POLL: How happy are you with the buildings and map?

[gannon46 788]

I cringe everytime when I read suggestions like huge shopping malls, golf courses etc or when people complain about the soviet feel and aesthetic, when this is exactly what the devs are going for and many people love for exactly this reason, because its not just another generic american suburb.

indeed sir i love the soviet era stuff then again i'm a huge stalker fan. i would like to see more of that era style buildings but i leave that to the devs so far they have done every single suggestion i usually think of eventually thats why i like this game so much.

[mercules 1290]

The general complaint is DayZ runs bad on good systems...

 

No it doesn't. It runs poorly on poor systems. Some people just believe their system is better than it is or have done things like tuned the settings down so far that it has moved all processing over to the CPU instead of giving the GPU something to do. Now, it is hardly optimized, but that would kinda be because of the "ALPHA" thing some people like to ignore. You don't optimize something whilst in the midst of changing it monthly. ;)

[scriptfactory 620]

No it doesn't. It runs poorly on poor systems. Some people just believe their system is better than it is or have done things like tuned the settings down so far that it has moved all processing over to the CPU instead of giving the GPU something to do. Now, it is hardly optimized, but that would kinda be because of the "ALPHA" thing some people like to ignore. You don't optimize something whilst in the midst of changing it monthly. ;)

 

Two things are wrong with your statement:

 

1) DayZ has poor performance in comparison to modern 1st/3rd-person shooters. It has a poor graphics quality as well. It is based on a poor engine which is why the BIS devs are trying to improve it. This is an objective statement of fact.

2) A lot of people confuse "optimization during an alpha" with "premature optimization". The first does not exist. The second exists independently of the application release cycle (alpha, beta, etc.). All optimizations should be considered premature unless performance is poor or application metrics say that a particular optimization will increase performance by orders of magnitude.

Please note that game optimizations and bugfixes typically occur during the pre-alpha and alpha stages of development! Do not trust Wikipedia. It is bullshit.

[hekp 223]

 

cringe everytime when I read suggestions like huge shopping malls, golf courses etc or when people complain about the soviet feel and aesthetic, when this is exactly what the devs are going for and many people love for exactly this reason, because its not just another generic american suburb.

+1. i love post ww2, cold war setting and all the relics from that era.

 

http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2014/12/12-abandoned-cold-war-airfields-soviet-union-russia/

combine the overgrown vegetation on NW mil base and put that on balota...

nailed it? I think BIS knows what they're doing :)

Edited January 5, 2015 by halp

[ColonelBurton 145]

No amount of additions to the map will make if feel like it did when you first started, the only thing you can do if you find Chernarus boring is wait for mod support.

None of the location options in the poll suit the map very well in my opinion (execpt the prison obviously

 

You sort of have a point there. But the thing is that in my opinion, there is not enough immersion going on in Chernarous when compared to other games. Look at skyrim.. people can  keep going back into that world, or Fallout 3 even, because it feels real somehow. It never gets boring though you've experienced it over and over.

 

Like I said, a lot of stuff in Chernarous feels real, but then you get stuck in the entrance to a 6m² house and realise that the props are not to size. 

 

Can you imagine two V3 trucks passing each other out on a Chernarous country road?

 

Another thing the buildings lack in terms of immersion is the possibility to utilise any tactics. The ship in Rify has only one way in, one way out, same goes for the town hall building in Novo. The churches have a big front door but not even benches behind which you could conceal yourself, never mind something like a pulpit. The castles are just pointless props, there is no way of getting up on some of the towers or the walls to create a community out of the castle ruins, for example.

 

Even linear shooters like Call of Duty have buildings with at least two paths you can take. In DayZ, the building with the largest variety of tactical options is the police station.

 

PS: I don't think Chernarous needs more development in general, but not the same crap over and over again and it all needs improvement. From the smallest wooden hut to the churches and police stations. Bigger, better buildings. The map is fine in my opinion, but when it comes to the building designs, start from scratch and resize everything completely, to be honest!

[igor-vk 909]

I like Chernarus. It's a small, sleep, Eastern republic. But I see suggestions like this, and it annoys me. Why would you rape the nice map we have with all this nonsense? Huge cities and tired novelties have been done to death in the genre. Why can't we just keep the rural republic we have?

True! Maybe Bi will make new map placed else where in world. People from US will get what they want in h1z1.

[Beizs 186]

They've said that it's unlikely that they'll ever be able to make the map bigger.

 

Because of this, I don't want them adding too much more. I'd like to see them work on existing towns etc, but, honestly, the map feels fairly crowded to me. Sure, I run very fast, but even taking that in to account, there's not enough countryside left over. If you run in the right direction, you're never more than ten minutes from a town or village. It's ridiculous.

 

I'd like to see them either find a way to make the map bigger or, if they can't, take out some of the smaller towns. Then they should revamp the remaining ones with more unique buildings, possibly increase the size of some of the cities and such. I feel like there's a lot of stuff there for the sake of it, not for any kind of level design reasons.

