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Baty Alquawen

Status Report - 2 May 2017

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Hello Survivors!

Another beefy Status Report this week! Brian talks about basic vehicle goals for BETA, Eugen shares a story about one of our development decisions, and Peter and Mirek go more in depth about some of their recent work! Let's get to it.


Contents This Week

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

 

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors, 

As Eugen is covering what the current tasks are, that frees me up to talk about some of the mechanics and systems that we (Peter, myself, the development team as a whole) are looking forward to improving upon in beta and the milestones past that. Given that after checking the various communities centered around DayZ, I noticed a group of posts doing their best impression of the World War 3 style courtroom audience summoned by the Q entity in Star Trek's Encounter at Farpoint when discussing the current state of vehicles, I figured now is as good a time as any to clear up some things when it comes to them, in DayZ. (The vehicles, not Q's apparitions)  

While I personally love the work Peter and the design team did on manual transmissions in DayZ, vehicle handling and mechanics as a whole are far from where we want them to be. The biggest culprit of this, obviously, is physics, and their handling on terrain. We did show some of the changes being worked on for that area of the vehicles, but many may have missed it.  

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It's fair to say that vehicles in DayZ's Alpha phase of Early Access have received the least amount of user visible love. Part of that is due to the complex physics situation in DayZ, as we still currently operate two completely separate physics systems. Another part of that is due to so much of the focus being on technology, and getting it in place to support DayZ as we want it to be. I'm looking forward to that, as from my perspective, vehicles are a critical component of mid-to-late game DayZ gameplay - and quite honestly, without them in a satisfying state, you tend to just end up with a walking simulator ;) 

Let me give you guys a look at some of the areas we will be looking at improving into and throughout Beta. 

  • Terrain handling / acceleration 
  • SFX (Engines / Transmission) 
  • UI (Specifically in the toggle-able HUD that we have shown before - so that 3PP players can see the same critical info 1PP can) 
  • Feedback on vehicle damage state (Aside from damage materials, and doors falling off - think smoke from a damaged engine, engine stumble/diesel when running out of fuel) 
  • Proper destruction of vehicle when it has been destroyed (rather than the current state of the vehicle just not turning on) 

Don't think for a moment anyone on the dev team looks at vehicles the way they are now and says "Y'know what - that's perfect, ship it" - far from it. All of us are just as antsy and eager to see DayZ's systems start to flesh out and polish as we all want them to be - we just have to knuckle down and understand that the technology to support our vision needs to be ready for us to start implementing this.  

This exact reason, and so much more is why all of us are so focused on, and excited to enter the BETA phase of DayZ's Early Access. I'll leave you all with that, as I'd like to put together Peter and I's thoughts on stamina, and weapon sway for the next Status Report. For now, just promise not to kill me on sight when you see me in Severograd.

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

 

 

Dev Update/Eugen

Hey guys, as some of you have noticed, I have omitted listing audio changes as part of 0.62 update in the last Status Report. That was an honest mistake, but it also highlights what a dynamic place game development is. I`ll try and have my contribution structured as a goal for the future Status Updates. Usually, I'll begin with a "story from development", just so you can see what kind of decision making is happening everyday, as well as going through the things we have been working on in the respective departments for each patch separately.

 

0.62 Strike Team Update & Development Story

This time, it’s a story AND a progress update - yay!

0.62 patch was originally planned for delivery (on Experimental branch) during the second week of April, but due to complications and cooperation on engine milestones, it became apparent that we needed to close them sequentially, rather than working on both at once. Remember that only small team is working on 0.62 at the moment, as almost all of us are focusing on BETA/0.63 delivery.

However, back to the topic at hand. Originally, that shouldn't have been that much of a problem. As we started testing the 0.62 update, we quickly found out that when we enable the new positional environmental sounds (basically the reworked Arma 3 tech introduced with the Eden Update that is becoming a part of Enfusion Engine platform), we encountered a crash.

