Photolysis

Already suggested there should be a delay on getting items out. I have no problem with having to reassemble certain weapons, or being able to disassemble them to reduce the space they take up so they can fit in certain backpacks. In fact I think that would add quite a bit to the game, allowing you to switch weapons but you wouldn't be able to do it instantly and would have to think carefully about what weapon you use, and it would go quite a way towards reducing the effectiveness of sniper rifles (along with modelling the weight accurately). Weight should influence how quickly you move, but most weapons are not that heavy. An AS50 is at ~12kg unloaded, but something like an M4 only weighs ~3kg unloaded. As long as the weight as properly distributed, the average person could carry quite a bit. And yes tools should count towards that limit. Every item you carry should.

So how do you propose solving the issue created by your UI? I can easily solve issues like this in real life by hunting through a pile of items. As for the rest of your post, you asked for my opinion, I gave it. We will obviously not agree with each other. Uh, yes you could fit an AS50 in a very large backpack, especially if you stripped the weapon down for transportation and yes you could carry a decent sized toolbox... people carry the latter around every single day for their jobs. Skyrim is unrealistic because you can carry around multiple suits of armour and a huge number of items that would take up very large amounts of volume. No one is suggesting this.

Definitely not, the current Arma UI is terrible for this sort of thing. I think the problem with your design (while significantly improving over the base experience) is that it tries to cram too much information into too small a space, which gives it a very cluttered feel and make it so you have to hunt around more. I also think your reasons for doing so (to preserve peripheral vision) are misguided because when you're looking through your pockets and backpack your attention will be distracted. To that end, having it take up a lot more of the screen is not a bad thing. When it comes to the backpack, having it pop out by default on top of the existing UI adds to the feeling of it being cluttered. You can move it around and when you do moving items becomes much quicker but I feel there is a better way to manage this than by a movable box. ]The UI in this thread spreads things out much more and is fairly intuitive and informative, and the use of colour quickly draws your attention to the appropriate parts of the UI. There is a lot of room for improvement and the size could probably be taken down quite a bit though. I do quite like the interface you've designed for looting however, assuming that it shows items within a certain radius of your character, and item volume is displayed when you mouseover an item. It might run into problems when you have a very large number of items in a small area though.

Then you're packing your stuff very badly. It's a good way to get stuff damaged as well. If I had a lot of stuff in there and/or it was properly packed it would not move around much at all. I would be able to store smaller items in pockets of the pack for easy access, and I would have a model in my head of where items were placed in the pack to speed the process up. Taking everything out would take a few minutes, but unless it was a large item at the very bottom it would not take that long to retrieve a few items. I shouldn't have to fight the interface to do stuff in the name of things being 'authentic'. UIs are used because of the limitations of the software and are completely unrealistic by nature. A bad UI is no more realistic than a good UI. It's just a bad UI. The purpose of a UI is to be as minimal as possible, to display things clearly, and to allow users to interact with the software. If the UI makes things more complicated and difficult than they need to be, it has failed. Difficulty is also not the same as something being time consuming. Counting to 1000 is time consuming but very easy. Retrieving something from a backpack and moving it to a pocket is time consuming (in cases) but not difficult. The UI should facilitate this and make it easy for players to tell the game "I want to move this here". I would support adding a delay and an animation to show your character extracting items from their backpack. That is authentic and fine and the right way to increase the complexity of inventory management in a realistic way.

One feature I don't think has been listed here yet - forgive me if it has - is dangerous wildlife native to the map. Obviously the type of wildlife would be appropriate to the setting, so we don't end up with polar bears on tropical islands.

Wolves would only likely attack very weakened humans that present an easy target. Otherwise they leave humans alone. The sentiment behind the idea is fine though, and I think there should be dangerous wildlife, appropriate to the setting of the map. Would be interesting if you had to hunt something dangerous for food out of desperation!

