about Hicks handling of the situation, posting every little internal goal, as if an actual milestone was reached; a lot of Dayz "newsposts" were internal achievements at best. Most of it should have never made a news release, unless it was about to be implemented. I understand that the ice is getting thin. The new approach with goals might change some of that. In the worst case however, it will just be a glorified bug-tracker and nobody takes much of an interest. The thing is: even without a refined news system pretty much every fan knows what is wrong with the game. The renderer is not released yet - that's what's wrong. Nothing else can work, until that fix is in. And then we can all count-down the next ten things to happen, because we've been talking about them forever now, too (vehicles, predators, base-building, character controller, etc.). We really just need to know that something is happening, but I'm willing to let myself be surprised by the future level of detail of the monthly updates; I expect "monthly" is what it will come down to, after the renderer release. The really bad idea with Dayz was to turn the game development into an engine development. What the team is doing is developing Dayz as a showcase for Bohemia's new engine. It's not there for its own sake any more. By definition of the importance, the engine comes first and then the games made on it follow. So we're really watching an engine development these days and not much of a game development at all. That's why there is never a word about balancing and improving existing features. Get the thing feature-complete, sell the Beta and make a quick and dirty release. Patch for a year afterwards. Welcome to Bohemia games!

When there is a EU-underground server, I'll definitely try that out. Seems like my kind of game. I've recently gone through collecting 5 radios and batteries and handing them out to strangers. I can see when they are online, and we'll see if I have better luck talking over radios then. Did you know you can also type in direct while you're radio is on? (it can even be in your backpack). It suffers the same effects as the talking with static breaking up the sentences. Very cool! I also still have to try out placing a radio in a container and putting it in e.g. a police station to use as bait ^^ I'm not that evil, though. All I know is that the chances to pick up anyone on a normal server with the radio are low to zero. I've never been able to make contact, which is why I'm just giving out armbands and radios now, so I can recognize people. It takes some getting used to, because I keep forgetting to turn them on; or I want to save battery. Licking the batteries to test voltage is a fun detail. Maybe in 0.60 the radio station will bring some new use to radios. Unless you deliberately use them for immersion and testing, there is no point in carrying one. But when servers are stable and online for long, my strategy of handing out radios to strangers might win me a lot of allies.

So I'm not the only one, who feels shooting is way too laggy again? Even with crosshairs on my (stationary) target, I keep missing the first shot. It's weird how much I have to shoot, it seems inaccurate. I play on a 50 player server that usually gets full, but even when it's empty the shooting feels slow. But my last week actually was fine. I have a new RP-character: FacilityManager I've build a public camp for trading and hunting inside the construction site north of myshkino tents (or south of Vybor). Things are going well. So far I've had three friendly encounters and evaded some shooting in Cherno. One guy actually came to camp and traded some ammo. I warned 2 survivors about going into town. I had a bus for a while (it exploded) and got a good amount of tents and gear. I had a car, too. But that also exploded. FacilityManager is basically just concerned about the integrity of the site. He will tell you to take your shoes off, before going into tents and things like that. He gives out radios and yellow armbands to friendly survivors, so they can stay in contact. There is a radio in my bag and several ones in the tents. I found enough batteries, so hopefully I'll remember to turn them on and receive some messages.

Even when I want to, I almost never make it back to my body anyway. I think things are designed this way so someone shooting/killing you can reap the rewards. And not so we can loot ourselves. The problem is - in the future there will be more deaths to zombies. I liked how in the mod these graves could sometimes draw the attention of different parties arriving around the same time. I think maybe dead bodies should be handled differently in the future. The 10 minute timer can be reduced (everytime you access the dead's inventory the time resets anyway). While players that have been gnawed up by infected could leave a corpse with their belongings around for an hour or more. That way a) we could distinguish cause of death b) we would get an extra loot opportunity with PvE (and PvP, if there are other players).

Are you in different locations (for example: earth - the moon), or is the shit audio-quality due to clueless encoding?

I still think hardcore is called like that, because your guy breathes like hardcore after five minutes of running. Seriously - did anyone else notice how much louder you breath in first person? I almost hear nothing else. It's literally the only thing I dislike about 1p. My friends drive me fucking mad by refusing to play 1p, so I only do it alone - which is a nice diversion, too. Even with the lame ass infected that hang around the map now, it can be scary fun to cut a corner in Berezino only to bump right into an infected. Of course the noise bug, where you think they are somewhere else doesn't help either ^^ I've had some jump-scares that way, also when bumping into other players. It's more intense on 1p and I kinda get into it more than with 3p. 1p/hardcore is a bit more annoying when running, because of the panting, but also because it's nice to see yourself in the world in 3p. Makes the hike shorter somehow. I recommend playing both. It just means you have 1 more character to waste. You can make a character on any private server, but then you can only play there. You can go public and switch between either public 3p/1p or public 1p (hardcore). Only one character per option is possible. Personally, I like to have my public character on a 3p server, since I play the game more with friends than alone. But a nice hardcore server with maybe some people you can chat to, goes a long way.

