decoman

@ Fraggle It is fairly obvious that you inferred your own meaning to my use of "fair", though you omitted to state any particular problem with anything to do with something being "fair". None of my ideas has anything to do with a fair fight in the sense of holding peoples hands, but has to do with the *conditions* in a fight that is specifically aimed at interesting gameplay and not really providing "roles" for others to follow as I suspect you interpreted my idea as being. This sort of allowed me to point out an example about a context where a suspect attitude against things fair or fairness could quite possibly imply a free reign of hacking or use of scripts, because a general sentiment *against* fairness might as well include any and all all options a player might want to field in a game. Since scripting and hacking probably isn't acceptable as metagaming by most people including you, I still find such a problem relevant now that I am writing about it here, because, if someone exploits a game, then some regular gamers is probably tempted for arguing to be "allowed" to do the same for making things more "fair". To elaborate on what I just wrote, ruling out hacking as a tool for the player on grounds of it not being fair, there are two implications in the sense of fairness. One being that about special privileges (hacking/scripting), the other an idea of being equally invested into the functioning of the game, two wildly different things, but also being somewhat similar as a sentimental concept. Imposed speed limits on a road might be a similar example, people who want to drive fast for some reason can go drive on the highway, the rules would still be the same for everyone. Obviously, using a speed limit analogy doesn't really translate to this game, but goes to show that "fair" conditions can be understood as a wide ranging concept, that has nothing to do with traditionally sentimental ideas with regard to roles. I recall having read lots of suggestions on the internet for games where people talk about "roles" and "fairness" being stuck with notions of what they already like and are used to, but I simply wanted to point out possibilities with imposed limitations that still made for interesting gameplay without forcing people to play in a certain way just because I had some ideas. Edit: Hm, I think I have been a little dishonest here in alluding to never having had any particular motivation for my idea, because I did want to avoid having survivors simply going around killing other survivors. :)

4. Implementing scope glint off sniper scopes when faced against the sun, perhaps with exception of when lying in shadowed area. I have no idea how realistic this is. I wouldn't want to see anything similar to that used in Battlefield 3. :D

I suppose it would be overly cpu intensive, but perhaps there could be some kind of heh algorithm for animating zombies in a crowd, just like in the movies, they would be slow, but would bite and maybe try to tear you apart. This way, the movement of the zombies will be slow, predictable, but potentially lethal if crowding in such a manner as to block your path out. Maybe one could accept that a crowd of zombies spawning off just the presence of a single zombie strolling about, making a situation dangerous in a very short amount of time. Heh I guess maybe 100 zombies ought to spawn for this idea to work out satisfactory. OR fewer given that they spawn in the narrow streets in an urban environment, making it easier to block ones path through a city. Maybe it could work, by spawning a limited amount of zombies, but they would spawn more quickly out of nowhere close up and more importantly spawn in a line blocking an entire sector of your view, like in the street in a city. They would ofc have to move in one general direction for the group of zombies to stick together for some duration of time. Instant spawning of zombies look fake but perhaps it can be made to work more satisfactory and without crushing all hope or irritating a player. Maybe a slowish spawn would look ok, allowing some time to run past them, but quickly enough to create a serious thread for anyone not paying attention to what is happening. This way, a player might perhaps have to gun down zombies to even break through the line and move beyond them. How about using a players own multicore cpu to help calculate masses of slow moving zombies? Leaving movement to the player cpu, and leaving combat resolution to the server cpu? :) This would mean that player A's cpu would calculate zombie movement for player E at some entirely different part of the world map, not in relation to the gameplay of player A.

Fair probably doesn't mean what you think it means. By implying that the game should not be fair, I think hackers will rejoice of your attitude. So obviously, some definition of "fair" would be helpful. Fair in this case with my idea, would simply mean an aggreement to common rules that are not designed to discriminate against anyone, which also pertain to how the game actually works (clothing, etc). Feel free to tell me how you would want to define "fair" with respect to how the game ought to work. Btw, I played Eve online for years, so at the very least I am not a stranger to sandbox games. As for sandbox games, I like the notion of something I read somewhere, that the players should be given tools to make structures. Fascinating stuff. So I will admit that the design of basic game mechanics might end up working against some idea that would otherwise be possible. Ofc, it would surely be absurd to flat out state such a controversy without actually having specified or generalized some a problem that one can relate to. I want to add that I think the idea of a sandbox is particulary important to the people designing a game, preferably making sure things don't fall apart if parts of the game is changed, reworked or removed.

