Doomlord52

Yea, exactly. It's supposed to be in open testing, but it's not. The last update was almost a month ago. The game is still in testing phase, but only internally. As an external tester we/us/the community has nothing to test. We have a build that has mostly gone through QA (which is questionable at best), with no objectives as to what to test. Is there some bug that is exceedingly hard to find that we should be looking for? No - we have no idea because no one told us. We can't even DO basic testing. We have no low-level information that could be used for performance profiling. Even basic stuff like a frame-rate counter is missing. Can we report on strange areas of that map that have abnormally high DP, poly count, shadow count, etc? No, because we don't have the tools. Could we report on crashes in detail? No, because the current log system is atrocious. I would love to do real testing, as an alpha 'early access' test would imply, but I can't since there are literally no tools to test with. What's worse, is that if I try to use 3rd party tools to get the information needed to properly test the game, I'd likely get banned because it messes with the renderer and would look like a cheat. Like I said before, I know it's not a full release, but the dev team acts like it is. There's no debug tools, there's no render info tools, there's no real logging, there's no frequent builds, and the builds that we do get go through QA. All of these signs point towards a game that the devs think is no longer in testing, but is instead a full release. How am I supposed to test the game in "open testing" without any of the tools required to do so? Ignore the comments on QA, but that doesn't explain how basic stuff such as water-bottle fainting got through it. If there was no QA, that would make sense. But there is, and they (should) have access to the internal change log. That log probably shows that something related to the water bottle changed, and as such, it should be tested. Obviously, that wasn't the case. QA should test for bugs, and a bug got through. If I've somehow missed what's going on, please tell me. But what I've outlined is basically what every studio does during development. Change happens -> Change gets logged -> logged changes get tested by QA. Yes, I'm aware that SC2 had 16k builds, that is a ton, and I wouldn't really expect any game to get that high. And yes, DayZ has tons of internal builds, again that's expected. However, what's unexpected, and quite frankly strange, is that likely 99% of those builds never see the light of day. Every single project I've ever worked on has had daily, or worst case weekly builds internally. However, in the case of DayZ, the testing team is supposedly the community (according to the steam page, rocket, etc.). Unfortunately, this testing team is almost always limited to monthly builds with zero in the way of testing tools, objectives, etc. The only explanation for not releasing a build is basically that it's completely unplayable. I.e. it doesn't launch, or fails to connect 100% of the time. However, that obviously can't be the case all the time. I can believe it happening every now and then, but not for periods so long that no semi-stable build exists for over a month. If you're really worried about a thousand posts of "this game doesn't even run", add a nightly branch to the game, and change the splash screen text to say so. That way, only the people who are committed to testing will actually run it. They won't complain about random bugs, since they're expected, and if the build actually comes with anything in the way of tools, they might give some very useful information. As for the SC2 video, I could say that your statement is just as wrong. In the first clip, he simply says that "they started with the SC1 units": he never says that they started with only the SC1 terran units. He then goes on to say they began to add NEW units, which started with the Terran team. Again, no where does he say that ONLY terran existed at this point; only that terran were the first to get new units. In fact, by the 2nd build, you can see that there are newly done terran and zerg units (1:08). Remember, features are not things like units, features are game systems. Even in that first build, they had unit movement, building, resource gathering. It's possible that they also had combat, but it's hard to say, since it wasn't shown. The only mechanical systems that weren't in at this point were the Protoss energy grid and Zerg creep. When he goes on to say that they started working on Zerg/Protos, this likely only refers to implementing new models/icons/etc. not the team as a whole, as like I stated before, Zerg units are clearly visible much earlier (1:08 in the video). Without the actual builds to play with, or at least a much more detailed explanation as to what was in each one, it is hard to make solid claims on what is in or not. However, you are most certainly wrong about when Zerg/Protoss were implemented in an initial form, just based off the evidence in the same video. As for my opinions, well, ok. I'll get some links. As such, you'd expect only the smallest of bugs to get through to the final game (keyword: final game)Yes, final game. However, the way DayZ is being treated, it feels like the dayz team thinks its a final game, or close to it. Why QA things in an Alpha? Why do art passes? Why add non-gameplay critical elements such as 40 different shirts when basic elements are still missing? These aren't alpha-stage things, these are late-beta things. What doesn't make sense is how bugs like 'passing out after drinking from a water bottle' gets through QA (Opinion).Not really an opinion. It's a known bug that you pass out (or at least collapse) after drinking from what a water bottle. What's the point of QA'ing a product if stuff like that gets by? You might as well just push without it going through QA. That way players get more frequent builds, and the same bugs