Quick status update for week 8 November

[SalamanderAnder (DayZ) 1747]

I didn't mean I was concerned with this impacting the release (though I understand why you assumed that's what i meant...)

 

Just that it has been a long time since I have heard anything about night time in SA. So when I read something like "removing the rendering from being bound to simulation" it raises a lot of questions... just wanted to know if this peaked anyone else's interest, or if there is some info out there about this that I don't know about.

 

Yeah, I'll admit it piqued my curiosity a bit. I'm assuming it's something to do with the server having to render things in order to track their simulation. Like for instance, a zombie moving across the map. Maybe you want to simulate a zombie moving around, but not actually render it graphically to the clients who can't see it. I think that's what he means. Not sure, that's just my tentative speculation.

[electroban 102]

Considering the amount of items and cosmetics you,re working on, why not make a little store where people can buy clothes or really whacky costumes micro transaction style? Gottah diversify your revenue streams man!

[IkaikaKekai 1957]

Considering the amount of items and cosmetics you,re working on, why not make a little store where people can buy clothes or really whacky costumes micro transaction style? Gottah diversify your revenue streams man!

BURN THE HERETIC!!!

[joe_mcentire 2073]

 

-

 

thank good you did this update, ppl's expectations are and were beyond good and evil. dean i think you are a man that prioritizes a good quality above statements and "promises" (yeah i know ;) ). Are there not slight thoughts towards a "softer" release like a private alpha release with 3-4 servers? or wouldn't this change anything?

[joe_mcentire 2073]

 When the game is playable and performs well, he will release it.

I'm pretty damn happy with that, and I think bigger companies could learn a lesson or two from this.

problem:

• devs would maybe do so
• publishers wouldn't

[joe_mcentire 2073]

in addition:

 

source: DayZBulletin

So once optimization has been completed and changes have been fully tested, you will then release? A while back you said that the actual release of the game (steam and such) was much more complex than anticipated, has that changed?

Yes. We don't foresee any delay in release once performance has been achieved.

 

Do you guys know what needs to be changed to fix the performance issues, or are you still trying to figure out what's causing them?

1. the sound queue.
2. the state checking of "slow vehicles" array. This contains loot items. instead of checking 30000 items each frame (50 FPS on server), we want to have them in two arrays. a "clean" array that is never checked (because they are stationary, waiting to be picked up) and a "dirty" array that contains objects that are on a player - we would check these regularly.

optimization has already occurred but its work has not been finished.

 

Updates are good. Screenshots are good. Just please make it clear that there will be no "hints" or suggestions in those images about when the release is going to be. Ones like the three bullets, no shit there's going to be bullets in the game. I think to EVERYONE it meant that there were only three days until release.

People will read into anything. And actually, I'm not saying it will definitely be weeks. Today it almost looked like we had reached the performance target, but the bug we fixed had a more subtle bug hiding behind it. I don't do clues and I never have, if I post a picture take it at face value. It's a picture of three bullets. There's no game in how we release this, we'll just release it.

 

Don't you think 15 FPS is low ?

Player simulation occurs 20 times per second Zombie simulation occurs 10 times per second Anything below 20 FPS will affect player simulation. Anything below 10 FPS will affect zombie simulation. Above that, you probably don't notice a great benefit so much as not notice any bad things. A couple of weeks ago the server was running constantly at about 5 FPS, and still functioning with the only main problem being rubberbanding zombies.

 

can't just throw a release date out there, but do you have an idea how much more time we have to wait ?

Yes I do but I'm not going to share that as it is subject to change and could setup disappointment.

 

I personally 100% understand why you want these issues ironing out however they sound minimal when compared to the mod and that didn't exactly go down bad did it?

To quote Marek (our CEO), "really this is a new engine". While the rendering may look similar to how it was, under the hood it is entirely different. The netcode, the inventory, the AI, everything is touched there. Because of this, we have to be very careful because all sorts of things can go wrong.

We have been discovering all these little problems. Small problems that you wouldn't see with 100, 1000, even 5000 objects become very noticeable when you have 25000 objects.

