Status Report - Week of 01 Dec 14

[SMoss 2101]

 

Now that 0.51 has reached stable branch we've had the pleasure of watching how the survivors of Chernarus interact and experiment with its content and mechanics. Be it player to player interaction through the extension of the meat harvesting systems, or traveling together across the map in search of a V3S. For now the team is focused on critical bugfixes and server side performance optimization for 0.52 midway through December (due to the upcoming holiday season).

 

For me, the first two quarters of 2015 hold a great deal of excitement.

 

The last year has had a large amount of work ongoing behind the scenes that effect gameplay, and playability for a significant part of the active Early Access userbase. As someone that has spent over three thousand hours in Chernarus this year I am genuinely excited for the possibilities.

 

Speaking of my time in Chernarus, as you all know the military tent (packable) was recently added into stable branch. This as I envision it is one among many possible "persistent objects" that survivors can find, and use to create their own base camp in Chernarus. Ranging from tents, to barriers, horticulture, containers, varied levels of fireplaces, and so much more - I see this feature expanding upon the initial pup tents of the mod into something that resembles a true improvised and -scalable- survivor camps.

 

Speaking of survivor communities, our Private Shard contest has concluded and while I am happy to announce the winners - I have to say there were far more entries than I had expected, and the decisions were not at all easy.

There are a lot of fantastic DayZ communities out there, and at the very least I now have a whole list of servers I need to take time to visit.

The winners, in no specific order are:

- FriendlyFlashMob
- The Midnight Crew
- TAW.net

Congratulations to the winners, make sure to reach out to support@dayzgame.com to start the process of claiming your private shard server. For those who entered and did not win, don't be sad - Of all the tons of submissions, there was not one that was not outstanding. We'll be rolling out new support and options for private shards in January, so keep your eyes open for those.

Still not a bandit.
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer


Chris / Lead Artist

"Long time, no talk! Sorry about that - but it was for good reason. Lots of things are going on with the art team!

 

Character Art:

Current character work is focused around the upcoming changes to the zombie AI and animation systems. We are re skinning the old zombies and exporting the skeletons into a new proprietary format. This has not, however, this has not held us back from creating a new batch of zombie model templates with which we can quickly create loads of new zombie types of various shapes/sizes/and ages. This is particularly important since the latest news regarding testing of the new zombies suggests we may soon be able to significantly increase the number of zombies spawning. Work in this area will be ongoing and my still take some time to finish but it should pay dividends in the long run. 

Regarding survivor clothing, we finished a bomber jacket and will be also adding a new quilted jacket, which should have fewer model clipping issues than the current bubble jacket, which it is intended to eventually replace. 

 

Weapons:

We added the AUG in a somewhat unfinished state as it currently does not work with any attachments. However, we do hope to transform it into a highly modifiable platform and adding a RIS is the first step in that direction. The model is ready and soon, perhaps, I'll release a picture as a teaser.  

We're also working on a Winchester Model 70 Alaskan which means I need to get off my butt and figure out a design for scope situation (i.e. one scope for many rifles). Also, its possible that I was told to make sure the suppressors are looking pretty so that they can be triumphantly re-added. 

Vehicles:
Now that design is settling on some technical requirements as it relates to art for vehicles, we're formulating a vehicles roadmap to plan for the number and types of vehicles that design has requested. It will be exciting to see the vehicles feature expand in the coming weeks.  We also recently added a new helicopter crash site which looks quite a bit better than the old UH60s."

Mirek / Lead Gameplay Programmer

"This week we have pushed the current work on new Infected/Animals AI into internal testing. The core AI system was developed by the Bratislava team and is also using the new animation system, which will help us to have better navigation for AI units and more complex combat systems.

For the initial implementation, there is not many new things about the infected, but it should improve better server performance and navigation. It will also allow us to have more infected on the map and to implement stealth mechanics into the game.

Current testing is aimed for performance and if everything will go fine, we're planning to push it on to experimental servers (once we’re happy with how it performs). After that we're planning to tweak stealth and combat and we would like to push it on experimental servers with 0.53 version.

We're also continuing on tweaking vehicles, improving loot distribution and loot respawning systems and other long term tasks, such as new game control mechanics and a new inventory system. Stay tuned for more details to come."

Peter / Lead Designer

 

"Long time no seen my dear survivors. I hope that surviving in Chernarus is a little bit more satisfying now with your new best friend - Praga V3S (by the way V3S is an abbreviation for the 3-ton military special). Indeed that rolled out version has rather stripped down functionality however you should enjoy the free ride while it lasts. We started to work on more complex mechanics for maintenance and repair. The battery will be most probably the next part that will be needed to get your vehicle functional so without it you can try to start the engine as many times as you want but it won’t get you anywhere, which also means that we are adding in the actual action for turning the engine over and off. If everything goes fine we will add animations for entering and exiting the vehicle as they were removed in last minute before release due some issues with action conditions that leads to undesirable results such as entering/exiting vehicle through closed doors. We are also working on setting up the inventory container for the V3S as with the current state of inventory implementation it is not trivial as it seems. New color variants of V3S are ready to go so you will be soon have the chance to drive also gray, orange and blue one. 

