PSA: Game development takes a while, but...

[Rammur 59]

bah most the complainers are kids more suited for lobby based pvp as in cod and bf games they are not cut out for the survival sim which is what makes dayz so fun and appealing to the actual dayz fans.Me personally i think the game dev cycle is perfectly paced.

[DocWolf 146]

but nothing changes the fact that people were told that DayZ would be in beta in 2014, and now it's nowhere near what most gamers would consider "beta", and compared to other games, things are indeed moving very slowly. Nobody forced Bohemia & Rocket to use the Arma engine. Or to start with a public paid alpha on Steam instead of releasing a closed alpha for fans only. Or to announce a 2014 beta instead of playing it safe.

 

So if you were trying to say that "considering the circumstances, DayZ development isn't slow" - i agree.

 

If you were trying to say that "DayZ development isn't slow, anyone who disagrees is wrong/uninformed/dumb" - then you are simply refusing to see the critics' perspective.

 

Completely agree. Considering what happened and the choices made by BI, yeah...DayZ development is more or less right on tracks. But considering what they marketed originally (and somehow still market with the rather optimistic DayZ development roadmap) they're lagging behind. No problem about that, better a good game than a rushed one, but IMHO they should redo their PR approach to the game and start giving out more realistic goals/deadlines - or they will hurt their sales in the future. Just my personal opinion however, a lot of folks would disagree.

 

Another thing...DayZ is not a MMO. That stands for Massive Multiplayer Online (Game) and at the moment DayZ is just a multiplayer game...and considering the amount of players per server the devs are working on, it will remain a multiplayer game also on launch.

[Beizs 186]

Another thing...DayZ is not a MMO. That stands for Massive Multiplayer Online (Game) and at the moment DayZ is just a multiplayer game...and considering the amount of players per server the devs are working on, it will remain a multiplayer game also on launch.

 

MMO's aren't defined by the number of players on a single server. That's the most obvious one, but from a game development perspective, DayZ is absolutely an MMO. If you just use player count on each server, where do you draw the line? Is Destiny an MMO? Runescape? WoW? These all have pretty large differences in player counts per server. All of those are considered MMO's. DayZ has already had servers with 100 people on (somewhat) successfully. The 75 player servers on experimental have all been pretty playable. Obviously there's issues with lag and desync, but that's the only limiting factor. They could, theoretically, have a server with 1000 people on it.

 

DayZ can support pretty much a limitless number of players online at the same time on separate servers, all of which (on the public hive) are pretty much interchangeable, ignoring persistence. This is, essentially, the definition of an MMO.

Edited May 21, 2015 by Beizs

[DocWolf 146]

MMO's aren't necessarily defined by the number of players on a single server. That's the most obvious one, but from a game development perspective, DayZ is absolutely an MMO. If you just use player count on each server, where do you draw the line? Is Destiny an MMO? Runescape? WoW? These all have pretty large differences in player counts per server. All of those are considered MMO's. DayZ has already had servers with 100 people on (somewhat) successfully. The 75 player servers on experimental have all been pretty playable. Obviously there's issues with lag and desync, but that's the only limiting factor. They could, theoretically, have a server with 1000 people on it.

 

I'm sorry but I have to disagree. At the moment we don't even have a 100-man servers...speaking of a massive multiplayer game with 50-75 people connected at the same time is quite incorrect. Even servers with a cap of 100 players aren't enough to define a game a "massive" multiplayer game. We can respectfully debate all day long on semantics, but let's not try to pass 50 or 75 man servers as a "massive" multiplayer experience. It's a little too much, honestly.

Edited May 21, 2015 by DocWolf

[vfxtodd 124]

I'm glad the OP started this thread. I'd say he's done a good job of laying down clear explanations of DayZ's development.

Another example that I think clearly conveys game development is Call Of Duty. That game is now on a 3-year development cycle for each of the three companies developing the game.

If you take ALL of the maps made for one release of COD, you probably wouldn't fill up Cherno if you combined them. Even still, COD is released with bugs and problems every year. COD has millions of dollars backing development of the game, and loads of people working on it. Plus, COD is played most peer-to-peer. DayZ runs on dedicated servers. Activision keeps promising dedicated servers for COD, but never comes through. Unless you're on Xbox one.

