Status Report - 18 April 2017

[Baty Alquawen 3688]

Evening Survivors!

This week, you'll hear from our Creative Director Brian Hicks and our Lead Producer Eugen Harton - as the department leads are fully focused on catching up on their tasks after a short Easter holiday, both Brian and Eugen are doing their best to report for them. Both also explain why some of the long-announced content isn't in the game yet, and what needs to be done to have it available during BETA.

Mind you, while our today's Status Report is a bit of a long read, it's also full of vital development information on the upcoming 0.62 and BETA updates, so get comfy, pour yourself a drink of your preference and reserve some time for reading - it's worth it! Also, Baty has some nice eye-candy bonus at the very end, so those who make it all the way through will surely be rewarded :)

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Contents This Week

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

 

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors.

I watch a good deal of DayZ Twitch streams and YouTube videos in my free time - and over the last week or so, I saw something that concerned me: hearing conversation in regards to gameplay mechanics or systems currently implemented in the most basic form, and if they are intended (by developers) to ever change.

Between the new user actions and rewrite to Enforce script, and the decision for designers to stop writing new systems in SQF and focus entirely on creating new gameplay systems in the new tech - it can easily seem (to those who don't closely follow development) that we just don't care about the issues currently on the Steam build, or don't ever intend to address them. That couldn't be farther from the case.

For example, Peter and I have been going over functional issues with the central economy we want to see addressed for BETA and beyond - these aren't things that are being ignored. Far from it, but as always, the goal for the team is getting to the final product as quickly and efficiently as possible.

While the economy functions at a playable level and much of the technology required for the final product is there, the priority for the programmers responsible for the Central Economy of DayZ moves on to the next piece of the puzzle - in this particular case, support for public access to server files and required software, modding, and off-line mode.

When those critical technology tasks (that are being worked on by those specific programmers) are implemented into the internal version of the game, that's where we can shift our focus on iterating upon some of the functional issues of the Central Economy.

What kind of functional issues with the economy? Well - just to list a few:

• Dynamic Event spawning behavior
• Dynamic Event item spawn quantity control
• Zone/Area restricted items bunching up in specific towns after extended persistence uptime
• Repeated spawns of the same item types in a structure
• Consistent availability of early game basic supplies

 

Also take a look at Peter's contribution to the last SR - it's a good example of how the current state of things is not final, how our features and systems will be iterated upon and improved.

To be honest, there isn't much of anything in the Alpha phase of DayZ that is functionally (from a design perspective) "complete". Nearly every gameplay system or mechanic the player touches is at a basic functional level, meaning the tech/script/animations are present and it operates in one way or another. Fleshing it out, addressing functional and gameplay issues - that isn't something we should be wasting time and resources on, especially when so much of it is being replaced.

"What about all that cool stuff you guys have shown for years but never ended up in the game?" You might ask - "What happened to that?!" - While I know both Eugen and myself have discussed this before, I can't fault anyone for missing it - it certainly is not easy trying to search or go back through Status Reports on DayZ.com at the very least.

Nearly everything that has been discussed since we stopped prototyping gameplay mechanics in SQF, stopped creating animations for new items on the old animation system, and so on is, and has been worked on. I know it can seem like cool things like base building, soft skills, or player facial hair growth has disappeared because we haven't publicly associated it with a specific release.

The reality of the situation is, with pretty much everything on that proverbial list being dependent upon the new player, and the focus for BETA being on getting the game stable and playable on the new engine modules - we're playing our cards close to the chest.

While we may end up with a BETA candidate build that has a huge chunk of the content and gameplay systems backlog functional in it - it's just as possible that we'll end up with a smaller chunk of the backlog content and systems in that first BETA build, and the rest of the list will follow up as quick as possible (which should be at a much quicker pace, having shed a good chunk of our nasty tech debt and overhead from supporting legacy and new tech). 

We're in that situation because it is the technology - the foundation of everything inside DayZ that you guys experience - that is setting the pace and progress towards our goals right now.

As we get closer to these core components of DayZ's underlying technology being functional and usable in a multiplayer state, we can better gauge what the gameplay and content ingredients of the BETA milestone are.

I know for some of you, a good deal of this is information is something you all already know, as Eugen and I both have spoken on it several times before (and I couldn't have put it better than Eugen's contribution to the last SR), but for as many of you that may follow development closely and know all this already - there are just as many that might have missed some of this down the pipe.

You know what they say: now they know... and knowing is half the battle.

