S3V3N

Also, if you read the status report (from 15.01), you see that real-sky is one of the things worked on. Among other things that means we'll actually have realistic representation of the light hitting objects, based on the sky colors and brightness/darkness value. This will also help with bringing out the material quality and the actual object colors much better. It also means a lot of light sources that have been set up in the editor (invisible to the player) can be deleted and this will possibly improve performance a bit. I'm thinking that when the game hits beta and the High Dynamic Range lighting is fully functional, they will probably remove the ability to manipulate gamma and there will still be proper lighting with much better quality than now. Now it is a mathematical approximation, but with HDRI the lighting will be photo-realistic and physically correct. Which means it will be dark at night, but through reflections from physically based materials (PBR), we'll be able to identify objects/materials and see better+more than now - despite it looking darker. It should also help with indoors lighting, making them much more varied in darkness than now. Nights are one of the things to be excited about! Already, I like the sunset and the game has its moments of sheer beauty, but in a month or two we'll start seeing the real thing.

I didn't check the status report, until today and I must say, I revoke most of my earlier statement. Here is a quote from Hicks (and I believe it!): Internally we're hoping to have our next .60 update out late next month. I don't want to get any of you too hyped, but internally we've been observing outstanding client side performance (frame rate) with the new renderer technology. Paired with the performance increase of the New UI, and iteration upon the inventory and UI skinning - we're *hoping* to see .60 be a hell of an update. They are really taken the engine to a new level, which puts it right next and even above the most refined engine technology out there. It should give the devs the resources to launch their planned features and will make it easier to balance the game economies. This is the big step ahead many have been waiting for, so I'd like to say Thank You! to the devs for sticking to the plan. I know there's a lot of frustration about things that don't work right now and we'll be dealing with those for a while. But Dayz is more and more distancing itself from the simulated features of the Arma RV engines and going the way of a procedural game engine, which can accurately and realistically represent real-life conditions. This is really something to be excited about and quite possibly the most important update for the game, yet!

These areas were added to the game and iterated over and over, in the past. I doubt the devs want to remove them again. There were however plans for a NATO base in the north, which should cover most of the things you ask for. They are probably waiting for their occlusion and renderer update, before adding such buildings. I find the northern airfield and the area around Myshkino tents too empty. On the airfield for example, there could be fuel trucks, service vehicles and aircraft waiting for service or in parking position. There could be accident sites from when pilots turned infected, while on the airstrip; ambulances, fire trucks... Myshkino tents could have a military cemetary next to it with hundreds of white crosses as well as a small chapel; it could have small civilian tent settlements around it . I know the idea behind Myhskino tents was that the military retreated into a safer defense position, away from Zelenogorsk. But they would have needed a place to bury the dead. And there would be checkpoints on the way down there and fences or barricades in the forest. Each of those two places you mentioned fails to tell its story. They don't create the kind of atmosphere they should and they are too clean. I hope we'll see some bigger efforts at visually telling a story and creating an ambience. There has to be a sense of threat coming from these places and we should be chilled to go in there, not only because some other player might snipe us. I hope we'll see new buildings and more unique and bigger buildings, too. Prison Island is pretty much wasted in its position and I wouldn't mind a narrow bridge going over there and additionally placing the prison building on some mountain tops too, because it would also fit elsewhere. And the building itself is fun, it's just too remote and not rewarding enough to swim there. I'd like to see a big building like a 70'S style civilian airport, instead of the North-Eastern airfield. I'd like to see a big hotel that was build for the communist elite in the 60'S and still retains that style. I wouldn't mind seeing malls and the more modern building, but I think particularly the old soviet architecture is more and more missing from Dayz and would make a great addition.

Hmm, but they are attracted to light/sound, isn't that the plan? That would be an interesting loop whe they run to your torch, burn themselves and run into the torch again ;) Things like torches can be used to distract them, like what a grenade does. So you throw a torch at night and they go for it, clearing the path for yourself. I'm waiting for the proper introduction of the custom infected that react to players and wear player gear. They should already be in the game, but by the time they actually are and when we see how the devs intended the infected to behave, we can make better assumptions about what kind of things they should be afraid of. It would be cool, if you could burn them (1 guy pours petrol and another guy lights it) and use them as a distraction to other zombies. I wouldn't really want them to be afraid of fire. Predators in the wild should be, but I think the infected should be drawn to it.