Justifying a bad UI design because "it should be complicated" to perform fairly trivial tasks is asinine. If I want to take something out of my pockets and put it on my wrist, or move it somewhere else, it is very easy and takes seconds to perform. Even in a large backpack this does not take that long, and the game could easily add a delay to represent you getting the item out. Inventory management should be an important part of the game. The point you miss, is that inventory management should lead to hard and interesting choices. It should not be hard because of a clunky and limiting UI.

Rocket actually pointed people towards this thread and commented on how it had some excellent suggestions. I think it's safe to assume he's keeping an eye on it.

They don't exist at the moment because the zombie animations are custom made, and the motion capture is taken from a male model. Applying them to a female skeleton would lead to weird effects, so they'd have to be redone. I'm pretty sure Rocket has confirmed that this will be sorted for the standalone.

It's been suggested many times before. It's still a very good idea and should be implemented.

Hiding bodies is fine, but it shouldn't be by clicking a button and having the body magically disappear. I'd suggest: Allowing players to drag them to places to hide them (also useful for creating traps), or dump them in the water somewhere Allowing players to set them on fire with matches + jerry can Allowing players to bury them with an entrenching kit or suchlike. And of course if players want to mess with people by picking up their stuff and then throwing it away somewhere, they should be able to do that too. But let's stop defending magical disappearing corpses.

I don't understand your point. Rocket can either release an early version of the standalone, follow the Minecraft model, and constantly add new features and fix bugs - something much much easier when he has full control over the engine and can customise it as needed - or he can ship the game next year, with no iterative development and feedback, and still fixing those same bugs. You make it seem as if by delaying the game it'll mean all these problems get solved which they wouldn't otherwise. In reality, all it would mean is that the problems get fixed as they would have been, just that everyone is stuck playing the mod's alpha for the next 12 months instead. It's not like Rocket is going to release the standalone in a few months in an early state and then go sit on a beach somewhere. If you don't want to deal with the problems in an earlier version, then you're free to wait as long as you want before paying for the standalone. But delaying the game won't have any impact on that at all.

The way it is in the OP works quite well, where volume is the limit on carrying capacity, and item weight simply affects how quickly you tire and so on. The grid system when used properly is a good way of breaking down volume at a glance and in an intuitive manner People can carry plenty of weight if needed, they just can't travel particularly far or fast when carrying large quantities of it, and that's what the game should aim to reflect, instead of the current system where a 5kg rifle takes up over half of a massive backpack, or you can fill a rucksack with a mere 12 bandages or epi-pens, or other very small items.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP5SD#Suppressed_variants A bit of information can be found in related articles on the subject as well.

Depends on the suppressor and weapon design. The MP5 for example shoots supersonic ammo but the suppressor uses gas bleedoff to slow the velocity to subsonic without using specialist ammunition. Some designs will use supersonic rounds and won't slow their velocity down but will quiet the firing sound and hide muzzle flash. In some cases though, the design means you must use specialist ammo, or risk very bad things happening.

Subsonic ammunition. Look it up. However, several weapons do not make use of subsonic ammo and so it's not unreasonable to suggest they use the same ammo as the regular version. If I understand correctly, a suppressed M9 uses regular ammunition. The MP5SD also uses this. You have no idea what you're talking about. Subsonic ammo eliminates the ballistic crack of the bullet to reduce noise. It does not eliminate or reduce the sound of the bullet being fired which a suppressor does (along with muzzle flash). If you don't use a suppressor with subsonic ammo, congratulations you've just decreased your accuracy and range for almost no benefit whatsoever.

Where did you read this? Rocket clearly stated in a recent QA that they were going to use the Arma 3 engine as a base and develop their own branch of it customised for their needs, so they can make fixes and optimizations for DayZ without negatively affecting Arma. http://dayztx.com/dayz-news-standalone-updates/

It's better than the existing interface, but does feel too cluttered. I much prefer the rough mockup in the suggestions sticky.

Mmm, why not I guess, though it should increase fuel consumption and reduce acceleration due to the added weight. The term "bulletproof" isn't actually used either, since enough firepower will break it. It also wouldn't stop shots through the vehicle bodywork (which actually offers very little in the way of protection). Overall, I have no real opposition to the idea, but if it was modelled accurately then it wouldn't be hugely useful; vehicles could still be easily disabled and players could still be killed relatively easily even if they couldn't be shot through the windscreen without it taking a lot of bullets..