will likely be in there. Use the public as QA, since that's what they signed up for. DayZ Development progress makes no sense (Opinion). Well no, it doesn't. That's my whole argument. You don't QA an alpha. You don't art pass an alpha. You don't road marks from Q2, then continue to miss them throughout all of Q3. It should go Q2 -> Q3. Instead, it seems like Q2 stuff was missed ('advanced weather', world containers, fast-time servers) and was then pushed aside for Q3 stuff - which was also missed (multi-core, central loot, fixed zombies, advanced animals, barricades, basic vehicles, mod support, player stats, horticulture). Now were in Q4, and I honestly doubt we'll see those three Q2 features in by the end of the year. Everything is behind schedule, and there's been no update to the road map to represent this. If you want things to make sense to me, and probably most of the community, we need transparency. Why did those three Q2 features slip? What's the status on them? We got a vague mention to horticulture 2 weeks ago, and that's about it. Maybe update the roadmap on Steam, or really anywhere, that outlines what we'll have and when we'll have it. Firstly, this isn't a "this game is buggy" post. This is the exact opposite of this: it's a look at how the devs are handling the game, and how their actions don't fit that of a game that IS in alpha (Opinion)Ok, the first bit where I can agree it's an opinion, but one with valid backup. Since you didn't 'opinion' flag the definitions of alpha/beta, I'm going to assume that we both agree on what those are. So, if the game is in Alpha as you, the steam page, and basically everyone claims, I have a few questions. Firstly, why are art-passes, such as re-textures, new barrels, new hangers, etc. all happening in Alpha? Alpha is, as per the definition which you seem to have agreed with, mostly used for grey boxing. However, beta is for art passes: that's conflict #1. Next we have the whole thing of 'feature freeze' and 'optimization'. Feature freeze occurs first, since if you optimize and then add features, you'll almost always break features. But again, we're getting things like code optimization, animation optimization and stuff, all while in alpha. Conflict #2. Why do we have so many weapons? Are they all really so unique that each one has a totally different game system that must be tested? Why are new pants/jackets/etc. always being added? Do those also contain new mechanical features that we haven't been able to test? Again, the answer is no. Conflict #3. I could go on, but there's really no point. Things are happening in Alpha that should happen in beta, and things that should happen in Alpha haven't happened yet. The later is fine, but it's somewhat annoying when it appears as if it's being delayed by the former. Look at the new Unreal Tournament pre-alpha. I can download and play it right now, and almost all of its weapons/hud are right from UT3. The maps are grey boxes. Meanwhile in dayZ we have these nicely polished assets with bug-tested and optimized code. This isn't an alpha. So, we now understand what alpha and beta phases are - so, which is DayZ? Well, it's an akward limbo between the two(Opinion)This is basically the same as above. Actions which should only occur in Beta are happening in Alpha. Things that should be happening in Alpha have been pushed out to at least next year. An alpha, by nature, SHOULD be full of bugs, since fixing them isn't the top priority. Beta is when you remove bugs and increase usability. "Bow animation polishing" - I don't even need to comment on this(Opinion).Again, same thing. Anything along the lines of 'polishing' should be in beta, if not late beta - not alpha. And yes, alphas have bugs. That's not really an opinion. Lastly, I want to bring up something that everyone has been asking for for a long time: vehicles. The approach taken on this also makes very little senseThis isn't how you would do an alpha feature implementation(Opinion) Well, it doesn't. Here's a nice post from someone who worked on Crysis 3, and it shows how they developed their game. As you can see, the level starts off as a mostly grey box with extremely low quality art. Then once they were happy with it from a mechanical standpoint, the art was tuned. Here's a thing on the new Unreal Tournament, which also shows dev progress (they post tons of stuff, it's great). In UT, you can hear him talking about how everything (elevator move speed, item placement, etc.) is all super temporary, and that's he's still messing around with it. But regardless of it being incredibly unfinished, I can still go out and download the current project - which is often updated several times a week. But instead, if we look at the latest dayz change log, all we get is that vehicles are in early prototyping. That's good, but what does it mean? Can we see any of the car models placed around? Are any of the parts pickable yet, even if they are trash? No, none of that is available, because as Rocket said, the dayz team is going to 'one-shot' it, and put every single mechanism in at once. The road-map agrees with this, as it says that initial, "simple vehicles" would be in by Q3 and more complex vehicles with upgrades would be out in Q4. Neither of that has happened, and the differentiation of the repair system, part-swapping and the vehicle system is never made. No where does it say "at first vehicles will be super basic, with no repair system", it's just "at first we will have bikes/card". Like I showed above, that's not how anyone does it. You would release basic vehicles as static art first, then as drivable, then maybe as repairable/refuel-able and then finally as upgradable. From a logical standpoint, the first feature which is required for testing is vehicles(Opinion).I don't see how this is an opinion. For any of the vehicle sub-systems to work (repair, refuel, part swap), vehicles need to exist first. I can't test the repair system without a vehicle to