DayZ development seems to be going along pretty well. I look forward to the future of DayZ.

[klesh 2423]

Necrobumping here because some time has gone by.   I had a look at the developer's 2015 roadmap that was posted on DayZTV.   

FYI, we're 2 weeks away from the middle of Q3 (consisting of July, August and September).

 

It would seem that development has fallen well behind the projections of the roadmap.  Will this result in roadmap features being dropped, or further extension of development time?

 

 

 

Q1 2015

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

Q2 2015

• Advanced vehicles (repair and modifications)
• Advanced animals (life cycle, group behavior)
• Player statistics
• New UI
• Player stamina
• Dynamic events
• World containers
• New physics system

Q3 2015

• Traps
• Barricading
• Character life span + soft skills
• Animal predators + birds
• Aerial transport
• Console prototype
• Advanced communication

Q4 2015

• Animal companions
• Steam community integration
• Construction (base building)
• Beta version, expected price €34.99 / $43.99.

Edited August 2, 2015 by klesh

[grimlok 77]

Necrobumping here because some time has gone by.   I had a look at the developer's 2015 roadmap that was posted on DayZTV.   

FYI, we're 2 weeks away from the middle of Q3 (consisting of July, August and September).

 

It would seem that development has fallen well behind the projections of the roadmap.  Will this result in roadmap features being dropped, or further extension of development time?

We don't even know when their quarters started.  We could be halfway through Q2 for all you know.  And almost everything from Q2 is in.

[klesh 2423]

Quarters are pretty standard.  I highly doubt they would refer to them in those terms if they meant something different.

 

Thats like saying we don't know their definition of "day"... it's pretty well universal.

[stinkenheim 249]

Q1 2015

Basic vehicles- in game

Advanced loot distribution- was implemented but suffered severe issues- being reworked.

New renderer- missing

New Zombie AI- in but still suffering from issues

Basic stealth system (zombies and animals)- in

Diseases- in

Improved cooking and horticulture- horticulture is in, not much word on cooking afaik

Advanced anti-hack system (Dynamic BattlEye)- in, or at least in progress. Huge reduction in hackers in my experience.

Q2 2015

Advanced vehicles (repair and modifications)- in exp

Advanced animals (life cycle, group behavior)

Player statistics- missing

New UI- in exp

Player stamina- missing

Dynamic events- been in for a while but suffering from issues

World containers- in exp

New physics system- missing. not much has been said about this afaik

Q3 2015

Traps- for animals or players? If animals then in (also bear trap/land mine- do they count)

Barricading- lock picks are present as earliest form of barricades

Character life span + soft skills

Animal predators + birds

Aerial transport

Console prototype

Advanced communication

Q4 2015

Animal companions

Steam community integration

Construction (base building)

Beta version, expected price €34.99 / $43.99.

Unsurprisingly the majority of Q3 is missing but most of the things from Q1+2 have been implemented or at least early versions are there. Sure the game is behind where the devs wanted it to be but look at the issues with CLE, it took so long to understand what was going on that it was bound to slow down certain aspects as the teams focused on ensuring it worked better. Look at exp with the limit on item spawns in buildings to prevent lootsplosions, great move IMO.

[grimlok 77]

Quarters are pretty standard.  I highly doubt they would refer to them in those terms if they meant something different.

 

Thats like saying we don't know their definition of "day"... it's pretty well universal.

No it's not universal.  

[brzator47@gmail.com 524]

Wat? Of course it is.

[emuthreat 2837]

I think they are progressing pretty well with respect to the roadmap.  I remember Hicks mentioning that it is like a roadtrip itenerary, where there may be diversions and dallyances along the way, but the destination remains clear.  One more important thing to remember is that this roadmap is THEIR internal roadmap, and does not reflect what we should expect to see functional in stable.  They could have most of the roadmap fleshed-out internally, but need certain modules to be installed before the new features will mesh into the game.