Let's start off listing the ways this is stupid: 1) Plate armour is extremely heavy and requires a great deal of experience to be able to move moderately quickly in. Someone with no training would barely be able to manage the weight of simply wearing it. 2) Any actual plate armour replicas would be for purely ceremonial and display purposes and not designed to function as actual armour 3) Plate armour is not at all impervious, and the joints present significant weak spots. It's main function is to protect from slashes, which it does quite well. 4) Plate armour provides limited protection from crushing blows and other blunt force. Zombies charging in sufficient numbers would be able to easily inflict blunt trauma through it and cause fractures. 5) Plate armour would provide no protection from bullets. It could be pierced with sufficiently powered medieval weaponry, and primitive firearms, which had muzzle velocities and energies far smaller than today's firearms. If it were realistically implemented, all it would do is function as a giant noisy dinner bell / coffin.

Almost everyone alive today is well aware you can't drink salt water. All your nonsensical rambling does little to change the fact that this is a silly idea and would be a complete waste of time. What next, are you going to suggest that players be able to drink a jerry can of oil or other, obviously stupid stuff? After all, it'll slap the non-existent people who think that it would work because it's 'just a game' hard in the face.

I've had a look at the medical system and while I support the general ideas behind it (I did suggest a similar system), I think it needs to be simplified a little. Oxygen cylinders and destroyed lungs? Too detailed. There's also no real need to add a huge variety of diseases, and quite a few of the medical items can also be removed. On the subject of the inventory as well, I think breaking certain items into their own small container doesn't serve much useful purpose. Storing an item in a toolbox or first aid kit would just add another pointless layer to the whole thing, and bring back a problem that already exists with the Arma II interface. I was also recently thinking of the camo system from MGS3. For those who don't know, the game has a variety of camo patterns and facepaints that allow the player to blend in better with the terrain and evade detection by guards. Some patterns are multi-purpose and offer good concealment in most environments. Others offer excellent concealment within a specific type of environment, but make the player very obvious outside of that, requiring the player to alter it as appropriate. Unlike MGS3, the game should not make the player's camo status visible on the HUD, but the mechanic should be there under the hood and impact zombie detection (and make it harder for the player to be spotted by other players, obviously). It would essentially be an extension of the system that already exists in DayZ. You could also tie in other properties to clothing that have to be taken into account. A cold-weather jacket might not offer good camouflage and make you a big target for players and zombies, but it's better than freezing to death. On the subject of maps, I think you'd really need to have custom maps built for DayZ for it to work at its best. I'd like to see maps taking place in a variety of different landscapes each with their own survival challenges to offer a unique experience. Ideally they would offer a balance of terrain types where appropriate as well. Just Cause 2's map offers rainforests, cities, mountains, deserts, and beaches, though admittedly this mixture is... rather unlikely (though New Zealand has very varying terrain as I understand it, that could lend itself well to a DayZ map)! In snowy maps you'd have to worry about cold weather, keeping warm, along with dangers such as being immersed in cold water (what about players destroying ice underneath you?). Water could easily be obtained from snow and ice, but food and shelter would be the major concern. In tropical maps like a rainforest, you wouldn't have to worry much about food and water but you could have poisonous and dangerous wildlife, a much higher chance of wounds becoming infected, and find it much harder to light fires. In desert maps, dehydration and hyperthermia by running around during the day would be a major challenge, making the map more suitable for night-time play. Water would become extremely important as well.

If the inventory system/fatigue system were based on weight, carrying multiple weapons around would result in penalties. You'd have a tradeoff between firepower, mobility, and endurance. Space-wise, there's no reason why you couldn't carry around several weapons in a massive backpack (you should see how much kit SAS soldiers will carry for example). Space isn't the main issue, weight is.

Good suggestion. It can't take up space in my pockets when it's loaded in the gun I'm carrying around in my hands.

Graphics problems still exist. Ended up being spawned at the beach with all my gear at least once.