Status Report - 3 mar 15

[SMoss 2101]

Greetings Survivors,

Last week the 0.54 update rolled out to stable branch. As noted on the official DayZ forums – a percentage of the active user base are experiencing abnormal behaviour with this update. That said, work progresses internally on a hotfix for 0.54 aimed at addressing:

• Crash to Desktop
• Low-Poly Textures
• Low FPS in game
• Constant “Receiving” loading screens during gameplay

While the programming and QA team members assigned to this hotfix push their work to experimental branch for testing, the rest of the team continues on with work on 0.55. The 0.55 update should be a fantastic one for the users of stable branch – with work focusing on things ranging from:

• Animal A.I. iteration
• Horticulture expansions
• Cooking expansions
• Operational Fluids for vehicles
• Traps/Snare expansions
• Testing of Central Economy controls
• And so much more..

Work continues on larger engine based tasks such as replacing the renderer, work on the new player controller, new audio engine module, and related tasks. On an exciting note, as we look forward to what will be required to support Steam Workshop modding for DayZ teams have begun analysis work on both requirements for new content to be created, and legacy DayZ Mod content to be supported. On the legacy side – we’ve worked closely with Sumrak, the author of the Namalsk map for Arma 2 / DayZ Mod and have completed a basic analysis and test multiplayer session on Namalsk in DayZ. The road to supporting a proper ecosystem on Steam Workshop will take time – but our goal is to have a strong set of tools, documentation, and examples by the time DayZ hits 1.0 and leaves Early Access. We’ll be reaching out to more DayZ Mod content creators over the coming months to gather feedback, and discuss exactly what modding DayZ will look like.

 

As always – head over to the official DayZ forums – Developers are present to discuss ideas, take feedback, and interact with the community.

Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

 

 

 

Back in the days when I was trying to survive and figure out how everything worked in the DayZ mod and apart from many other things I was also amazed with this simple one - during the idleness, infected were choosing their destinations on the fly. At first seemingly irrelevant mechanic makes out for me the dynamic stealth game which is authentic in any case. I cannot count how many times it makes my heart race when infected suddenly changed their direction while I was trying to sneak around them or how I was waiting for ages hidden nearby just to pick point the moment when to move to my desired location just to realize that more infected were coming to that area. This unpredictable behavior made me fear them, trying to minimize my appearance to become successful - to survive in a hostile environment and luckily find and get what I needed.

 

Fast forward to the present, from the DayZ release infected was one of our main issue and we were very aware of it. Many of you have been disappointed how they work and lack of the visible progress. Hopefully we will revive your faith for proper working infected soon. With the most of the new AI, sensors and animation systems now being in their place we can finally begin to transform infected to the real menace as they always meant to be.

 

Of course initial implementation based on the new systems will resemble the current state at first as we need to settle things down, catch and solve the most annoying issues and make proper foundation. So please don't expect instant switch to infectsomenauts. I can see you are getting afraid again, but hey we are still deep in the development and you can experience these changes hands on which is part of fun being involved in the early access to the game. I want to assure you that more advanced things will be rolled out continuously later as we progress with their implementation alongside with further development of AI, sensors, pathfinding and animation system.

 

So what to expect from the new infected in general? At first which is very important is clearly the performance which allows us to add more of them in the environment. Very first test showed us that server performance is pretty solid even with 1500 infected on the map which is 5x more then it's usual on the stable these days.

 

The infected are designed to be a threat for the survivors as their senses are more sensitive, they are moving fast on short distances and can be lethal in the close combat. You can encounter them mostly in the residential areas, the larger the area - the more infected are present. Areas can be purged which encourages to barricade structures and establish bases. After some time infected will be approaching the area again. As we want to promote stealth approach to encounters you can minimize chance of being seen or heard by wearing darker or camo clothes and light shoes, slowing down your movement, lowering your profile in crouch or prone, avoiding usage of lights and making noise and so on. Fortunately you can also distract them when they are wandering to unwanted destination with throwing the items witch makes noise, light or are somewhat attractive to them. You must be aware in such situation as they are quite interested what's going on around them. When you are focused they will try to hunt you down with no mercy while easily forming packs down the road. Even the doors or barricades cannot be trusted once they want to feed on you. They have fast acceleration but can slow down overtime or lost interest if you get too far after they eventually stumbled. In combat they are using different types of attack, based on distance and force, which makes the combat with them more interesting.