 

Kinda like when building a house, the plumbing and wiring are in there for weeks, waiting to have the fixtures installed, because the drywall and floors need to be finished first.  For all we know, the interior doors are behind shcedule getting hung because somebody framed in a wall on the bathroom before the oversized tub could be delivered, and now they have to tear out the wall to get the tub inside.

 

I'm very confident that they know what they are doing, but it might take a bit longer than planned, because it has never been done before.  Could anyone here tell me exactly how long it would take to plan, engineer, and successfully deploy a permanent automated observation station on Vesta?  Yup. No fuckin' clue. DayZ is a much simpler project by comparison, but the appropriate amount of slack must be given to this development process.  Once they decided to modify/rebuild the engine while it is running, all bets are off.  The only certainty is that the project will be completed to the specifications published by BI.  After all, they have already collected millions of dollars for the promise of a badass finished product with all those bells and whistles; their hands are kinda tied at this point, and they are more than capable of delivering.

Edited August 2, 2015 by emuthreat

[klesh 2423]

Unsurprisingly the majority of Q3 is missing but most of the things from Q1+2 have been implemented or at least early versions are there. Sure the game is behind where the devs wanted it to be but look at the issues with CLE, it took so long to understand what was going on that it was bound to slow down certain aspects as the teams focused on ensuring it worked better. Look at exp with the limit on item spawns in buildings to prevent lootsplosions, great move IMO.

 

 

 

Well this is the crux of my question.  Not much on that list is working fully.  They have the early iterations of things and are reworking alot of it in experimental.

 

Is the content of the roadmap still being considered deliverable, even though it'll be outside of the dates?   Has some of it been decided to be scrapped?  Not everything that is said they want will always make it in; consider the whole radiostation idea from awhile back.  Perhaps animal companions, or lifecycles and group animal behaviour need to get cut. Or perhaps the dev cycle will just be extended?

 

I'm simply wondering since they have slid from the roadmap, whats being changed?  The contents or the dates?

[Grimey Rick 3417]

What do you hope to accomplish with this thread? It'll be done when it's done. If people don't like it, they can move along.

Haters gonna hate.

[emuthreat 2837]

What do you hope to accomplish with this thread? It'll be done when it's done. If people don't like it, they can move along.

Haters gonna hate.

I think he wants others to do the reading for him, as well as the reading between the lines.

[klesh 2423]

What do you hope to accomplish with this thread? It'll be done when it's done. If people don't like it, they can move along.

Haters gonna hate.

 

 

Who are you asking?

[Rauchsauger 94]

They should optimze FPS/netcode frequently.

Saying - nah we will do that once we put everything else in - will just open you up to a nasty awakening when you realize you cannot optimze because of X.

Then there will be a massive rollback or (more likely) "eh fuck it...it has to stay that way"

[Beizs 186]

Grimey Rick, the point of the thread was to explain some simple concepts of game development that a large part of this community does not understand. As they are participating in an Alpha, they really should.

Emu, I have literally no clue what you were trying to say there, or where you got that idea from.

In regards to the roadmap, they have always maintained that the roadmap is a general guideline (as it always is in any software development). Everything on that roadmap will be implemented, even if delayed. Basically everything from q2 is in experimental. But they also have a tonne of stuff in internal builds and far along in the pipeline. We just don't see everything right away.

Rauchsager, that's not really how it works. FPS will not improve until the new renderer is implemented. Optimising a renderer they're going to tear out would be stupid. They're currently running the game on DX9 and DX7. It'll be on DX11 and DX12 once the new renderer is finished. That alone will improve performance a lot.

Net code is constantly being worked on and improved.

The thing is, optimising on a large scale before the game is feature complete is just a terrible idea. Optimisation is ALWAYS possible, but adding new things in will regularly screw up optimisations. They are following the traditional method - inplement shit in alpha, then do the majority of bug fixing and optimisations in beta. That's how the vast majority of games (and software in general) are developed and it's for a good reason. Again, every time you add something new, you'll probably introduce new bugs and break optimisations. It makes far more sense to do it all once the game is feature complete (beta).

