Status Report - 17 Feb 15

[SMoss 2101]

 
Greetings Survivors,
As some of you may be aware, we've been experimenting a bit with the format and release day of the Status Reports coming into 2015. With upcoming changes to DayZ.com as a centralized point of information on the development of DayZ, the Status Reports will be released on Tuesdays from now on. Additionally, we'll be making an effort to make the Status Reports more visual, for those who do not have the time to read what is new in the world of DayZ development.

Moving onto said development, you'll soon be seeing the spawning of a different variation on the V3S. This variant will allow for the transportation of larger groups of players. The spawn rate across the world will remain at fifteen vehicles for the time. Initially you will not be able to access the inventory of the vehicle, this will be supported shortly on stable branch. As well, finalized animations, and firing from passenger positions will be supported in later builds on stable branch. The initial intent of spawning vehicles supporting large groups of players is to gauge both the performance, and functionality of large player groups moving together at high speed across Chernarus. Any issues discovered should be reported to feedback.dayzgame.com whenever possible.


 
In addition, Chernarus should soon also begin to see the roll out of the new animal A.I. system that briefly made an appearance in 0.53 experimental branch. Animal behaviors should be significantly more complex, and add a great deal to the immersion and feel of hunting for your next meal, or resource. Initially this will roll out with the deer, and then progressively expand to support the full list of animals residing in the world of DayZ.



Lastly for me, we've been discussing the subject of blood regeneration, transfusion, and all the mechanics surrounding them for awhile. With blood regeneration at the rate it currently is, and the reduced amount of blood gained per blood bag, not many folks use or interact with these mechanics in the current stable build. Given that now is the time to experiment, and alter these mechanics to gauge viability through use on our steam branches we'll be reducing the blood regeneration rate, and increasing the amount of blood gained through proper blood transfusions.

Personally I cannot wait to see how the survivors of Chernarus adapt to this change.


 
Mr. Black0ut picked up his Hardcore DayZ Series again, you should all take a look.
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

 
Mirek / Lead Gameplay Programmer

"I'd like to mention a few brief words about the new character/player controller. The physics part of this controller will be implemented using Bullet physics, so there will be a visible improvement in interactions between static and dynamic objects. e.g. there shouldn't any camera clipping issues, it will improve melee combat, movement on stairs, and it will be possible to get over dropped items and dead bodies. It will have also positive impact on performance.

The animation side of this will be using Enfusion's new animation system and will allow us to have more animation layers on character, so it will be possible to play more animations at once. With this, we can achieve moving during shooting from the bow or adding injured animations.

The character/player controller will be used for players and for AI units. We would like to introduce the physical part on character controller in 0.55 experimental. As for the animation part (which is already used for animals), there is a lot of work with exporting data to the new system and with complete rewriting of current system, but its in progress now and we hope, that we will introduce it in 0.56 (0.57 more likely) experimental build.."
 
Peter / Lead Designer
"While the new vital parts of the Enfusion engine and the game itself like the renderer, particle effects, UI, animation system, inventory, AI, controls/interactions, vehicles, scripting language, central economy and others are being still worked on by dedicated programmers - we are getting closer to the point where we cannot push the game further in the direction in which we want to with the existing legacy systems. That means as the new technology is merged into the main branch, better, advanced mechanics and enriched gameplay begin to be possible. We still need to wait to start using these systems, which will allow us to do more without hassle.
 
However we can still push the current systems to their limits as we've prepared some prototypes of long planned features. I can mention at least some of them. Placing of objects which allows you to precisely visualize where the given object will be placed within the environment and if it's possible to place it there. This feature will be a great addition for base building in general, fireplaces, traps and similar objects and in the future we will maybe add this feature for placing every item as we understand it can enhance role playing and user generated content.