This isn't about perfection - its about function. And also, the mod was a freebee alongside a functioning game. DayZ SA will require people to pay, many of those people feel they have already invested not just money (buying ArmA2), but time and support. Therefore there is a certain expectation of function that will prove the viability of the project.

I believe that a well functioning multiplayer system demonstrates the viability of the project, even if the game design might be a bit lacking.

 

On the side note, how large the dev team has become? You were moving into different building, expanding staff... Please, elaborate with some useful details.

20-30 FTE, with other externals.

 

redditors would be fully prepared to drop money on the Alpha version knowing full well that it will have quirks and would give concise feedback on them.

True. But as much of a relief and morale booster as the release will be for the team, it also means all hell breaks loose. It means we will become very focused on the low-hanging, obvious, bugs. Now we need to ensure the basic core architecture functions correctly - without any dodgy bugs or unexpected behavior.

 

Will the initial server be capped to a certain number of players (below 60)? If so, do you plan on gradually increasing that number to measure the performance? Also, how many servers can we expect on alpha launch?

Server size will be dictated by the server itself. High quality servers will be able to run more players. The servers are very CPU intensive, but the bandwidth requires are greatly reduced compared to ArmA2. I would go so far to say bandwidth, and even ping to an extent, are not really that important any more. But server CPU is. We are benchmarking with what we believe is a typical ArmA2 dedicated server. We are aiming for 50 players for the initial release, scaling to the design limit of 150 (we feel more than that does not work for Chernarus).

 

Will you be able to test the 50/server goal using internal testers or will this be something that essentially the alpha release will test ?

We will test it internally first absolutely. Actually, it is very easy to see the problems. The bugs we have now show up because they are compounding. That means they get worse quickly. So once these are solved the system scales very well.

 

So, if I hit W on a 250 ping server, does it take 250ms for me to see my character move forward? How much exactly is simulated on the client to reduce this delay? Or if you don't want to get into details, is playing with 250 ping bearable?

Can you count to 200ms? The main difference is that previously your client had a hell of a lot of work to do - and the poor server had a lot of information to send you. This meant bandwidth would be prioritized and on a busy server your 200ms became a very big liability. Now that the server doesn't send nearly as much info as it used too, things happen much faster for the network manager. This means that you get only the information you need. 200ms is actually a very short space of time, when you think about it. The issue is all the bloat added onto that 200ms by the client + server.

 

do u know a round about size of disk space for the SA?

About 10GB for client. About 600mb for server.

 

do u know any recommended system requirements for the standalone?

A good CPU. more than dual-core is probably a waste but CPU speed is most important. An SSD helps because there is a lot of texture loading. SSD for the game, separate one for OS would be my suggestion. More than 2 GB VRAM is probably a waste, game doesn't use it. Same for RAM. Server wise, it's all about CPU. More CPU more zombies + more lot + more players. Bandwidth not a big issue (full server probably 4 Kbps out and 1 Kbps in). Ram non-issue (expect 400mb to 1gb on server).

 

Could you not improve performance by caching textures in RAM?

Probably but I haven't tried it myself. We have some issues with textures that are causing a noticeable client FPS drop looking at center of cities. We'll get to that eventually.

 

Rocket, you said before that it was the zombies causing that issue....

Client side issue is associated with rendering. Zombies simulation is calculated on the server, and zombie rendering is very simple (one texture, one section = one render pass). So our main rendering is objects, buildings, etc... of which there can be many. I believe the issue mainly relates to how we are handling the textures (massive numbers of them).

 

Is optimization as big of a hurdle as the network bubble? Is it network bubble v2, or knowing how the dev team works, do you think it's an "easy" fix?

Optimization can be very frustrating, and it's probably not as "fun" as creating something. But certainly optimization is probably less complex than developing code netcode architecture. It's fairly reactive... run app, watch what is happening... optimize the things taking the most time... repeat.

 

Is it worth to spend the safed bugs on another game (based on timeframe) or would you (honest opinion - not the salesman one) say "nah, just be patient"?

