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Status Report - 14 August 2018

Tue, 14 Aug 2018 19:36 CEST

Gamescom is upon us, but before we head out we have another Status Report prepared for you guys. To start things off, our Lead Producer Eugen provides an update on the current state of the first content update, as well as our plans moving forward. Our leads from gameplay programming, animation and sound give a quick recap of their past two weeks of work. We close the Status Report with our Community Spotlight. Let's get into it!

Dev Update/Eugen
Dev Update/Peter
Dev Update/Mirek
Dev Update/Viktor
Dev Update/Filip
Community Spotlight

Dev Update/Eugen

Dear Survivors,

although the struggle with the server performance is ongoing, we're seeing some good results overall in our goals. We have implemented multiple optimizations during our Stress Test period and there are more coming. Right now, we are seeing some unintended behavior in the multi-core server environment, and that's our current focus. Running servers on a single core, we're experiencing a large upswing in the server FPS that should, in theory, be even more noticeable in a multi-core configuration, but unfortunately, that is not the case now. Some of these issues are quite complex, so we will be tweaking the server code base even more.

The first content patch is in an okay state, but we're still not happy with the overall performance. As far as content goes, that seems to be received well, and I'm happy to see people enjoying the returning features and flavor that was added to them. Once we're happy with the performance itself, we will move the build over to the Experimental branch of the game and make the build available to the servers owners in our community. We know it has been a long time and the community has suffered because of it, but if we work together, we can make this dream game of ours a reality.

Besides the development of the first content patch, there is a lot of ongoing work put into other BETA features. On Friday last week, we have concluded the primary feature development and the Internal build seems to be in a good place feature-wise. The focus has shifted to bug fixing. There are more than 2000 fixes to get through and we want to make sure we get them done! We will share more details about the next patch after Gamescom.

I know some of you are worried about missing features or content. Over the last few years, there have been many features designed, and an insane amount of content created both externally and internally. Some of these things make DayZ better as a game and simulation. Some of them can be considered more or less an added flavor, or even clutter in the overall vision of what the game should be.

DayZ needs to be fun first and foremost. It needs to meet your expectations in behavior, stability, and balance. It also needs features that support the player interaction and empower players who want to invest time into learning the details and intricacies of the simulation itself. We read everything you guys say. This is a game made by gamers and for gamers. We want to enjoy the game with you and even though the struggle is sometimes real, all of us want the game to succeed the same way you do.

When we have any details to share beyond what has already been stated in the goals for the Beta release[dayz.com], we will do so on all of our channels.

Some of you might have noticed an increased commotion around the Xbox version of the game. What we are testing now is the same version that you're seeing on PC Stress Tests. We're making sure it runs well and provides a gameplay experience that feels good on a controller, and shows good performance. The benefits of the performance work we have done are already enjoyed by a smaller group of players that already have access to the Closed Preview, but there are so many players out there that have been with DayZ for a long time and even more who haven't had a chance to try this unique experience. One of the benefits of utilizing modules of the Enfusion engine is being able to have a game like DayZ running on a console. We always want to grow the DayZ community, and it's important not to forget about other platforms.

I'll be at Gamescom this year talking about what we will be seeing in the near future and what our goals are before we reach 1.0. I can't wait to share more with you as there are exciting times ahead of us.

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Peter

What would DayZ be without the possibility to restrain others and put them into captivity! Now you can also restrain yourself if you would like to plot some twist - of course you will be able to struggle free if something goes wrong. While the character has his hands restrained, his inventory is blocked as well as his quick-slots. However, his inventory is accessible by other players through the vicinity part of inventory screen.

https://media.giphy.com/media/OO2J5QpwGnTTYsNmmV/giphy.gif

We are also working on the implementation of continuous interactions with objects in the environment. It will allow us to broaden possible interactions, like taking items directly into hands (or swapping them), slowly opening doors, seamless drinking from wells or switching channels on the radio transmitter laying on the ground.

Speaking of items on the ground, there is a comeback of dropping items from hands to the ground directly in the world (of course the 'take' animation displayed instead of the 'drop' animation in the GIF is a placeholder). The next step will be a shortcut for putting an item from your hands to the inventory cargo even without it being assigned to a quick-slot, as we would like to minimize any unnecessary access of the inventory.

https://media.giphy.com/media/NQ23rqTPGLtwsJWvzg/giphy.gif

The work on firearms is still ongoing as well. The support for the new weapon (and items) swapping animation is being implemented, after which there will be a possibility to add independent shoulders. Recently, the long awaited leaning has been reintroduced in it’s basic form (as it was in 0.62 version). However, we would like to make it more prominent and useful for gameplay later. Weapon inertia was missing as well until now and its new implementation is portrayed as sight misalignment. Its degree depends on rotation speed, a nice side effect to it is a parallax shift in the new 3D scopes. You can see them presented in Mirek’s portion of Status Report below.

