DayZ Developer Blog 15th April Highest one ever

[mattlightfoot 2463]

Our latest dev blog being posted by Rocket from Mt Everest

http://media.tumblr....IyV41qz4rgp.jpg

Dean “Rocket” Hall during his Puja ceremony today, proceeded by a local lama. Flour is spread on each others faces, hopefully signifying the individual reaches old age. Rocket is completing this devblog from Everest Base Camp during his attempt on the summit of Mt Everest.

Devblog from Everest base camp!

I’ll start with a huge thank you to the DayZ development team who have continued development at a breakneck pace despite me being off living a lifelong dream to climb Mt Everest. Although the timing is poor for my sabatical, it is not something planned on a whim and involves non-refundable costs of up to $100k.

So here I am, at Everest Base Camp, 5400 meters, writing what I am sure is the highest ever devblog from the ground! This is largely able to occur because of Matt Lightfoot, the youngish looking chap who is our tireless Production Assistant. Both him and others have continued to send me progress updates and approvals, which I am accessing via a satellite connection.

Anyway, the important bit is the game. Ivan is now working a great deal directly on the project, and has been picking up the slack for some of the areas I needed to address which has been a huge help. Those from the community who wanted to get involved in writing are keen to get started, but the response is so massive that we are looking to put a structure in place to ensure community written books pass through some kind of editorial process. This community content, together with copyright expired books, will form the basis of hundreds or thousands of books that can be found and read in the world. There are no set timeframes for this, so please be patient.

Programmer Roundup

Ondrej, our lead programmer, continues his work on moving DayZ into a server-client architecture, turing the entire architecture of DayZ into an MMO. Jirka is working on updating some of our steamworks integration, and fixing bugs associated with the massive inventory changes we implemented over the past month.

Radio Implementation

Bebul is working on our Radio implementation, allowing players to communicate using a basic radio, similar (but more simple) to the popular ACRE radio mod for ArmA2. Players pick up radios, and they can set a frequency and talk/receive text/voice from other players. The microphone or speaker can be turned on or off to allow players to use radios as a listening device. If the player has not crafted a headset onto the radio, then the output is public (either voice or text). The results are fantastic, and Bebul is now ensuring this all works properly in the all special cases during Multiplayer play.

Animators

Our team is working their way through the animation backlog, involving new zombie animations for the new skeleton, test melee moves for our new melee system, new animations for the new animals (such as the deer), and then onto player animations for the new skeleton, custom designed to feel more like a civilian rather than the trained soldier of ArmA2.

Internal Artists

Mostly they are working on creating the interior data required for the AI zombies to pathfind correctly inside buildings. New road decals have been created by Mario for the roads so it looks like they have a damaged look to them, to give the world more of a feel like “the Road”. One of our big special new buildings is in game, and we will surprise you with some new screenshots of this in the next devblog!

External Artists

Our team of artists recruited from the community have been hard at work. The new male character mesh is being prepared, in line with the new skeleton, as well as a new template for clothing skinning. The new M4A1 has been committed with proxies that allow our new attachment system to be utilized along with the crafting system. Also being worked on are a Gas Mask, Pilot Helmet, Mauser Rifle, pen/paper, mess tin, can opener - a huge amount of items are being developed while we wait for the programming tasks to be completed heading towards our first public release.

The excitement from the team is tremendous with all these fantastic new items, allowing huge crafting possibilities.

Map Design

Seven towns have been remade by SenChi, overseen by Ivan, to alter the look and feel better. Bugs are continually being fixed and we have purchased new satellite data to improve the detail of the base map (looks much better in the distance with this new data).

Conclusion

I realize some people are upset at my departure from the project for two months to climb Mt Everest, but hopefully from this you can see the large team Bohemia have assembled behind the development that are continuing to innovate and develop DayZ Standalone in the direction of the game we all want. This is going to take as long as it needs to, we want to release our initial alpha under the architecture it needs to avoid hacking and security issues - this is the only remaining task stopping us from releasing the alpha. But while this task is being completed, we can continue with other activities.

The next devblog will feature some screenshots to demonstrate the progress, captured by Matt, but my satellite connection and tiny laptop cant cope with downloading the current build.

So, this is the devblog I write from Everest Base Camp, at 5400 meters! Tomorrow I am off to the Khumbu Icefall for training in fixed lines and ladders, big thanks to the community for their continued patience, and everyone at Bohemia who is pushing hard towards our DayZ standalone initial release!

Edited April 15, 2013 by Inception.
ACRE, not ACARS.

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

Woot!

Some nice info in there. Good to see things are moving along nicely. Hopefully some of the critics thinking that DayZ SA is just an Arma 2 port will actually read this one.

Edited April 15, 2013 by Fraggle

[mzltv 2281]

FIRST POST LOL.