repair. However, this isn't how the devs are handling this(Opinion).Two quotes above show that this is exactly how it's being handled. Vehicles will be added in basically one big 'patch', which adds all the features. There's no breakdown of sub features which will be released one at a time. It's either nothing or everything (and then more vehicles). They instead want to one-shot the ENTIRE vehicle system, with repairing, fueling, combining parts, etc. This is NOT how you do an alpha(Opinion).Again, not an opinion. Quotes show vehicles will be done all at once, and the stuff from Unreal/Crytek shows how that's not how you do an alpha. You would first add grey-box vehicles, then basic-functioning ones, and then ones with proper sub-systems. I can get even more documents showing that you never do development all in one go, and that it's broken down into sub-systems, but I really hope that's not necessary. So where does this leave us? Well, it leaves us in a situation where there's realistically very little hope of the game being even feature complete any time soon(Opinion).Road map said Q3 for vehicles. It's Q4 and we don't even have Q2 features. If we're lucky, we'll hit that point at the end of 2015(Opinion),Currently, the road map has been wrong by about 100%. Features that were supposed to be in by Q2 are (at best) going to be in by Q4. That means 6 months = 12 months. Most of the Q3 features aren't in yet, and likely won't be in during Q4. Extrapolate that and you end up with end of 2015 for the completion of 'Q4' vehicles. Will that be 100% accurate? I don't know, I don't have a time machine. But unless you feel like making a 100%, unbreakable, set-in-stone promise (with some sort of consequence) that vehicles will be 100% complete BEFORE the end of 2015, it's not really a false claim. meaning that it'll have taken over two years to get out of alpha. However, this shouldn't be the case(Opinion)I very much doubt that alpha began the very day that DayZ was put on steam. The first version was released on December 16th, 2013, and that was version 0.28.113734. The current version, 0.48.124737 was released on Aug 8, 2014. That gives us a 235 day time span in which the game incremented by about 0.2 in terms of versioning. Now, that transition isn't linear, obviously, but it's a good scale to use. Remember that a long time ago, rocket said that the alpha would be released in December 2012. For that claim to make any sense, development had to have started by then. So that gives us a year and 3 months to work with. Interestingly enough, if we use that 235 days = 0.2 version increment, and scale it back by the entire 0.28 version history, that gives us about 329 days. Subtract 329 days from the actual December 16 release date, and you get January 21, 2013. Not too far off from the initial estimate release date. So basically, we have two separate confirmations that development must have started in 2012, exactly when is unknown, but 2012 is pretty much assured. That means that by the initial release, dayz had been in Alpha for pretty much a year. By the end of this year, it will have been two years. And, again, unless you want to make a statement that guarantees the community fully, complete vehicles by the end of 2015, that means we'll still be in Alpha at year 3 (two years of public release). Why should this not be the case? Well, the main factor is that games, even games as big as DayZ, don't take 3 years to get out of Alpha. World of Warcraft, which even at release, was a bigger game than DayZ, took 4-5 years to go from concept to release. Minecraft, which is the same in many respects, started in May 2009, and was released as 'official' in Novemeber 2011 - that's 2.5 years. In addition, pretty much every commercial game takes about 3 years to make. So yea, taking 2+ years to get out of alpha shouldn't happen. Adding new features, such as vehicles, should not take all that long to implement.See above. It's almost certain that any other major dev studio would have an internal beta by now, assuming development started in late 2012. As it stands, the current Steam page is a lieWARNING: THIS GAME IS EARLY ACCESS ALPHA. Well, it's not. I've covered why. PLEASE DO NOT PURCHASE IT UNLESS YOU WANT TO ACTIVELY SUPPORT DEVELOPMENT. Well, i'd love to. Too bad I have no tools to do any supporting. Again, covered above. PREPARED TO HANDLE WITH SERIOUS ISSUES. There aren't any, since builds are so sporadic, and since it goes through QA. It states that DayZ is "in alpha" and that you shouldn't buy "unless you want to actively support the development of the game". Neither of these statements are trueIt's not in alpha, I've covered that. And I'd love to actively support the development, but I can't because everything is QA'd, everything is locked down, there's no debug tools and logging is non-existant. As shown above, the devs (somehow) belive that DayZ is in BETA, and they do NOT want people actively supporting the devlopment of the game, short of giving them money(Opinion) Prove me wrong. Art passes and polish are for beta, you yourself agreed to that definition. And like I said, I'd love to support development with more than just money, but since there's literally no tools, and 3rd part tools would get you banned, I literally can't help you. Just give me something half as good as RenderDoc and I can give way more detail as to why the game runs horribly at random times. Give me wire-frame and comment on models. Give me network logs, and network people (not me) can comment on that. Give me access to lower level game settings, and I can tweak them to make the game run better. Literally anything would be better than what we have now. If the statements were true, we would have far fewer guns/shirts/hats and the initial stages of the vehicles available for play(Opinion).Yes, because grey-boxing is what happens in Alpha, as does system development, and not art passes. Hope that covers everything. If you really want links... sure.

