Status Report - Week of 20 Oct 14

[SMoss 2101]

 

The subject of the central economy has been one of varied opinions within the community. The idea of centralized control over both rare items, and quantity control over more common items of loot is very polarizing. As we look towards the remaining months left in 2014, the team has been discussing our intended goals and level of functionality desired from the loot spawning system, and the central hives' control over it. As the current behavior for the spawning and respawning of loot is a placeholder system and the limits of this form are very visible when observing the current behavior on experimental branch servers we have outlined the following goals for the final functionality with the programming, and design teams:

• Control over quantity per server instance for rare / high value items (Eg: M4A1, SVD, etc)
• Loot table control per region/area type rather than per building class name
• Even distribution of loot economy across the whole of Chernarus

As work moves forward on deploying the intended functionality into loot spawning/respawning, server side stats analysis will allow fine adjustments to the system to be made, and experimental branch updates on a weekly basis will allow us to iterate, and volume/stress test against a large user base. Status reports throughout the remainder of the year will keep people apprised on the progress of this new system. - Brian Hicks / Producer

 

Chris / Lead Artist
"This week, I'm taking a look at our skybox and lighting settings to see if there is opportunity to improve the experience visually - particularly at dawn/dusk and night.  I'm hoping that we will find a way to add the milky way spiral arm visible in the night sky to our game.

Work continues on several new character pieces (women's clothing, prison uniform, medical scrubs, craftable clothing and new zombie types) as well as various environment models which I have mentioned previously (new heli crash site, objects for the NEAF, building signs, other props).

The Derringer, AK74M, AKS74U and MP133 with pistol grips have all been passed to the animators, designers and sound team for their part to be completed. We are still be on course to add 5.45mm ammo and the AK74 before the end of October."

 

Peter / Lead Designer

"The art team has completed several new weapons and delivered the assets to the animation and design teams. One of these new items is one quite a special case, which we need to figure out how to do properly and it's a flare gun. So in the meantime you will get other dangerous toys to play with. By the way do you remember that little useful item from the mod which was used to heat yourself up? Character exposure mechanics were expanded again and good old heat pack is back and it's better than ever. When you use it, it starts to produce heat to warm you up as long as the pack lasts. With advanced weather impact we had introduced also some meaning for shoes you are wearing. But that wasn't enough for us within scope of the survival. Shoes have potential to became very important part of your clothes to take care of as they are gets damaged now depending on movement speed, surface type and distance traveled and eventually hurts your feet.

Previously, I had mentioned the new controls system which is currently being worked on and we have working prototype of it already. You are probably curious what changes it will brings to game and way it's played. We are focused to make the controlling of your character as fluent as possible so there will be no immersion breaking due to clunky controls. That means we want to eliminate user action menu, or at least have this possibility just for very special cases. Usage of items will be driven contextually, let's say you have an apple in your hand and you invoke action by pressing and holding use button - if you are pointing on someone you will start to feed him while you are holding the use button, if not then you will start eating it by yourself - when you release you will stop the action. You will be able to use items even during movement. Still have that half-eaten apple in hand when zombie suddenly appear? Just hit him hard with that apple in your hand - yes all items (of course firearms too) can became melee weapons. New controls allow us also to expand melee system which we are considering to do with addition of two types of attacks - fast and charged, or to add push instead of fast attack. We will see how the prototype of these goes and how it will play with server performance and synchronization in general.

Next time I will talk a little bit about the new inventory too. As usual apart from such exciting stuff we made some fixes such ammo-box container inception and other smaller ones. I nearly forgot that we spent some time on defining what animal companions should be, but that's something to talk about later.

Choose your footwear wisely... see you in Chernarus folks!"

 

Standup Notes for the week of 20 Oct 14

(Note: Standup notes are not a change log - they are a quick high level look at tasks the teams worked on throughout this week)

Art:

• Improvements to the skybox and lighting
• Multiple crafted leather items
• Women's shorts, sweater
• Polishing bush rag and 3D camo for weapons
• Prison Uniform Pants
• Medical Scrubs
• Steyr AUG
• Large Tent
• Various new environment models

Animation:

• Sitting gesture changes/polishing
• Prone animations with pistol polishings
• New hand poses for items
• Wring clothes animation done
• Binoculars animation graph tuning
• Bow reload animations in progress

Design:

• Bugfixing (tent pitching, repairing leather items, struggling, containers)
• Configs and scripts for new items (heat pack)
• Shoes and foots damage
• Expansion of weather impact
• Loot tables maintenance
• Damage and destruct textures
• Advanced melee
• Barricading
• Animal companions
• Loot distribution
• Injured character
• Controls
• Inventory
• Vehicles

Programming:

• Critical inventory fixes
• Unintenional weapon switching
• New gamecontrols
• Loot distribution improvements
• Gameplay statistics
• Door states persistency
• Implementation of the V3S vehicle
• Zombie/Animal AI

[Valdenburg 200]

Thanks for this Update!

 

We also launched our Private Shard/HIVE with PvP/PvE and soon RP Server ;)

Edited October 26, 2014 by VanValdenburg

[Mycaelis 12]

Looks promising, keep up the good work!

[C0bbler 17]

Bare bones but looking forward to next week. Fingers crossed for a chunky stable update.

[zenonek2000 2]

I know this picture from somewhere :)

[hoik 415]

Im quite interested in how this new loot economy is going to play out, especially because it is exactly the type of complex system I needed for a mod I had in mind. Basically i want to do this:

 

- keep track of the average life span of players over, say, 24 hrs.