The bandit skin would be self imposed in this case. Ofc, the alternative would be to stay around as a survivor without any obvious bandit clothing suffering an increasing amount of debilitating penalties. I fail to see any point at all in the argument that DayZ is "a sandbox game". I suggest fair play, as opposed to a chaotic free for all.

I realize now that it would be awkward for a soldier killing zombies to have a survivor around, that could just sit and wait for the soldier to raise his rifle to get a "free" kill. :D Ugh, give me a minute (holy crap I have to solve this problem). Edit: Solution: A survivor killing a soldier with a raised weapon, becomes a free kill for 24 hours. That means that any other soldier on site can respond to the gunfire and kill the survivor immediately, or sometime within 24 hours of game time (sitting out the timer logged off should't work). Putting on a soldiers uniform have the benefit of being able to kill other soldiers for free, but with the risk being attacked by survivors. Only put on a uniform if playing with friends and having balls. :) Soldiers should thus not walk around alone but stay with their group. :D Concern: This soldier killing done by survivors might become a sport, like some kind of quasi bandit role. If a soldier can have the habit of lowering/raising his weapon all the time, I think few if any survivors would bother trying to fire at a soldier knowing that they risk being penalized if firing at a soldier with his weapon lowered. Edit2: A simple way to discourage a survivor sitting around trying to kill a soldier from a distance, could be to have a range requirement of less than 50m for example, in order for discouraging sniper fire. Hm, perhaps the same rules of not displaying an aggressive stance could apply to survivors in proxy of soldiers, with the same distance requirement of less than 50m. Then ideally any survivor and soldier would prefer to keep some distance from each other.

This thread made me come up with this: 1) Any player doing lots of player killing, becomes anxious and depresssed, leading to penalties in game, with greater and greater severity. "Friendlies" will regret making too many careless murders. 2) Any player with this affliction can rid him-/herself of the effect to acknowledge that he/her is a bandit, and then their character will somehow be stamped by their own choosing and will then be easily identified as bandits in-game. Obvious consequences: Friendlies might be tempted to keep friendly "bandits" around, but the easiest would be to simply have they sick it out and stop murdering others. Bandits will have to figure out a way to relate to other bandits if they want so socialize. Wanna-be-bandits might try exploiting a low daily kill count to avoid severe physical/mental penalties or from being stamped as a bandit, so daily murder counts should not be allowed, and instead an accumulated murder value should be used instead to determined if they are basicly homocidal. The choice of becoming a bandit might stick forever if the game is designed that way, so anyone growing tired of being a bandit should perhaps be able to opt out at some point. I guess, it will be tricky in the beginning, where there is no differentiation between a murderer and someone killing in self defence, but perhaps it will all work out, with friendlies on one side and bandits on the other side. Edit: I guess a third group could be useful. It would be alot more complicated because this third type of group has to work with the two others, but perhaps having a "military" group could work.

How about a signal flare gun, where the signal flare falls down in a little parachute? (edit, I knew I spelled that word wrong) At least it would be a way to signal inentions of friendship, and then the other party would best try to behave in some manner that doesn't resemble one associated with a hostile party.

If one imagined an underground bunker complex with alot of compartemental doors, opening a door could be a portal to the traumatic and horrific. :) Anyone opening a door to see what, if anything, is behind it, he will have to deal with the consequences and perhaps fend off zombies that spawned just there, like with the housing. An obvious consequence of having doors, is that players might be tempted to keep all doors open having passed behoynd them the first time. Perhaps doors should autoclose, or perhaps one could find items that kept the doors open all the time, or for some period of time. An open door would perhaps make zombies spread out more so that they 1) don't gather around enmasse and 2) so that they dont simply stay waiting behind a door.