This thread is still going? Impressive. No, we are completely justified in complaining about bugs. QA exists purely to stop bugs from getting into the public version of the game. In any AAA, or really any mid-sized studio, they'll test out the game on a bunch of hardware/software setups, with a bunch of different in-game settings. As such, you'd expect only the smallest of bugs to get through to the final game. Again, calling back to the Company of Heroes 2 bugs I found with a friend, those bugs were so insanely obscure and hard to reproduce (yet still game-breaking if done), that it took nearly an hour specifically trying to replicate it once. That kind of bug I can accept getting past QA, since it requires testing way outside of what anyone would do in-game (a normal game lasts ~20 min). What doesn't make sense is how bugs like 'passing out after drinking from a water bottle' gets through QA. This is something that everyone does in-game, and requires zero setup: just get a water bottle, and drink it. Or, if you paint the fairly new AK-folding buttstock, it causes it to disappear. This list goes on. These are all very easy to reproduce, and all of them should have been caught by QA. However, they weren't. By definition, QA is supposed to stop bugs from getting out, and in this case they didn't - which means they failed. If, however, that QA team didn't exist, it would mean two things. 1, more frequent patches as they wouldn't need to go through QA, and 2, a legitimate reason to not complain about bugs. Just take Firefox for example: there's the regular build and a nightly build (as well as few others). If I find a bug in the regular edition, it's incredibly annoying and Mozilla failed to deliver a decent product. If I find a bug in Nightly, well, that's the point of Nightly. If DayZ wants to put out a nightly build beside the current build (some kind of extra-experamental build) then yea, I'll hop on that asap and never complain about bugs again (or, at lest until mid/late beta). I'd have to disagree there. The StarCraft video showed a much better development process. The difference here is that StarCraft 2 never had a paid/open Alpha. While the Alpha existed, it was only for a very select few (high-level professionals, etc.). DayZ on the other hand has a paid/open Alpha which is pretty much all anyone has to go on, and is, as such, the only thing we can compare to. Firstly, look at the number of builds. In one year, SC2 had about 1300 different builds available - at a constant rate, that's about 975 in 9 months. DayZ has had 17. And, to avoid the whole "but DayZ is actually open", just look at Planetary Annihilation, which had 20 different builds in the span of 6 weeks during its initial alpha. Then we had the way they implemented things. The first thing Blizzard did was add the SC1 stuff as a starting point. DayZ kind of did this, but ignored things like ARMA2/3s gigantic weapon list, vehicles, and so on. Then they went on to add other major features, like cliffs and lighting (since it was a new engine). Right now, we haven't even reached a build comparable to the 2nd clip in that SC2 video. DayZ SA still doesn't equal the mod in terms of features, while the SC2 build had all the features of SC1 implemented (although much more rough). And then yes, the last thing they did was tons of optimizing at the end. As far as I'm aware, this is how every studio does things. As for the call-back to my OP, I would like to hear what misinformation I posted, or what opinions I presented as facts. Everything I posted was based upon the current public version of DayZ, as well as my experience with game development.