 

To wrap up brand new infected they will also have new visual and audio appearance which will be released gradually and will replace old models, textures and sound effects. We get together 50 different types of males and females infected, and they will be dressed in clothes you can find around so they will no longer look inconsistent with survivors. Some of them will be generic citizens, villagers but you can also look forward to different workers, clerks, policemans, soldiers, firefighters, paramedics, prisoners, patients, journalist, survivors.. and plenty of others. Soon we will be doing rehearsal with adepts for infected voiceactors and I'm quite happy where sfx direction is heading as it will delivers some shivers and goosebumps.

 

The dawn is around the corner... see you in Chernarus folks!

Peter / Lead Designer

 

 

 

Standup Notes for the week of 3 Mar 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:

• Infected Attack Animations
• V3S Animations
• Gestures bugfixing
• Support for new Player Controller
• Support for new Infected Systems

Design:

• Plant Pests
• Barrel configs & scripts
• Diseases
• Support for new infected systems
• Trigger systems
• Manual Transmission
• Cooking
• Central economy
• Bugfixing

Programming:

• Inventory refactorization
• Loot distribution per buildings
• Zombie/Animal AI
• Character controller (animations & physics)
• Vehicles - Manual transmission and bugfixing
• Flaregun Improvements
• Security Bugfixes

[Ironhuge 69]

Would it be possible for any of the devs to post a screen-shot or something from the WIP render engine?

[kichilron 8550]

Is it sad, that I know exactly where the position of this screenshot is on Namalsk and where those towers can be found? :O

[SMoss 2101]

Is it sad, that I know exactly where the position of this screenshot is on Namalsk and where those towers can be found? :o

No!

[pipewr3nch 2]

I know this might be the wrong topic, but how about adding even more weapon parts? With that I mean parts like barrels, pistol grips, upper and lower receivers (maybe in different colours), pistons or even charging handles with their very own conditions, which in the end you can put together with different tools to have a more or less properly working weapon.

 

Two examples of possible situations:

-You have an AKM without a piston, which means you have to use the charging handle after every single shot.

 

-You shot too many bullets with your HMG (maybe mounted on a boat or helicopter?), now the barrel is overheated and broken, so you have to change the barrel.

 

It might be a little bit too realistic, but I think it would be a cool feature for even more immersion.

 

 

 

 

And sorry if my English is not that good.

Greetings from Germany!

 

 

[wil24567 240]

I came. Twice.

[St. Jimmy 1631]

Awesome news! Good that you're cooperating with Sumrak. Maybe he can bring those EMP Stroms and maybe even some Bloodsuckers or similar stuff later? I loved those but veeery few servers ran both of them on...

Well if infected get slowed down when they've run for some time, I hope stamina system on players will balance this so it's not too easy to run away from them and with heavy equipment impossible.

50 different looking infected! Man gotta love that variation.

[krazypenguin 174]

5 times as many zombies???   YES!!!

 

I was being chased by 5 of them a few days ago, imagine if that was 25!!!  This is gonna be epic...

[ToySmokes 116]

I am hyping DayZ to hard after this status report

[joona.kujanen@suomi24.fi 62]

Namalsk, eh... does this mean winter environment? Surviving the elements was the main fun to me in Namalsk, as it seems it was mostly a small pvp deathmatch arena island for the rest.

[gannon46 788]

total and utter badassery right there. you guys had to show my favorite map hell yeah. and i like what i read on the new zeds can't wait please take your time i want them done right as i'm sure they will not disappoint. 

[tobias winfro 305]

5 times the zeds, modding support and a better stealth system yay! Not feeling it about Namalsk though, it was my least favorite map for arma 2 Dayz. The EV storms and blood suckers and lack of things to do made it not fun. Guess I will be sticking to Chernarus+ until a better map is chosen

Beans for the hard work guys and gals keep it up

[igor-vk 909]

I hope 5 times the number of zombies is only the beginning. There should be even more zombies at best loot locations

[Survivor_Ted 269]

Not really interested in mods and new maps... I prefer the vanilla Chernarus.