The crash itself manifests when you switch window focus fast enough during startup, but it can manifest at any point, this is just the easiest way to get it. The crash is based around file system and resource management of our engine - one of the last remaining parts that are not rewritten for DayZ yet.

We have a couple of options now: We can either rework the content to work with the old system to make the new sounds function, but lose the ability for positional audio in environments, or fix the bug in the resource management and make the old system work with the new content and data.

We can also rewrite the system completely to get the pattern of these crashes fixed on the platform as a whole.

It might look like a small thing, but the positional environment audio makes the game much more immersive. And the issues go much deeper than that, as the same system might be causing some console performance issues (and more). To get an overview and make a right decision requires fast, but actionable intel. These things happen often when working with older technology, especially when you are in a process of refactoring it as well.

This resource management has been the culprit of many issues in the past, but so far it held the test of time. That might not be the case going forward, and might need some serious looking into.

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Our team of designers in the middle of some deep thinking :)

 

0.63 BETA Strike Team Update

As for the work with BETA Strike Team, I list them below. One line of text / bullet point usually means it's in the hands of a single person working on the feature and handling the ownership. However, be aware that I need to simplify it to make things at least a little bit digestible, so it's hard to strike the right amount of detail without basically reworking JIRA tasks to show them here:

Programmers

• AI script implementation
• Zombie behavior script representation
• Wind rework and debugs
• Inventory and item conditions
• Item spawn definition
• User actions in multiplayer
• Exhausted and hurt player animation support
• Network traffic optimization
• New version check (to prevent edge cases of connecting to a different build of a game)
• Lightning fixes (new lightning setup)
• Sound event manager
• Tons of crash fixing
• Tons of bug fixes

 

Animators

• Weapon mechanics animations polishing (unjamming, reloads)
• Inverse Kinematics poses
• Mocap (Player turns and more)
• Hit reactions on player
• Animation plugins
• Cow and Bull refactor for the new animation system

 

Designers

• User actions in multiplayer
• Player representation
• New item hierarchy definition
• New player and item spawn definition
• Inventory UI refactor
• Lifespan
• Tree fire geometry
• Tons of bug fixes

 

Audio

• Positional environment audio

 

QA
• Playtest 0.62
• Door rework priority assignment (standardized door sizes)
• Performance profiling in 0.62
• Client performance benchmarks in 0.62

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0.62 Strike Team meeting

I know that a list is not the best way to present the progress, but might be interesting for the development folks out there. However, I would also like to make it much more representative. There are tons of things happening at the same time, and we are in process of visualizing the sprint in very near future and I`ll try and share our overview of BETA progress when things settle down.

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

 

Dev Update/Peter

Along with upcoming changes to doors behavior I wrote about in the past, another issue which we definitely need to address and solve is the wide variety of different widths and heights of door openings. It may sound like a marginal issue, but I encourage you to continue reading, and discover how it affects gameplay.

Nearly every opening in DayZ is unique, which is caused by historical reasons and non-existing metrics back then (we are using a mixture of different structures collected from Operation Flashpoint, Arma 1, Arma 2, and some new ones made exclusively for DayZ). Apart from the fact that doors with dimensions below ideal standard just look bad and out of place (not to mention handles placed in above knees height) and feel odd (especially from the first person camera), they are also hindering the "fluency" of player movement.

Character collisions coupled with old clunky locomotion are introducing unwanted challenge in such simple action as going through the door, turning doors into an obstacle. Internal tests made with both old and new characters show us that a minimum clear opening of doors in DayZ should have clear width of 120cm and clear height of 220cm, and these dimensions were established as required metrics.

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Everything below causes issues with character navigation, and feels odd especially in first person camera, where opening seems very narrow and low due to camera FOV and perspective. Also the third person camera then shows unnecessary jumping down while going through the door (if their opening height is under 220cm). New doors metrics with their new behavior will add a lot to responsiveness and smooth movement through the environment and its obstacles.

