Status Report - 06 Jul 2016

[SMoss 2101]

 

Contents This Week

• Dev Update/Hicks
• Dev Update/Peter
• Community Spotlight

 

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors,

This week the Status Report might seem a little thin for those who follow development closely, as not much new has occurred between Friday when the presentation was held, and today. Focus is on recapping the stuff shown at RTX 2016 covering .61 and what we can expect for it - but aside from that we have some updates on current Stable Branch hotfix, some new renders of work in progress animations for the first of our predator animals, wolves, and Peter talks to us about body temperature and how it impacts DayZ gameplay.

Current Stable Branch Hotfix goals are:

- Known Server Crashes
- Item Duplication Methods
- Animation State Issues
- Tent Lifetime Refresh
- Spatial Orientation for Vehicles

A couple key things to note on the above list: Tent Lifetime Refresh is currently not functioning as intended on stable branch, meaning you are only able to refresh the lifetime of placed tents by packing and unpacking them. Intended functionality on these is to match the current behavior of containers such as barrels, and backpacks - which refresh their lifetime whenever an item is moved inside the inventory of the container. In regards to Spatial Orientation for Vehicles - the hotfix we're working on here should resolve complaints of vehicles not persisting. As current stable branch behavior does not properly save the directional orientation of the vehicle on server restart, in some cases this can cause the vehicle to be destroyed and cleaned up.

In addition, we've uploaded some animated gifs of .. oddly enough.. animations of the upcoming wolves to our Trello board. If you're into that sort of thing, go check it out!

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

 

Dev Update/Peter

With the release of DayZ 0.60 stable version there was a bit of misunderstanding regarding the body temperature mechanic and considering it currently as bugged since characters can reach hyperthermia state in a very short time which wasn't the case in the 0.59 version. I would like to point out to those who aren't aware of it, that the engine which DayZ runs upon is capable of marvelous things that aren't obvious at first sight. Trajectories of sun and moon (even it's phases), star positions, tide heights, complex weather forecasts with air temperature, wind, newly added fog and other game world subsystems directly depends on the time of the day, date and geographic coordinates configuration.

While geographic coordinates is tied to the map itself and cannot be easily changed, date and time is exposed in the server configuration so admins can change it freely. Unfortunately, date and time is not separated in the configuration file and the easiest way is to set it to the system date and time of the server itself especially to get more variety in time of day across the servers, and as most servers aren't running in the past or in the future, that's where things like the body temperature mechanic which is connected to those settings can seem off, even if it behaves correctly - I bet most of you will be overheating and sweating while sprinting hundreds of meters in full gear, long clothes and with gloves, masks, vests and helmets on top of it all in summer weather with air temperature around 30°C. As DayZ is visually set in eternal autumn it makes sense that this mechanic is balanced to that time of year, where nights are actually cold and days can be anywhere from a bit warmer to quite chilly depending on the forecast, not to mention plenty of foggy and rainy days. Of course, it could be hard-balanced without taking weather and air temperature into consideration, however, it would be a step backwards considering that DayZ will be open to modding and there being possibilities for us to expect maps in different times of the year and geographic coordinates - jungles, deserts, mountains anyone? To allow more control over it we are going to tear apart date and time in the server config so the date is not affected when the system time is used by admins. In the meantime, there was an offset applied in the calculation of body temperature for the experimental version so it behaves more according to the visuals of an autumn environment instead of an actual summer date set in the server config file.

Now is a good time to unveil a bit more regarding the temperature feature, even if it's obviously quite low on the priority list now. Many of you noticed there is heating up and cooling down of item temperatures already present in game. This can be used to affect the body temperature of your survivor as heat packs, and even improvised ones like cans heated up in fireplace embers, will raise the body temperature while cold items will lower it. We are going to add more purpose to handling temperatures by making food perishable, especially raw meat alongside with blood bags. With plenty of refrigerators in houses or at junkyards you will be able to store food and blood bags safely to keep their expiration under control after you connect the fridges to an electricity system. The addition of cooling box containers will help you to carry food and blood bags around in fresh condition and ready to use. Considering food as one of the most crucial things for survival and with lowering of the amount of non-perishable food in the world towards the end, it will lead to promoting interesting approaches to gameplay for both lone wolfs and groups alike, as it will offer short time solutions of immediate consumption balanced against long term solutions with incorporating electricity usage at barricaded houses, camps, and bases during the times of need.  