- the next 24 hrs, if the average life span goes up i want to effect the loot in accordance with the "growing population" by making some loot rarer (essential things like food) while others more common (better weapons etc). And vise versa.

- I would also like to link the average life expectancy with when a server is wiped/reset (too many dead survivors = extinction, live longer more time on the clock)

 

This is just a basic run down of what I'd like to do - so what i really want to know is, is this the type of thing that modders will be able to do when they get to go crazy with DayZ?

Edited October 23, 2014 by Hoik

[blackberrygoo 1416]

Can't wait for these :

Door state Persistance

Injured character

Damaged and destruct textures

Animal companions

Large tent !

Aug steyr

And finally implementation of v3s , whenever you come you beautiful beast , I will find you .

[jessebilyk 32]

And finally implementation of v3s , whenever you come you beautiful beast , I will find you .

Not if I find it first!!! lol

[blackberrygoo 1416]

Not if I find it first!!! lol

Seriously people will be fighting over the first one found so hard , lol I can see it now ; a camp of 5 men , 3 protecting a broken down v3s while the other two scour the entire city for an engine part lol so sweet .

[jessebilyk 32]

Seriously people will be fighting over the first one found so hard , lol I can see it now ; a camp of 5 men , 3 protecting a broken down v3s while the other two scour the entire city for an engine part lol so sweet .

Dont forget the people that will try to use it as an ambush, man this is gonna make things interesting

[themightylc 56]

Cheers to the Dev Team!!

 

This week's Blog is so exciting - if we don't all die of natural causes before it's done (sorry :P), DayZ will be so much more than I expected!! 

 

Keep up that good work guys!!

[Survivor_Ted 269]

 

• Control over quantity per server instance for rare / high value items (Eg: M4A1, SVD, etc)
• Loot table control per region/area type rather than per building class name
• Even distribution of loot economy across the whole of Chernarus

 

 

 

Will this be adjustable by server owners? I certainly hope not, then we'll be back to the "[5000+ increased weapon spawn | MAXIMUM L00T!!!! | AMMO IN ALL HOUSES!!!]"

 

Otherwise everything else sounds interesting!  :thumbsup:

[Steak and Potatoes 13480]

 

Design:

 

• Animal companions

 

A friend to cover my mistakes without judgement.

 

[jessebilyk 32]

A friend to cover my mistakes without judgement.

 

guy should have just bought the shamwow

Edited October 23, 2014 by jessebilyk

[themightylc 56]

Will this be adjustable by server owners?

 

 

I dare to say this is a given: IF it even will be adjustable, then only on private hives. If people want to play 60€ a month to play a "worse kind of Battlefield" then so be it. Each to their own.

[pillock 850]

Shoes have potential to became very important part of your clothes to take care of as they are gets damaged now depending on movement speed, surface type and distance traveled and eventually hurts your feet.

Previously, I had mentioned the new controls system which is currently being worked on and we have working prototype of it already. You are probably curious what changes it will brings to game and way it's played. We are focused to make the controlling of your character as fluent as possible so there will be no immersion breaking due to clunky controls. That means we want to eliminate user action menu, or at least have this possibility just for very special cases. Usage of items will be driven contextually, let's say you have an apple in your hand and you invoke action by pressing and holding use button - if you are pointing on someone you will start to feed him while you are holding the use button, if not then you will start eating it by yourself - when you release you will stop the action. You will be able to use items even during movement. Still have that half-eaten apple in hand when zombie suddenly appear? Just hit him hard with that apple in your hand - yes all items (of course firearms too) can became melee weapons. New controls allow us also to expand melee system which we are considering to do with addition of two types of attacks - fast and charged, or to add push instead of fast attack. 

 

Excellent. Any tramp will tell you that the most important possession you can have in this situation is a decent set of boots. (And DayZ survivors are, essentially, tramps.)

 

Also looking forward to being able to whack someone over the head with half-eaten cucumber.

[OrganGrinder 89]

Also looking forward to being able to whack someone over the head with half-eaten cucumber.

 

The perfect thing with which to dope-slap your buddies when they screw up

[Paxom (DayZ) 30]

SMoss, thanks for report.

 

Any word on Hit Points, anything at all ?

[Death By Crowbar 1213]

Were there any changes to meelee weapons recently? I ask because the pickaxe used to be 1 hit for zombies, and now it's 2. That seemed new to me...

[ob1korobi 125]

bamo

[xCAPx 349]

Chris / Lead Artist

I'm hoping that we will find a way to add the milky way spiral arm visible in the night sky to our game.

 

This would be awesome. I love to play the game at night and this would be a nice eyecatcher. Maybe we could see some falling stars in the future, too?

[Mad Scientist 73]

Jumped on experimental last night, ran through one small town and my shoes were ruined and my feet started to hurt!! Found a pair of hiking boots (worn) and by the time I got to the next town they were ruined as well. I think the wear on the shoes needs to be toned down a bit...

[darkrider400 76]

 

Implementation of the V3S vehicle

 

 

 

 

I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO RESIZE A PICTURE!! :D

Edited October 27, 2014 by Mos1ey

[claws4life 99]

Vehicles already designed and already being programmed for experimental?? I smell the tons of abandoned stable servers soon :D

[dedoolb 157]

Gameplay statistics

 

Does that mean something similar to the Bandit / Hero system of the mod?

Zeds killed / Bandits killed / Murders?