As we are continuing to work on 0.63 version AKA BETA, programmers are getting rid of old systems down the road. Lastly, old player has been completely removed internally, and with it also firearms handling (that includes firearms action like chambering, reloading, shooting… etc.) and aiming model (which means sway, recoil, dexterity, aiming, holding breath…), together with melee fighting (traced swings…) are gone forever as these were integral parts of the old player.

This untied our hands as now is the time when prototypes based on design I mentioned in past Status Reports (8 March 2017 and 28 September 2016) start being implemented in close cooperation between programmers, animators and us managing the design and script side of things.

Rewrite of firearms also allows us to introduce mechanics like changeable gun barrels (we have 2 more barrels for AUG ready to experiment with), different muzzle speeds for the same ammunition type depending on barrel length (which helps balancing firearms between each other, or vice versa), different muzzle speeds for different ammunition type used in same firearm (pellets vs slugs anyone?), switching between scope and sights if possible (like AK family, AUG…) and refinement of, and more importantly, connecting already introduced firearms mechanics like unjamming, mechanism manipulation, chambering and others to the new animation system .

I just can't wait for the moment these systems will be fully re-implemented, as it will change the combat experience a lot in general.

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

 

 

Dev Update/Mirek

We have finished network part of user action system as I described in my last Status Report contribution. It's worth to mention that this change has decreased network traffic from clients significantly and now our client on 0.63 sends (with some small exceptions) only input packets. This change will help a lot to resolve issues like late hits registration and it also should help to overall game responsibility. 

Weapon system has received some new features, like changeable barrels and muzzles and support for attached grenade launchers. Basic implementation for weapon jamming is ready since last week.

And another small new feature - we're working on a system that will select communication channel for chat and voice automatically, so players won't have to change channel using keyboard cursor keys. 

Apart from that, most of our time is still being spend on the new player implementation - tweaking movement and collisions, creating new weapon aiming system and connecting it all to other gameplay systems - we'll talk about these later on, when they are ready.

- Miroslav Maněna / Lead Gameplay Progammer

 

 

Community Spotlight

Greetings Survivors, It is getting warmer outside in Europe, but not even the nice weather can stop you from playing your favorite game. With every day, we are getting closer to release of the 0.62 Update and the community is trembling with impatience and nervousness. But don’t worry, I am also looking forward to the release of the new update, same as you.


As you surely know from previous Status Reports, update 0.62 will also contain map updates, which are being taken care of by our map designer Adam Franců a.k.a. Sumrak. We will be shooting new Q&A video with him in the next couple of days. If you have any questions regarding his work and the DayZ map, feel free to ask him. 

And now for the things that landed on our Twitter, official forum or Reddit over the last two weeks. 
 
When I opened Twitter today, the first thing that caught my eye was an elaborate figurine made by Bragawn. It’s almost unbelievable that it is made entirely of paper! Great job! 

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Next, I would like to share with you two videos that I found interesting. First one is for fans of role-play gameplay style. It is a ritual of Cult of Papa filmed by three different people and edited into one video by Ron Fox. Can you guess the place where it was filmed? Hail Papa!

 

The other video is for PvP lovers. Absolutely brilliant singing opening and ending by IsSy is followed by exciting action with a lot of victims. Good aim Inherwake!  

 

 

For the end, I would like to introduce a smaller streamer from Australia who I like for his enthusiasm, optimism and being always cheerful. Make sure to check out his Twitch channel, you will surely be infected with his positivity! 

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If you have any DayZ creations of your own that you'd like to share, tweet them to us on our official Twitter channel. You might just honor the next status report with your talent! 

Awesome header image submitted by: [O.N.U] Damigo 

 

- Baty / Community Manager

 

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Thanks Baty! Filled with great news, and an overall feeling of hope. 

*Cant wait. 

Edited by Irish.
d is for derp
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Interesting report. Not mentioned if new vehicles will come with 0.63.