Stay cool... see you in Chernarus folks! 

- Peter Nespesny - Lead Designer

 

Community Spotlight

Another couple of weeks have passed, and we have again received a good amount of bugs via the Feedback Tracker. Regularly, we still see quite a few reports on player characters having lost their gear, and we do have a set of repro steps for this bug:

1. Join a server.
2. Go to any M4 handguard laying on the ground.
3. Take M4 to your hands.
4. Swap handguards on your M4 with handguard on the ground via action menu or by drag-and-drop.
5. Relog.
6. Notice that the character is missing all the gear except for the M4.

If you experience loss of gear in any way different than with the repro steps above, please do let us know: http://feedback.bistudio.com/

Of course, we also have a video to highlight. This time around it's a video made by: PolishedGuy

 

Also, in case you tend to find yourself a bit on your lonesome when roaming around Chernarus, BarelyInfected has a meeting event coming up on July 16 at 22:00 CEST. Have a look here:

 

If you also have an event coming up in the future, just let us know via our DayZ Forums and we'll help spread the word.

Header image kindly provided by: wstdsgn.

Thanks as always for all your help and support!

- SMoss / Community Manager

[Brian W. 3]

How long do tents stay if you don't reset their lifetime? 

[tenmbits 2]

Hey Peter. Will item temperature have other effects as well? Like consuming warm foods warm you up etc?

[PsyStormZ 20]

Can you elaborate on how persistence works exactly. Does the timer still count if the server is offline? Also how many days per item and what do we need to do to keep our things?

[Private Evans 1303]

Will we see more Arma tech being merged into the Enfusion Engine in the future like firing from vehicles ( i guess this is really needed), Scuba Diving ( just a cool feature) , Slingloading ( lifting cargo containers or broken vehicles to base would be awesome), vehicle in vehicle transport (having a bike or dirt bike in the back of the truck or bus)? Just curious since this new engine will be I guess the new engine for BI games in the future ( A4 ) anyway :)

[Hicks_206 (DayZ) 4297]

11 hours ago, Brian W. said:

How long do tents stay if you don't reset their lifetime? 

8 days for barrels
45 for tents (as they don't currently refresh their lifetime unless you pack/pitch)

[PsyStormZ 20]

1 hour ago, Hicks_206 (DayZ) said:

8 days for barrels
45 for tents (as they don't currently refresh their lifetime unless you pack/pitch)

Wow 45 days! nice

[Hicks_206 (DayZ) 4297]

4 hours ago, PsyStormZ said:

Can you elaborate on how persistence works exactly. Does the timer still count if the server is offline? Also how many days per item and what do we need to do to keep our things?

Lifetime counts as long as the server is offline.
Most items are 30 minutes.
Barrels are 8 days
Tents currently 45
Backpacks are 4 hours last I checked.

[PsyStormZ 20]

Just now, Hicks_206 (DayZ) said:

Lifetime counts as long as the server is offline.
Most items are 30 minutes.
Barrels are 8 days
Tents currently 45
Backpacks are 4 hours last I checked.

Thank you brother ;) Really loving how things are going lately :)

[IrokGaming 4]

Does anyone know if the military tents cant be packed? or is this just me?

[PsyStormZ 20]

2 minutes ago, IrokGaming said:

Does anyone know if the military tents cant be packed? or is this just me?

Yes but they bug out currently. I was told by someone on the forum to run around inside the tent and spam F. This worked for me every time except for today. I then got creative and ran OUTSIDE the tent while running into it and spamming F and voila! 