Honestly, I don't know about the hacking complaints. The most annoying thing I'm dealing with on semi-full to full servers is ghosting. But I don't think I've met a lot of hackers lately, unless you count the guys that exploited talking server-wide with the cheats for the radio. I don't even think that's possible any more and it didn't harm anyone directly. I've seen some people still use teleportation hacks on fairly recent streams, but I have not seen anyone like that myself for over a year. It's quite possible people are using aimbots, but that's no different in any other multiplayer game, and I have not noticed it of lately, either. Fights can be a bit weird at the moment, because there seem to be some problems with character desync, even though everything appears fluent. If you want an offline version, you'll have to wait for the release of mod tools and load yourself into a standalone version of the game. I think the devs have other things on their plate than introducing modding tools anytime soon, but if they do them right and start the right kind of advertising (hype!), the mod tools will probably sell more copies of the game than the introduction of the new renderer. They are that important to many people. I'd like to hear an announcement about that, or an estimate on when it's going to happen. For the singleplayer you'll probably wait a lot longer.

I'm confused by the development. It's contradictory. First they announce that beta will start in Q2, then they say new elements will still be added during Beta; adding new features is what the Alpha is for. And I wouldn't worry, if at least the features in the Alpha were working well enough on the first or second (or third iteration). Yet so much is still not working well, even though it's been in the game for a year. So that makes me think, they might take a game with many broken features to the next stage, which will then present its own problems and slow down progress again. Essentially I don't see the difference between the Alpha and Beta, at this time. There are a lot of different economies in the game and we've never seen them as intended, yet. They don't all come together, because of all the resources required. The new renderer and occlusion technology are surely gonna speed things up - but is it going to be enough? And then there are random deaths and the afore mentioned broken medical system, which can leave you unaffected by illness or kill you off in a matter of minutes. Things like these worry me to no end. At the same time, I see parts of the team doing great work on improving the map and creating great-looking assets. But what are we to do with these, if the game cannot be tested in its fullness. It's such a unique project that I'm almost ready to say: tune it down a bit, devs! The helicopter isn't going to be the endgame and if it doesn't work right, it won't be worth the hassle repairing one. The endgame should be human interaction, which means to me: make it meaningful! Work more on soft skills and learning curves to let us develop unique characters and let us have the ability to prove useful to other players instead of being just targets or enemies. I don't want the game to be all cozy and friendly, but to me the key to Dayz is making a player's life valuable. Through cooperation and improvisation things should be possible that aren't possible on your own. I have some confidence that in the end we'll see a game that works well enough, but I'm not yet convinced we'll actually see the game that puts us in a threatening enough situation to make us seek help and shelter and pray for our bare life. I'm really somewhat clueless about Dayz at the moment. On the one hand I enjoy fighting with other players, but on the other hand I feel like the fighting shouldn't be over nothing or a couple of guns or other material items. The true fight should be about survival and sometimes having to make a hard choice, instead of an easy one. And that fight is still a long way off and if it will ever come, Dayz would probably be a lesson in life much more than only a game.

I'm just really wondering, if the idea that you can't drag clothes of a dead player's body is a design choice or has to do with the underdeveloped nature of the UI. Since you can only see the inventory of that body and don't get an option to see the ground (inventory), unless you step back a bit, it might be they will have some trouble making things work the way they were. I definitely need to be able to drag things off a body quickly, everything else is cumbersome and dangerous. The alternative would be to stop bodies from despawning for a longer time. I still don't understand why this isn't done, especially during the Alpha and Beta Phase and given as an option later on. I always liked the "graves" in the mods, though they aren't realistic. But they were an interesting thing to go an fight over, and I've been killed so many times randomly, while running on rocks or over stairs (that most of the time were perfectly safe) that I can't forgive the option not being there. I'm exclusively using New UI and it's come to the point where I don't even bother to loot dead bodies, except for their primary rifle. It's however very inconvenient to have your friend die next to you and not to be able to safe his gear, unless you strip down and expose yourself for several minutes while fumbling around getting dressed with his gear and dropping it nearby. Arma had the option to drag dead bodies. I hope this will see a comeback with the new player controller. That said, I'm not as impaired by new UI as many other people, in fact I quite like it. But truth be told, there are many situations it is a total pain to use in. And half the time I don't grab the items I want to, but the ones that are next to it in my inventory. Everytime I put my pistol back in the inventory, I have to check where it went. Binoculars and bottles have no problem going back to the slots they were taken out from, but pistols and sidearms seem to go to wherever you have some space. Good to hear there will be massive updates. It's much needed, in order to convince people to use it more. The status icons are the one thing I'm not missing. After a while you rather like not having them.

The 3p I play is a private hive, but thanks for the offer. I don't build camps for nothing, so the most it took was running to the camp to get equipped. I was just trying to get an all black character "assembled". I was only (still!) looking for a black drybag. I posted in the wrong threat anyway. But those rocks are north-east of Kamenka, try not to run between the big boulders there - unless you wann die that is.