 

The rest is amazing, can't wait for the new renderer that should be closing up on us real soon. ;)

[AnarchyBrownies 1383]

I personally hope the modding the development team promotes and allows is very limited. The DayZ community became completely fractured as more and more mods were released. Modding on a large scale seems like a weird thing for an MMO. It feels like a residual ARMA mentality because that game sort of thrived off of modding. If I've understood people correctly (I've never really been into ARMA), the online game thrived on people creating missions/scenarios. DayZ doesn't work like that but for some reason people want to treat it the same way.

 

Other than that gripe, this status report was awesome. Things are looking good in development :)

Edited March 4, 2015 by AnarchyBrownies

[tobias winfro 305]

I personally hope the modding the development team promotes and allows is very limited. The DayZ community became completely fractured as more and more mods were released. Modding on a large scale seems like a weird thing for an MMO. It feels like residual a ARMA mentality because that game sort of thrived off of modding. If I've understood people correctly (I've never really been into ARMA), the online game thrived on people creating missions/scenarios. DayZ doesn't work like that but for some reason people want to treat it the same way.

 

Other than that gripe, this status report was awesome. Things are looking good in development :)

I too hope they limit the amount of modding, I really don't want to see 1000 vehicle servers or starting loadouts or pay to win servers that plagued the mod.

[yazar8 584]

Best status report I've read so far.

[AnarchyBrownies 1383]

I too hope they limit the amount of modding, I really don't want to see 1000 vehicle servers or starting loadouts or pay to win servers that plagued the mod.

 

I always found it weird that people were completely drawn in by the cut throat and frustrating nature of the game... only to gravitate towards huge amounts of weapons and vehicles to make the deathmatch easier. That game already exists a million times over.

Edited March 4, 2015 by AnarchyBrownies

[joona.kujanen@suomi24.fi 62]

 

I always found it weird that people were completely drawn in by the cut throat and frustrating nature of the game... only to gravitate towards huge amounts of weapons and vehicles to make the deathmatch easier. That game already exists a million times over.

For many DayZ is just a Battlefield/CoD with beans. You can't get rid of that unfortunately.

Edited March 4, 2015 by Kuikka

[PaniXx 34]

 

For many DayZ is just a Battlefield/CoD with beans. You can't get rid of that unfortunately.

you forget that DayZ is a game where the player decide how he/she wants to play it... if there are players, which want to play it more like a dm or teamdm on a very big map, then let them... there are no rules, which are against it. you can still play the game how you want and you won't be disturbed (in most times) by others. I want to get a similar mode like BattleRoyale or Squad-BattleRoyale in DayZ:SA, which would lead maybe to some esports... is it a bad gameplay-style? surely not. So what is the deal with it as long as there are still many servers with the normal mode. As long as everyone gets fun by playing his/her own favorite gamestyle, everything is fine.

Edited March 4, 2015 by PaniXx

[joona.kujanen@suomi24.fi 62]

 

you forget that DayZ is a game where the player decide how he/she wants to play it... if there are players, which want to play it more like a dm or teamdm on a very big map, then let them... there are no rules, which are against it. you can still play the game how you want and you won't be disturbed (in most times) by others. I want to get a similar mode like BattleRoyale or Squad-BattleRoyale in DayZ:SA, which would lead maybe to some esports... is it a bad gameplay-style? surely not. So what is the deal with it as long as there are still many servers with the normal mode. As long as everyone gets fun by playing his/her own favorite gamestyle, everything is fine.

Gamestyle, surely. But it's the game that defines the rules and players play accordingly. You surely remember the whine storm that erupted when anti-material rifles were removed from the mod and thermal scopes too? And in general there are requests for that kind of stuff plus more & heavier weaponry. I don't understand why people don't play Arma II or III instead of wanting to transfrom a survival game BACK into Arma II or III.

