First dynamic chopper crashes in DayZ!

[luxifergrim (DayZ) 19]

Like many, we were getting frustrated with the broken heli crashes on our server. We wanted to find a way to not just fix it but improve on the concept. It took some work, But GriM's Salvage and Co. has what we think is the first truely dynamic heli crash system.

[boneboys 7988]

Can you loot gear and does the crew protect it ?

Just asking.

[Cap'n (DayZ) 1827]

That was awesome. You need to talk to some of the guys in the dev. team, cause this blows the current crash system out of the water.

[syndicatefaction 118]

Very very nice. We need that in game!

[SmashT 10907]

Get this to the devs!

[luxifergrim (DayZ) 19]

The occupants die in the crash and we are working on custom loot tables, similar to the way our AI bandits spawn with random gear.

You can loot gear from the deceased, but right now the tables are pre-set. The next step is to get the loot randomized, which should be straightforward as we currently do this with our AI bandits.

Edited April 3, 2013 by luxifergrim

[madmega 16]

This have to be implemented

[mattldempsey 8]

As long as it is a rare occurance then this is a lot better.

And I mean rare.

Developers often dont appreciate how easy it is to de-value something by having to much of it.

Dont make it any more common than it currently is to find crash heli's. If anything make it a bit rarer.

Another thing I personally think is crap is how the items are actually distributed. They all right under the heli and hard to see.

They should be MORE spread out but EASIER to see.

Once you have found the heli, you should still have to search for the items, they could be 50m of who knows, it would make it more dramatic because at the moment its boring.

To make them easier to see you could introduce the items via weapons crates, that would make it fairer because of the larger radius the weapons/ammo could be.

[xiangrim 0]

My next idea is to actually give the helicopters a probability point as well, say about 50% and only have 3-4 on the map at a time. I don't want to give too much away as of yet but I love all the feedback we've gotten with this, really makes all the work that was put in not only by myself by Luxifer as well for helping test and work out the bugs really worth it. That being said, I have quite a few ideas brewing around my head. Bigger and better things will be coming from this.

[entspeak 374]

This is awesome... but do you lose the zed's at the heli crashes? I'd make the explosion a little less pronounced in the air, so that it looks more probable that some crew would've survived as infected. Maybe smoke, spin and explode on impact. I agree about the loot spreading out more... keep some guns on the bodies and add some small weapons crates that are strewn about randomly in a particular radius around the crash site. And, I think it would be best not to have any notification that a heli has crashed apart from the sound and visuals.

Also, I couldn't tell from the video... is the heli the same one that is used for the heli crashes?

[gord8410 0]

gg!

Looked awesome. Agree with the comments about making this super rare.

And imho, the explosion is pretty decent. I mean when most people see a heli the don't run towards it, they hide and watch it. So I think the explosion has to be dramatised a tad to get peoples attention.

Edited April 4, 2013 by Gord84

[xiangrim 0]

The heli is actually a reg huey. It may not be completely accurate as the regular crashes but my entire goal was to just spice up the regular heli crashes. As far as making the explosion less pronounced, personally, I'd only go bigger lol The stock ones were just so boring. These heli crashes currently do no spawn any type of zombies, as they fly around the map until a player is within a certain range. Not much of a challenge but we've got more additions to our server such as AI bandits that challenge our players elsewhere on the map. When I showed my wife what I had accomplished, her reply was "So what if it explodes, what makes that so special?" And really, the only answer I could come up with is "Sweetheart, we're men. We just NEED to have shit exploding."

I haven't really looked, anyone know where we could go to post this video for the devs? We'd love to work with them on this.

Edited April 8, 2013 by XianGriM

[EliteSkittle 59]

WOW! That is amazing! I don't like the notification though, but I loved the feedback you guys are getting and the fact that you are responding. Get this to the Devs when you've finished it because this sir. Is amazing!

[Devin (DayZ) 17]

It would be better if the heli does not blow up mid air, but blows up on impact and skids like a live player crash. Also how would the loot spawns work around the crash being that each site would be unique?. I would hope if this was implemented they would mix both already downed and smoking heli crashes ( like there are now ) and these Dynamic ones. Would add a lot to the game, however if the helicopter dynamic crash system had to many points of activation it could be easily exploited to gather gear at a tremendously fast rate.

Regardless of all that, Kudos!

[xiangrim 0]

It would be better if the heli does not blow up mid air, but blows up on impact and skids like a live player crash. Also how would the loot spawns work around the crash being that each site would be unique?. I would hope if this was implemented they would mix both already downed and smoking heli crashes ( like there are now ) and these Dynamic ones. Would add a lot to the game, however if the helicopter dynamic crash system had to many points of activation it could be easily exploited to gather gear at a tremendously fast rate.

Regardless of all that, Kudos!

Again, the explosion is just for the visual. It may not be entirely realistic for some but going, that was exactly the point. The old heli crashes were just on the ground smoking with zeds around them. In a later build, I will be taking the notification portion out, it was really just there for testing purposes. Most of the work really goes into working with and around BattlEye to get things the way I first envisioned this. For the record, BattleEye does not like things blowing up in the sky lmao

For right now, the loot is actually on the pilots themselves. Our video sucks in regards to the ending, we're going to be doing a completely new one with tidbits of all our additions to our server, the Heli crashes, our AI bandits and our working Train. The pilots are basically ejected once the heli settles down and the players can then loot the dead bodies. Each pilot is scripted to choose a random loadout set.

As far as activation goes, that was the best part in my opinion. Because I was going for that Wow! factor, I designed so that a player would have to be relatively close to the chopper for it to set off the explosion. Whether he was flying by, driving in a car or on foot, if the chopper flew by near him, there is almost 0% chance of them missing the excitement.

[anAveragePotato 5]

The private hive I play on has dynamic heli crash's running on it, They are pretty good and look amazing and all but they seem to have stopped just regular heli crash's spawning as well so it's kinda a win lose situation where have to give up the easy loot of a random crash site for the awesomeness of an actual crash in front of your eye's ... btw you must actually damage the heli first for it to crash then it just turn's into a regular crash site with zombie's and loot