I randomly died while running over some rocks. With AKM, AKS-U, 1911 silenced and my fully black clothed character. I guess you could say, I've had that character for long enough, but it sucks loosing them this way.

Is the M4 spawning mate? I thought it and the AK101 don't spawn, at the moment?! I know someone posted a pic of one a page ago, but I still don't believe ^^ Nice collection there - next time my friends call me crazy for collecting everything, I'll refer them to your pictures ;) Me - I'm about to go camping :) If I don't find a black drybag soon, things will end badly. I don't even know, how long I've been running around with my guy, trying to complete his outfit

If it's carrying a calf, you can get milk from the cow ;) What's this thread about? Do vegetarians have regrets in games now, too? Oh boy...feel that guilt over killing some pixels!

You already explained it. It's been used in other engines, like Unreal Engine and Cryengine, Tech4 or Unity for ages and is about time it's implemented in EnFusion. It's particularly useful when you enter a large building or go to a city area with lots of geometry to draw, most of which you don't see and doesn't need to be rendered. It's an algorythm that determines the vector of the camera and gives feedback on which objects are visible to the player. Streaming objects works hand in hand with occlusion, the purpose of both is to save memory, but occlusion/culling is a much finer distinction and takes place on a more detailed level. However, there is a catch - as is described in Bohemia's Tech Paper (link from SMoss), since occluder components can be expensive to calculate as well (since there is a constant feedback loop between what you see and what is rendered). So you don't want occluders to be too small + many or it'll otherwise end up using more resources to calculate occlusion than rendering the actual objects would cost (performance wise). With a game like Dayz and thousands of occluded objects in dense areas this makes a lot of sense as a technology. I expect the technology will be very useful for cities, but small villages or standalone houses will not really be affected and need no occlusion meshes to encompass them. So if you have bad frames in empty areas now, you probably won't see a change there. In dense areas however, there should be a massive increase to framerate, which means more dynamic objects (vehicles, infected/animals, openable doors/windows) can be rendered without overtaxing the engine. This is going to take a while to balance, but the final result can only be an improvement.

This kind of Skilift is on the Taviana (mod) map aswell. It's a nice looking asset and gives you a reason to place some ski-huts and holiday villages on top of the (otherwise empty) mountains. At this point in the map development I don't see where they would fit in, though. Maybe some of the monotonous field/forrest areas in the far north could be remodeled for it. Not a bad idea, if you ask me, because the flat northern border lets us drive/run around the map far too easily and cross over to the western part of the map without a problem. No doubt some high mountains and natural obstacles would prevent this. I doubt they will be usable at all, but are probably just decoration and part of a new (but realstic) remodeling of the northern parts of the map. They're kind of a guide, like the traintracks and electricity lines. Even though it'd be fun to ride them, you'd have to be suicidal to get on a skilift, where you are a prime target for sniping without any chance to evade/exit. If they wanted to make them usable, they would use gondolas/cabins with the opportunity for cover. It wouldn't look bad or be difficult to add snow to these mountain areas, both as ground texture (layers) or as particle effects (snow instead of rain). It just adds to the variety and you'd need warmer clothes up there. Which is something I like, because there are not enough unique+challenging places on the map and those that are (Prison Island, Skalisky Island, Rify) are not interesting or rewarding enough to visit. A fairground would be nice, too. >>EDIT<< I just read that the location for this is at Tulga. Which means no snow and not the northern area. I actually like Tulga, because most people don't make the effort to go up there and it's one of the more quiet places to meet.

I just talked to my friend today (when we played a brief two hour round), about how I joined when vehicles were announced. Little did I know that meant only trucks and that since then only a few more cars would be added. A lot of things that bug me about Dayz have to do with presentation and announcements. They make great looking and great sounding presentation, but when they don't amount to anything in the actual game that effort is misleading gamers and distracting developers. Their task at the moment is to introduce new elements to the game, but like I said - bought the game at least a year ago when trucks were announced and they still don't drive well enough or have the kinks of the other vehicles ironed out. That's too slow and it is really hard defending against is when there are mods that run fine with 100 vehicles on the map. I'm always trying to look at the good pieces and hope there is a masterplan of how all the game economies will run faster and stop desyncing the player interaction in the beta builds. The devs must be confident this will happen, or else they would not say over and over, how the new renderer and technology changes will improve the performance. The problem is - we can't know about the results, unless we travel to the future, but unfortunately the future is something undecided and remote and things can go both ways with this game - good or bad. At the moment, they are just adding the planned features and hopefully these will work properly. I can imagine the devs aren't always happy with the results and progress themselves and in every game development a sort of fatigue sets in and you wonder, who you are doing this for. In the end it's us, who have to prove the game is worth playing. That's why I always advocate for people to try out other modes of play, instead of seeing it merely as a PvP Wonderland. The shooting isn't that great yet, desync can kill you as well as the guy you're aiming at, but there is still fun to be had with the game. After playing for two hours with the friend, who basically convinced me to buy the game (because: vehicles!), I realized that I'd bought it for the same reasons, but am sticking with it for the right ones.