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

 

Dev Update/Eugen

Hi there survivors, since some of you appreciated my last Status Report contribution, I'm going to try and keep them as regular as possible. While knowing that my wall of text is not going to be an easy read for everyone, I do believe it's necessary to try and write stuff in technical detail in order to have an provide an honest coverage of what's happening in the DayZ Dev Team offices.

There will be a lot of stuff happening over the coming months, and I want to guide you through it with as much information as possible. At this point, there are two large releases scheduled for this year. and we're fully focused on those. The development is divided into strike teams - a smaller strike team is working on the 0.62 update, which we internally like to call a "Visual Upgrade". It contains tweaks to lighting and new forests, as well as general world fidelity improvements (we have more to come in that department for follow-up/future updates as well).

As far as what that means in a bit more detail, the Visual Upgrade coming with the 0.62 update will feature:

• New tree models
• Denser forests
• New clutter (grass, small plants)
• New surface textures (roads, plains and such)
• Improved wind behavior
• New shader for the wind, affecting trees and grass
• Tweaked and changed lighting for the world (for a more apocalyptic feel, yay!)
• Small improvements to satellite textures
• Rain affected by wind and refinement of its behavior in general
• Many reworked locations on Chernarus
• Reworked ghillie (to be consistent with new tech
• Small bugfixes to some issues from 0.61

The 0.62 update will NOT introduce:

• Any changes to gameplay
• Any changes to buildings and structures (in terms of model graphical fidelity)
• Any changes to player model fidelity
• Any changes to animation fidelity
• Any of the gameplay changes, or new content that we've been occasionally mentioning in Status Reports 
  (those are all scheduled for BETA/0.63)

After this milestone, the strike team for 0.62 will merge with the current 0.63 strike team, and join their efforts to reach BETA on our Steam branches as soon as possible. BETA/0.63 will be a major change for the game as a whole. That is the update that you guys have all been waiting for, and we have been working hard to reach that goal for the past few years. What does that mean in more concrete terms though?

All the new engine technology we have developed for DayZ, along with the content of the current game - all merged in and improved, as it has been refactored from functionality point, design-wise, and in terms of fidelity as well. Moreover, additional content and features that we couldn't properly implement on the legacy tech.

Besides all the refined features, content and overall improvements to the DayZ experience, we also aim to release a handy toolset very near to (or along with) the initial BETA/0.63 update. This toolset will contain the much-requested server files. 

I know you are all asking: But when?!?! As much as I would love to tell you now, we want to be able to deliver a seamless core gameplay loop without bugs breaking it at first. Our main goal now is to get the melee combat and ranged combat work on the new technology, and in a real game environment, not only in a debug mode.

A lot of work has been done already (like new synchronization, damage system, player representation, and more), so this means mostly adding support in synchronization, and adding content for new features in the animation system are ahead of us, but it's still a lot to handle.

So just so you get the idea of what work is being done at the moment (from the perspective of disciplines):

Gameplay team

• Refactor of hard coded world interactions to script. There were still a couple left (opening doors for example). Creation of core synchronization model for these
• Moving VOIP to server authoritative completely
• New weapons API for weapon script implementation
• Inventory conditions implementation for item states and more
• Optimizations of item spawning for server performance
• AI script API for behavior modification
• New player spawn definition
• New item spawn definition
• Vehicle behavior in new technology
• Backend toolset (srvlet) for central manipulation of economy, and server management (community version)

Design team

• User actions manager for the new synchronization model
• Player representation refactor and debug functionality for new player (visualization and toggles for testing and manipulation)
• New hierarchy of item configurations (includes new technology like damage system, procedural coloring and such)
• Data re-structuralization to suit the new setup (file structures at the moment)
• Inventory refactor and optimization according to internal version
• Integration of soft skills to actions in game
• Electricity and its implementation
• Placing of items in world and its implementation

Animation team

• Implementation of animation player turns
• Polishing new weapon animations (unjamming)
• Implementation of hit reactions to melee combat in the new system
• Work on inverse kinematics and item poses
• Tweaking player graph
• Implementation of detailed user actions animations

Engine team

• Toolset refinement
• New inverse kinematics implementation
• New physics representation for non-player entities
• New shaders for trees and grass
• Hit reactions in animation system
• Synchronization of new animation system
• Player turns
• Aiming model

Art team

-New models (sorry, don't want to spoil stuff! )

As you can see, there is a lot of work ongoing, in order to implement all the new technology and content. Most of the tasks are now aiming to get things working together as seamlessly as possible, and a lot of them are playable in different debug environments.

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

 

 

Community Spotlight

Hello Survivors, before we look at the community content for the last two weeks, I would like to tell you about a 0.61 crash we are looking for that we are not able to reproduce internally. Your game can crash when connecting to the server after waiting in a queue, and when that happens, that is what we are looking for.