I kid. Fraggle gets all the perks. Bloody mods.

Stoked on this! There was really no need after giving us a heads up the other day, but I suppose Rocket was gonna do it anyway.

Cheers homie!

[aHzdaNny 49]

YES!

[barrett_killz 229]

Good one!

[Man vs Wild 313]

AWESOME!

[Guest]

Sounds good. I like the radio idea

[Dancing.Russian.Man 1631]

BEANS FOR THE FLOUR-FACE.

[Zarniwoop 1193]

Now that is awesome! Its even better to not expect a devblog and getting one!

Kudos to all the devs! Keep up the good work. :beans: :beans: :beans:

[Imafighter 236]

Looking forward to the radios. Any idea if the radios will make noise while on the ground, and not in your inventory?

[ZlobaRUS54 441]

I'm really excited about radios as well. The (fake) radio chatter was the most exciting thing in one of the early WarZ staged videos.

[mzltv 2281]

Looking forward to the radios. Any idea if the radios will make noise while on the ground, and not in your inventory?

I believe they do. I remember hearing Rocket say they will be able to do so for purposes of ambush (I think it was from the PAX East exhibition?)

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

Lovely stuff. Big thanks to everyone for their continued hard work. Especially Matt for forwarding the good news (Cheers dude).

Best o' luck to the boss man with his big hill.

I'm away for a lie down. The high altitude is making me a bit wobbly.

[okami (DayZ) 129]

Tomorrow I am off to the Khumbu Icefall for training in fixed lines and ladders

Pfffffft training... Man up, climb that hill and then back to work! :)

Nah, best luck for the ascent and thanks to the team for all the hard work!

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

Such a tease.

[VisionTwelve 24]

"This is going to take as long as it needs to, we want to release our initial alpha under the architecture it needs to avoid hacking and security issues - this is the only remaining task stopping us from releasing the alpha."

HELL YES FOR DEV'S!

cant wait for SA Alpha. gonna be one of the first to buy it, just watch

[timboski 618]

You're all reading this in Rockets voice aren't you? :D

[DemonGroover 8836]

Nice one.

Peace for another week

[RedNome 443]

Nice one.

Peace for another week

You don't really believe that now do you?

Thanks Dean, good luck with your little walk.

[R9Rsc68avHbs 8]

So are we getting a dev blog this friday? ^^

@matt:

Can you maybe provide an estimate for the progression of the MMO architecture or what your best guess would be for its completion date? Ofc only if that is even possible at this stage. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Edited April 15, 2013 by R9Rsc68avHbs

[RedNome 443]

So are we getting a dev blog this friday? ^^

@matt:

Can you maybe provide an estimate for the progression of the MMO architecture or what your best guess would be for its completion date? Ofc only if that is even possible at this stage. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

It's being reviewed in June when Dean returns from Everest, as he's already said, so I guess we'll know then.

[Private Evans 1303]

Mauser Riffle :)

[hoik 415]

BEANS FOR THE FLOUR-FACE.

lol, I thought you were making a silly joke (thought it was sun-screen maybe) - but it turns out it is flour :P

Rocket talks about the new animation rig alot, and in some

he mentions how this new rig will make the way weapons are held/viewed in first person look better, because essentially there will be two seperate skeletons for third and first person. As is, in DayZ/Arma, the FPV is basicly (layman alert) a camera directly attached to the head of the skeleton. What you see of yourself is directly representative of what others see when they look at you, or what you see of yourself in 3rd person.

I guess my question is if there are two different rigs/skeletons for the two different views how does this reconcile with the way we currently experience first person in dayZ - eg. the way you can move you're head around independantly from your body? (EDIT: and the way you can view you're body from FPV)

Edited April 15, 2013 by Hoik

[mattlightfoot 2463]

You're all reading this in Rockets voice aren't you? :D

I was reading it in Morgan Freeman's voice......

So are we getting a dev blog this friday? ^^

@matt:

Can you maybe provide an estimate for the progression of the MMO architecture or what your best guess would be for its completion date? Ofc only if that is even possible at this stage. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

I'm returning home to the UK for a week to deal with some boring things, I'll be working from home throughout this time and I'm hoping to do a screenshot update later this week.

No ETA sorry as we don't know although progress seems to be good.

[Serious Stan 202]

Nice and settling heap or words coming from a calm and impressive adventurer Dean Hall! :)

Or rocket as we call him by rants or praise, we all will rant and shout untill SA is out then we all will calm down and play it and cry about bugs that is never fixed (like the hospital glitch)..

Then after a while, noobs stop playing and only pro's play the game after a few years it will get boring and the "new discussions" forum is dead... people are moving on to other games that are more interesting,, people will ask you who was that Dean Hall guy? you will say... I dont know?

Then who made dayZ? that was BIS!