 

Next we have a prototype ready for continuously usage of items which will be used in new controls/interactions, this means that you are continuously using item in hand by holding mouse button, when you release it use action is stopped. With the new animation system added to the mix it means that also eating and drinking during movement will be possible. The last prototype I would like to mention is the one which was done for the advanced crafting. It's flexible enough to be used as a field crafting and also table crafting. The point is that you need to put all your items from which you want to craft something new in front of you then equip right tool in your hand and directly interact with the item pool to produce the desired new crafted item. This solution is giving us few important possibilities like adding meaning to the plethora of tools we already have in game, crafting complex items without need of intermediate products which are most of the time useless. As well, turn some of the stationary tables with machinery in houses and industry structures to crafting tables where you will be able to produce crafted rails for scopes, modify weapons and do other advanced processes.
 
Apart from that we started configuring the V3S with a cargo bed as we know you need to carry more passengers around Chernarus. Don't expect entering/exiting the cargo bed animations nor shooting from it yet. But if everything goes fine we will introduce a different vehicle feature for you to play with - the manual transmission, so you will be able to test your driving skills. Manual transmission is done in style of sequential changing of gears, this means that you can go from lets say 1st gear to 3rd gear only directly through the 2nd gear, there is no way to skip the 2nd gear altogether.

We added the proper weight value to all items. Total weight that character is carrying around will be used later to modify his stamina value. We are getting prepared for use of the new central economy system which will be hopefully be plugged in at least partially. Now every item and structure have tags assigned to them, this categorization combined with minimum and maximum amount of items spawned in the server we finally can start to balance loot amount and its distribution over the map. Later area based distribution will be added to currently tested type distribution which means the same house can spawn different items depending on its location in the world.
 
Crafting and usage of the fireplace is being polished to be more user friendly and straightforward. We decided to ditch the fireplace kit for now, improve the current functionality of it and add some new functionality too. Gas cooker is receiving some attention as well and cooking functionality of this too will be merged. Piece of lard and pile of bones are new items which are expanding resource gathering. As you can guess piece of lard can be used for cooking while pile of bones have wide range of use, we will start with arrows with bone tips. Modular plate carrier vest with attachable pouches and pistol holster is ready to go, same apply to FN Trombone which was waiting for proper reloading animations. Now we are configuring and preparing disposable suppressor crafted from PET bottle and we are looking at possibilities to damage firearms with bullets in bad condition.
 
I'm looking forward to brighter future... see you in Chernarus folks!"

Standup Notes for the week of 17 Feb 15
(Note: Standup notes are not a change log - they are a quick high level look at tasks the teams worked on throughout this week)

Animation:
• Trumpet reloading animation
• Salute + Sitting Gestures
• Zombie attack animations
• Analysis of transition to new system for players / A.I.
• MoCap Session
 
Design:
• Manual transmission
• Advanced crafting
• Fireplace polishing
• Gas cooker refactoring
• Controls and interactions
• Diseases transfer
• New script language
• Central economy
• Configs and scripts for new items
 
Programming:
• Inventory refactorization
• Loot distribution per buildings
• Zombie/Animal AI
• Character controller (animations & physics)
• Vehicles - Manual transmission and bugfixing
• Crash fixes
• Security Bugfixes

[TimF 79]

 

we'll be reducing the blood regeneration rate, and increasing the amount of blood gained through proper blood transfusions.

 

I'm all for this but I reckon the biggest improvement to blood bags would be to let us write labels on the bag!

[SmashT 10907]

I'm all for this but I reckon the biggest improvement to blood bags would be to let us write labels on the bag!

 

Good possibility something like that will be possible in the future, see Peters post here. 

 

Funny thing is that we had such mechanic for writing down notes on every item (not so graphical, it was only possible to see such note in the tooltip) long before we released the first version of early access, but we scratched it due its impact on the server performance. There is a good chance that we will revive it in the future as we are getting server performance back bits by bits.

[Tatanko 5591]

Looking like 0.54 should be a solid update! Really looking forward to the new V3S stuff (passenger space, manual transmission) and the continued work on cooking.