Thanks for testing! I didn't get around to do it. Did you feel like the second batch cooked much faster? I thought I'd just imagined that when I cooked, but maybe they actually take boiling the water into account. When you wrote about it I remembered how fucking long I waited and that I had overcooked + cooked several pieces of fish on a stick in the meantime (I cooked with a tripod on a fire when I tried with the pot). I didn't know it's the same (access problem) with the cooking pot in old UI. I thought you could look into there, while it is on the flame, but apparently there's no difference to the new UI. The stick is more convenient to check, especially if you don't fish like a maniac or plan to feed the five-thousand. However, I do think it is impossible to overcook anything in the pot, as I never got it past that same stage of cooked that you showed. Was that rabbit leg from a trap? I guess so, since you wrote you're trapping, and I've only once actually seen a rabbit model that sprinted away (and made a high pitched sound). I'm hoping for a bit more wildlife. The foxes seem to be more common than rabbits, yet there should be more rabbits around, near where we have a fox encounter. I dislike that everything spawns in small groups and would like to see a little more of the prey and less of the predators, in the future!

Are you sure about that? I tried both (pot and stick about a week ago and didn't get sick from the one in the pot); there just had to be water in the pot, otherwise the fish is ruined. What I noticed though is that in the pot you only get 1 stage of cooking and it still looks fairly raw, as it is poached. Wheras on the stick you can overcook the fish/meat and get food poisoning when eating it at its last cooking stage. With new ui the cooking in pot is a pain in the ass though, because you can't look in the pot while it's on the fire. I always had to take it out and check the fish directly. A nice thing I found out is that you can rightclick the fish fillet and chose "inspect" to bring up the description and it will turn cooked in that big description window in realtime; it's easier to see the stages. Generally, as soon as there are ripples/cuts on the scale side of the fillet, it is cooked. I'm still wondering about the cooking pots myself a bit, but it seemed legit to me that they rather poach than burn the meat. I'm gonna try again today and see what happens. Maybe post some screenshots here later.

I'm always sceptical about more medical functionality too, because I don't want to micro-manage a lot of different items when I get shot and bleed. I think there is a variety of things that isn't useful at this point (the vials and antiseptic, for example - only useful if you accidentially stitch yourself up). I also remember my America's Army Noob sessions when I would rather kill than heal a guy on my team, by giving him the wrong treatment; that suff can become quite unnerving and the "training" is dull an easily forgotten. As for injuries showing on the character or even through his animation - I would like that a lot. I would like to see the functionality of some items improved, though. For example - the defibrillator. Wouldn't it be cool if you could actually revive a character, if you manage to use the defibrillator successfully within a short timeframe after his death? It should not always be successful either, but at the moment he defib is little more than a much larger epi-pen.

It was only a topic for that failed hotfix that basically made everything worse ^^ There was no real difference between it and the current stable, imho (except the stable works better). So perhaps there will be another hotfix soon, because we all know 0.59 needs it (cars you can't drive, magazines that disappear, stairs that kill you...) I expect we'll see at least two more hotfixes, before another experimental arrives. There are quite a few issues that have been adressed in the thread, and I wouldn't say adding the bike and enduro actually warrants a 0.60 update. I'd also appreciate it if weather was brought back and the animal population upscaled. I'm guessing in 0.60 we'll see updated renderer/particles, infected AI + custom infected, weather + health updates and possibly the first iteration of the new character controller (why is that taking so long, btw. Human IK is not that difficult to implement, unless they come out with a new UI aswell). So don't start saying your goodbyes to 0.59 too soon ;) I wouldn't expect the arrival of 0.60 anywhere before Mid/End-February and the team should concentrate on getting some of the serious problems with vehicles fixed, before taking giant leaps ahead. Sometimes I fear they'll just leave everything broken anyway, so they can meet their beta-release date. If so, it's probably not their fault, but a matter of having to deliver the product. The problem with that is: if the Beta is flawed they will achieve the opposite effect of not selling more copies. I hope they are aware of that and do the fixes, pronto.