Oh dynamic lights. I thought you were refering to the global illumination from the sky. Because there are certain buildings that have light shining into them at day. I was refering to those invisible gaps in walls. Yeah, the flashlight problems should be completely resolved. I can't see a reason why not. In one article they spoke about adding more dynamic lights to the environment. They wouldn't do that, if there were still problems. And they have a new model for occulsion. It should also work in tandem with the lighting, so I guess that's fixed. I'm not sure where the energy comes from, but seeing some houses or streets lit will simply look awesome. Somewhere a nuclear reactor surely is still going ;)

I think KoS is somehow common for groups versus solo players. I feel like the mods were a bit more forgiving if you went about solo. I can't even number all the people I met ingame, who just wanted to team up for mutual safety. That was good. 2-3 is a great progression from playing alone. And over time the groups will settle and grow. I played on an overpoch server where we had a small village of 9 players (each with two houses) and later a castle. It was great just coming there and watching it grow. I expect something similar will happen, once we have bases in Dayz. I actually liked that in the mod you had to build two houses (small and medium), before you could get blueprints for a castle. It could be cool, if there are stages for basebuilding, too. After all, it seems unlogical that two people can build the same base as 10, but given enough time you can haul any amount of building materials to a base. This could get frustrating for players who aim too big at the start. I already know where I'll build my first base: at a radio tower Why? Because they are simply ingenious for a small base. You only need four walls between the tower's metal struts, a door and no roof at all. You can climb up the tower for surveillance and there is pretty much nothing obstructing the view. Perhaps there could be preview layouts, which show you the amount of materials you'll need to finish your base. A lot of people will understand that base-building in Dayz needs a compound of materials that are difficult to get (in the mods you could buy the bulk of it from AI-vendors). And those people will start small and grow tremendously as their group grows. Probably that whole layout preview thing is unncessary, but as Mr. T would say: I pity the fool trying to build a condominium in Dayz.

Back in 2015 when the new renderer was discussed the devs mentioned they are hoping for better lighting indoors. So definitely there wil be some improvement. As for light shining through meshes - it might be simply bad modeling. If the modeler didn't snap, e.g. the roof to the walls, there might be a tiny gap - invisible to the eye - but still enough to let a beam of light slip through. I've only noticed these lighting problems in certain houses, so I guess the model is to blame. If it will be fixed - who knows. But a lot of these models are old (ARMA-series) and have not been re-worked too carefully when interiors were added. If it was a general rendering issue, it would show on all building edges. Guess it's just sloppy modeling for now and won't really go away by another renderer. But if this is a geometry fix, it would literally take 5 minutes to do it. This kind of polish is for beta, nor alpha stage, though. A reminder: Dayz wants to go to Beta in Q2 - which has just started. Since they didn't change that, I expect Dayz to reach Beta stage within the next three months. Several miracles have to happen ;)

The last three times I wanted to heal someone and tie them up afterwards, they had already died when I got there. I suspect at least one of them immediately respawned after getting downed. So yeah, it does take away from the fun. I also wish there was some kind of visual indication for how long a body will stay revivable. I've missed upon reviving my friends in time, often for only a second or two. If before they go limp and drop their gun, they'd make some noises or a gesture to indicate that you have e.g. 15 more seconds that would make things a lot more managable. I wasn't really very successful with reviving strangers for a while, so your suggestion is pretty good. The problem is just what Kohlbar said - if the entire system is still buggy, we can't hope for a reliable timer, either. And I'm with him on this. Since the whole medic part of the game needs overhaul to be made working right, we'll probably see a lot better functionality in the future. It's just always that same answer...which annoys me too! After infected pose a problem and we actually heal much more often, we'll need the medical system to be spot on. So do I think this system needs refinement? - Yes! Do I think it needs it now? - No, but keep that in mind, because reviving people would be fun. I'm thinking perhaps after 10 seconds or so change the view to 3rd person (even on a 1 person server), so the downed survivor can see if anyone is trying to help him up. I'm regularly completely surprised by my revive, because I heard and saw nothing until then.