Life vs Robot in DayZ

[cussingprince 2]

As the topic shown above, I wish to express my feeling and thought about the animation of the characters and zombies And* some other animals in the Game. I've watched lots of video about the latest Dayz Standalone updates and changes and I know there's been lots of effords being made during the making compared to the MOD. But personally, when I was watching the standalone gameplay, it doesn't give me the feeling of LIFE. All I feel is like I'm controlling a robot in another dimension to do what I want, instead of I'm controlling myself in the other dimension of my life. The "LIFE" isn't there yet everything too stiff and robot-ish. If you may, please refer and have a look at the best narrative survival game "The Last Of Us". They did their best job in capturing the emotion, movements, body language and expression of one's life. People will feel nervous at some point when they're less confident, people will get scared/ afraid of something when something happened unexpectedly and so on. People's face is very important because it contains alot of meanings and emotions of somebody. Eventhough the game I meantioned " The Last Of Us" is a narrative based survival game, but I feel I'm actually struggling for survival in that game because of their animations and body language and face expressions, which is much more important for this Zombie Survival Simulation Game. Please consider this suggestion to be part of the game before other games with this idea exist.

 

Regards,

cussingprince

[boxman80 964]

I think we might be judging a book by it's cover, before it's even been written here.

 

Whilst I can see your point here, and agree emotion, movement, animation etc all adds to the "feel" of the game, this is something that I feel the Day Z devs are actually more than aware of already. You only have to look at their attempts to add/compensate for this in early Day Z mod builds, such as adding "panic" and humanity systems into the game. Subtle things such as sounds play a  key part in Day Z to address the feel of the game, and I was/am more than prepared to overlook the lack of relative animation in characters that are based on a 5 year old game platform and being used well and truly outside of their original design.

 

They were, and I guess still are, limited by their engine in some respects as to some of the look and feel of the animations as it wasn't built from the ground up specifically for Day Z. Certainly more so tahn if they were creting a linear zombie survival game from the ground up, such as Last of us. This is a compromise I am more than willing to accept if they continue to address other key areas of the game though and they continue to "fill in the blanks" in other ways to try and capture a better look and "feel" of the genre.  

 

In Last of Us, you feel like you are struggling to survive because of the story they thrust upon you and the excellent quality of graphics that help the look and feel (more effort and time on graphical elements, movement etc is alwasy expected in linear and console-esque titles)  all help towards this.This is fair enough and part of the trade off that occurs in playing a fairly linear game.

 

Otherside of the coin, already in day z (this is just the mod built on largely second hand game content!) I feel like I am constantly struggling to survive because of the atmosphere of the excellently rendered landscape, the moody weather and daylight settings (eerie night scapes and dark forrest settings!), the terrifying sounds, the harsh conditions of the game, the countless elements i need to consider (food, water, temperature, shelter, storage, transport, fuel, medical supplies, infection etc) and not to mention the other players! If Stand Alone even matches (and I expect it to improve upon this!) I will be very satisfied indeed.

 

In my eyes, there no comparison and while I agree the feel of the game is very important and animations, expressions etc all add to that, they dont "make" it. 

Edited October 24, 2013 by Box

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

Yup I tend to agree in some regards.

 

It's not so much the motion captured animations themselves, to me they all look good.  It's the transitions between those animations, that's what breaks the "effect" of looking at something real, it takes away any feeling of weight or momentum the characters, zeds or animals could have.

 

Having said that, there was a post made by Dean saying that those transitions are being worked on.  Progress on the SA is moving along very quickly now so it's always worth remembering that what you see in the devblogs is a game heavy in development and largely unfinished.

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

Ah graphics... And i've had a blast in games that represent my player with '@' 

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

Ah graphics... And i've had a blast in games that represent my player with '@' 

You play Dwarf Fortress?  I really tried to like it and I'm far from being a graphics whore but that was a step too far for me.

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

I did play dwarf fortress and found the interface too clunky. But i do recommend "Cataclysm: dark days ahead" which use similar visuals. It  even support tilesets now i believe. This is my favourite zombie survival experience so far.

[cussingprince 2]

Thanks for the reply !

