Status Report - 23 Jun 2015

[SMoss 2101]

Greetings Survivors,

 

As the team continues pushing development of DayZ, we have Brian, Chris, and Viktor providing us with a peek at what is on the plate for the team. For this week, Lead Producer Brian Hicks will discuss development going forwards in regards to the DayZ audio module, while Lead Artist Chris Torchia will discuss the decision making behind the firearms design, and Lead Animator Viktor Kostik will discuss the development of transitioning the player character across to the new animation system.

 

Like always, we have a couple of links to our DayZ Trello board, and towards the end of this weeks' Status Report we showcase a video showing an interesting game session springing forth from a Vybor spawn.

 

Contents This Week

• Development Board Spotlight
• Dev Update/Hicks
• E3 - DayZ PC Gaming Show 2015
• Dev Update/Chris
• Dev Update/Viktor
• Community Video: "Long Story Short - I Got a Vybor Spawn"

 

Development Board Spotlight

 

 

 

 

Dev Update/Hicks

 

Greetings Survivors,

 

Its been a hectic few weeks, with 0.57 release and E3 - but I'd like to take some time out this week to discuss pending changes to the Audio side of the Enfusion engine, as well as some critical audio bugs plaguing DayZ Early Access players.

 

We've talked about replacing the existing Audio system in DayZ with a new Audio module better suited to DayZ's needs, but we haven't really outlined what some of that means. As many players may know, the inherited audio technology from the Real Virtuality (TKOH / Arma 2) side of the family has its strengths, but it also has quite a few weaknesses. As we began looking at the time and resources required to update this portion of our base engine, we looked at several key areas we wanted to improve:

 

- 3D Positional Ambient Sound: Supporting true 3D Positional Ambient sounds is integral to proper immersion within Chernarus. As well, once we support this - the roar of the coast, and the confusing positional ambient noises should be a thing of the past.

- More complex configuration options for vehicles, weapons, etc: Current technology supports a very basic methodology for potential sounds and triggering events for weapons, vehicles and the likes. Moving to the new Audio module will begin to allow the design and audio teams to implement more complex audio configurations for items and vehicles in game.

 

As development on this portion of the engine continues, we'll be looking at other features existing internal projects offer (such as Arma 3's tech) to ensure that the support the Enfusion engine offers is as comprehensive as we can allow.

 

In addition to this, work has continued internally on slaying the ever illusive audio bug beast known as "Ghost sounds" - Potential headway was revealed during a conference between key members of the Arma, and DayZ teams. Potential related causes of the issue, as well as fixes implemented on the Arma side of the company are hopefully going to be implemented. We'll be testing this out on experimental hopefully with 0.59 - I'll be speaking with people about this on the official DayZ forums when we begin testing, and anyone encountering the issue at that point is strongly encouraged to utilize the Feedback Tracker.

See you all in Chernarus!
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

 

 

E3 - DayZ PC Gaming Show 2015

 

Also, we have a little bit of info in regards to modding and the singleplayer part of DayZ in the following video featuring Brian Hicks at this year's E3 convention. Thanks and props go out to the fine people of DayZ Underground for providing the video!

 

Dev Update/Chris

 

From the beginning of the project, Dean and I worked closely on the initial design of firearms in DayZ, including which kinds of attachments they should be able to use as well as which specific firearms would best fit the environment.

 

The requirements from Dean for creating the final list of firearms included:

 

- 50/50 mixture of 'Western' and 'Eastern' firearms.
- Bias towards civilian models.
- Expansion of the weapon set should occur with minimum expansion of calibers and attachments
- Emphasis on short and intermediate range firearms

 

Peter also required that each firearm should be as visually distinct as possible from one another and that we should add some of our more unique items.

 

To figure out which sort of guns we should add, I took several trips to zbraně a střelivo obchod (gun and ammo stores) in Prague as well as investigated the websites of local gun ranges for firearms for sale and rent and was shocked at the massive spectrum available to civilians.

