Status Report - 14 Apr 15

[SMoss 2101]

Greetings Survivors,

Build 0.55 has been on the Steam/Stable branch for a few weeks now, and with the new systems in place with this build we were able to gather some incredibly valuable bug data from all you eager beaver Early Access participants. That said, and before we get into details on this week and the plan moving forward a few words need to be mentioned.

Much like the warnings placed on the DayZ Store Page, and the DayZ Launch Screen, as well as the stickies on the DayZ Steam Forums - The Early Access program provides you with development builds of the project, not access to a feature, or functionally complete game. As this year progresses, more and more parts of the Enfusion engine and its accompanying technology will be merged into the main branch. This means things will break, sometimes things will break -hard-. We utilize the experimental branch to flesh out any catastrophically game breaking issues (think client crashes, server freezes, high repro progression loss, and so on) and at the end of the month the most stable development build gets pushed to Steam for all of you to poke, experiment, and have fun with. Testing is done in three tiers, each tier scaling up in load and volume. Internal, Experimental, Main (Stable) - and make no mistake. All three branches are for testing. 

So as we move forward to 0.56 and beyond, keep that detail in mind. Systems will break, bugs and interruptions of gameplay will occur - and as I will detail below, nothing finds the cracks in the stonework like throwing a rotation of roughly a million active players at a build and seeing how it holds up.

Through extensive monitoring of both private shard and public hive servers on 0.55 the team were able to identify two key bugs in the new loot and economy systems that did not appear in proper detail on experimental branch. These two separate issues affected the core persistence mechanic of DayZ in different, but similar ways. On one hand, we discovered aberrant behavior in item respawn positions, and the other (over this last weekend) we discovered loot respawning causing corruption in the primary persistence binarization (which caused some servers to believe it was "okay" to be operating at 20,000 items less than the defined red-line).

These two bugs are the primary focus of the members of the gameplay programming team responsible for the loot economy, and player progression - and will be included in the 0.56 update (scheduled for early in May). In an effort to mitigate the issue in the mean time, during the Wednesday maintenance period this week we will be switching servers over to the legacy placeholder loot spawning system. Unfortunately this means some of the newer items won't spawn, but it will keep the economies going until 0.56 hits stable branch.

 

Paired with this hotfix, we will be instructing GSPs to reset the persistence structure for each stable branch server. So pack up those tents post haste. Moving forward we'll be segregating the base building type objects from the main persistence structure, so in the case of any issues like this popping up again during development - player camps will not be effected.

On a more fun note, The Survivor GameZ are holding the Survivor GameZ VI this upcoming Sunday - Frequently coined the "Super Bowl of DayZ" we'll be seeing some very well known personalities from across the Twitch and DayZ content creation sphere going head to head in a 2 man team based fight to the death. Live streamed on 4 seperate free roaming cameras and no less than 15 competitor twitch channels.

 

 

Keep an eye on their twitter account @Survivor_GameZ for more information!

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

 

Standup Notes for the week of 14 Apr 15

(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:

• GAZ Volga
• Ikarus
• UMP 45, VSS, Mauser polishing
• New Zombie Models
• School Env. Objects
• Roadblock Objects

Design:

• Central Economy
• Firearms Recoil
• Tripwire Traps
• Firearms Noise (AI Related)
• Drying Food
• Cooking via Stick
• Object Placement
• Player / Infected Stamina
• SVD Configuration

Programming:

• Inventory refactorization
• Dynamic Events
• Vehicle Transmission bugfixing
• Adv. Loot Distro Bugfixing
• Persistence Bugfixing
• Advanced Loot Distro bugfixing
• Character Controller
• Login Que Design
• New Damage Sys.
• Crash Fixes

[SmashT 10907]

Nice to see the party bus returning to DayZ :D

[igor-vk 909]

Nice to see the party bus returning to DayZ :D

Its too early for bus. It will get stuck everywhere because its longer than V3S.

Looks like new inventory system will be in next update.

[ToySmokes 116]

Its too early for bus. It will get stuck everywhere because its longer than V3S

That's why we're here to test it so it won't at final release!

[Highman 0]

Thanks developers for this update! looking forward to tomorrow! :beans:

Edited April 14, 2015 by Highman

[tobias winfro 305]

Nice to see the party bus returning to DayZ :D

Hells ya! I can't wait to start a chartered bus line tour of Chernarus, only one can of beans\peaches to ride. And on your left, some poor beach goer getting mobbed by the infected and keep your head down in Cherno and Elektro as we will be making brief stops on the outskirts of town

[sgtpotatoes@gmail.com 30]

Cooking via stick!