Yes, the hidden cameras are to your left. No, It's pretty dead, though. I mean, bug #363, from last year, which is incredibly basic (pressing hotkeys doesn't always work) is STILL listed as new. The devs haven't even acknowledged it: If it's not a bug, then close it, if it is assign it. It's not rocket science, it's using the tools you want the community to use. Do I expect every single report to be acknowledged? No. But the #3 most voted for bug report from last year? Yea, probably. There aren't even the full patch notes under the change log section. It shows two 0.27 builds and one 0.44 build. Yea, I know. This is my point, the name alpha contradicts the actions of the devs. This is literally my ENTIRE point. We don't get to Alpha test it because we don't have nightly/weekly builds and it goes through QA anyway - hence, it can't be a public alpha. However, its full of bugs, and it seems like the DayZ community LOVES to dismiss these bugs by saying "ITS ALPHA". These two contradict eachother. If we had an actual alpha to play with, then saying "it's alpha" would actually make sense. However, we don't, so it's not.

"If it's not going to be fun - you don't release it". That's not what an Alpha is. An Alpha you release whatever build you're working on. It might be crazy buggy, it might break random things, it might not even work on half the systems out there because of some random hardware conflict. If your main concern is releasing a "fun and working" game to the public, then you're not releasing an alpha product. You're releasing some sort of quasi-under-development game. If that's the case, then everyone needs to stop calling it an 'alpha' and saying 'bugs are there because it's an alpha'. It's not: it's a commercial game that goes past QA - any bugs that get past are because QA didn't do their job. Early access alpha and alpha are supposed to be the same thing. Both are alphas, except in one case you pay to test the game, and as a result, get to keep said game after release. edit: Found the bug-tracker. It's horrendously out of date. Really? A public bug tracker is too much to ask? Here's Arcen Game's bug tracker. It's updated daily. Here's the Planetary Annihilation 'task list', which is also updated frequently. And hey, here's the ARMA 3 bug tracker. Asking for a public, live bug tracker isn't that much to ask. It's actually pretty common with developers who want to keep the community in the loop, and also want to give fast and accurate feedback as to what they're doing with the complaints/suggestions/bug reports from the community. Really, all I'm asking for is that the DayZ dev team be as transparent as other dev teams. That's not too much to ask. Well, you should released un-QA'd updates in an Alpha. If it were a true alpha, there wouldn't have been 2.5m sales so far, and the development would have been a LOT faster, since QA wouldn't be a thing. It would also justify the communities rampant "IT'S ALPHA DON'T COMPLAIN" replies to people saying its buggy. The community essentially has two choices, it's either a true alpha (which it's not, since it's not nightly/weekly, and it's QA'd) or it's a fully-fledged product which goes through QA - in which case the whole "IT'S ALPHA" thing doesn't hold any water. It would also mean that literally everyone (devs included) need to stop calling the thing alpha. It's not. I'm also not asking to participate in the design process. It's their game and their vision - I'm just a customer. But to participate properly, I need the proper tools. There's no console to check logs in-game, so we can't report that way. There's very little in terms of game-feedback, like a poly-count display, light count, shadow count, etc. There's nothing to show the breakdown of a frame so we can say "hey, electro spends way too much time on lighting", or "why does looking at this wall still cost 2,6000 draw calls". The tools to do so exist (RenderDoc, for example), but because it's a commercial product, and NOT an alpha, it's got anti-cheat, which means you'd probably get banned for it (since RenderDoc works by injecting itself into DirectX). It's not that hard. We're still missing features that were supposed to be in for Q2, and we're instead getting stuff like re-textures and bugfixes.

If it was actually an alpha, the ONLY option available would be nightly. Also Bk is great.

That's the problem. DayZ is an 'early access' psedu-alpha game. It's not really an alpha game, and not a single player is really involved in any way with the alpha. So why is it called an alpha, and why do all the devs continue to call it as such? The last alpha I was involved with (where I wasn't part of the dev team) was for Company of Heroes 2, and that alpha was a true alpha. Firstly, the first batch of alpha players were only the extremely elite, who had worked with Relic on CoH1, or had a relationship with them. Basically, they were very trusted individuals. By some luck, I was allowed into the alpha a bit after that, and the alpha was... sketchy. The UI was pretty horrible, the game ran extremely poorly (no optimization at all), the game had bugs, placeholder text, etc. even the game window would show something like "Company of Heroes 2 - Build #XYZ". You were literally playing what Relic had to play. Now look at DayZ, especially with their Steam-page info. "DayZ Early Access is your chance to experience DayZ as it evolves through its development process." Well, that's not true, we get 'patches' after they've gone through QA and all sorts of testing, and only once it's a complete feature. This isn't a development process, this is a commercial game being released to the public. "We strongly advice you do not buy and play the game at this stage unless you clearly understand what Early ACcess means and are interested in participating in the ongoing development cycle". Well yes, I do know what 'Alpha' means, and I would really like to participate in the development cycle. However, giving me QA'd stuff and art passes isn't letting me participate in the development cycle. Once we've been given an update/release, it's pretty much set in stone, and we get to play it AFTER it's done the development cycle. Has anyone seen the full feature list of weapons? What about player gear? What about the near-future development goals? No; no one has, because we're not participating in the development cycle. We're not even 'testing' the game, since bugs that have been reported for nine months (soda can sound, etc.) still haven't been fixed. The point is, an alpha isn't supposed to be fun or even that interesting (gameplay wise) - it's supposed to be barely functional. When I first saw the page, and the giant disclaimer, I thought that we'd finally get a truly open alpha. However, obviously, that's not the case.

