Here is our latest Dev blog created on the 24th February...

[SmashT 10907]

 

Here is our latest Dev blog created on the 24th February 2014.

 

So what’s in the Dev Blog?

 

Lighting improvements:

 

We are working on improving in-game lighting, not just from a visual perspective but also from a game play perspective, to improve playing at night.

We have enabled light sources such as flashlights and pistol torches, to emit light during the day as they previously haven’t done. However we still have to do some HDR tweaks

 

Physics:

 

This is an area we have wanted to put in for a while. We have added physics middle-ware, which allows us to add throwing items to the game but it also enables us to look at ragdoll and how the characters move within the world.

 

This is still fairly early days with physics, but we are getting much closer to having something that we can implement into the experimental branch with stability.

 

Containers:

We want to add world items that are lootable such as refrigerators that can store items, so they can be looted and the items within them can be interacted with.

 

Bow and arrows:

 

One of our programmers has been working on bow and arrows, in the video we show a very early work in progress clip of it. So far progress has been fairly quick with good results, so we are looking forward to seeing how this progresses further.

 

Animations:

 

Animations team has been working hard on getting new transitions and new methods of wielding melee weapons. This is still a work in progress.

 

We have moved away from our old way of how the animations were working which caused left handed swings. This restricts how the melee attacks are performed. As the hit detection is done from the item position this allows player to be able to easier work out where they are going to hit. This is still very much a work in progress but we hopeful and we look forward to your feedback.

 

New map updates:

 

Our map team has been working with artists to add new buildings into game and fixing collision issues with buildings. We have added police stations and new health center buildings across the map as well as improving preexisting towns. 

 

We are currently working on ensuring that all buildings spawn loot as this is a big issue at the moment.

 

Weather:

 

We want it to be almost like an antagonist, we now have rain and weather is properly synced across all clients so all players experience the same weather conditions. Rain will also currently make your clothes damp and then wet, but at the moment this doesn’t really have much effect but in the long term but we definitely want to expand upon that.

 

Hunting and cooking;

We have dedicated a whole group of artists programmers and designers with experience with hunting games, that are dedicated to working on animals, their behavior and hunting. To maximise the element of survival, our current sprint is focused on cooking and campfires.

 

DeSync;

One of the big areas people have been reporting is DeSync, we have been working on this directly this is due to the amount of bandwidth DayZ is using because a lot of the messages to do with the inventory are sent via non-guaranteed messages. So if you or someone nearby you has a large amount inventory items, all these messages will be spammed as the server can’t guarantee the client has received them. We have a couple of hot fixes in place but our long term goal for this is to have a guaranteed message system. So the messages are only sent once and not constantly. This will be an ongoing effort.

 

Zombies;

Zombies are an area of active development, we want to increase the amount of zombies. Tied with this we also want to improve their collision detection indoors. This will be one of the task of the new team will be the hit detection of zombies. We are also actively working on the zombie respawn mechanics, using some of the optimisations that we used with player respawns. 

We want zombies to be a good experience so they don’t spawn directly in front of players, this is what is taking the time, as we want to do it properly.

 

Persistent objects;

We want to have some objects have persistency throughout server respawns, such as backpacks, paper with written notes one and eventually when we bring barricading in, wood and wooden barricades and keeping it’s exact location in so far.

 

Vehicles;

Once we have achieved these objectives we can then look at vehicles as implementing vehicles too early could very easily upset the balance and impact other game play areas. When we do implement vehicles we are likely to start with slower vehicles such as  bicycles. Then we will look at more complex vehicles, where we can have many more degradable parts such as batteries or spark plugs.

 

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