Even if you bought another game now, DayZ will still be there. I think that DayZ is going to be an interesting experience when the alpha releases, but it is still early in the products life. Only the basics are there. So even if you bought another game (like Project Zomboid!) DayZ will be there and better when you have the money again :)

 

Question, will all the servers for the initial release be run by Bohemia? Or do you already have server providers that are willing to host it on release date?

BIS will run some servers through a hosting provider who will also run some. I think we will be able to handle 50-100k concurrents (this is from memory, i can't be sure of the exact numbers).

 

If its not holding back release what is?

Read it carefully. Right now there are performance issues with the game servers. I think many other bugs and problems aren't an issue, but this is. The servers need to be smooth and dependable, even if the game and design are not so much. smooth frames at 20 players is not enough, we need more optimization and there are existing bugs that cause serious performance issues on the server. We know what they are, and we are fixing them. So we just complete that then reassess.

 

Could you let us know if you will be announcing the release date once standalone is ready? or will you just announce that it is now available.

There will be no delay, when the server performance is achieved it will be released. There is no marketing strategy. Our aim will be to try and well publicize the issues with the alpha, and encourage those who are concerned about the state to wait a few months and pick it up then.

 

I'm surprised no one asked this yet, but do you have an approximative time window ?

Yes I do but I'm not going to share that as it is subject to change and could setup disappointment.

 

Do you continue to work on other game features (adding more objects, etc) or simply focusing on server performance atm? To put it in a different way and to avoid incurring hatred from reddit (all the effort into alpher, now!) are there other parts of the development team simultaneously working on future features, like vehicle and building mechanics?

Vehicle and building is not being worked on (yet) but is part of the roadmap. The current systems will be utilized by vehicles, such as the attachment + consumption systems. So we're laying the groundwork for that. Not all the team is working on performance, some of the team are working on more longterm stuff like rendering + physics/ragdoll.

 

AND

 

 

What about hyperthreading? Would an i7 do better than an FX because of the differing threading support, or are we just talking raw clock speed here?

The app architecture is old, it's a 32 bit app. Like the vast majority of games, it's designed for previous gen processors. Games generally aren't designed to use six cores and etc... I'm no expert on hyperthreading but one thing that does help is raw clock speed on a single core. There is some multithreading stuff in the engine, i looked at it but I don't understand how it works. And I think that's all clientside anyway. I personally haven't looked into clientside CPU and my client runs fine for what I need. But on the server, it only uses one core. Which means raw clock speed is critical. It scales well enough with faster CPUs.

 

Can you shed some light upon widely adopted theory here that we shouldn't be expecting 'imminent' release until we see about a hundred people playing on test server?

I don't think we will bother testing above 50. If that happened it would not be planned. If no compounding FPS issues are experienced at 50 we know it scales well, and it means your average ArmA2 dedi server can hold 50 and a super-server could do more.

 

So obsessing over the steam server numbers isn't the best idea for us?

Every time we break the ceiling on player numbers, we get excited too :)

Edited November 9, 2013 by joe_mcentire

[Guest]

Sounds very promising, 

 

"We have now something that provides basic functionality for 10-20 players. The new zombies are in, they provide excellent pathfinding outdoors, and improved pathing indoors. They are capable of breadcrumb navigation or line of sight. At low server FPS they will start to rubberband and glitch through walls much more often. They are very much a work in progress."

 

Does this mean that theoretically there is still some way to go? Not complaining just curious :)

[YZ250 248]

"BIS will run some servers through a hosting provider who will also run some. I think we will be able to handle 50-100k concurrents (this is from memory, i can't be sure of the exact numbers)."

 

This worries me, so even when the Game does come out we are going to be dictated by some servers not within 50,000 kms of our Country, Ohh the fucking LAG I hear you say. SO we cant download Server Files and create our OWN ?  Correct me if I'm reading this wrong, NOT your point of view

[rossums 2190]

"BIS will run some servers through a hosting provider who will also run some. I think we will be able to handle 50-100k concurrents (this is from memory, i can't be sure of the exact numbers)."