Oh no, I just realized I typed beta there. You're right, it should be done in alpha. That was my mistake, and it's fixed in OP. What should the artists be doing in the mean-time? Well, there's still tons of art-related stuff to do. Even without the programming behind the vehicles done, the assets needed for that entire system could be made. The mod had 27 vehicles in it, and of course, those all could have variants. Then, as rocket said in an interview a while ago, parts from vehicles need to work on other vehicles as well (to some degree): this would mean stand-alone type parts, such as doors, windshields, etc. Those by themselves could already be in the game as static geometry, with no need for scripting. Other parts which would need to be added to the loot system could also be made: things like the alternator or spark plugs (again, quoting rocket) could be modeled, set to pick-able, created with flavor text, inventory icons, etc. They could even be added to the game as 'junk' pickups, since they would have no use until drivable vehicles were added. Depending on the detail that was being targeted, the vehicles might also need several different states, such as ones with the front-end severely damaged (beyond just a blend-layer over the normal texture....), that would require a different set of models as well. Other than vehicles, you have the base-building type of things. Storage crates, mobile fuel tanks, maybe some kind of BBQ for cooking meat, large tents, sandbags, barricades, etc. also all need to be made. The existing models could be used for this, but personally, I think they would be far too 'military' to suit the survival aspect the game is trying to go for. However, one could argue that new 'civilian' versions of existing props should be done in beta, since it's an art pass. In that case, inventory UI icons are still needed (but that wouldn't take long). Of course, eventually the game may hit a point where the programming back-log is simply too great, and the artists need to be moved into a more 'beta-oriented' production schedule. This is likely. since DayZ does borrow heavily from ARMA2 in many areas in terms of art, but few in terms of gameplay and mechanics. At this point, even something as simple as a statement saying "the art department has begun an art cleanup while the programmers work on new systems" would be extremely beneficial for the community, not only from the standpoint of knowing where the dev team is at in terms of progress, but also because it would signify impending improvements. Such an art cleanup would be greatly beneficial, since many of the assets from ARMA 2 (and even ARMA3, but that's not important) aren't exactly what I would call excellent. Reduced polycount is always a benefit, and replacing objects with more instance-friendly ones would also be great in terms of performance. That's just off the top of my head, and with the information that's been published. Im sure that within BI's DayZ team there is a much better list of things the art team could do, that will be needed in the near future. /edit To alleviate this problem entirely, where part of the community thinks that progress is too slow/random/illogical/etc. you could always make the internal change log (i.e. the day-to-day stuff) public (except for security/anti-cheat). That way people like me would know that "hey, the code for vehicle wheel movement is finally in" or "that missing collider has been fixed".

2 years professional work, 7 years doing 'mod' work. It's not top-tier "I have my own company and make $200,000 a year" stuff, but I've done enough to know what its like to develop systems, create assets, etc. And also, it is a lot like making a wall of lego bricks, if you're doing it right. Code should be modular, assets should be pretty much interchangable (rigging, scale, etc.). When I do work in CryEngine, I can literally exchange one building (for example) for another (with colliders, lighting, textures, impact sounds, etc.) simply by replacing the mesh WHILE the editor is running. Since the mesh contains the material assignments, it'll pull them from the material/texture library. The materials are pre-set to play the correct impact sounds, lighting will update, and colliders will be set (in CE via materials). You're right about the model re-texture, though. But in this case, it's not from place-holder to final. It's from a texture that looks good to another texture. There's no need - it's not polish or anything, it's just a re-do. The same can be said about the new 55-gallon barrel - why is it needed? The current one is fine. Instead, car parts could be modeled/textured/scripted and added to the spawn system. Right now they would have no purpose, but it would show that vehicles are coming soon, and it would show that the team as a whole is actually focusing on that. I would (as would others) that development has been very slow. The game now is still very, very similar to the one launched back in december, and it's still not even close to what the mod offers, even disregarding the whole vehicles thing. This is what you're supposed to do in a community alpha, and what (as a developer) you want the knowledgable people in the community to do. For example, in Company of Heroes 2, a friend and myself found a rather serious exploit regarding unit veterancy. Instead of just bug reporting it, we wrote a large post covering how it happens, what it affects, and (from what we could tell) exactly why the bug was occuring from a script perspective (in that case, veterancy was being assigned to the wrong entity). We also found another bug regarding the reward of exp from unit kills, where it was simply going to the last unit to do damage, rather than the actual 'killer'. As a result, troop losses to cold (a feature in CoH2) were being attributed to enemy action. Again, we bug reported it in detail, and showed exactly why it was happening. In both cases, the bugs were incredibly obscure, and were really only a rumor up to that point - it was obvious that the developers had no idea they even existed. The developers thanked us, and both bugs were quickly fixed since they didn't need to do any serious investigation. So yes, that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'll look into their render path, see what I can see, and report what I find. Maybe they already know everything there possibly is to know - in that case, I got to do something I enjoy doing: nobody loses anything. But maybe I (or someone else) finds something that slipped by the developers, and the findings actually end up helping the game become better. Is that so bad? No - it's not: everyone wants a better game.

It is important to distinguish between 'stuff' and system features. A new barrel (or AK skin, or jacket #342) is not a feature, it is a new art asset. Art passes are for betas. Vehicles (and the associated mechanics) are a new feature, these get added during alpha.