Should this happen to you, we would appreciate if you could send the crash dump files from folder Users\YourPCName\AppData\Local\DayZ to our Feedback Tracker.

We are discussing this issue further on our official forums - come join us:

 https://forums.dayz.com/topic/236621-i-am-looking-for-crash-can-you-help-me/ 

Overall, we welcome reports of any crashes that you will be able to reproduce - please send them together with the dump files using the Feedback Tracker. Every report will massively contribute to speeding up the fixing process of those issues.

 

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If the wallpaper from the last Status Report was not enough for you, we have another one here, that landed on our Twitter account and that could suit your desktop well. Gaming Roach edited his screenshot into an amazing wallpaper with infected as the main theme. You can find his original screenshot here. You have some talent, man!

 

Today, I would like to dedicate some space to one of the role-play communities. I am a big fan of role-playing myself, and I really enjoy watching entertaining videos from post-apocalyptic Chernarus. One of them is this video from an RPevent on the whitelisted AftermathRP server that is being organized every 2-3 months. It is about the evacuation of civilians by NATO group from Staroye to Chernogorsk's docklands, while a group of Russian rebels tries to stop them. Here is a part of the official event description from their pages:

"When news first broke out about the virus, many assumed it was just the flu - horrible to have, but with treatment, something you can overcome. This was not because the survivors did not understand what the infected were, it was because of what they were told.  Information was withheld to prevent widespread panic, to make evacuations easier and more importantly, to ensure that no one knew what was happening inside of the country, should they ever get out or be able to call home.

NATO started with their evacuation of civilians.  They went into towns and camps, large in numbers and ‘rounded up’ those were staying there.  If any questions were asked, NATO would simply point to one of the many flu warning posters they had put up around the country and inform people that it is a perfectly normal procedure, and they were just going to check people for symptoms, treat the ill and take the healthy to a safe location."

If you are interested in role-play or if you want to be a participant in the next event here is more information.

A friendly reminder like every week: If you want to be a part of the Community Spotlight, tweet us your content to our official Twitter account or send me a private message on our official forums.

Header image provided by TheDethscythe.

- Baty / Community Manager

 

[OliverPlotTwist 458]

When the Status Report is just right.

[Storymaster 143]

Great update and an awesome plug for the good folks over at Aftermath.

[Espa 711]

Good report :)

Fantastic and info-heavy for any who don't follow development. 

But.. Still no ETA for .62? :/ 

[Gobbokirk 546]

Good stuff again, never be afraid to get technical in these, if there is something down the line I don't understand, I can live with that :)

[Sqeezorz 839]

Good SR.... i dream of 0.63...

Thump up @ Devs

[JBURNS489 165]

I consider myself very passionate, and I am sure we can all work on patience. With that being said, this is good info but I didn't really learn anything new from this SR. I know we are in a long stretch in between updates, and it feels like the game is on the cusp being what we all hope it will be. From a player's perspective though,  not having a set of goals for BETA release is a big red flag for me personally. It seems like the development is set up backwards from a traditional development process..normally you set goals for each patch and then strive to hit those goals. It seems like you guys are saying, "We will decide what will go into the first Beta release when we get close because we don't know what will be ready." That suggests to me that at the end of December 2017, right before the new year, we will see a Beta release, and even if it's only in name and not in functionality. If you don't even have a list of expected features for Beta, can you really blame someone for thinking along those lines?  All through development you have preached that Alpha is for implementing new features, and Beta is for bug fixing. DayZ has said when Beta hits, that all gears shift to bug fixing. Brian Hicks himself recently said that currently the development team is split 90% working on new features, and 10% on bug fixing. When Beta hits, according to Hicks, that is supposed to swap and have 90% of the team working on bug fixing. When you say Beta is right around the corner, myself and I am sure a lot of other players assume it means all the features will be implemented in a rough way. It sounds like Dayz is trying to take a step back from the Alpha/Beta assertion, as it looks like we may have a Beta phase that is still implementing new features. What makes it Beta then, as opposed to continuing Alpha development? I love DayZ, and I check the forums every day whether it's a SR day or not, but this discourages me immensely. I hear that development is continuing along at a good pace from the Devs, and that it will be evident after Beta and the perceived speed of development will increase. We were also told the same thing when we were waiting 6 months for .60 to hit though. We were told that once the new renderer gets implemented that development would speed up. Tldr; thank you for the updates, but without any producible results I am slowly loosing interest. I really, really hope that .63 is a full, actual BETA in function, and not just in name. 

