Seasons & a possible solution to deathmatching

[Azrail (DayZ) 211]

Rocket wants the game to be harder, more possibilities, more things to consider.

And then there were seasons!

Yes, i have searched and looked through the other like 25 suggestion threads, but none of the authors have really put much effort into thinking this through.

How could a season impact gameplay in detail? What good is your imba ghillie suit if everything around you is snowy-white? Maybe consider to pack an extra

soda-can on these burning summer days? How long should the season's cycles be and why?

Well, this post is the result of like about 1 hour brainstorming, dumping everything in one notepad file, mix it up and see what comes out at the end. Enjoy!

And yes yes yes, this is mostlikely not gonna happen in ArmA II, but hopefully in ArmA III :D

Here it comes (make sure you vote for your favorite, and post why!)

~ Spring ~

Temperature: Current 10-30 degree (note that the value in debug is borked)

Vegetation: More green, less grass/plants/leaves overall, more contrast (easier for spotting)

Animals: Rare spawn

Takes: Current level

Weather: Current, mixed

New skin: spring camo - new collection to blend in with the spring~ish green

~ Summmer ~

Temperature: 20 - 40 degree

Vegetation: Current

Animals: Current spawn

Lakes: Sinking level

Weather: Mostly clear skies, low chance of rain

Other: Need to drink more frequently

~ Fall ~

Temperature: 0 - 20 degree

Vegetation: Grey/brown, less grass/plants/leaves overall, less contrast (harder for spotting)

Animals: Rare spawn

Lakes: Raising level

Weather: Mostly cloudly, high chance of rain

~ Winter ~

Temperature: -10-10 degree (keep moving/stay inside/stay close to fire if below zero, or die very quickly)

Vegetation: Not much left, mostly covered in snow (very easy for spotting)

Animals: Very rare spawn

Lakes: Freezing up (can be walked upon, rare chance to break in and drown)

Weather: Common chance of snowing (snow will stick, slowly melting on sunny days)

Other: Need to eat more frequently

Can put snow in waterbottle and melt it in a fire, takes 60 seconds

Snow showing differing footsteps allowing you to better find/hunt animals or track humans

Snow forcing you to move slightly slower

New skin: snow camo with ultra ultra ultra rare spawn, make sure to grab yours in next summer sale!

New weapon: icicles. new melee weapon, found under bridges and rooftops, limited to 3 minutes usage time xD

All this maybe in a monthly cycle or even a real 3-month cycle.

A cycle to short (less then a month) will neglect the purpose of seasons - force different environmental circumstances upon all players alike over a longer timespan, so they have to adapt their gameplay.

A cycle to long will allow people to get used to one setting too much, again kind of neglecting the purpose of it all.

I think 1 month sounds healthy.

We could have different servers on different cycles. showing so with a server tag like the timezone.

So people could currently choose which season to play.

I would prefer winter - effectively enforcing more pvp, and i like winter anyways.

All the deathmatchers would probably go for winter servers, while the carebears would probably prefer summer/fall.

Carebears still need to beware of bandits though.

Though, for longterm (beta?) i would prefer one of two options:

1) You can not see the time (night or day?) and the current season/weather situation

on the server you join. and if you pick a server, you have to stick with it for the day. Of course that only

works if there are enough decent servers to cover the demand for a given area :S Tricky stuff.

2) Every server on every location is synced to the time and date/season of the main hive, or people are enforced to play

on servers within their own timezone. So that noone can specifically pick to play on day or night, winter or summer.

people shall deal with what the game throws at them, not take the easy way around. dayz isn't played the easy way around.

/discuss

Edited July 20, 2012 by Azrail

[PælimPalim 2]

i guess this will need so much more performance to play (snow&footsteps for example), but i have no experience with this so if its possible it would be very nice in my opionion.