 

Here are some items I found in Prague. See if any of them are familiar:

-Mosin Nagant
-Modded AR15s
-AR10s
-VZ58 (by the way, I'd love to buy one and export back home to the US :) )
-SVT40
-Tiger rifles (civilian SVD)
-Various bolt action rifles of every make and kind -Ruger 10/22
-Derringer pistol
-Single action revolvers
-Kimber 1911
-P38 Pistol
-Civilianized AK clones of multiple origins
-Various pump action 12 gauge shotguns

 

The list goes on...

 

In addition, we wanted to remain faithful to the lore of DayZ's roots in Arma2 so involvement of NATO and Russian forces and their equipment. This meant our options were wide open to consider some more exotic items like the AK74M, VSS, UMP45, etc...

 

We hope this approach would provide a large variety of experiences for our players as your strategy must sometimes change, depending on what kind of firearms you end up with in your journey.

- Chris Torchia / Lead Artist

 

 

Dev Update/Viktor

 

In the last weeks all animators were focused mainly on the new animation system since all animations need to be reexported and adjusted for the new skeleton.
Our initial goal is to reproduce the character as we know and then focus on the improvements which new system will allow us to do.

 

Player already has all movement animations, can reload all guns, climb ladders, enter and drive vehicle and do other things as old character.

 

 

The big chunk of work is done although some major things still need to be implemented like most of the user actions.

Some animations were improved on the go. So now we have new climbing ladders anims, falling and landing, picking up and carrying heavy items, some additional gestures and other polishings. The reload animations at the moment work the same way but we just started on advanced behaviour where chambering and loading rounds will get it's own animations for each gun.

 

 

In the Phase 2 of transition player character to the new animation system we will do some major improvements regarding animations.
There will by synchronized walks and runs which will enable us later to do some fancy stuff with upcoming wounded character and stamina.

 

On to do list is also improvement of animations for first person view, improved IK for feets and hands, detailed animations of guns, and more.

- Viktor Kostik / Lead Animator

 

 

Community Video: "Long Story Short - I Got a Vybor Spawn"

 

For this week, we have a small gem created by "Dog the Bandit Hunter". This video popped up in the sea of DayZ content while looking for a bit of entertainment one weekend. From the tumbnail it looked like it was a video dedicated to depicting the Vybor spawn bug itself, so I thought I'd have a look see. Very quickly did I find out though that it was a bit more than that. Instead, the video turned out to be a somewhat hectic documentation of Dog's experiences, as a result of the Vybor spawn, during a gaming session.

 

In short, many lols were had that afternoon while watching (and re-watching) Dog's video.

 

 

Unfortunately, it seems like "Dog the Bandit Hunter" have hung up his spurs in regards to editing and uploading gaming videos on YT, but luckily there's still quite an archive of entertainment goodness on his channel. If interested in more, please feel free to have a look: Dog the Bandit Hunter

 

As always, if you have a nice video containing DayZ footage you'd like to share, or if you have come across some DayZ footage from other content creators, just post it in the Gallery section of the DayZ forums and we'll happily have a look.

 

May is long gone, and again we are extremely grateful to see how many bugs we received from players. A quick look at the Feedback Tracker tells us that  Darcion did very well in terms of finding new bugs, so for the month of may, Darcion is the top bug hunter! As mentioned before, we'll keep track of this in the background, and those of you guys that make the extra effort to help out the team in terms of filing them bugs will be mentioned in the Special Thanks section on the rolling credits for DayZ.

 

Header image credit: T1M #pepe

 

- Michael aka SMoss / Community Manager

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

Thanks, guys!!

 

Experimental tomorrow/this week possible?

 

So much awesome stuff on the horizon!!

 

You give good SA!

 

Me love you long time!

 

:ph34r:

[igor-vk 909]

No replies? Is this topic locked?

On topic, only two months until new vehicles!!

[blacktwin0 98]

You give good SA!