I see who ever installed ventilation system didn't do good job. You should be able to adjust ventilation  internally and without cardboard box.  :)

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2 minutes ago, igor-vk said:

 

I see who ever installed ventilation system didn't do good job. You should be able to adjust ventilation  internally and without cardboard box.  :)

But...the cardboard box adds that touch of the post-apocalypse that only increases immersion and authenticity. 

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Really good SR, thanks. Still got 2 Questions. First this quote.

1 hour ago, Baty Alquawen said:

... to enter the BETA phase of DayZ's Early Access. ...

We heard a lot the term 0.63 / BETA. I, for myself, thought that 0.63 is the BETA Status of the game, but the quote states, that it's "just" the BETA state of the EA. Does that mean, that it could be, that the game will go into BETA after EA ends?

Second question. 

1 hour ago, Baty Alquawen said:

We have a couple of options now: We can either rework the content to work with the old system to make the new sounds function, but lose the ability for positional audio in environments, or fix the bug in the resource management and make the old system work with the new content and data.

We can also rewrite the system completely to get the pattern of these crashes fixed on the platform as a whole.

Here are the options listed to get 0.62 on EXP, but I don't see the solution (or have you not decided yet?). Is this the "only" reason, that 0.62 is not on EXP? That sounds AWESOME, cannot wait to play 0.62 on EXP! :)

Thanks again guys/girls, can't wait!

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larger doorways?! W00T !

 

Good SR :) hope to see beta soon. 

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2 hours ago, Baty Alquawen said:

As we are continuing to work on 0.63 version AKA BETA, programmers are getting rid of old systems down the road. Lastly, old player has been completely removed internally, and with it also firearms handling (that includes firearms action like chambering, reloading, shooting… etc.) and aiming model (which means sway, recoil, dexterity, aiming, holding breath…), together with melee fighting (traced swings…) are gone forever as these were integral parts of the old player.

....

Rewrite of firearms also allows us to introduce mechanics like changeable gun barrels (we have 2 more barrels for AUG ready to experiment with), different muzzle speeds for the same ammunition type depending on barrel length (which helps balancing firearms between each other, or vice versa), different muzzle speeds for different ammunition type used in same firearm (pellets vs slugs anyone?), switching between scope and sights if possible (like AK family, AUG…) and refinement of, and more importantly, connecting already introduced firearms mechanics like unjamming, mechanism manipulation, chambering and others to the new animation system .

Once the core elements of this are completed, would I be wrong in thinking this seems to imply that some form of ArmA 3-like 'weapon resting' mechanic would be considerably closer to inclusion in DayZ?

Even considering that, at least as I understand it, this part is only half of the equation - the other being adapting/checking the compatibility of various building and object models from SA and various past BI titles (which will no doubt be a very involved process in itself).

Given the knowledge that an eventual redesign/overhaul of so much of the code was needed, and the fact that any work done to shoe-horn a weapon resting mechanic into the old system would be wasted once the new system was in, it makes complete sense that it wasn't worth working on.

That said, since you are starting with a (relatively) blank slate when it comes to the relevant code for this, what are the dev's opinions on how to best approach finding a balance between weapon sway and (potentially) weapon resting in this new system, and what might be the most challenging elements? They seem to go hand in hand, and I'd assume they should naturally be developed together (even if sway gets to where it needs to be long before resting works reliably everywhere). To me, the current amount of sway is acceptable, as long as there will be a reasonably functional resting mechanic to balance it out before DayZ hits 1.0.

 

Edited by chambersenator

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in short words, everything like it was..nothing new to tell you.

 

the servers are empty, the biggest communities closed their servers and the last masochist streamer "deadlyslope" cryed for help with his video.