Edited April 18, 2017 by JBURNS489

[Irish. 4886]

This is such great news.. While I did not learn a whole lot due to following fairly closely, what I did learn was priceless.

And .63 being officially called BETA is amazing.. I guess they already did, but reading it so clearly put out, makes me excited for the future of dayz. 

*If you did not catch it, they plan and hope for .63 and .62 to release this year. So beta is in fact soon, if things go well. 8 months or less, fingers crossed! 

Edited April 18, 2017 by Irish.
do/due

[DannyDog 532]

So will .62 still feature the new audio updates spoken from the previous status reports? I assume they just forgot to mention it when they gave the bullet list of what will and will not be in .62.

Can .62 just be called the MERSION UPDATE cuz it pretty much is :)

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

Thanks to all for their hard work and dedication!

[ColdAtrophy 1850]

3 hours ago, Baty Alquawen said:

To be honest, there isn't much of anything in the Alpha phase of DayZ that is functionally (from a design perspective) "complete". Nearly every gameplay system or mechanic the player touches is at a basic functional level, meaning the tech/script/animations are present and it operates in one way or another. Fleshing it out, addressing functional and gameplay issues - that isn't something we should be wasting time and resources on, especially when so much of it is being replaced.

This really needed to be stated plainly. I don't mean to pretend that I know anything that anyone else doesn't, but it's always been very easy for me to see a logical path forward for many of the existing systems, mechanics, and content. I'm always a little stunned to hear others talking about existing functionality as if it were set in stone simply because it's been that way for awhile. I'm very glad to see a dev say it in such a direct manner.

[[Gen]Adzic 241]

3 hours ago, JBURNS489 said:

I consider myself very passionate, and I am sure we can all work on patience. With that being said, this is good info but I didn't really learn anything new from this SR. I know we are in a long stretch in between updates, and it feels like the game is on the cusp being what we all hope it will be. From a player's perspective though,  not having a set of goals for BETA release is a big red flag for me personally. It seems like the development is set up backwards from a traditional development process..normally you set goals for each patch and then strive to hit those goals. It seems like you guys are saying, "We will decide what will go into the first Beta release when we get close because we don't know what will be ready."

I feel ya, They aint gonna set themselves up for more missed targets. Expect tight lipped-ness. I expect nothing anymore, in fact not since I got all hot under the collar for them early milestone goals that never came to fruition, so I'm not about to step on them hot coals again.

Don't get me wrong, Thanks for the SR's, taking the time to inform us on reasons why we continue to wait, which to be frank are only really useful and enjoyable for those of us who are capable and willing to wait even longer for DayZ to actually become DayZ again.. but I'm not gonna lie and sugar coat it, they in some ways annoy the hell outta me! I just want the game to be finished! I just want to enjoy it as I once did.. It's been/being a monumental wait, I can only apologize for my (can't really say impatient when it's been such a LONG time) inability to play a buggy unfinished game and therefore subsequent posts on this forum. Call me a jerk, a killjoy.. ungrateful.. selfish.. whatever, who in the hell said time was a healer?

Man, I really wish I had half of the tenacity of some of you guys.. True fans. One I hope to be again one day.

 

[green_mtn_grandbob 594]

3 hours ago, [Gen]Adzic said:

I feel ya, They aint gonna set themselves up for more missed targets. Expect tight lipped-ness. I expect nothing anymore, in fact not since I got all hot under the collar for them early milestone goals that never came to fruition, so I'm not about to step on them hot coals again.

Don't get me wrong, Thanks for the SR's, taking the time to inform us on reasons why we continue to wait, which to be frank are only really useful and enjoyable for those of us who are capable and willing to wait even longer for DayZ to actually become DayZ again.. but I'm not gonna lie and sugar coat it, they in some ways annoy the hell outta me! I just want the game to be finished! I just want to enjoy it as I once did.. It's been/being a monumental wait, I can only apologize for my (can't really say impatient when it's been such a LONG time) inability to play a buggy unfinished game and therefore subsequent posts on this forum. Call me a jerk, a killjoy.. ungrateful.. selfish.. whatever, who in the hell said time was a healer?

Man, I really wish I had half of the tenacity of some of you guys.. True fans. One I hope to be again one day.

 

Well in reading all i could find for the last year or two, i got the fact that the developers hit a snag with dayz, and had to start all over and make a new dayz standalone.

And at the same time try to keep the old dayz some what playable for us, until they get the new dayz going, these last few SR's should drive that home for everyone now, at least the people that read the forum and comprehend what they read. 