 

This worries me, so even when the Game does come out we are going to be dictated by some servers not within 50,000 kms of our Country, Ohh the fucking LAG I hear you say. SO we cant download Server Files and create our OWN ?  Correct me if I'm reading this wrong, NOT your point of view

 

BiS will host some servers through a provider (There will be a number of servers in at least Europe, The US and I think Australia).

The provider will also host a number of servers around the world too.

In total the servers will hold up to around 100K concurrent players.

Compared to the mod though ping isn't anywhere near as big of a problem - since a lot of calculations are done server-side there is no need to pass as much data between the client and the server which means better performance.

 

Edited November 9, 2013 by Rossums

[rossums 2190]

Sounds very promising, 

 

"We have now something that provides basic functionality for 10-20 players. The new zombies are in, they provide excellent pathfinding outdoors, and improved pathing indoors. They are capable of breadcrumb navigation or line of sight. At low server FPS they will start to rubberband and glitch through walls much more often. They are very much a work in progress."

 

Does this mean that theoretically there is still some way to go? Not complaining just curious :)

Currently work is being done to get an increase in server FPS to make sure there won't be any problems with stuttering zombies etc - it's going pretty well atm, the devs just have to make sure it will remain smooth enough for a proper launch though.

Since that's more about tweaking, testing, tweaking, testing they aren't really able to give a specific time frame (They also don't WANT to give a timeframe in the event that anything else crops up that they have to deal with.)

[Hosty 647]

"BIS will run some servers through a hosting provider who will also run some. I think we will be able to handle 50-100k concurrents (this is from memory, i can't be sure of the exact numbers)."

 

This worries me, so even when the Game does come out we are going to be dictated by some servers not within 50,000 kms of our Country, Ohh the fucking LAG I hear you say. SO we cant download Server Files and create our OWN ?  Correct me if I'm reading this wrong, NOT your point of view

 

 

You will be able to host, but not put mods/change vehicles to 30000 or anything like that.

It will have to be within the only, main hive.

 

 

Edit: 600th post woot

Edited November 9, 2013 by Hosty

[voddler (DayZ) 367]

You will be able to host, but not put mods/change vehicles to 30000 or anything like that.

It will have to be within the only, main hive.

 

 

Edit: 600th post woot

And I hope it stays that for a long time, especially no modding. That's what ruined DayZ for a lot of players, you could have everything on one server... And you'd experience it all before you even started.

 

It's a bit sad.

[Hosty 647]

And I hope it stays that for a long time, especially no modding. That's what ruined DayZ for a lot of players, you could have everything on one server... And you'd experience it all before you even started.

 

It's a bit sad.

 

This.

Finding helis at every corner and 300 cars every tiny village is retarded.

It took me seriously a month to find my first car and it was so thrilling and exciting.

It was a red GAZ. I kept crashing it into things and it repaired itself back, so me and my friend called that car Jesus.

Until we died and lost it.

To this day, Red GAZes to me remind me of Jesus the car.

[codestargod 102]

Project Zomboid???

 

*sniff*

 

...

 

wut da eff is dis smelly piece a shit? gimme my DayZ!!!!  :(

Edited November 9, 2013 by codestargod

[Barack Obama 215]

Vaporware 2013

[kichilron 8550]

You will be able to host, but not put mods/change vehicles to 30000 or anything like that.

It will have to be within the only, main hive.

 

 

I will be more than happy to host a couple of servers even though I can't change anything serverside. Just to give the infrastructur for other players.

[scaramoosh 162]

I'm disappointed by the FPS issues, ARMA 3 was a total flop, was meant to be an improvement and yet it runs worse than ARMA 2, I don't think I've ever hit over 30fps in either game and I have an 780 + 4770k now and the games run worse than my older PC :\ 

 

Just license out a better engine. 

 

I don't get the argument of A.I either, the A.I is shit, Dead Rising 3 has thousands on screen at once and they act far better. People saying zombies drop FPS in Dayz when there are like 5 on the screen....... I just don't believe it, that or there is something deeply wrong with the A.I. Apparently the system has been changed for SA and yet the FPS issues are still there... 