 

You may ask what else is being worked on not regarding the vehicles? I'm glad that I can tell you there is a bunch of upcoming stuff that was hinted a long time ago, specifically silencers, chainsaw and suicide. Recently a feature to use more shooting sounds per firearm was added thus we can now made the silencers useful and bring them back to loot spawns. It also opens possibility for crafted ones so you will be able to decide if you keep that PET bottle as a water container or made a silencer from it. The chainsaw was put on hold for few reasons that were connected to animation and melee systems but now we feel it is quite a good time to push it in the wild finally at least in some crude form. We decided to redo the way how suicide was supposed to work completely. We ended up with a fluent part of the gameplay which doesn't break up the immersion. Suicide starts with a gesture and while you are in this verbose pose you can still decide if you really want to pull the trigger and end your misery at once or leave it be and try harder to survive even with bad cards on your hand. Added value of this solution is that you can do such pose even with empty hand. 
 

Apart from all that we are still improving the horticulture with the possibility of making fertilizer while cooking is being refactored with some advanced functionality in mind for example you will be able to put your ammunition to fireplace and examine what it will do with them over time. We are also supporting the hermit way of play. In the near future you won't need to scavenge surroundings for loot and become self-sufficient if you wish and choose such a way to play. For now we will be adding new items and crafting possibilities including primitive stone blade and guts, next step will be to add bones, torch and alternative way to ignite the fire without matches.  
 

Don't forget to save some fuel for chainsaw... see you in Chernarus folks! "

 

Standup Notes for the week of 01 Dec 14
(Note: Standup notes are not a change log - they are a quick high level look at tasks the teams worked on throughout this week)

 

Art:

• Full length ghillie
• Quilted Jacket
• Bomber Jacket
• High fidelity V3S instrument panel 
• Winchester Model 70
• Cleaver
• Hatchet

Animation:

• Support to new Zombies
• Optics
• Vehicle animations
• Chainsaw Animations
• Sword animations

 

Design:
• V3S Praga Bugfixing
• Config and scripts for suicide
• Silencer configs
• Chainsaw configs
• Loot defines for new centralized loot spawning

 

Programming:
• Critical inventory fixes
• Walkie/Talkie support/fixes
• Sound System support
• Loot distribution redesign/improvements
• Audio/Global Messaging bugfixing
• Vehicle simulation diagnostics / bugfix
• Character connection issues (protecting players from attack while logging in/before being able to move)

[alex_d20 2]

Speaking of survivor communities, our Private Shard contest has concluded and while I am happy to announce the winners - I have to say there were far more entries than I had expected, and the decisions were not at all easy.

There are a lot of fantastic DayZ communities out there, and at the very least I now have a whole list of servers I need to take time to visit.

The winners, in no specific order are:

- FriendlyFlashMob

- The Midnight Crew

- TAW.net

 

Where are the entries winners?

Edited December 5, 2014 by Alex_D20

[niko 0]

Still no news about 64 bit server?

[blackberrygoo 1416]

Still no news about 64 bit server?

That's one of the highlights of quarter 1 , 2015 on the road map that was just recently posted all over the forums .. But I'm very excited I really hope to see a lot of progress on the "fun" stuff like advancement in vehicles , ai , weapons (silencers and the sounds of guns being different/ echoing) , containers and persistence working fully , more advancements in cooking (and by the way it sounds , it seems like we will be able to cook our bullets ? Does that mean flammable objects are coming ?)

Overall a very exciting time, I can't wait for the next 4 months to be over with lol I just wanna see the surprises it will bring :) !

Edit : oh and it looks like in the picture that none of the light from the fire is shining through any walls ... Will this be one of the first products of the changes made to the renderer in Q1 2015? I'm very excited to see a fix for the light so people will play night servers more often (gamma should not be able to be changed in game , so when the lighting is fixed I would hope the gamma slider in game would be removed so people can't cheat at night ).

Edited December 5, 2014 by Grapefruit kush

[SmashT 10907]

Still no news about 64 bit server?

 

I assumed this was implemented many months ago. I know it was rolled out to experimental servers back in July or so (0.47) is there any reason why you think that's not the case for stable servers?

[a_ruttle 199]

Winchester model 70, oh yes... Also, the scope thing, why not just make it compatible with the LRS then make the LRS more realistic like the PU scope?

[TheWeedMan 132]

Can't wait on silencers being re-added, any insight as to when we can see the bipods return?

Hopefully the new zombies will have some nice animations like limbs being removed and exploding heads etc when damage is inflicted to certain body parts.

