Christopher Torchia (Bohemia Interactive Studio) - DayZ: Surviving Success

[edwin3 74]

Really worth watching :thumbsup:

 

 

greets

[kichilron 8550]

Ah, well. Shit. I missed it.

 

Was supposed to go there, seeing as it's exactly where I live anyway.

[xCAPx 349]

Thanks for posting. Really interessting! Why are such videos not linked to the Status Reports?

Edited September 23, 2015 by xCAPx

[gannon46 788]

A lot of this i didn't know thx for posting. i can only imagine how much of a headache they went through without any documentation and new tools especially with us bitchy players always complaining and wanting more more more and now not later. I used to do tech support and they would throw me curve balls sometimes with new tools without proper documentation or new problems without any documents on a fix and we had to figure it out and share among one another to squash the problem it was no where near as stressful as his job but i understand it takes a person with nerves of steel to put up with that kind of shit, so i say thx dev team for putting up with it.

[DemonGroover 8836]

Don't know why they were so shocked at the initial sales.

 

It was pretty obvious that most people who played the mod would buy into the SA.

[Bororm 1156]

Don't know why they were so shocked at the initial sales.

 

It was pretty obvious that most people who played the mod would buy into the SA.

 

I agree with this.  

 

I think the video is pretty nice for a candid view of the difficulties they faced.  I'm sure it wasn't restricted to just the art team.  I don't think the devs are necessary shy about sharing that there are/were inner problems but I don't think we've really gotten such a clear picture painted to us before.  It was pretty obvious at points something was going on with the team.

[VIPEREYE1 17]

Chris said Dayz sales "pale's in comparison" to witcher 3 sales. I assume he does know that when its released for console...that number is gonna blow up. Especially to players who have never experienced anything even close to what dayz is. It may change the way the industry develop's video games.

Edited September 24, 2015 by VIPEREYE1

[VIPEREYE1 17]

I agree with this.  

 

I think the video is pretty nice for a candid view of the difficulties they faced.  I'm sure it wasn't restricted to just the art team.  I don't think the devs are necessary shy about sharing that there are/were inner problems but I don't think we've really gotten such a clear picture painted to us before.  It was pretty obvious at points something was going on with the team.

I kinda of got this feeling also. especially when the game first released. We heard nothing for what seemed like a long time for a game that hit so big. And this could of been why..things got busy quick. I have a bigger concern now, its about morale. I'm not going to point out anything, But i was not happy with that speech.

 

On a more positive note, the clothing on characters, weapon art, and scenery is on a whole other level. Every other game looks cartooney to me in a sense, I'm not sure if you all agree with me but not only is dayz a unique game, the art is fucking impeccable and these guys deserve a round of applause.

Edited September 24, 2015 by VIPEREYE1

[ColdAtrophy 1850]

Chris said Dayz sales "pale's in comparison" to witcher 3 sales. I assume he does know that when its released for console...that number is gonna blow up. Especially to players who have never experienced anything even close to what dayz is. It may change the way the industry develop's video games.

 

I've been saying this for quite a while now. Console gamers have never seen anything like DayZ. They are going to lose their shit. I can say that with a fair degree of certainty as I was primarily a console gamer up until about a year ago. I am the tiniest of samples, but I do represent the kind of console gamer that would buy into DayZ and I've put in 1000 hours since I bought it sometime around the beginning of the year.

[S3V3N 1402]

So the problems with Dayz were/are a lacking documentation and no common design goals or sense of design among the different teams involved. Employing these guy in Thailand must have been cheaper than hiring them at the home office, but for a longterm project like Dayz it is quite a gamble. It probably won't save Bohemia much if any money to have chosen this path. I can imagine the confusion working with different subsidiaries and time zones. Makes it hard to get everyone on the same table. On the plus side: Thailand guys could work on issues, while Prague guys were sleeping. 

 

The one thing I cannot forgive is the lack of a proper design document. The first thing Dean Hall should have done when the overwhelming success of the mod was becoming apparent is sit his ass down and start writing. But I guess he was too busy giving presentations on how "this is your story" and polishing his bling. He didn't have to write the documentation alone, but together with the technical lead. If they had done things right from the start it would have shaved off a lot of time iterating content and functionality that clearly didn't work well. I guess they underestimated how deep the changes and technical challenges with the engine went. 