[Azrail (DayZ) 211]

i think with arma 3 they might reconsider the way things are rendered in arma (right now, most of everything looks really stupid if set to low/normal settings, maybe im just spoiled by bf3 and the like :D)

[GodOfGrain 191]

Would give the developers a good range of opportunities to make the survival part harder.

Perhaps (once proper player camps are implemented) the people will prepare for the winter time, hoarding food etc.

Hard time for lonewolfs. Cooperation through mere necessity.

Night time play in the winter would be interesting. With just a bit of moon light you'd be able to spot everything in the snowy landscape.

* A player finds winter camo in the summer... will he be optimistic and keep it? :)

Ah, and then you will tell your friends who want to join DayZ "Ah man, not a good time, we have winter right now. Can't spare any food"

I guess one season = 3 to 4 weeks sounds fine. But all servers should be enforced to run the same season.

That are the visions we need for the future DayZ development.

Edited July 19, 2012 by GodOfGrain

[robonator 6]

Its a really nice idea, it would be nice to see different seasons ingame, but is it possible for the arma engine to create things like snow etc? i see bad fps drops :/

[GodOfGrain 191]

Its a really nice idea, it would be nice to see different seasons ingame, but is it possible for the arma engine to create things like snow etc? i see bad fps drops :/

We could just have four different versions of the chernarus map.

Even two (the additional wintermap) to begin with.

[Zheiko (DayZ) 10]

nice idea, but I am afraid, that not possible on ARMAII engine, this is still just a modification, not a whole new game, and I guess it'd need a lot more devs power to build something as huge as this one...

[Azrail (DayZ) 211]

14 votes and 6 replies?

the queen is not amused :|

Edited July 19, 2012 by Azrail

[Mister Christopher 0]

Its a good idea, but it looks as if animalspawning is decreased a lot for mostly every season. At the very least i would think that there would be the same if not more animals in the spring.

[Azrail (DayZ) 211]

Its a good idea, but it looks as if animalspawning is decreased a lot for mostly every season. At the very least i would think that there would be the same if not more animals in the spring.

Right now we have reasonable (if not to much) spawn of animals, i think this is how it should be during summer.

In fall it needs to go down, in winter even more down, and in spring start to raise again, reaching peak in summer.

I think this is how it goes in nature, not? i'm not a fauna prof here :D

Mind you, the seasons all need their trade off's, so they all have their pro's and contra's. winter is a special exception for all the dm kiddies :D

My cycle was only a mere thought, not even really took the balancing into account. then again, rocket said there is no balancing in dayz, so :D

I want to add, more suggestions are always welcome. i will try to incorporate them into the OP.

Bring it on!

Edited July 19, 2012 by Azrail

[ChinWooMan 34]

May the server hoppers begin.

People that hate the feeling and RP of DayZ will server hop to a better seasoned server. Unless every server will have the same season because when that month of spring,fall etc comes every server becomes that season.

[g4m3rz925 5]

It's cool but it'd be too much for rocket to work on and I don't think a snowy winter would be possible. So most of this probably isn't even going to happen.

But I think the idea about the temperature settings for a time of year are cool though, I'll give you that.

edit:

Also, I don't think the idea of having servers being different from others is very good, they should all be the same otherwise we'd have more players joining whatever's easier.

Edited July 19, 2012 by SgtPapaya

[thedog88 180]

its possible and not that hard to do. ask map makers in the arma community. the creator of isla duala made a desert version as a counter to the tropical green one, just for example. doubt he made it from scratch, probably replaced building and object files and changed the texture of the ground. when u say snowy winters dont expect to sink into the ground or anything. it will simply be a white ground texture. its not as crazy as it first seems and its doable. it would have to be 4 seperate maps though and srrvers should be forced to run the same one at given times. i think monthly rotation would keep it the simplest and best.

[Lukio (DayZ) 24]

What about just rotating seasons every 3 months, looking at how there already is a system for that, makes more sense with the whole real time day / night cycle and also has more variations than just one endless season. Like this everyone gets something out of it and it also gives more long term goals (e.g preparing for winter/summer.