Edited August 3, 2015 by Beizs

[Grimey Rick 3417]

Who are you asking?

 

Seriously? Who do you think?

 

Grimey Rick, the point of the thread was to explain some simple concepts of game development that a large part of this community does not understand. As they are participating in an Alpha, they really should.

 

Yeah, that's fine, but I guess my point is, you're never going to get through to the whiners. You're literally just wasting your energy. I, and many others here, agree with you, because we have some semblance of common sense. Unfortunately, most people who post here don't share that attribute.

 

I like to compare the DayZ community to a horde of first graders on their morning recess. They're running around like crazy people, yelling and scream, and more than half of them are going to be crying at some point.

[Rauchsauger 94]

[...]

Rauchsager, that's not really how it works. FPS will not improve until the new renderer is implemented. Optimising a renderer they're going to tear out would be stupid. They're currently running the game on DX9 and DX7. It'll be on DX11 and DX12 once the new renderer is finished. That alone will improve performance a lot.

Net code is constantly being worked on and improved.

The thing is, optimising on a large scale before the game is feature complete is just a terrible idea. Optimisation is ALWAYS possible, but adding new things in will regularly screw up optimisations. They are following the traditional method - inplement shit in alpha, then do the majority of bug fixing and optimisations in beta. That's how the vast majority of games (and software in general) are developed and it's for a good reason. Again, every time you add something new, you'll probably introduce new bugs and break optimisations. It makes far more sense to do it all once the game is feature complete (beta).

 

I never said they should optimize the old renderer. But optimisation is not done by just fiddeling with the renderer.

Performance is gained by optimizing EVERYTHING to perform well.

Just amping up the renderer will gain you nothing if the rest  of the tech bottlenecks.

(I do speak from experience as a developer - not games but software) Trying to improve things after the fact will lead to pain and cut corners (things not optimized properly in the end)

I have been on the receiving end of that *soab*. Just adding in stuff without thinking it through beforehand is not a good idea - heck even if you try to stay on top of the issue you will run into severe problems.

 

Bottom line if you don't adress issues when they pop up you have fucked up what will be stacked upon it.

 

*edit*

The early access model should favorite that approach because the "traditional method" stems from pressurized development by publishers

Edited August 3, 2015 by Rauchsauger

[Rauchsauger 94]

Seriously? Who do you think?

 

 

Yeah, that's fine, but I guess my point is, you're never going to get through to the whiners. You're literally just wasting your energy. I, and many others here, agree with you, because we have some semblance of common sense. Unfortunately, most people who post here don't share that attribute.

 

I like to compare the DayZ community to a horde of first graders on their morning recess. They're running around like crazy people, yelling and scream, and more than half of them are going to be crying at some point.

 

And you do everything you can to agitate them further - where does that leave you?

[Beizs 186]

I never said they should optimize the old renderer. But optimisation is not done by just fiddeling with the renderer.

Performance is gained by optimizing EVERYTHING to perform well.

Just amping up the renderer will gain you nothing if the rest  of the tech bottlenecks.

(I do speak from experience as a developer - not games but software) Trying to improve things after the fact will lead to pain and cut corners (things not optimized properly in the end)

I have been on the receiving end of that *soab*. Just adding in stuff without thinking it through beforehand is not a good idea - heck even if you try to stay on top of the issue you will run into severe problems.

 

Bottom line if you don't adress issues when they pop up you have fucked up what will be stacked upon it.

 

*edit*

The early access model should favorite that approach because the "traditional method" stems from pressurized development by publishers

 

That's the thing though. In regards to general performance, they have been working on it consistently. Netcode is always changing. They're constantly making improvements to it. They've been optimizing the zombie AI for as long as they've been working on the freaking Zombie AI. They've done the same for animal AI, loot spawning systems, cleanup systems and just about everything else. But none of that will have an impact on the FPS, as it's done server side. That's part of the simulation 'frame rate', rather than the graphical frame rate... And they separated the two very, very early in development. You mentioned 'optimizing FPS', which is really only going to be done on the renderer's side. All of the AI etc is handled server side, again. That will not impact FPS.