 

Comparing it to the Witcher is not the best idea. Witcher was never an Alpha-funding game. I think expectations for Dayz were too high in the beginning (in part that's Dean to blame for) and the devs went with it, even though they did warn the public the game wouldn't be a quick or easy project. It's not an easy thing to think about what could have been improved. I'd say the Alpha Funding idea wasn't really a good one for Dayz. Sure they sold lots of copies in short time, but people were also pissed off with the progress. It's very hard to see the transition to serverside from a player's perspective. Bohemia, as a publisher, should have funded this game themselves to give the team more time to develop and create documentation and assets without being under pressure from the public.

 

The console port will be a weird thing. Usually it is the other way round - from console to pc. And we all know how that ends, most of the time. A game as complex as Dayz will need an ingenious UI design, because multifunction-scroll-wheels and other UI elements, as well as aim assistance will be needed, but don't really fit with the game.  

Edited September 24, 2015 by S3V3N

[ColdAtrophy 1850]

 

The one thing I cannot forgive is the lack of a proper design document. 

 

Chris wasn't talking about that kind of documentation. He was talking about documentation pertaining to the creation of new art for the game so that everyone has a standard and a set of rules. I'm not 100% sure about all that entails, but I'd imagine that it's best to have a core set of guidelines for anything new made for the game so that as little as possible has to be reworked or redone.

 

 

 

Comparing it to the Witcher is not the best idea. Witcher was never an Alpha-funding game. I think expectations for Dayz were too high in the beginning (in part that's Dean to blame for) and the devs went with it, even though they did warn the public the game wouldn't be a quick or easy project. 

 

I think he was comparing to The Witcher only because (based on the context of when he first brought it up) the guys at CD Projeckt Red had either just spoken before him or he had just spoken to them. Granted, this is just conjecture, but it's based on the manner in which he was speaking. I could be wrong.

 

 

 

I'd say the Alpha Funding idea wasn't really a good one for Dayz. Sure they sold lots of copies in short time, but people were also pissed off with the progress. It's very hard to see the transition to serverside from a player's perspective. Bohemia, as a publisher, should have funded this game themselves to give the team more time to develop and create documentation and assets without being under pressure from the public.

 

I actually agree with you here. As much as I love being a part of this, I hope other devs learn from the struggles that DayZ has gone through. If this was a project like one of the other EA titles I own (Stranded Deep or Interstellar Marines) wherein the devs were working with an established engine and simply adding features and bugfixing, it wouldn't have been a big deal. Instead they opted to develop Enfusion concurrently with DayZ SA and I can't help but feel that, while it will be best for the long run, neither the players nor the developers are well equipped to deal with the particular problems that this creates. However, if BI had gone the other route, they risked DayZ spending too much time out of the public eye which could have negated the relevancy of the entire project. 

 

I guess what I'm saying is that I feel DayZ SA's project is too complex to have player access to alpha builds. I think that, in general, we have as a community demonstrated that the majority of us can't even be bothered to read the rather simplistic weekly status reports, let alone report bugs to the tracker, or handle the massive fluctuations in functionality and playability. I'm guilty of it to an extent as well with the recent lack of zombies. I haven't harassed anyone over it, but it's tough to contain my disappointment all the same. These issues would be easier for me to swallow if we got more detailed and technical stuff from the dev team about what they are specifically working on, but I imagine that would be impossible for many reasons. 

 

 

The console port will be a weird thing. Usually it is the other way round - from console to pc. And we all know how that ends, most of the time. A game as complex as Dayz will need an ingenious UI design, because multifunction-scroll-wheels and other UI elements, as well as aim assistance will be needed, but don't really fit with the game.  

 

I can't wait to see how that turns out. I will likely end up getting it for my stepson on the PS4. I'm most interested in seeing the end results of all the optimizations that would absolutely have to take place before the game is even remotely playable on the 8th gen consoles. I have an i5-4690k @ 4.5ghz, 16GB RAM, an SSD, and a GTX 970. I still get a minimum FPS of about 30 after a lot of experimenting and tweaking for quality vs performance. The consoles have custom AMD APUs that are nowhere near up to the task of running something like DayZ SA in its current state. While I'm not heavily invested in how that all turns out, my curiousity is still quite piqued. 

[gunstarpocket 9]

The first thing Dean Hall should have done when the overwhelming success of the mod was becoming apparent is sit his ass down and start writing. But I guess he was too busy giving presentations on how "this is your story" and polishing his bling. He didn't have to write the documentation alone, but together with the technical lead. If they had done things right from the start it would have shaved off a lot of time iterating content and functionality that clearly didn't work well. I guess they underestimated how deep the changes and technical challenges with the engine went. 