I like the ideas about viewing the hands as separate, though this could become a bit cluncky in the interface and with hotkeys. I'm thinking about the following situations: - flashlight in the left, pistol in the right hand -> put together to stabilize your pistol hand and have a flashlight at the same time. - binoculars in the left, lowered rifle in the right hand -> spot deer or enemies and either pick up the gun two-handed or keep observing, while being able to move with both - gas lamp in the left hand, pistol in the right -> useful when you're securing buildings at night (I expect gamma can't be turned up any more, later in the development) - key in the right hand, pistol in the left -> unlock a base or a storage item without having to take down your guard completely - tent in the left, pistol in the right hand -> don't be completely defenseless when you carry one med-sized item (barrels would still require both hands) - Fishing rod in the right hand, net in the left hand -> pull your fish out of the water and catch it with the net, instead of pulling it right into your inventory I can see a hundred great uses for this idea. And I actually believe this would make a much better experience for a lot of things in the game. Stuns me I haven't thought about this ever, myself. You should go into game design, Espa! You think methodically and reflect on game mechanics and come up with meaningful ideas. Congratulations!

Heheh, well that's an art to fell a tree and have it land exactly on the car ^^. I bet if you're trying this in the middle of a dense patch of trees, they will fall all around the car ;)

Grenades are the only way to destroy a vehicle (or mines, but they don't spawn, I think). When it is destroyed, it will respawn. If it is upside down or on its side it will respawn in the same place after restarts (but on its wheels). I'm watching a car that has no fuel (I have another one) and it hasn't despawned in at least 4 days and nobody else found it. It has three wheels on it though (which I put there) and stuff in its inventory. It is well possible that they don't despawn when there is at least one working tire on them (which would also explain why they always spawn with a tire). Theories, nothing else. I wonder myself what counts as damage. It seems there isn't any damage to the body with this patch. What I can say is I've driven a car for over a week now and most of the time returned it to camp. I have ruined the lights, battery and sparkplug and went through at least ten tires on it and it still sticks around. But I was moving it every day. Wheels seem to be persistent, yes. I find it makes sense to remove them, so other items can (re)spawn in the vacant slot. However, only a certain quantity of tires can spawn in total, so removing a tire at a completely remote and random place is a dick-move, because people won't come looking for tires there. I usually remove them from sheds in cities and leave the other ones be, as the loot will rotate every couple of hours and even though items are persistent, they still switch places this way. I think 5 of each car spawn each time, not sure about the buses, but supposedly 8 V3S trucks spawn (5 two-seaters + 3 with truck bed for passengers). This might have changed with the last update, as I haven't seen any V3S trucks in the latest updates and either all the cars are taken or completely remote or fewer of them spawn now. The north rotation is really annoying, especially when you start setting up tents for your vehicle. I made sure to keep my tent empty, until the server restarted, in order to set it up facing the right direction again. If your car is stuck in a tree due to this, you can chop down the tree and free it, but it will probably be somewhat damaged and you could get injured or killed yourself. Keep a splint nearby and don't wear anything in your pants, as well as strong boots. (I only did this with a truck once and it slid down an entire mountain and stopped in a pond...)

Switching to -newui will save you so much trouble...add -newui to startup parameters in Dayz properties (rightclick Dayz in your game list). You should also be able to remove these with a wrench tool (no the lugwrench), if you chose to keep using the old User interface.

They wanted to tea-bag you, because it's the best way to avoid you choking on food. If you pass out or choke, they can always pull on the string. It's highly realistic. People don't tea-bag enough - many lives could have been saved by tea-bagging! I think National Police are required to carry tea-bags in their inventory at all times in Great Britain.

Dude, switch to New UI and you can scroll down in the inventory...

Another stupid bug. You can try removing the wheels, logging off and back on again (the wheels won't despawn). Often that helped for me. Usually it also helps, if another player is helping you as oddly, a car I couldn't get to move could be driven by a friend without problem. I think that problem is part of the temporal solution to stop them from sliding away after restarts, but it causes a likewise annoying problem of not being able to drive the car. With a vehicle that was stuck on a hill, none of the usual methods worked for me... A restart will usually fix this, but if the car was upside down before restarting, it may just be stuck after the server works again. Plus, we don't know when servers restart and 12 hour intervals are a long time to wait for. I hope tomorrow's maintenance will bring more fixes to vehicles, as the desync with vehicles close to each other is teleporting cars around and makes it impossible to drive near one another. It also makes it supereasy to find other vehicles, when you are driving in one. We need a function to flip them over, until the devs work out the mayor problems there are with cars.