 

As for things like supermarkets, I agree to a point. There shouldn't be anything absolutely huge, but a couple of larger shops would be nice. Just not superstore level. Prison would be nice, along with some of the military stuff, tunnels would be awesome, but nothing more. Just doesn't fit the aesthetic of the game. A small, richer area might be nice, but I'm not entirely sure what purpose it'd serve.

 

As for improvements other than towns and stuff, I'd like to see denser forests, some larger beaches on the south, preferably with some dunes or something and a range of plants added.

 

I really, really want to see every building and every room enterable.

 

Just my opinion, though.

Edited January 5, 2015 by Beizs

[Freshmen 28]

Agree FULLY!!!

 

Dead Island has some amazing ideas, the problem with Dead Island is it lacks the gameplay of DayZ

DayZ is bland boring and ugly at many points.

 

Actually i got the idea for a golf resort from the horror flick "Carriers"

For those who don't know the movie:

 

A group of teenagers are like the last on earth after an infective virus has wiped out almost the entire humanity(sounds similar?).

They travel around in a car till they find this abadoned golf resort which they want to make their new home. Too bad it turns out it isn't abadoned but owned by bandits. Well you can figure the rest out.

 

Edit: GOLFCARTS!!!!

Edited January 5, 2015 by Freshmen

[mercules 1290]

1) DayZ has poor performance in comparison to modern 1st/3rd-person shooters. It has a poor graphics quality as well. It is based on a poor engine which is why the BIS devs are trying to improve it. This is an objective statement of fact.

You mean like BF3/4 and CoD? CoD's "map" is about 1/100th the size of Chernarus and a BF map is about 1/20th. Neither of them have nearly as many items that they track and render constantly and by items I mean Screwdriver lying here at this angle on the shelf with a slightly damaged water bottle so it has the damaged texture on the shelf below and the two doors into the shed are both closed.

I have a "decent" computer. It's not top of the line but above mid-ranged and I get 70-FPS outside of towns and it will drop to 25-30 FPS in the crowded towns better in the smaller ones. That isn't horrible at all especially considering what it is rendering and the fact that it is an alpha.

2) A lot of people confuse "optimization during an alpha" with "premature optimization". The first does not exist. The second exists independently of the application release cycle (alpha, beta, etc.). All optimizations should be considered premature unless performance is poor or application metrics say that a particular optimization will increase performance by orders of magnitude.

In this case I am not overlooking anything. Devs have admitted they have not optimized crap because it would be a waste of time with them putting in a new renderer. Even before that they didn't as new models were still being made.

Please note that game optimizations and bugfixes typically occur during the pre-alpha and alpha stages of development! Do not trust Wikipedia. It is bullshit.

Please note, no they don't. Some optimizations might be best to get in that early but typically it is stupid to optimize a half formed system since you will have to go back and redo most of that work at a later date.

...and bugfixes? I've worked with a QA team and found show stopper bugs in release candidates. Again there are some things at some layers that are easier to get fixed before you put even more complex systems over the top of it, but a lot of bugs are not apparently until you start putting in other systems so bug fixing is typically an ongoing process. Some bug fixes you just won't do. Like bug fixing zombie glitches right now when they are about to work on the AI would be a waste of time.

[scriptfactory 620]

You mean like BF3/4 and CoD? CoD's "map" is about 1/100th the size of Chernarus and a BF map is about 1/20th. Neither of them have nearly as many items that they track and render constantly and by items I mean Screwdriver lying here at this angle on the shelf with a slightly damaged water bottle so it has the damaged texture on the shelf below and the two doors into the shed are both closed.

Frostbite and IW(x) are two of the best game engines ever written. They were both created to fulfill specific gaming tasks. In fact, while the maximum size for Frostbite maps is about 8x8km it renders players/vehicles at distances up to 4km with astonishing details like trees, bushes and undergrowth. All at a constant 120+ FPS on top-of-the-line hardware. If they added a level streaming technology the engine could, no doubt, support a map the size of Chernarus+.

My point is, there are a bunch of good graphics engines and the "Enfusion" engine is, currently, not one of the best. It will be improved with time, no doubt, but you shouldn't knock BF4 or CoD.

 

In this case I am not overlooking anything. Devs have admitted they have not optimized crap because it would be a waste of time with them putting in a new renderer. Even before that they didn't as new models were still being made.

Please note, no they don't. Some optimizations might be best to get in that early but typically it is stupid to optimize a half formed system since you will have to go back and redo most of that work at a later date.

...and bugfixes? I've worked with a QA team and found show stopper bugs in release candidates. Again there are some things at some layers that are easier to get fixed before you put even more complex systems over the top of it, but a lot of bugs are not apparently until you start putting in other systems so bug fixing is typically an ongoing process. Some bug fixes you just won't do. Like bug fixing zombie glitches right now when they are about to work on the AI would be a waste of time.