 

but ok, i am patient and i will be the last guy who plays dayz when it is finished. I was allways an defender from BI since OF, but Hicks statement about "dayz will be supported for 5 years after finishing it" is the same like the devs from "take on mars" stated on an sticky in the steam forums.

since take on mars is "beta" nothing, NOTHING happend to finish this little project, and now i am not sure if the same will be happen to dayz. 

sorry for my bad english and my pessimism, its on you to deliver what you told us. its not enough to talk about this accidently happend and this will be great when its done, NO, now its time to deliver.

 

Push .62 broken as it is an experimental, make new exp. servers and push .63 on it! then all players are able to see how far you are, not talking about tit and tat every 2 weeks without any proof.

 

sorry for my rant, wish you all good and the best for all players

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8 hours ago, Baty Alquawen said:

Proper destruction of vehicle when it has been destroyed (rather than the current state of the vehicle just not turning on) 

I hope this doesn't mean exploding into fire... classic ARMA...
 

8 hours ago, Baty Alquawen said:

different muzzle speeds for the same ammunition type depending on barrel length (which helps balancing firearms between each other, or vice versa)

Excellent (assuming speeds are based on real life).

Will be interesting with this one (25 cm barrel, E0 ca 2.0 kJ):

OiqCbbg.jpg

 

8 hours ago, Baty Alquawen said:

Rewrite of firearms also allows us to introduce mechanics like changeable gun barrels (we have 2 more barrels for AUG ready to experiment with)

I remember an old status report mentioned 'barrel swaps'. With the modular weapons, it's okay.



 

Edited by -Gews-
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12 hours ago, Baty Alquawen said:

Dev Update/Eugen

[...]

0.62 patch was originally planned for delivery (on Experimental branch) during the second week of April, but due to complications and cooperation on engine milestones, it became apparent that we needed to close them sequentially, rather than working on both at once. Remember that only small team is working on 0.62 at the moment, as almost all of us are focusing on BETA/0.63 delivery.

 

I really appreciate Eugen's contributions. Always giving insight and always being straight forward, even regarding mishaps or things not going according to plan. With communication like this noone will complain about missed deadlines/milestones, internal or external or just simple delays (as obvious by noone mentioning it in their replies). I just wanted to leave this bit of appreciation here. People do love Eugen's contributions, technical or anectodical for what he writes. My thanks also.

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I'm so excited.

And I just can't hide it.

I'm about to lose control.

And I think I like it.

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An interesting update - I`ve one question though are Helichopters with parts planed for 0.62, or in the beta version of 0.63?

It has been a while since I read anything about it, and I don`t remember exact details at the moment without a research! :)

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Dayz standalone  is the game that got me into online gaming. and is the only one i have been playing for the last few years. and i will stick with you no matter how long it takes to finish the game. because of the forum and reports i understand what is going on.  

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8 hours ago, Nebulae3 said:

Helichopters

Beans for saying Helichopters.

I say this too....

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I'm a little bit sad about the removal of "double turbo," even if vehicles were practically un-driveable on populated servers.  Here's to hoping that some of those new vehicle fixes find it into the game sooner, than later.

I hope the next SR has an internal checklist of task completion for both .62 and .63, so we can have an idea of how far along each of these projects are.

I kinda got the impression that they were getting rolled together, based on the issues with positional sounds.  Is this the case???

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Because of 62/63. Is the crash new environment sounds are producing a reason of not releasing 62 and everything will be postponed to 63? Or will 62 released without new environment sounds? 

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1 hour ago, Arthur Dubrovka said:

Because of 62/63. Is the crash new environment sounds are producing a reason of not releasing 62 and everything will be postponed to 63? Or will 62 released without new environment sounds? 

Good Question.

The file system / resource manager seems to be the problem. Part of the "still" is not rewritten. The question does not ask me why "yet". Is this something that only makes sense at the end or is it too risky to tackle this part. Eugene has written some possible ways to solve this problem, but without a real way to do so. The solution to the problem seems to be quite open to us. He mentioned some of the team resources, which could mean that the 0.63 team had to leave their road map because of this problem, a real conflict situation.

 

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