 

In regards to 'optimizing' fps, the literal only way they would do that (to any noticeable level) would be 1 - optimizing the old renderer which, again, would be completely idiotic and 2 - implementing the new renderer and further optimizing that. Guess what. They're working on that already.

 

But again, it makes more sense to wait until the game is feature complete to do the bulk of the optimization because, again, new things constantly bring about issues. That doesn't mean they're not thinking ahead. That doesn't mean they're not doing stuff already. But it would be really, really stupid and a massive waste of resources to get everything optimized now... Because I can absolutely guarantee that by the time the game was feature complete, it would need optimizing all over again.

 

 

 

Also, Rick, I see where you're coming from, but honestly, posting and maintaining a single thread really isn't a whole lot of work - and I genuinely can't count the number of people over the last year and a half I've had debates with on this exact topic and had them turn around at the end and tell me 'yeah, I see where you're coming from. Guess I just need to be patient'. It's really just a vocal minority imo, and believe it or not there's a good chunk of that minority who actually can see sense when presented with facts and comparisons (both comparing the game at 'release' to now and to other, similarly sized projects).

Edited August 3, 2015 by Beizs

[q.S Sachiel 470]

On one hand I agree that whipping a horse to move has only limited effect, as does trying to make something or create something/faster when progress cannot possibly be done/quickened.

On the other hand I believe that a certain lack of scrutiny must always exist in business ventures / products such as these.

 

 

I think he wants others to do the reading for him, as well as the reading between the lines.

 

TBH i think it's a biased opinion he's giving, but hey it's a public forum.

Edited August 3, 2015 by q.S Sachiel

[Beizs 186]

On one hand I agree that whipping a horse to move has only limited effect, as does trying to make something or create something/faster when progress cannot possibly be done/quickened.

On the other hand I believe that a certain lack of scrutiny must always exist in business ventures / products such as these.

 

 

 

TBH i think it's a biased opinion he's giving, but hey it's a public forum.

 

I agree that everything should be criticized... Including peoples criticisms. I see too many people shitting on the DayZ dev team for absolutely stupid reasons.

 

Also, I don't really think my view is particularly biased. I don't really have any vested interest in the game or the dev team, other than the fact that I enjoy the game... And I enjoy the game because it's a good game. That's not bias. I try to be objective, and, looking at other, similarly sized games and looking at the actual facts on the rate of development of this game, as well as just how fun this game is (in my opinion), I just can't agree with the majority of the criticisms thrown at this game and its dev team. They're doing a far better job, honestly, than any other similar game (H1Z1, RoK, ARK, every other early access game has very similar problems). Games of a similar scale developed by huge dev teams funded by massive companies have, historically, taken longer to develop than DayZ. This game was released to the public at the literal beginning of its development cycle. It's only been a year and a half and it's come miles. If they come close to reaching their target for Beta, it'll have been in alpha for roughly two years - which is actually a very short time for a game of this scale, especially with its relatively small development team. That's my point, and it's not based in opinion at all. Literally all you have to do is look at the very clear facts about other games of a similar scale, regarding how long they took to develop from start to finish.

Edited August 3, 2015 by Beizs

[Rauchsauger 94]

[...]

In regards to 'optimizing' fps, the literal only way they would do that would be 1 - optimizing the old renderer which, again, would be completely idiotic and 2 - implementing the new renderer and further optimizing that. Guess what. They're working on that already.

[...]

 

As far as I followed there will no "new" renderer they expand the old one ("so much that it is basically a new one" that was the gist of what BI said as far as I remember)

So as far as I understand it they basically do improve the old renderer - but in my opinion they should concentrate on that a bit more.

As for FPS improvement is just done by the renderer - that is not true.

Heavy CPU load will drop your FPS no matter what your GPU is and there are a lot of ways to improve CPU load beside the renderer.

 

With that in mind and given the high amount of people that gave them money in advance to actually play the game as it is - I do think they should optimize what they got more often.

It cannot hurt the process much because I think most people would prefer a game that runs fine and has not all features in yet as opposed to a mess of features that performs really bad.

Edited August 3, 2015 by Rauchsauger