 

Like wtf is going on? I could forgive it if this was pushing the boundaries  but like we have GTA V on consoles getting a smoother frame rate with far more going on, even in online and we have BF4 online with 64 players with destruction and everything, yet I get over 100FPS maxed out there with MSAA turned up. People then blame the map size, no it isn't that, you'd still get the same fps issues on small Dayz maps..

 

 

I'm not going to buy the SA until it is running at a smooth 60FPS on my machine, I could forgive a mod, I'm not going to forgive a full release game. 

Edited November 9, 2013 by Miffy

[zfleming12 395]

I'm disappointed by the FPS issues, ARMA 3 was a total flop, was meant to be an improvement and yet it runs worse than ARMA 2, I don't think I've ever hit over 30fps in either game and I have an 780 + 4770k now and the games run worse than my older PC :\ 

 

Just license out a better engine. 

 

I don't get the argument of A.I either, the A.I is shit, Dead Rising 3 has thousands on screen at once and they act far better. People saying zombies drop FPS in Dayz when there are like 5 on the screen....... I just don't believe it, that or there is something deeply wrong with the A.I. Apparently the system has been changed for SA and yet the FPS issues are still there... 

 

Like wtf is going on? I could forgive it if this was pushing the boundaries  but like we have GTA V on consoles getting a smoother frame rate with far more going on, even in online and we have BF4 online with 64 players with destruction and everything, yet I get over 100FPS maxed out there with MSAA turned up. People then blame the map size, no it isn't that, you'd still get the same fps issues on small Dayz maps..

 

 

I'm not going to buy the SA until it is running at a smooth 60FPS on my machine, I could forgive a mod, I'm not going to forgive a full release game. 

Then you'll be waiting for the full release because we are coming towards Alpha, not the final release product.

[Dekkymane 145]

Dean said Chainsaws in one of his posts somewhere.

 

choo choo?

[icomrade 201]

Alpher

[zfleming12 395]

I wonder what the comes after alpher....

 

 

 

BETATO!

[sav112g 114]

Wow that put a lot to right! Well done Mr Hall in spending time with us.

 

I think for a lot of us that is all we asked, some nice answers and a nice update to what state the SA is in.

 

 Bit disappointed about the game only using one Core (server side). If they cracked that issue it would mean better performance I guess server side and client.

Edited November 9, 2013 by sav112

[NagsterTheGangster 388]

So by the sounds of it the optimization is a little under half done if it supports 10-20 people well and they want 50 before release?

[kichilron 8550]

I wonder what the comes after alpher....

 

 

 

BETATO!

 

 

Beter.

[m.w. vindicator 880]

I'm disappointed by the FPS issues, ARMA 3 was a total flop, was meant to be an improvement and yet it runs worse than ARMA 2, I don't think I've ever hit over 30fps in either game and I have an 780 + 4770k now and the games run worse than my older PC :\ 

 

Just license out a better engine. 

 

I don't get the argument of A.I either, the A.I is shit, Dead Rising 3 has thousands on screen at once and they act far better. People saying zombies drop FPS in Dayz when there are like 5 on the screen....... I just don't believe it, that or there is something deeply wrong with the A.I. Apparently the system has been changed for SA and yet the FPS issues are still there... 

 

Like wtf is going on? I could forgive it if this was pushing the boundaries  but like we have GTA V on consoles getting a smoother frame rate with far more going on, even in online and we have BF4 online with 64 players with destruction and everything, yet I get over 100FPS maxed out there with MSAA turned up. People then blame the map size, no it isn't that, you'd still get the same fps issues on small Dayz maps..

 

 

I'm not going to buy the SA until it is running at a smooth 60FPS on my machine, I could forgive a mod, I'm not going to forgive a full release game. 

 

 

You can have 120 client FPS when the server has 15 fps.  It is a different thing. 

 

 

Rocket is talking about reaching 15 server fps.   15 client fps is not acceptable.

 

 

 

And also, I have a laptop that I play on.  I get 30 fps on Arma 3 unless I am surrounded by 20 explosions.  I think it runs fine personally