 

Hi Box,

I understand your reply and sorry for misleading you to think I'm judging the game and comparing both games since they are both different genre ( Zombie Survival + Narrative & Zombie Survival + Simulation ) I know both of them have their very own gameplay and style but one thing they do share the same is "Zombie Survival" in the Post apocalyptic world. People struggle for survival in the matter of time. In the narrative story based game they'll have an ending for their game. But for DayZ, It's a simulation game which is NO ENDING for the game. People will get bored over time playing with toys just like kids. What the most important thing for this NO ENDING game is to make another life instead of playing toys. Just like us humans, we struggle for life everyday, the mood, feelings, things to do, thinking and more. Thanks!

 

Hi Fraggle,

I really love and enjoy this game very much and maybe because I'm a hardcore survival gamer haha~ But there are lots of games similar to DayZ popping out every months and I really wish DayZ to be the best of the best Zombie survival simulation game. Thus I suggested something about life to this game.

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

But i do recommend "Cataclysm: dark days ahead" which use similar visuals. It  even support tilesets now i believe. This is my favourite zombie survival experience so far.

I'll have a looksie at it a bit later.

Thanks for the reply !

 

Hi Fraggle,

I really love and enjoy this game very much and maybe because I'm a hardcore survival gamer haha~ But there are lots of games similar to DayZ popping out every months and I really wish DayZ to be the best of the best Zombie survival simulation game. Thus I suggested something about life to this game.

No probs, and welcome to the forums.

[boxman80 964]

Thanks for the reply !

 

Hi Box,

I understand your reply and sorry for misleading you to think I'm judging the game and comparing both games since they are both different genre ( Zombie Survival + Narrative & Zombie Survival + Simulation ) I know both of them have their very own gameplay and style but one thing they do share the same is "Zombie Survival" in the Post apocalyptic world. People struggle for survival in the matter of time. In the narrative story based game they'll have an ending for their game. But for DayZ, It's a simulation game which is NO ENDING for the game. People will get bored over time playing with toys just like kids. What the most important thing for this NO ENDING game is to make another life instead of playing toys. Just like us humans, we struggle for life everyday, the mood, feelings, things to do, thinking and more. Thanks!

 

I agree, Day Z is a sandbox  existence as such for players, so the more elements it has to help immersion, the more appealing it will be and the more longevity it will have. It needs to be consistent and deliver as much detail as possible and as on many levels as possible - including as you point out, look and feel graphically.

 

I was just saying I feel there are some limitations in the graphical area that Day Z faces given that this title isn't being built from the ground up and I personally could overlook these as long as they were the best they could be and and overall the feel of the game aw enough to immerse me. And so far Day Z's other attentions to detail HAVE managed to immerse me and entertain me (not  just gimmicky toy features either) for well over a year now, even with a  clunky interface and clumsy animations.

 

Ideally though, yea, without a doubt smoother gameplay transitions, higher end graphical animations etc. would all be fantastic and they're a great way to build atmosphere and improve immersion. 

 

As a fan-boi of Day Z since early release I naturally want "my" day z to be the best Z-survival game out there of course, so yea I'd love to see the devs take this sort of thing seriously (and I do believe they will!), but I do  think at the end of the day it's all of us fans of the genre that benefit anyway as rival titles come out the woodwork and try to out do each other as each one will raise the bar that little bit higher in order to steal our attention! 

 

Good first post by the way mate! :)

Edited October 24, 2013 by Box

[enforcer1975 1111]

While i agree that the transitions are awkward you must admit that the engine is like 10 years old and the last update to make it "state of the art" was with OA. There are a lot of new animations like the combat roll or jump over fence while running but they are still a bit clunky and i think that's something you won't be able to remove that easily. Even ArmA 3 has it's moments even if everything is a lot more fluid.

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

Age of the engine has nothing to do with anything, that's the argument i always hear from the modding community, mostly because they don't have access to the source. BIS made the arma2 engine, from the ground up, since operation flashpoint, if they need a feature they can simply write it in, there is NOTHING that can't be changed or improved, that's programming 101.

 

Now where the real issue is is in budget. Animation cost money, programmers cost money. If a game has to be the "best they can do" it will never be truly finished. There is always something to prove and at some point you have to decide what is going to be the priority budget and time wise.

 

Frankly i would prefer if they focused on the gameplay and the depth of the game world rather than spending an extra cent on graphics.