Looking forward to seeing what 2015 will bring ;)

[OrganGrinder 89]

For now we will be adding new items and crafting possibilities including primitive stone blade

 

As someone who flintknaps (makes primitive stone blades) this makes me very very happy.  As a source material I hope you'll make a distinction between using the existing plain old "stones" and ones that are capable of actually being made into a usable blade (i.e flint).  Also, consider a good place for finding flint (or whatever you use) to be at stream banks.  Its the first place I would look  :)

Edited December 6, 2014 by OrganGrinder

[xCAPx 349]

Edit : oh and it looks like in the picture that none of the light from the fire is shining through any walls ... Will this be one of the first products of the changes made to the renderer in Q1 2015? I'm very excited to see a fix for the light so people will play night servers more often (gamma should not be able to be changed in game , so when the lighting is fixed I would hope the gamma slider in game would be removed so people can't cheat at night ).

 

yes, I think it shows the new renderer (lightning) too.

 

So many nice things coming next year, I'm excited :)

 

Thx devs :beans:

[xtali700 17]

Can't wait on silencers being re-added, any insight as to when we can see the bipods return?

Hopefully the new zombies will have some nice animations like limbs being removed and exploding heads etc when damage is inflicted to certain body parts.

Looking forward to seeing what 2015 will bring ;)

Way back when it was supposed to be a much smaller scale game, I remember them saying that gore and dismemberment wasn't gonna make it, Im guessing it could have at least partially changed,but I would still rather have good performance over zeds without arms ect. To me, the bigger issue is the fact that they dont spawn any loot or clothes,they should at least drop loot if you kill them and so on, gives an incentive to killing military zombies.

[Thumper1999 48]

Interesting. :)

[bekifftes_Frettchen 0]

I can`t wait for much more Zombies. this is so important

Edited December 7, 2014 by bekifftes_Frettchen

[xetorak 0]

The game is a real one, you guys are making good stuff, sometimes you're too stop by the details that you stop thinking about the base of DayZ (in my opinion). The cheaters are a real problem facing the community, we are frustated. It's Alpha, we know but still it doesn't excuse everything, we need the cheats and duplicating stuff unusable for the people who are using it, maybe it's not that simple but go to the source, buy the cheat learn how it works and break it down. The hackers are becoming more and more powerful: Aimbots, wallhacks, ESP name them. We, the community would really love if you could think about this message to feel the deep and great experience of DayZ without hackers. To all the dev team continue doing your wonderful work! Our best regards, the community.  

[JGallemore1 3]

Can we put the sword on a belt along with a canteen. Sword on one side and canteen on the other. Would be cool. Also a bandolier would be nice. Just saying xD

[pillock 850]

Can we put the sword on a belt along with a canteen. Sword on one side and canteen on the other. Would be cool. Also a bandolier would be nice. Just saying xD

 

What sword? Did I miss something?

[Tatanko 5591]

What sword? Did I miss something?

Here you go...

 

http://www.dayztv.com/pic/dayz-0-51-leaked-medieval-sword-model/

[pillock 850]

Here you go...

 

http://www.dayztv.com/pic/dayz-0-51-leaked-medieval-sword-model/

 

Thanks. I've just noticed it says "sword animations" in the stand up notes as well...

 

It's not something I think is particularly important to the game overall, but more variety is always nice!

[Tatanko 5591]

Thanks. I've just noticed it says "sword animations" in the stand up notes as well...

 

It's not something I think is particularly important to the game overall, but more variety is always nice!

It's a curious addition, for sure. Probably one of those things they did just for fun, so we can't say, "You never give us anything we ask for!" :p

[[TAW] GunRunner 53]

Congratulations to FriendlyFlashMob and The Midnight Crew from all of us at TAW.net!!!

 

As for the report itself- suppressors, FULL LENGTH ghillie, and the Alaskan is what I'm really looking forward to. May get back into some bambi-overwatch in Electro if I can throw a supressor on my AKM. Combine that with a few strategically placed walkie talkies around town so I can warn them of incoming bandits and we have ourselves a hella-good time.  :D

[PitstopHead (DayZ) 40]

I am so excited about the SWORD being readied. Let us hope they can put in a beheading animation for it....please?

[Bearhound 0]

Can't wait on silencers being re-added, any insight as to when we can see the bipods return?

Hopefully the new zombies will have some nice animations like limbs being removed and exploding heads etc when damage is inflicted to certain body parts.

Looking forward to seeing what 2015 will bring ;)

No need to add in suppressors when people can't hear gunshots anyways...

[escobert 112]

Love where this is going, great job guys. I love having the weekly status updates, always look forward to them :)

[ruax 32]

Was it just me or was servers down this morning?

[SmashT 10907]

Was it just me or was servers down this morning?

 

They are down every Wednesday for a few hours for weekly maintenance.

[ruax 32]

They are down every Wednesday for a few hours for weekly maintenance.

Right forgot about that when i wrote the comment.