Wow, the response to this has been quite... interesting. I thank those who welcome the discussion, and actually posted real feed-back. The people with the 'other' comments: yea, thanks. So, let me get a few things out of the way: People seem to dislike the wiki-quotes. That's fine, and yes, it's not an academic source. However, the definition of alpha/beta/rc/release is pretty much set in stone, since it's been just about the same throughout all of software development. If you disagree with the definitions I posted, you're welcome to look them up yourselves from whichever reputable source you choose; however, I am certain that they will all say effectively the same thing. In Alpha you add features, in beta you are feature-complete and begin to debug/optimize/etc. I will likely do this when the new renderer comes out. I spent the last ~2 years doing some small game-dev work, mostly related to final render path, so I've got a few useful tools I can put to use. For example, RenderDoc is a great tool for tearing into the draw calls and buffer passes used to create a frame. Hopefully, the new DX10/11 engine is better than ARMA3's, which uses about 7 depth passes, spaced between 4 color passes (why would you do this?). SImply combining the depth passes into one, after an initial color pass, and then using that depth-pass info in a second color pass (for things like SSAO) would cut down on draw time by a massive amount (it would likely double or tripple FPS in gpu-bound situations). Interesting. Care to elaborate on why you don't agree with my statement? I don't even mention beta, or moving to beta, in my bit about vehicles. I simply stated that releaseing vehicles in essentially a 'feature complete' stage all in one go is not how one should approach a public alpha. Of course, adding features post-release is a normal thing to do. Often, the community will suggest things the developers never even thought of. However, during the initial release, the developers should set out a 'minimum viable product' goal, which contains all of the major mechanics and systems they wish to have for "1.0" release. This is an interesting approach, but is is valid. However, your last sentence brings up essentially what I was talking about in my OP: this isn't a true beta. Worries about a 'loot economy' are not worries which should be looked at during alpha. The mechanics behind it are, such as limiting the number of specific items across the entire hive, but tuning this to the point where food and ammo being too comon, vs. other things being not common enough (on a per-server basis) is a purely beta-related topic. I agree, that if the devs wish to implement vehicle parts before the actual vehicles, a system for cross-hive spawning should be in place first. However, this system is fairly unrelated to loot spawning density on individual servers. I agree: DayZ is NOT feature complete, and is in Alpha. However, spending development time on 'beta' features such as new 55-gallon drums and re-texturing the AK101 indicates a split in the development team. Changes such as those should all be happening in beta - not alpha. This exactly. It's good to hear another game dev agree with me on this. I hope that clears some stuff up.

Edit: As some of you pointed out, I accidentally said vehicle prototyping should be done in beta. I meant to say Alpha. This was my mistake, and it has been corrected. Sorry for the confusion this caused. DayZ Development progress makes no sense Firstly, this isn't a "this game is buggy" post. This is the exact opposite of this: it's a look at how the devs are handling the game, and how their actions don't fit that of a game that IS in alpha. It's also a look at how the game has been progressing, and how they will likely continue in the future. Firstly, let's quickly look at what an "alpha" is. From the so-often cited wiki page, "The alpha phase of the release life cycle is the first phase to begin software testing". What this means, is that your product is at the point where it's playable (ignoring crashes, bugs, etc.), and you want to start getting feedback on mechanics: "Does movement feel good", "does combat feel right", etc. It's also the point at which you expand on mechanics to some degree. If your game starts Alpha with only a semi-auto rifle, you might want to add in variations like an automatic rifle or a pistol. Similarily, you might want to add in new mechanics, like vehicles, or base building - basically things which aren't just expansions of already existing gameplay mechanics - things which need to be made for the ground-up. Secondly, let's also quickly look at what a "beta" is. Again, from the same wiki page: "Beta is the software development phase following alpha. It generally begins when the software is feature complete". Basically, once your game works from a feature standpoint (i.e. I have my SMG, rifle and pistol mechanics and my movement mechanics, etc.), you polish them. This ranges from improving art, to refining balance, and increasing variation (i.e. low RoF, high damage SMG, high RoF, low damage SMG) and of course polishing them from a technical standpoint (performance, code cleanliness, etc.). So, we now understand what alpha and beta phases are - so, which is DayZ? Well, it's an akward limbo between the two, where it seems like one group belives it's a beta, and the other belives it's an Alpha. Why? Well, look at the patch notes as well as the existing stuff that has been added since the December release. Let's start with today's status report, which basically demonstrates my main argument: that the dev team has no idea if this is alpha or beta. The first topic is loot distribution and adding "more granular control over the quantity of each type of item that spawns". This isn't a feature, this is feature refinement - balance adjustment. Fine tuning the amount and types of loot that drop isn't a new feature, it's a variation of an existing feature, and a minor one at that. This is something that should be happening in beta - not alpha. Further down we have "The Rossi R92 is finished being animated. We're just waiting for sounds and then it'll be good to go. The animators also began work on the M133 earlier this week so it won't be too far behind the repeater.". Again, why? This is a new weapon - a variation on a system which already works. DayZ has weapons, the weapons work as weapons. Hence, that feature is from an alpha standpoint, complete. While an argument could be made for the weapon feature to be truely complete it needs to have a larger variation of weapons, this simply isn't supported by the dev actions. These weapons are being rigged, textured, and in the case of the AK101, re-textured. None of this has any place in an alpha - this is all stuff which should be happening in early beta. If it were truely an Alpha, weapons would only exist for the sake of feature testing - not art. As a result, they would likely be borowed from other BI Games (i.e. ARMA2&3). Scrolling down further on the status report, we are just left with item after item of what would be beta-status changes: New 55-gallon drum art, New zombie skins, AK101 retexture. Of all these art changes, the only ones which make any sense are the addition of the smoke grenades (new mechanic - smoke nades) and waterproof bags. Every single other art change is something which should be occuring in beta. The animation changes are also what should be done in beta: "BugFixing" - this is a purely Beta+ feature. An alpha, by nature, SHOULD be full of bugs, since fixing them isn't the top priority. Beta is when you remove bugs and increase usability. "Bow animation polishing" - I don't even need to comment on this. Scripting is the one area which gets some actual credit: Vehicle classification prototypingVehicle component prototypingThis is what SHOULD be done during a alpha (this used to say beta, I typed wrong - SORRY). Prototyping and addition of new features. However, our good friend "bug fixing" is still there. It's also there in programming, which has another DayZ-"alpha" feature, 'Code cleaning and optimizations' - something which, again, should only be done once the game is feature complete. Lastly, I want to bring up something that everyone has been asking for for a long time: vehicles. The approach taken on this also makes very little sense. From what we've heard from people like Dean, the idea is to implement vehicles, vehicle repair and vehicle 'combining' (red door from one car onto other blue car). This isn't how you would do an alpha feature implementation. From a logical standpoint, the first feature which is required for testing is vehicles. As such, what you would implement is vehicles which spawn. In a true alpha, these vehicles would be pretty basic in terms of gameplay. Initially they would be invincible with infinite fuel, but once features such as fuel and damage were implemented, they would take on those characteristics. As mehcanics such as using parts to repair were added, the vehicle mechanic as a whole would advance, until it is feature complete. However, this isn't how the devs are handling this. They instead want to one-shot the ENTIRE vehicle system, with repairing, fueling, combining parts, etc. This is NOT how you do an alpha. So where does this leave us? Well, it leaves us in a situation where there's realistically very little hope of the game being even feature complete any time soon. If we're lucky, we'll hit that point at the end of 2015, meaning that it'll have taken over two years to get out of alpha. However, this shouldn't be the case. DayZ is built upon an already existing framework. Adding new features, such as vehicles, should not take all that long to implement. As it stands, the current Steam page is a lie: It states that DayZ is "in alpha" and that you shouldn't buy "unless you want to actively support the development of the game". Neither of these statements are true. As shown above, the devs (somehow) belive that DayZ is in BETA, and they do NOT want people actively supporting the devlopment of the game, short of giving them money. If the statements were true, we would have far fewer guns/shirts/hats and the initial stages of the vehicles available for play. Basically, I don't want my money back: I want to know what the ~$75 million in sales has gone, because it sure hasn't gone into making an 'open' and 'community supported' development cycle.