Edited April 19, 2017 by green_mtn_grandbob

[scriptfactory 620]

Quote

While we may end up with a BETA candidate build that has a huge chunk of the content and gameplay systems backlog functional in it - it's just as possible that we'll end up with a smaller chunk of the backlog content and systems in that first BETA build, and the rest of the list will follow up as quick as possible (which should be at a much quicker pace, having shed a good chunk of our nasty tech debt and overhead from supporting legacy and new tech).

Can someone explain this to me? Are you guys saying that you will simply reduce scope enough to call .63 beta?

[Arthur Dubrovka 376]

I think they will add as much as possible in the first beta iteration and features which are to buggy to implement will be added in following patches... maybe?

 

Edit: thnx for the wall of text! I love them!

Edited April 19, 2017 by Arthur Dubrovka

[scriptfactory 620]

Yeah. I was somehow concerned that the base game engine would be missing functionality.

And you're right about the wall of text. I really gotta thank the DayZ development team so much for these reports. You guys have been smashing it with the communication lately.

[Floydypants 0]

Thanks for the SR, very interesting read.  I'm new to the game so still very much enjoying my Dayz honeymoon, bugs and all.  I think my wife misses me though :/

[blackberrygoo 1416]

Wow ... guess I'm not playing this game until beta . Devs you were supposed to put in all this fancy shit (advanced vehicles , soft skills , base building , barricading , so on and so forth ) BEFORE THE BETA . Not after . I'm very disappointed to say the least .

Edited April 21, 2017 by blackberrygoo

[scriptfactory 620]

2 hours ago, blackberrygoo said:

Wow ... guess I'm not playing this game until beta . Devs you were supposed to put in all this fancy shit (advanced vehicles , soft skills , base building , barricading , so on and so forth ) BEFORE THE BETA . Not after . I'm very disappointed to say the least .

I was disappointed too until I thought about all this more objectively. The most important thing (IMO) for beta is having a good technical infrastructure that can be used to build the missing game mechanics. I don't know which features will make the beta cut (and would appreciate a list of planned features at some point) but BI DayZ is in a position to be THE modding platform for survival-style mods. As of now I am expecting the worst but hoping for the best. In the end, its just a game, right? :D

[elander 4]

Why bother with 0.61?

Put the whole team on Beta!?

I feel no need waiting 6months for a new update and then realize no cars.. 

DayZ needs this: 

Modern feel - Playercontroller etc

New vegetation - visual upgrade etc

New models and textures

New netcode

New physics

Im sorry but - "New everything" sorta suits my claim

 

Skip DayZ development other than beta build!!

[DannyDog 532]

48 minutes ago, elander said:

Why bother with 0.61?

Put the whole team on Beta!?

I feel no need waiting 6months for a new update and then realize no cars.. 

DayZ needs this: 

Modern feel - Playercontroller etc

New vegetation - visual upgrade etc

New models and textures

New netcode

New physics

Im sorry but - "New everything" sorta suits my claim

 

Skip DayZ development other than beta build!!

If i understand you correctly, the features you listed will at least be in when or after Beta hits which is the .63 update.

Maybe you misread the entire status reports and the previous ones?

[smofi 18]

16 hours ago, DannyDog said:

If i understand you correctly, the features you listed will at least be in when or after Beta hits which is the .63 update.

Maybe you misread the entire status reports and the previous ones?

I think you misread his/her reply. Let me clear it for you.

He/she is saying why bother to update and fix bugs with 0.61 at all when DAYZ entire devteam should be focusing their time to push out the beta instead. In hopes of geting "beta" faster.  But what OP does not understand that some of the fixes they make to 0.61 might be related to pushing out less buggy "beta".

Edited May 2, 2017 by smofi
grammar

[DannyDog 532]

21 minutes ago, smofi said:

I think you misread his/her reply. Let me clear it for you.

He/she is saying why bother to update and fix bugs with 0.61 at all when DAYZ entire devteam should be focusing their time to push out the beta instead. In hopes of geting "beta" faster.  But what OP does not understand that some of the fixes they make to 0.61 might be related to pushing out less buggy "beta".

Yea nah that's what I thought.

But him saying "skip DayZ development other than beta build" also means they should skip .62 which is silly.

And his "DayZ needs this" point just sounds like he hasn't read any of the past status reports.

[kopo79 426]

so,is there new status report today?

[IIAJEARLEYII 1]

IIAJEARLEYII-Today at 12:02 PM

Hey @BatyAlquawen Will there be a Status Report Today?

BatyAlquawen-Today at 12:06 PM

Yes, I am working on it.