[AnarchyBrownies 1383]

you forget that DayZ is a game where the player decide how he/she wants to play it... if there are players, which want to play it more like a dm or teamdm on a very big map, then let them... there are no rules, which are against it. you can still play the game how you want and you won't be disturbed (in most times) by others. I want to get a similar mode like BattleRoyale or Squad-BattleRoyale in DayZ:SA, which would lead maybe to some esports... is it a bad gameplay-style? surely not. So what is the deal with it as long as there are still many servers with the normal mode. As long as everyone gets fun by playing his/her own favorite gamestyle, everything is fine.

 

 

  Gamestyle, surely. But it's the game that defines the rules and players play accordingly. You surely remember the whine storm that erupted when anti-material rifles were removed from the mod and thermal scopes too? And in general there are requests for that kind of stuff plus more & heavier weaponry. I don't understand why people don't play Arma II or III instead of wanting to transfrom a survival game BACK into Arma II or III.

 

I think a major issue too is people don't really think too much about what they want so they gravitate to what's comfortable. So people were so excited about a really hard game but then a few of their friends started playing DayZ COD/BF and all of a sudden that's where the social aspect was. Back to what's been pushed for the last decade or so.

 

DayZ is a game with parameters and people create their experience within those parameters. Modding is breaking those parameters and fracturing the community. A game should be developed with a clear vision in mind and anyone who likes that can play it, others can make their own games. But when you give others an MMO to mod in minute ways that have a significant impact you really start breaking up the community. It's a bad decision in my opinion. Mods are people's way of saying this is how I think the game should be, but a culture and community from a game is created both by the things we love and loathe about it. The internet has created this idea that everyone should get exactly what they want all the time (which a mod may allow you to do), when really people just don't see the value in things not being 100% the way you want them. If people really don't like the way DayZ is, they should go create their own game.

 

The developers are nice to even consider the opinions of modders, who I doubt represent any significant % of the overall player-base. Creativity is a great thing, but when someone creates they are under no obligation to let others break their game down in a million ways so that it no longer resembles the original vision.

Edited March 4, 2015 by AnarchyBrownies

[PaniXx 34]

  Gamestyle, surely. But it's the game that defines the rules and players play accordingly. You surely remember the whine storm that erupted when anti-material rifles were removed from the mod and thermal scopes too? And in general there are requests for that kind of stuff plus more & heavier weaponry. I don't understand why people don't play Arma II or III instead of wanting to transfrom a survival game BACK into Arma II or III.

i guess because arma II or arma III does not have infecteds... and no, sorry i don't remember the anti-material rifles etc stuff.. i have only started to play DayZ 3 years ago... and at the time i was really not interested what was happening with mods etc.. i just wanted to play the vanilla mod. Anyway, i think mentioning ARMA II is useless. This game is old.. Arma III has already all the things from ARMA III, so it would be quite stupid to recommend anyone to get ARMA II - even from the mod-aspect. But it is just my vopinion though. If you disagree with me, it is fine. Also don't worry, in vanilla-dayz:s there will be not really the issue you are talking about. I would say when the developers have opened the mod-support incl. mod-tools for DayZ:S, there will be surely some mod for these people, which tend to play DayZ with more military-weapons and vehicles... like in a modern BF. i would probably try it too. All i hope is that vanilla-dayZ:s will be great as we wish and that a BattleRoyale-mod or mode will be released for it.

 

 

. If people really don't like the way DayZ is, they should go create their own game.

 

If only creating own games would be so easy...

Edited March 4, 2015 by PaniXx

[WhisperKicker 8]

will the new rendering engine be able to support the Oculus rift?

[tamaster92 71]

Personally I hope they let modders do whatever the fuck they want. Just make sure there is always vanilla servers available as well.

 

Some of the features in Standalone and recent DayZMod updates came from the modding community and it will always be where fresh content and mechanics appears. Restricting that will only damage the game and make it so that it's lifespan is significantly shorter.

 

As long as we can mod;

 

- new maps

- new weapons

- new clothes

- new vehicles

- new items (food, medicine etc)

- spawn parameters

- textures

- loot tables (eventually)

 

Its fine by me.