I think adding a "friendly" voice emote is detrimental to the spirit of the game (because one could/should really use ones voice I think). I think it would be better to add some kind of emote, to wave ones hands instead. Maybe some combination of lowering the rifle/pistol/weapon + waving friendly with a free hand to greet others and display a passiv non threatening stance. A non threatening stance by lowering the weapon could benefit both players, as it might take a little amount of time (I dont know, just played for three days) to rise the rifle, perhaps enough for the other person to react one way or another, instead of simply being shot. I havent tried the feature in game, where one can lower the rifle (doubletapping left Ctrl I think), but I imagine it might offer half a second or perhaps a whole second.

I want to add something that find interesting with regard to game design, in which game design decisions pertains to realistic "things" inside a game. I would argue there are mainly two things to strive for: 1) That things make good sense for the player whenever possible 2) The establishing of a fantasy to put it short. Hearing a different sound effect when walking on grass as opposed to concrete probably goes to show how simple, yet crucial it is to get some things right. Point 1 can be elaborated upon and is a problem of sorts that can be solved in different ways. So just because some feature or suggestion seem implausible or detrimental to the game design, there are perhaps ways to twist and bend an idea to fit into existing concepts that the game rely on. A consequence analysis of sorts seem like a good idea and exporing the exploit potential seem wise, since trendy behavious might be detrimental to basic motivations or the basic functionings in a game. Point 1 and 2 are sort of smiliar to each other, but the first pertains mostly to player sentiments, while the other pertains to the design of the game. In the end, I guess everything depends on everything else. I wouldn't call it "balance" because that would be too stupid of me, a metaphor of some kind of equilibrium that is often pointless and meaningless other than some conceptual metaphor for fitting two things together. At some point while playing DayZ, it occurred to me that I was so into the game that it never occurred to me to question the impossibility of drinking water off the wells without a cantine, when it is all too obvious that the wells found in game offer a pump that should realistically. At the very least, the wells offer one sensible function to the game, with the one filling up canteen bootles. :) A third point could perhaps be about the repetiveness in any game. Some things surely can be laborious and tedious, while other things might seem only natural, like jumping through the stargates in eve online. So it would imo make sense to try control or at least be aware of repetetive tasks, and try to make or keep them meaningful.

About installation: -Installing the game and the patches of Gamersgate.com worked well. -When I tried to enable the expansions in the Arma 2 menu this appeared to work but when starting the client again and looked at the expansion menu, another option for "dayz" was there. I enabled this and a couple of other things listed and when restarting the client anew, I got a couple of errors ending with the Arma 2 client failing to start: " No entry 'bin\config.bin/CfgInGameUI/MPTable.shadow' " & " Error compiling pixel shader PSSpecularAlpha:0 ". I don't remember if I installed any DayZ mod files just prior to this. Anyway, I installed DayZ mod via 'Six Updater' and could start playing this way. I am unable to access Arma 2 main menu by its own shortcut from desktop in windows. Playing DayZ: -Was disconnected for no apparant reason once or twice (broken chain icon on the screen) -I used the hatchet to kill Zombies but it seemed difficult if not impossible to hit when they ran around me. -I used the makarov pistol to try killing a crawler, however the Zombie never died despite me spending 8+ bullets with several bullets to its head and several bullets to its torso, with a relaxed character and optimal aiming recticle. -I broke my legs while crawing on paved asphalt with no debris around -Keyboard got stuck a few times in my last game, so when I woke up from being unconscious (low blood) several times, my character moved on auto in some presumably random direction (or something was stuck perhaps) and it was difficult if not just impossible to figure out how to counter act this buggy behaviour. -Using a crowbar as a meelee weapon seemed impossible when I tried it the first time, until it just worked all of a sudden. -I tried to kill a Zombie with a 1911 pistol but failed to kill it with several shots at close range and optimal aiming recticle. Had to empty the magazine in quick order to kill it. -I played on a local server with really low network connection latency Windows 7 Pro i7 2700k @4GHz, w. 8GB ram Radeon 5850 with Catalyst 12.4 (works pretty well by the looks of it, with the exception of artifacting, maybe due to having set the video mem to 'very high' or 'high') Game installed on Intel SSD

I lost all my stuff on the second day, killed a second time even after I retrieved my stuff after the first time I was killed in Elektro. :) Third day; fun time again looting Elektro at night. Moonlight kept the landscape lit up pretty well considering the time of the day. Ate alot of food and managed to rise my blood to about 12000 (damn zombies managed to hurt me early on). Having all the required items for surviving in the wild, I left Elektro. I found some nice weapons around the bottom airfield near the coast, a M16a2 and a M17 Glock, with lots of ammo at the end of the session. Learned to avoid the zombies better now, while being more apt at moving at speed. To my surprise, some zombies doesn't make noise, at least one did not, came close to walking into it.