 

Replacing the graphic rendering systems is an optimization. There are other optimizations that need to occur before the product goes into beta. The client is suffering from memory leaks on several hardware configurations. The player character loading process will need to be optimized. Network utilization has already undergone optimization and more optimizations will be needed before beta.

There can always be blocker bugs found. Bugs occur constantly as a part of the development process. I work as a developer and team lead for a F2P publisher in Germany. We don't make games but we do make applications. On my team we have a "zero bug tolerance" policy. While we won't fix every bug as soon as it pops up, we fix 95% of bugs as soon as we can reproduce them. The reason for this is, the longer you wait to fix a bug the costlier it is to fix in terms of time and money.

Zombies are an excellent example. There is no "about to work on the AI". The work has already started. In fact, Rocket started working on the Zombie AI a year ago. He reached a roadblock and then they got an entire team to work on zombie AI pathfinding and they implemented current navmesh system. The zombie glitches are a part of the new system and any changes made now would carry through to the post-beta product.

 

Look, man. I have been following DayZ since mod. I am a huge fan of DayZ and the Arma series. While I appreciate the games for what they are, I also know that BIS gets a lot of leeway since they are an independent game developer and publisher. A lot of their practices are not the industry standard. And sometimes bugs stay in their games for waaaaay too long. I wish more fans would look at their work objectively and realize that sometimes non-BIS employees DO know a little bit about how software is developed...

Edited January 5, 2015 by scriptfactory

[mercules 1290]

Zombies are an excellent example. There is no "about to work on the AI". The work has already started. In fact, Rocket started working on the Zombie AI a year ago. He reached a roadblock and then they got an entire team to work on zombie AI pathfinding and they implemented current navmesh system. The zombie glitches are a part of the new system and any changes made now would carry through to the post-beta product.

Uh huh...

First Quarter

• Basic vehicles
• Advanced loot distribution
• New renderer
• New Infected AI
• Basic stealth system (infected and animals)
• Diseases
• Improved cooking and horticulture
• Advanced anti-hack system (Dynamic BattlEye)

So "new" isn't really "new"? ...or you just don't follow it as closely as you just claimed?

[scriptfactory 620]

Uh huh...

So "new" isn't really "new"? ...or you just don't follow it as closely as you just claimed?

 

Isn't that the roadmap for completion? Vehicles are already in the game. So it loot distrib. The new BattleEye is already added, just not "activated". I dunno, man. It seems like you are arguing just to argue.

Edited January 5, 2015 by scriptfactory

[FortheEnts 22]

I'm just excited in general for all the updates they're doing this year. I'm addicted to the DayZ  :thumbsup:

[ColonelBurton 145]

I cringe everytime when I read suggestions like huge shopping malls, golf courses etc or when people complain about the soviet feel and aesthetic, when this is exactly what the devs are going for and many people love for exactly this reason, because its not just another generic american suburb.

 

I agree. A golf course would be silly in my opinion. But would a proper church or school or a real supermarket (not a mall, not a 7/11, butt a supermarket) be so far off?

Edited January 6, 2015 by ColonelBurton

[mercules 1290]

Isn't that the roadmap for completion? Vehicles are already in the game. So it loot distrib. The new BattleEye is already added, just not "activated". I dunno, man. It seems like you are arguing just to argue.

No, that is the stuff they haven't worked on yet.

Vehicle is in the game, not basic vehicleS. The advanced loot distribution isn't in as that involves there being X of items existing on a server at a time. In other words there will be X M4s on a given server or hive and no new ones will spawn until those are gone. That is certainly not implemented. The new BattleEye is not in, the system is a slightly improved one but not a Dynamic one as is listed. That is their Roadmap of what hasn't been implemented yet.

[barnabus 1708]

As far as the Naval Base, I could go for a Submarine or a destroyer, light non military loot except maybe some naval/marine uniform items.

 

Bring back caves, nothing like grilling meat in the mouth of a cave to bring out the survivalist.

 

Also need derelict aircraft and helicopters scattered around the airbases, both civilian and military.  Balota airfield should have been cratered since may of the buildings around it are also wrecked.

 

Old late 19th/early 20th Century Coastal Defense Forts should be included along with other coastal defense installations in and around Chernogorsk City and Electro, not just a bunker here or there.

 

I'd like to see a small subway system from Cherno ending at an AirCherno terminal in Balota, where the tent city used to be.  Add a skyway over the road to a jet way on the field itself, boom, civilian airport. Many airfields are duel military/civilian usage in order to share costs.

[mfdayz 18]

Personally I am a fan of the soviet aesthetic so I would not be in favor of large shopping malls or anything that seems too modern or grand.

Instead of adding a bunch of more buildings I would rather see that time spent making the existing ones more unique and more immersive. No more cookie cutter doll houses, add immersive elements like nature growing into the houses and things that suggest people actually lived there as well as removing fake doors (if we can't go in there than at least obstruct it in a realistic way).

At the moment houses and buildings are nothing more than a place to find loot. I think a goal to shoot for is to make exploring houses and buildings just as rewarding as finding that perfect piece of loot.