Bat (DayZ)

Well totally, but there's already such a BIG list of things to change and improve, I really can see a dozen of other feature that should be higher on their priority list. Also I'm not sure how they could really fix this problem. Vegetation kills your FPS in Arma, so having a 800m or more grass render would kill most low/mid-end computers. Maybe some kind of script that would determine if an object is correctly "hidden" by vegetation around it, and if it is in fact hidden, apply a "camo" material to it that would fade out as you get closer?

I'm all excited about the new devblog update. They refining lighting for early release is far above my expectations. Also, I can't wait for the first zombie screens, let's hope the new models have more variety to them and look at least as good as in the mod (IMO the mods zombie are not that bad). Now the next art content that would blow my mind would be rocket announcing they've implemented a nice gore system with proper particle effects.

I remember rocket mentioned he would ask the guy responsible for ArmA 3 lighting to improve DayZ lighting... I wonder if Mario could be that guy? And I wonder to what extent lighting have been improved... Hopefully we'll have a few answers tomorrow!

I think DayZ is original, the concept is not. A mix of MMO, with persistency across servers, FPS, and survival game. Many people dreamt about it years before Arma 2 even existed. But it takes a solid technology+talented developers to realise the concept properly. So original in the sense it's never been made before, but not original because everyone was dreaming about it.

No :(

Daffy Ducky, apache25 would be proud of you. And yes drop bears are real :

+1 would be awesome.

It will probably be between Februaty-April. We can't say for sure. on a side note I played both games and I would not recommend buy WarZ. Their zombies are totally bugged, you can't sneak, the servers are a big deathmatch... DayZ has this unbelievable realistic atmosphere and sense of scale and loneliness, theres all these possibilities for player made stories, it's so much better in everyway, you can truly experience the feeling of being part of the zombie apocalypse.

rocket just twitted this about the closed test : "Closed test? Here's the deal, I wasn't happy with the zombie anims or the pathfinding at all. So redoing for the closed test."

Good idea, but level design of cities in the game are not thought for parkour ahah. Anyway, climbing walls with different animations depending on the weight equipped would be pretty cool. Would give the newspawn who have no gear a little advantage over well equipped bandits, in the way they could more easily climb over stuff, vault, or even have a slightly better runspeed.

Some console games indeed are animated to run at a certain framerate. On pc however, given the variety of hardware, the games are not designed that way. If they were, the game would speed up at higher framerates, and slow down at lower framerates. A recent example of that is a game like Dark souls, a console game in which when your framerate goes under 30 fps, the game just slows down. PC games however are not designed that way. 30 fps is the bare minimum and you'll get some major input lag in fast fps such as quake or unreal tournament making those games unplayable. constant 45 fps is when a game begins to feel responsive and good. A constant 60 fps gives you the full experience and comfort. 120-200 fps is needed in fast fps if you play in competitions, the game looks perfect and there's no input lag which means your reaction time can be extremely sharp. A game like DayZ sure is playable at 30 fps, because your reaction times are not that important, but it's far more comfortable to play at 45-60 fps. (a simple example : at 30 fps you just can't instantly turn around at 180 degrees. There will be a noticeable screen lag, it won't be precise at all.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m6kbKJVVos

I don't want no mni game in my DayZ, no thanks sir! More seriously, If you played take on helicopters, for instance, in this game you have to learn to start your chopper engine. It is not a "mini game". You have to use the right buttons and levers at the right time or the chopper won't start and you might even damage the engine. I think something like that for vehicule repairing would be awesome. You would need real life skills, or a wiki, and learn everything step by step and practise and focus to repair a car faster, or a medical operation, or even for dismouting cleaning your weapon. Woule be so much more rewarding than a minigame, or a skill system, IMO.

I for myself think all learning in the game should come from player and not some kind of skill system you have to grind/do repetitive actions to master. It is far more rewarding to master a hard system for say, a hard medical system with lots of diseases and having to know which med to use depending on the symptoms and maybe even make mistake and kill yourself/your patient, than having to do repetitively the same action until you get that medical skill +1 that will give +10% chance of success for my next bandaging... I mean, sure the mod as it is has no depth at all in it's mechanism, and some people might find it enjoyable to grind stuff, but I don't think it would be profitable for the kind of game DayZ tends to be : simulation.

Private hives are against the philosophy of the game. Your character is meant to be persistent across all servers so you only have one life, and thus make death more punishing. But if the SA is still full of hackers, then I'm sure rocket will change his mind. IMO I'd rather have no private hives and a consitent gameplay on official servers and I trust the devs to fix security problems in the SA, but we just have to wait and see.