 

It's a lot easier to say what Dean Hall SHOULD have done - but the truth is he did the best he could in the position he found himself in.  DayZ was his first rodeo.  There was no official guidebook on "How to Develop and Publish a Brand New Video Game Out of the Bones of an Arma 2 Mod That You Created For Fun".

 

I think Dean gets a lot less credit than he deserves for the job he did.

[S3V3N 1402]

It's a lot easier to say what Dean Hall SHOULD have done - but the truth is he did the best he could in the position he found himself in.  DayZ was his first rodeo.  There was no official guidebook on "How to Develop and Publish a Brand New Video Game Out of the Bones of an Arma 2 Mod That You Created For Fun".

 

I think Dean gets a lot less credit than he deserves for the job he did.

 

The first step in every game development is getting the documentation ready. It's a WIP, but it is the common ground everyone bases their work on. It entails all elements of the game, describes goals and design concepts, technical solutions. It's also a lot of work to write and is a matter of constant iteration. If Dean Hall wanted to lead this project, this was his first responsibility. I cannot believe they didn't have a design document to start with, because even mod teams know these are essential parts of the creation process. What Hall did is like planning a new car that flies, but there is no factory and no machines designed to make it happen. 

 

I guess you are right about the much confusion, and I am surely not blaming Dean Hall alone for this mishap. Mostly to blame would be Bohemia's management, because they didn't make the investment, nor gave the team the time to wrk things out, before actually working on them. A year of designing the game at the start would have taken off tons of stress from its developers and would have helped make the goals for each step more transparent. At least now I know why they never reach their scheduled goals.

Edited September 24, 2015 by S3V3N

[St. Jimmy 1631]

On a more positive note, the clothing on characters, weapon art, and scenery is on a whole other level. Every other game looks cartooney to me in a sense, I'm not sure if you all agree with me but not only is dayz a unique game, the art is fucking impeccable and these guys deserve a round of applause.

Yes I also love the art of Arma and DayZ. I get the very same feeling as you about the art that many other games look just cartoonish or non-realistic. For example GTA V looks beautiful and all that but it still doesn't appeal to me in a way that Arma and DayZ. Bohemia has that down-to-earth feeling in those games.

 

Very good video. Thanks for posting because it's always nice to see some talk in the forums :beans:

Edited September 24, 2015 by St. Jimmy

[VIPEREYE1 17]

So the problems with Dayz were/are a lacking documentation and no common design goals or sense of design among the different teams involved. Employing these guy in Thailand must have been cheaper than hiring them at the home office, but for a longterm project like Dayz it is quite a gamble. It probably won't save Bohemia much if any money to have chosen this path. I can imagine the confusion working with different subsidiaries and time zones. Makes it hard to get everyone on the same table. On the plus side: Thailand guys could work on issues, while Prague guys were sleeping. 

 

The one thing I cannot forgive is the lack of a proper design document. The first thing Dean Hall should have done when the overwhelming success of the mod was becoming apparent is sit his ass down and start writing. But I guess he was too busy giving presentations on how "this is your story" and polishing his bling. He didn't have to write the documentation alone, but together with the technical lead. If they had done things right from the start it would have shaved off a lot of time iterating content and functionality that clearly didn't work well. I guess they underestimated how deep the changes and technical challenges with the engine went. 

 

Comparing it to the Witcher is not the best idea. Witcher was never an Alpha-funding game. I think expectations for Dayz were too high in the beginning (in part that's Dean to blame for) and the devs went with it, even though they did warn the public the game wouldn't be a quick or easy project. It's not an easy thing to think about what could have been improved. I'd say the Alpha Funding idea wasn't really a good one for Dayz. Sure they sold lots of copies in short time, but people were also pissed off with the progress. It's very hard to see the transition to serverside from a player's perspective. Bohemia, as a publisher, should have funded this game themselves to give the team more time to develop and create documentation and assets without being under pressure from the public.

 

The console port will be a weird thing. Usually it is the other way round - from console to pc. And we all know how that ends, most of the time. A game as complex as Dayz will need an ingenious UI design, because multifunction-scroll-wheels and other UI elements, as well as aim assistance will be needed, but don't really fit with the game.  

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

oh, i'm just comparing the numbers not the games themselves. Dayz has only sold half of what the witcher has, but when its released for console it could either come close, fall short, or exceed the sales of witcher.

Edited September 26, 2015 by VIPEREYE1