[IrokGaming 4]

aah cool!! I will try it emmeditly!! Thx alot!

[IrokGaming 4]

Hahaha!! This is gonna take me whole day.. we have 14 militarytents in our camp.. and im the only one online.. well well.. what wouldent i do for dayz, I just love this game so it really dosent mather :))

[PsyStormZ 20]

Did it work?

[IrokGaming 4]

Yepp! You are amazing for telling me that!! Thx so so much!!

[Valdenburg 200]

2 hours ago, Hicks_206 (DayZ) said:

Lifetime counts as long as the server is offline.
Most items are 30 minutes.
Barrels are 8 days
Tents currently 45
Backpacks are 4 hours last I checked.

45 days on tents is awesome, however corpses aka death players gear despawns too quick imo.

Is there any chance we get a higher despawn timer on character corpses that have just died?

[gh0stop 2]

1 hour ago, PsyStormZ said:

Yes but they bug out currently. I was told by someone on the forum to run around inside the tent and spam F. This worked for me every time except for today. I then got creative and ran OUTSIDE the tent while running into it and spamming F and voila! 

It seems this and hiding bodies (like zombies) is bugged while indoors. But it works fine outside.

[IrokGaming 4]

Another thing i have been thinking on that i dosent seem to get a straight answer from anyone.. On our server we can't wear anything on the upperbody.. If i so put on a tshirt i will get "rapidly warming up" and then "overheating" shortly after..

Now.. Fragnet told me they had spoken to one of dayz devs and had been told that this is a bug.. But the devs seems to say otherwise.. Is it a bug or is it not?

Best Regards

Irok.

Edited July 7, 2016 by IrokGaming

[St. Jimmy 1631]

53 minutes ago, IrokGaming said:

Another thing i have been thinking on that i dosent seem to get a straight answer from anyone.. On our server we can't wear anything on the upperbody.. If i so put on a tshirt i will get "rapidly warming up" and then "overheating" shortly after..

Now.. Fragnet told me they had spoken to one of dayz devs and had been told that this is a bug.. But the devs seems to say otherwise.. Is it a bug or is it not?

Best Regards

Irok.

Does the overheating also happen when you're standing still or walking?

[IrokGaming 4]

Nop. 

[Hicks_206 (DayZ) 4297]

2 hours ago, Valdenburg said:

45 days on tents is awesome, however corpses aka death players gear despawns too quick imo.

Is there any chance we get a higher despawn timer on character corpses that have just died?

Not cool - it is there because of a bug. Soon as the bug is resolved, they will be 8 days as they should.

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

Thanks for all the hard work devs/all!!

Everyday I'm just hoping for .61.

I feel delusional holding out hope for zombies in my zombie game but there it is, I have hope!

 

[Brian W. 3]

8 hours ago, Hicks_206 (DayZ) said:

8 days for barrels
45 for tents (as they don't currently refresh their lifetime unless you pack/pitch)

Thanks! So for tents to be reset you have to pack them up and place them again, okay. For barrels, you just add, remove, or move items inside them? Now I know my campsite didn't despawn and some bastards came and ransacked it instead.

[PsyStormZ 20]

@Hicks_206 (DayZ) I know these are maybe not priority but can you please check about carrier plate pouches spawning. I think the loot table might be incorrect as people can't find them and ammunition boxes this patch. Also I have been waiting soooo long to use the fal with optics but since .60 the acog and other sights are not working with the Fal.

[St. Jimmy 1631]

6 hours ago, IrokGaming said:

Nop. 

Then it's likely not a bug.

"- I bet most of you will be overheating and sweating while sprinting hundreds of meters in full gear, long clothes and with gloves, masks, vests and helmets on top of it all in summer weather with air temperature around 30°C"

 

Constantly running in the hot weather isn't the most pleasant thing to do so that's why you're overheating. Just imagine yourself running same way as in the DayZ.