I'll take the same example : how much thrilling would it be if instead of just finding a book and magically having a +1 at repairing, you would have to learn some basic mechanics stuff from real life, that would be needed to repair the car? You could follow a wiki online (which would be slow) or if you want to get it done faster, memorize each step and train yourself, and after a while repairing cars and different vehicles you will not need the wiki anymore, and be so much faster and efficient than you were back at first try! What I think of is pretty similar to Take on helicopters where if you don't learn the start process by clicking the right thing at the right time your chopper won't start properly. I think a skill feature is not good for DayZ, because it just doesn't fit with the authenticity, the simulation parts of the original design.

I for myself think all learning in the game should come from player and not some kind of skill system you have to grind or whatever. It is far more rewarding to master a hard system for say, a hard medical system with lots of diseases and having to know which med to use depending on the symptoms and maybe even make mistake and kill yourself/your patient, than having to do repetitively the same fuckin action til I get that medical skill +1 that will give +10% chance of success to my next bandaging and make the swallow of pills 0.0002s faster.

really good point there. Although a skill system would not seem so bad at first glance, I'm afraid it could break some magic inherent to the mod, and I don't want to lose that.

Man you joined the mod a little late, I haven't launched DayZ since July because job/girlfriend/lack of time in general, but back in may/june it was perfect. I mean everyone was excited and when I first heard of a hacker, it was only rumours like someone said on chicago server or whatever they heard someone who had a friend who saw the whole server being killed and I couldn't just believe it... and slowly it became worse and worse and more servers were being insta killed and I stopped playing. My point is, like you said the mod in itself is wonderful, the kind of interactions it can provide with other players is something that I never experienced in gaming before, for instance I had a 2 man squad with an unknown guy and became friends and we saved each other countless times, got our hands on the best night vision high end stuff and started to raid clan's camp, stealing vehicles then trying to hide it, and those stories when we came across a group of hippies in the woods in vans and buses lol, and when those same pacifists guys got attacked by a clan of bandits on motorbike and they chased us for hours and then there was a total misunderstanding and me and my friend got accused and then it all went to shit and we had to go on a long raid north to have revenge .. And after a long day of scavenging to find fuel or car parts, you find yourself sitting around that campfire in the dark night, lonely with the weight of all those days of surviving that could be gone at the first bullet, shivering at the slightest noise, and this other time when I heard in the distance the sound of a UAZ, near stary sobor, at dawn, and just had the time to dive in a bush and saw all those bandits armed to the teeth heading for the helo crash I was 5 min before that, and now I'm just holding my breath in those damn bushes, waiting for the right time to move... tl:dr : just to say you really got in the game too late, I feel sorry for you :( EDIT : Fixed incredibly long and dense wall of text

I won't be that harsh with him, I do think the game would benefit more variations in zombie skins/behaviour/AI. Some that are slower/stronger than others, not in inhuman proportions, but still. We already have the crawling zeds, the monkey zeds, I think standalone should be the occasion for a nice randomisation of the system, make every zed encounter less predictable. * diversified zombies : scarier, less boring. Just my 2 cents.

okay just got an idea but might seem a little bit extreme here I go : why not having different wounds/infection affect your actual skin on your body, meaning you'll have to undress and heal/check for wounds infection like you would IRL? of course you would still have clues you've been shot somehow, but it's up to you to actually locate the wounds and heal them. it would require some dynamic textures and lots of coding and all, but hey that would be pretty intense seeing an infection spread and blood stains on your clothes and all... tell me what you think !

not correct. There's some tweaks for Arma2 OA around that will improve A LOT the performance you get out of the game, whether you have a high end computer or a 4 year old laptop. EDIT : not sure if I made my point clear, but there are many people around here with high end computers who tend to think the game should runs smoothly because they can run BF3 or crysis on ultra high. The truth is arma 2 engine is far more dependent on your HDD, ram and CPU than most games, and if one of those fails, then no matter how good is your triple sli nvidia card, the game will freeze and fps might drop in cities. On the other hand, if you know the limits of your hardware and what is the cause of the performance issues, then it can be solved with tweaks, system cleaning tools, or utilities like game booster.

Ramdisk never worked for me. check out a thing called ultimate defrag that lets you install the game on a secured high performance zone of HDD, it reduced freezes and fps drops nicely on my old laptop.

Some additional tips I used to make the game run smoothly on my 4 year old laptop : * if you don't have a ssd you should not set object details to max setting, it kills performance. * using ultimatedefrag and use it to set the game directories in a high speed region of your hdd might help * try set resolution to 150%, or use AA. I think your GPU can handle that. * shadows always on high (uses GPU) not medium (uses CPU) They're making their own engine because it would be silly to spend billions re-developing the most authentic ballistic physics in another engine when you already have an engine that does that.