 

 

Also, the changes to the blood system sound good to me. It will feel more like the early days of the Standalone, in my opinion :)

Edited February 17, 2015 by Tatanko

[HeXedMinD (DayZ) 39]

Lastly for me, we've been discussing the subject of blood regeneration, transfusion, and all the mechanics surrounding them for awhile. With blood regeneration at the rate it currently is, and the reduced amount of blood gained per blood bag, not many folks use or interact with these mechanics in the current stable build. Given that now is the time to experiment, and alter these mechanics to gauge viability through use on our steam branches we'll be reducing the blood regeneration rate, and increasing the amount of blood gained through proper blood transfusions.

Super excited for this, will add value to hospitals again.

On that note something should also be done with broken limbs, there is no point in finding morphine when you can easily make a splint. Both unrealistically instantly fix a broken leg :P

[ebrim 998]

Funny mentioning the blood system as I noticed the other day that a string of my most recent characters in 0.53 had all had O+ blood type. I figured this might be intentional to get more people to use transfusions.

 

Also every time I see disease related work being done in the design column, I get really excited.

 

Oh and the day when I can cook on a portable stove will be a very fine day indeed.

[Guest]

Speaking of Blood Bags, will there eventually be a way to mark them by Blood Type? Maybe with a new permanent marker item? Edit: Already asked above.

 

Also, will firearms degrade from use as well?

Edited February 17, 2015 by Guest

[-Gews- 7443]

We added the proper weight value to all items. Total weight that character is carrying around will be used later to modify his stamina value.

Most interesting thing I read!

[foiki 16]

I'm all for this but I reckon the biggest improvement to blood bags would be to let us write labels on the bag!

does that mean we dont get all blood back when we are energized, hydrated and Healthy?

 

With this, we can achieve moving during shooting from the bow

 

 

 

we will start with arrows with bone tips.

 

yes yes yes :D

Edited February 17, 2015 by FriendlyFarmer

[Tatanko 5591]

does that mean we dont get all blood back when we are energized, hydrated and Healthy?

Natural regeneration will still occur, but much slower. They don't want to remove that as an option, they just want to make it worthwhile to do a blood transfusion again. See the part I highlighted below:

 

 

we'll be reducing the blood regeneration rate, and increasing the amount of blood gained through proper blood transfusions

Edited February 17, 2015 by Tatanko

[ChainReactor 922]

does that mean we dont get all blood back when we are energized, hydrated and Healthy?

 

Essentially it means that we can expect the blood regeneration rate to be nerfed notably in the next experimental update, probably along with increased blood bag / IV / test kit spawn rates.

[Tatanko 5591]

along with increased blood bag / IV / test kit spawn rates.

I hope not permanently :p They always increase spawn rates of new items for Experimental so we can test it, but I hope it doesn't make it past Experimental. Enough of those things spawn now in their appropriate places (hospitals, medical centers, etc.). Then again, who knows how necessary they might become.

[JiJi (DayZ) 223]

About blood bag / transfusion...

[...] not many folks use or interact with these mechanics in the current stable build.

Please dear devs, take a look at this old topic. It might help somehow.

[Pan_Andrzej 109]

• Vehicles - Manual transmission and bugfixing

 

American community is like: What the heck ?!? Say what ?

[Tatanko 5591]

 

American community is like: What the heck ?!? Say what ?

More of us drive manuals than you'd believe, and more of your own drive automatics than you probably realize ;)

[Richard III in Leicester 200]

Did I hear someone say party bus  B)

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

Ladies love a guy with a V3S.

[Scarcifer 102]

 

American community is like: What the heck ?!? Say what ?

 

 I find your comment  offensive and  it's stereotyping if not a sense/form of bigotry..... I learned to drive and drove a manual transmission s-10 for umpteen years..

Edited February 17, 2015 by Scarcifer

[tamaster92 71]

Have to say I do like a more visual status report! Pics + gifs + short videos help explain things much more than words usually

[Cap'n (DayZ) 1827]

 

American community is like: What the heck ?!? Say what ?

 

 

You'd be surprised how many people in the states drive a manual. My Impreza is a 6 speed manual.

[Tatanko 5591]

You'd be surprised how many people in the states drive a manual. My Impreza is a 6 speed manual.