Stamina!

More vehicles!

 

Parade!

[joe_mcentire 2073]

i wonder if we are going to hear a faint children's laughter in these school objects...

[igor-vk 909]

I can't even guess where will SenChi (if he is still in dayz team) squeeze in that school building.

[Jordancsmith 9]

'during the Wednesday maintenance period this week we will be switching servers over to the legacy placeholder loot spawning system'

 

Does this mean we are going back to the old loot system for a bit, when all loot respawns on server resets?

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

'during the Wednesday maintenance period this week we will be switching servers over to the legacy placeholder loot spawning system'

 

Does this mean we are going back to the old loot system for a bit, when all loot respawns on server resets?

 

 

I believe it means that loot will once again spawn in the same places as 0.54 until they iron out more bugs via experimental branch.

 

It sounds like it will only last another few weeks so you all that wanted it back so bad.... enjoy for now!!

 

Thanks for all the hard work, devs!

 

I'll be ready to give the next experimental a go to help move the loot system along and try new stuff!

[gibonez 3633]

 

 

AHHHH yiss

[that1n00b 7]

Will this mean that persistence is no longer a thing? Any clarification would be appreciated/traded for beanz.

Edited April 15, 2015 by that1n00b

[Munson_fry (DayZ) 312]

am i the only one who had a good time ???

 

so tonight the pink dress fire extinguisher elektro slaughterhouse is open again ! 

[tobias winfro 305]

am i the only one who had a good time ???

You weren't alone, I enjoyed .55 and its harsh survival mentality. It forced me to rethink my Dayz play style and how other players reacted to one another. Seeing people work together was nice, still had plenty of PvP but you had to work for it.

[Apollo'sFire 31]

The game should still be in .55, so sneaking around and angry zeds should still be in the game, they're just changing the loot system. Please correct me if I'm wrong

[blackberrygoo 1416]

The game should still be in .55, so sneaking around and angry zeds should still be in the game, they're just changing the loot system. Please correct me if I'm wrong

That sounds right , so really only thing that changes is where and how loot spawns ... I liked the new spawning system (in which you could find mp5s in police stations and police gear there too) so I hope it doesn't take long toget back to it !

[Hicks_206 (DayZ) 4297]

Will this mean that persistence is no longer a thing? Any clarification would be appreciated/traded for beanz.

As the report calls out, we discovered issues in loot respawning - nothing with persistence.

[ruax 32]

As the report calls out, we discovered issues in loot respawning - nothing with persistence.

I had problems with persistence just now.. Server restarted everything was fresh. And that server was persistence since I started play on it untill today, played on it for weeks.

[Hicks_206 (DayZ) 4297]

I had problems with persistence just now.. Server restarted everything was fresh. And that server was persistence since I started play on it untill today, played on it for weeks.

You'll need to contact the server operator, server apparently is misconfigured.

[hemmo 55]

What about the tents? did he ment "stack u[ the gud lewts while you can" or "Were resetting so your tents is going bye bye"?

[that1n00b 7]

As the report calls out, we discovered issues in loot respawning - nothing with persistence.

Thanks for the clarification! I don't know how closely persistence and loot spawning are connected. Beanz are in the mail!

[Sr.Niko500 3]

V56 when it comes?

I cant update dayz '-

[trujuice 56]

Paired with this hotfix, we will be instructing GSPs to reset the persistence structure for each stable branch server. So pack up those tents post haste. Moving forward we'll be segregating the base building type objects from the main persistence structure, so in the case of any issues like this popping up again during development - player camps will not be effected.

Hey SMoss can I get some clarification on the tent persistence since the roll-back to the legacy loot system. The status report was a bit unclear as least to my reading of it anyway. Do you mean that moving forward with 56 or do you mean moving forward with 55.127157? Since the status was posted before the latest patch 55.127157 I didn't know.

 

Basically, I just want to know if I put my tent and garden back down and stock up will it stay after the server maintenance next week?

[ImpulZ 2491]

back to the good old loot system :D

spawned directly next to 10 chainsaws, bear traps and landmines, every book in the game, and enough food to last till the central economy is reimplemented. Waiting for May...