 

:lol:  :thumbsup:  :beans: 

 

Yes! That fall picture, man. Oh man, my jimmies be a rustlin. Can't wait for the new animations. 

[Arthur Dubrovka 376]

Real nice stuff! And how is loot distribution system working? Can we hope to see persistence enabled soon or does ist take a long way until it´s possible again?

 

... and by the way. I´m so excited about the megaphone :D

Edited June 23, 2015 by imun

[Coheed_IV 381]

These updates produce a lot of drool..........3D Positional Ambient Sound..........improvement of animations for first person view............synchronized walks and runs.............fancy stuff with upcoming wounded character and stamina.

Dev Update/Chris

- Expansion of the weapon set should occur with minimum expansion of calibers and attachments
- Emphasis on short and intermediate range firearms

 I take intermediate range to mean 100-300 meters. Not sure if I'm right. Not sure what the devs view as intermediate.

 

I'm thinking this somewhat hinges on how vision works out, by that I mean the "zoom". Without the "zoom" you cant be realistically effective at that range with normal sights.

 

To get realistic field of view on a screen you need to unzoom, which is how we normally play games. But, to return vision to normal proportion we need to "zoom". This allows for realistic weapon accuracy with these ranges.

 

Will be interesting to see how this all comes together.

Edited June 24, 2015 by Coheed_IV

[PaniXx 34]

Experimental tomorrow/this week possible?

 

Hicks wrote on reddit that .58 exp. will be released early next week as long as none major issues will happen. 

Edited June 23, 2015 by PaniXx

[BeefBacon 1185]

Awesome. I'd love it if sounds became quieter through walls so you can't hear people stomping around inside buildings. I hope they improve the sound of distant gunfire as well.

 

As far as animations go, I can't wait. Janky movement has been a problem since day one.

 

I'm hoping they sneak in a basic stamina system soon as well. The sooner they get rid of unlimited sprint the better.

[LoveAffair 329]

And week 3 with no tent persistence ... and the beat goes on ....

[chodeofwar 145]

Please fix the issue with the random sounds.

 

I have been a loyal supporter of game since day 1 and have even bought copies for friends of mine who refused to.

 

One and a half years of listening to phantom reloading, eating and combining sounds. 

 

FIX THE SOUNDS.

 

WHY HASN'T THIS BEEN ASSIGNED A HIGHER PRIORITY ?

 

ITS GAME BREAKING (for me).

 

I go away and play Arma 3 (Breaking Point) for 2000 hours come back and this shit is STILL NOT FIXED.

 

FFS BOHEMIA.

[PaniXx 34]

 

WHY HASN'T THIS BEEN ASSIGNED A HIGHER PRIORITY ?

 

ITS GAME BREAKING (for me).

 

I go away and play Arma 3 (Breaking Point) for 2000 hours come back and this shit is STILL NOT FIXED.

 

FFS BOHEMIA.

 

Because the current audio module needs to be changed to fix an issue like this... did you even read the status report of this week? 

 

FFS chodeofwar

[blackberrygoo 1416]

That Falling animation is amazing ... I can't wait to see someone fall off of a building and have a bunch of zombies fall on top of him trying to get a meal !!

[Coheed_IV 381]

Nice mix of long hours and jet lag. Very relaxed though, some other guys in the show were quite nervous, felt bad for them. Very nice to see PC getting some attention there. The only bad part was Jay Crowe was not allowed to keep speaking, everyone would have been hypnotized.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is there some new clipping on the hands there? New hands?

 

 

 

Edited June 24, 2015 by Coheed_IV

[Bororm 1156]

Because the current audio module needs to be changed to fix an issue like this... did you even read the status report of this week? 

 

FFS chodeofwar

 

The new audio module isn't required to fix it, they say they are working on it right now, did you read the report? =P

 

It is pretty unbelievable it has gone this long without being fixed.  What's even more worrisome is that they seemed to not even know what was causing it the whole time.  But that goes back to chodeofwar's question of why hasn't it been assigned a higher priority?  You'd think after a point (that point being within a year and a half) they'd say, you know what?  We should really fix this thing.