Nov-Dec-Jan = Winter

Feb-Mar-Apr = Spring

Mai-Jun-Jul=Summer

Aug-Sep-Okt=Fall

Edited July 19, 2012 by Lukio

[g4m3rz925 5]

its possible and not that hard to do. ask map makers in the arma community. the creator of isla duala made a desert version as a counter to the tropical green one, just for example. doubt he made it from scratch, probably replaced building and object files and changed the texture of the ground. when u say snowy winters dont expect to sink into the ground or anything. it will simply be a white ground texture. its not as crazy as it first seems and its doable. it would have to be 4 seperate maps though and srrvers should be forced to run the same one at given times. i think monthly rotation would keep it the simplest and best.

I see, Interesting, but doing all that would make the files of DayZ mod much larger with all those things on the map that need re-texturing. If rocket were to do this, it would definitely take a very long time unless someone or a team of talented people were able to make realistically detailed textures, then that could be a whole new story.

[Azrail (DayZ) 211]

:blush: i know i am always asking for too much in my suggestions (get used to it :D)

but see it as a mere pool of ideas for the dev's to pick the best/doable parts, and see what they can mix up with the other eastereggs they got in their lucky bag.

*sigh* i want winter in dayz so badly :(

*pokes rocket with an icicle*

omg icicles. new melee weapon, found under bridges and rooftops, limited to 3 minutes usage time xD

What about just rotating seasons every 3 months, looking at how there already is a system for that, makes more sense with the whole real time day / night cycle and also has more variations than just one endless season. Like this everyone gets something out of it and it also gives more long term goals (e.g preparing for winter/summer.

yes, i am all for real time seasons across all servers.

but that would again not allow deathmatch and non-deathmatch players to play apart (i don't necesserily need a solution to that anyways)

also i think 3 month could be considered to long for a season.

Edited July 19, 2012 by Azrail

[Azrail (DayZ) 211]

*damn double posts wtf*

Edited July 19, 2012 by Azrail

[thedog88 180]

the arma community is amazing. if rocket would ask he would have a finished map for every season. he would even have 1 version where everything is made of candy and gingerbread houses and even a version where it rains lava and kittens at the same time. making this is no issue. the files being too big? lmao have u played ACE? u would stop playing dayz cause its 3 gigs big? i wouldnt xD not trying to be a dick. just sayen its possible by all means with little to no issues.

[Survivor-Kyle 148]

Why not pilot the idea by linking ambient temperature to the server's date/season cycle. Just flux temperature at first, watch as heat-packs suddenly become useful and infection rates skyrocket.

[g4m3rz925 5]

the arma community is amazing. if rocket would ask he would have a finished map for every season. he would even have 1 version where everything is made of candy and gingerbread houses and even a version where it rains lava and kittens at the same time. making this is no issue. the files being too big? lmao have u played ACE? u would stop playing dayz cause its 3 gigs big? i wouldnt xD not trying to be a dick. just sayen its possible by all means with little to no issues.

Well it's not like that, but anyway I think if rocket were to work on things like this himself it would be better off at a later stage of the mod when the more important things have been done.

If the community wanted to help they should go right ahead and talk to rocket, because I don't think rocket would come to them asking for anything. :P I understand what you mean.

[Azrail (DayZ) 211]

Why not pilot the idea by linking ambient temperature to the server's date/season cycle. Just flux temperature at first, watch as heat-packs suddenly become useful and infection rates skyrocket.

could be a possible start, and wouldn't really take too much coding me thinks.

problem with that is authenticity. why is it so cold? and if its so cold, where is the snow?

i guess in alpha it doesn't mean much, but its things you have to consider if authenticity is a big factor for the whole thing.

on a sidenote:

looks like we could right on just switch to the winter map (with the changes suggested :D)

oh my...

Edited July 20, 2012 by Azrail