As FreeThink said, I also stupidly went to the east coast for fun again. Guess what: move speed hackers, flying hackers, insta-kill hackers, etc. Lot's of fun. Was in Berezino with a friend, on top of a building. I see a guy floating in the air moving incredibly quickly. He covers about 800m in a few seconds. He then turns around and starts shooting at me with a mosin. He then hack-moves (it was like he was teleporting 10-20m at a time) back to the building we were in, and we stop seeing him. A while later, a guy climbs up the building we were in and says "how's it going up there, you two". It's impossible he knows there's two of us up there, so we're a bit suspicious. He talks some more, and then goes away. A while later, a guy starts floating in the air (at least 50m) and hits my friend with one shotgun blast, breaking his arms and legs, and ruining most of his gear. Shortly after this I see a guy climbing the lader, so I shoot him a few times. Shortly after that, there are shotgun blasts coming through the floor directly to where we are. These don't do damage, obviously; but it's really annoying. Then I suddenly die to a shotgun blast, as does my friend. Needless to say, hackers have ruined the game - again. The only effective anti-cheat is basically active mods on at all time, and that's not going to happen. DayZ devs need to really step up their game - these types of hacks have been around since the mod, Move speed and telepor aren't even hard to detect.

Are we playing the same game? The ARMA (VR) engine is horrifically optimized - it's so single-thread heavy that it's not even funny, and the render pipeline is almost as bad. The only reason it runs on PC is because we can throw a TON of hardware at it and hope for the best. My laptop (i7-740qm, 8gb ram, GTX 460) had serious trouble getting 30fps at 720p on low, with the view distance set to 500-600; and that thing has turbo stuck on, so the CPU is running at 2.8ghz the whole time (with an OC'd GPU). Right now, it's much more important for the devs to get the game feature complete (and bug free) than essentially rebuilding the entire engine to get it to run on what is essentially a laptop. Is it POSSIBLE? Yes. Absolutely; but it would take a lot of effort and time.

So I think it's fairly obvious that they missed the release date.... any new ETA?

So when exactly is this patch going to be released? Or has it already been released? (Some of you are talking like it has been - but I don't see any news/updates).