 

That seems to finally be what they're doing now, at least.

[Coheed_IV 381]

Dev Update/Hicks

 

As development on this portion of the engine continues, we'll be looking at other features existing internal projects offer (such as Arma 3's tech) to ensure that the support the Enfusion engine offers is as comprehensive as we can allow.

Interested in more, check this out. :)

 

http://dev.arma3.com/post/oprep-audio-roadmap-update

 

Hope interiors and vector-based multichannel panning get implemented into Enfusion, seems they would effect DayZ the most.

Edited June 24, 2015 by Coheed_IV

[chodeofwar 145]

Because the current audio module needs to be changed to fix an issue like this... did you even read the status report of this week? 

 

FFS chodeofwar

 

So you are ok with the 'sound issues' ?

Edited June 24, 2015 by chodeofwar

[Hicks_206 (DayZ) 4297]

Real nice stuff! And how is loot distribution system working? Can we hope to see persistence enabled soon or does ist take a long way until it´s possible again?

 

... and by the way. I´m so excited about the megaphone :D

 

Right now the only blocker for us toggling the system back on is per-building quantity control, and a test pass on experimental.

[Hicks_206 (DayZ) 4297]

Please fix the issue with the random sounds.

 

I have been a loyal supporter of game since day 1 and have even bought copies for friends of mine who refused to.

 

One and a half years of listening to phantom reloading, eating and combining sounds. 

 

FIX THE SOUNDS.

 

WHY HASN'T THIS BEEN ASSIGNED A HIGHER PRIORITY ?

 

ITS GAME BREAKING (for me).

 

I go away and play Arma 3 (Breaking Point) for 2000 hours come back and this shit is STILL NOT FIXED.

 

FFS BOHEMIA.

 

I'd encourage you to read the OP, this is discussed in detail.

[DannyDog 532]

A question about the audio system, is there any consideration of simulating binaural audio rather than sim HRTF (which i assume would be what you meant by 3D positional audio?)

Audio i believe should be the most important part of creating immersive environments rather than focusing on graphics.

[spanos5590 0]

All these are awesome !!! i saw the things ull add in 2015 and PLEASE dont add Stamina and Skills like more health more stamina and stuff like these! its gonna be really unrealistic!! and something more after the maintenance today!! I cant find ANYTHING servers are rly laggy even if i have good ping people teleporting loot is nowhere cant even find a rope or a t shirt........... do something.....

[St. Jimmy 1631]

Audio i believe should be the most important part of creating immersive environments rather than focusing on graphics.

Got to agree with this. Good audio and ambient sounds are big part what can make the game shine.

 

Nice blog again.

 

Got to say about those ghost sounds, I've heard something similar in Arma 3 when I've spawned a lot of AI fighting together and my fps has been low. When it happens I hear that some guns shots are happening very close to me even though the AI is shooting several hunderd meters away in a same way as those ghost sounds in DayZ. It only happens when the fps is really jamming. Just saying just in case though they don't likely relate other than when there's low fps (in DayZ server and Arma client fps).

Edited June 24, 2015 by St. Jimmy

[Arthur Dubrovka 376]

Right now the only blocker for us toggling the system back on is per-building quantity control, and a test pass on experimental.

Thank you Sir! Thats what I wanted to read...

[joe_mcentire 2074]

The requirements from Dean for creating the final list of firearms included:

 

- 50/50 mixture of 'Western' and 'Eastern' firearms.

- Bias towards civilian models.

- Expansion of the weapon set should occur with minimum expansion of calibers and attachments

- Emphasis on short and intermediate range firearms

 

Peter also required that each firearm should be as visually distinct as possible from one another and that we should add some of our more unique items.

is there also a list for melee weapons or makeshift/everyday "weapons"? Edited June 27, 2015 by joe_mcentire