Spending some time crawling seem like a good idea. Better to spend a few minutes ekstra avoiding zombies than running into zombies repeatedly when you dont really want to. If you notice that your aiming recticle is shaking all about, it is time to take some 'painkillers', then the shaking will stop. Heh, too me half an hour to figure that one out.

I am guessing that the moderator probably had better things to do (or was perhaps busy). OP should mention exactly what kind of graphics card he has, AND what version of the graphics driver is installed on his computer. If using an AMD/ATI card, the driver version can be seen when opening the "Catalyst control center" (from the start menu in windows), in the "information --> software" (in newer versions of the former catalyst control panel). Driver versions are usually easily interpreted. 12.4 means year 2012, month 4, i.e. april 2012.

I wouldn't mind seeing a "load cartridges into clip/magazine" action, but it has to make sense and not be a designated TIME SINK. Preferably, it could make good sense if a new inventory management system was made, because the experience with the management system would with this constitute immersion/fantasy so to speak. I would like to see an inventory management system, where the clothing intuitively indicates how each pocked can hold on to an item. Items that does not seem plausible to place into a certain pocked, could be penalized with a time delay, so learning and knowing what items best goes where in such and such pocket would be fun I think. It may seem silly to manually reload a machinegun belt with single cartridges, yet it would not be that bad if you really had to insert 10 cartridges. Optionally one would have to find loot with fullly loaded magazines (or finding partially loaded magazines ofc). I also think that any laborious task of reloading a belt/clip/magazine could be negated by allowing fairly quick reloads, if done in the proximity of a campfire, tent, vehicle, paved asphalt or some other context that would make it more special. I think that concerns with realisme is not a crippling one, because as a game designer one should be able to design a feature to fit the game regardless. The problems just has to be thought out before hand, leading to solutions that will fit the existing game mechanics and that will fit the existing motivations for the game mechanics (for making sense and for establishing the fantasy elements).

Item description: A portable radio worn on the back of a person, akin to Vietnam war ear PRC radio: http://www.tourofdutyinfo.com/ToDAdvisorwebpages/fieldradio2.html The radio uses rechargable batteries that will eventually become depleted. Purpose: This portable radio offers server wide non encrypted communication with other portable radios of the same kind. Functioning: A user is to turn one or more dials or simply input a number in order to transmit over certain radio frequency or over a particular channel. Friend and foe would be able to listen in on eachother, if listening/transmitting on same frequency/channel. A greater range of channels for transmitting over would make evesdropping hard, impractical, but not impossible. The radio can/might have pre-programmed presets, for quick switching between teams on different channels or for jumping channels quickly. Potential issues: Too many people involved with a single frequency/channel? Malevolent disturbance, caused by open mic flooding a particular channel with noise. Could be roleplayed as jamming I guess. Malevolent disturbance on familiar frequencies/channels, making it difficult for anyone that e.g wanted to use channel 01 to start initial communication. Malevolent disturbance on any random channel. If made too convenient, anyone attempting to evesdrop in order to accidentally come across transmissions on a frequency/channel, might spend too much time on this task. Will be inferior to out-of-game voice comms clients like Teamspeak for example, making in-game battery game mechanics irrelevant. Fun things: Implementation of codes, for quickly requesting comms over a given frequency/channel. Initial contact made on standard choice of frequency/channel (basicly public), further communication is then assigned to a coded frequency/channel (more private) Spoofing identities (if possible) The use of a radio can offer a certain initiative to the transmitter/receiver party. When listening for a command to be given over channel xx, the one listening and the one transmitting has the initiative to start communicating, making it relatively easy to communicate brief information without great risk of being intercepted by anyone trying to eavesdrop on any randomly chosen channel. The aquisition of other peoples radio (as loot) might reveal the preset channels made on that particular radio. Radios could be a way to socialize people to create groups I think, those who are not already teamed up using other voice comms clients. Exploit potential: Unknown Difficult to code? I have no idea.