Same here. I had to look really hard for my car because it's produced in really low numbers, but it was worth it ('10 Accord Coupe V6 6-speed).

[franzuu 211]

On that VS3, you can fit at least 3 dudes on both sides, probably 4 + a few people sitting on the truck bed.

 

 

Regarding blood bags, they are a logistical nightmare to use, inconvenient and offer little reward. Here are some random thoughts in regards to it.

 

Testing kits are too rare.

 

Bloodbags are too rare.

 

They should have a high chance of spawning together. I hate that in DayZ stuff that goes together spawns separate like ammo, magazines and guns.

 

Getting into fights or a passing swipe from a zombie will destroy your stuff. Your precious rare stuff. Your clothes, equipment, everything is so fragile.

 

Your and your groups blood types are changing with every death, changing the dynamic and requiring to find rare items again.

 

There is no net gain with a blood bag. You get and your friend loses.

 

Only viable option is to farm yourself for blood.

 

You can't mark blood bags as certain blood type (either correctly or incorrectly if you want to). What if you forget or have a mix of blood bags from different people or want to store or stash some.

 

Nothing bad will happen if you have low blood, you won't go in and out of conciousness. There is no urgency to getting blood back. I loved that in the mod you could pass out and wake back up with low health. In SA it feels like you just can't save your dying friend. All their shit gets ruined in the event that got them to the state they are in. Much of your stuff gets destroyed by just playing the game. Fighting to save your friends life just isn't a thing anymore. Stuff too rare, not potent enough and turns to dust when a hostile looks at it wrong.

 

When you go unconcious the SOP in SA is to respawn. In the mod people waited because they knew when and if they would regain consciousness. They would bandage themselves, run into bushes, pass out, regain consciousness and fix themselves. Food not being instant blood and you requiring to be filled to the brim with it to heal has destroyed this brilliant gameplay element. You can't go unconcious every 90 second for a minute. All your shit that you had is ruined and you'll starve to death before you find enough food to start healing. Or you attract every zombie from 300m away and get instantly destroyed.

 

If you stock blood bags before a fight then there is a high chance that after a fight they are ruined. 

 

Hopefully the Devs can think of something to restore that gameplay from the mod.

Edited February 17, 2015 by Franzuu

[xCAPx 349]

Next we have a prototype ready for continuously usage of items which will be used in new controls/interactions, this means that you are continuously using item in hand by holding mouse button, when you release it use action is stopped. With the new animation system added to the mix it means that also eating and drinking during movement will be possible. The last prototype I would like to mention is the one which was done for the advanced crafting. It's flexible enough to be used as a field crafting and also table crafting. The point is that you need to put all your items from which you want to craft something new in front of you then equip right tool in your hand and directly interact with the item pool to produce the desired new crafted item. This solution is giving us few important possibilities like adding meaning to the plethora of tools we already have in game, crafting complex items without need of intermediate products which are most of the time useless. As well, turn some of the stationary tables with machinery in houses and industry structures to crafting tables where you will be able to produce crafted rails for scopes, modify weapons and do other advanced processes.

 

....

 ...Piece of lard and pile of bones are new items which are expanding resource gathering. As you can guess piece of lard can be used for cooking while pile of bones have wide range of use, we will start with arrows with bone tips...

 

Every part which is mentioned is awesome, but these are ... fantastic!

 

Hail to DayZ, baby! :D

 

OT: I played some sessions the last days, (I think it was fine for me, no critical errors) and I started to play with the bow. It's really challenging. I hope they will do some improvements to it later in development :)

 

So far, great work guys! Thank you so much :thumbsup:

[ebrim 998]

Most interesting thing I read!

 

Yeah, stamina system no sprinting all the time people will be nice. Not to mention people making different value judgments regarding what gear they carry around...

[Tatanko 5591]

On that VS3, you can fit at least 3 dudes on both sides, probably 4 + a few people sitting on the truck bed.

There really isn't any guess-work involved here. The picture that begins the status report shows 4 people sitting on each side (with room to spare).