As the latest addition to the pack, welcome the first implementation of lifting weapons in front of obstacles. This mechanic will prevent firearms from clipping through objects geometry, may it be walls, infected or other characters. Don't worry about self defense, as in these cases you will be still able to use a melee attack with your firearm. The lifting at obstacles takes various firearms lengths and their muzzle attachments too into account .

https://media.giphy.com/media/vy0fWoWIDb7VBKxPhk/giphy.gif

Also, progress on firearms malfunction was recently resumed and unjamming support is being added to all the firearms which will be available in 0.63 version of DayZ. Type of malfunction used is 'failure to eject' which causing mechanism to jam where next round fails to feed.

https://media.giphy.com/media/iDJmLvnnOua9OEi4SP/giphy.gif

Chance of malfunction is directly proportional to condition of the firearm. In case the firearm is fed from detachable magazines, chance of its malfunction is combined with condition of used magazine. Firearms and magazines condition can be repaired, making weapon cleaning kit a valuable and important item. With firearm malfunction in, I’m looking forward to see all that interesting situation which will emerge during the heat of firefights.

Better stock up on weapon cleaning kits... see you in Chernarus folks!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

Dev Update/Mirek

For the last couple of weeks and for the next weeks, the major tasks for our gameplay programmers are server-side optimizations, bugfixing for features and content and the implementation of core systems to support new gameplay features, which can then be tweaked by designers.

Optimisations

We have found a bug, which has been in the game for more than two years but was finally visible after the introduction of ambient loot. This bug was tied to the game entity deletion and caused massive performance drops. We are also preparing optimisations for the Central Economy process, which should be done in a few days time.

Gameplay features

Vehicles - probably the biggest and most complex feature we're now working on is vehicles. Almost everything had to be rewritten (including character parts), in order to be able to add additional vehicle-related features more easily in the future. Viktor already showcases some progress two weeks ago and I'm sure we will show you more in a couple weeks.

Leaning - We've reintroduced a very basic implementation of leaning. The first iteration is in the game and now we have to polish things like animations, camera, and probably more. Check out this first teaser here:

Weapon changing - We have implemented a basic system for the changing of weapons. For now, we are supporting only firearms, but the rest is on the way.

Sights misalignment - Which means weapon inertia in iron sights and scope. Now, only a few parameters have to be tweaked in order to achieve the best gameplay experience with this feature.

- Miroslav Maněna/ Lead Programmer

Dev Update/Viktor

Over the last weeks, we've been creating and implementing new attack animations for the infected. That's light, heavy and running attacks with individual arms to get some variation into the PvE encounters. For the player character, we've started the implementation of basic facial expressions during combat-actions. We've also implemented multiple improvements for the idle character animations, like blinking, exhaustion and new idle movements in general.

Apart from that, the team has been working on placing and deployment animations that will be used while handling cars, during base building, or when placing traps. All of this comes with numerous fixes to our player animations and the animation graph.

- Viktor Kostík / Lead Animator

Dev Update/Filip Čenžák

Our audio team went on a trip across our offices and beyond to record some footage for the reintroduction of vehicles. The results are new engine sounds, as well as tire sounds for different surfaces.

When it comes to shooting, we will bring back an Arma feature of the shooting controller, which silences insects and birds for a while after a gun is fired. To add to the infected, we've implemented and improved several of their animation sounds with steps and rustling clothing during three different states: idle, running and climbing.

Here you are some pictures from our tires and engine recording:

- Filip Čenžák / Sound Designer

Community Spotlight

Hello guys,

It's here, finally! Gamescom time! Bohemia Interactive is going to have a large booth with at Gamescom - with DayZ on PC and on consoles too (both Xbox and PlayStation!), so you can play on whatever platform you prefer, meet the devs and get some merch of course. We prepared a photobooth where you can take some cool DayZ-styled photos. You can try and wear a Gorka uniform, Ushanka, Zmijovka, guns, baseball bat, the Taloon backpack, High capacity vest, Ghillie and more gear from DayZ.

So if you're at Gamescom next week, don't forget to stop by in our booth D042 in the Hall 10.1, we are going to be there from Tuesday to Saturday - you have a lot of time to visit us!

That is all from me and now is your time!

Someone is really excited about the upcoming DayZ Preview release on Xbox! AlexRUiLs[forums.dayz.com] made this 3D print of a DayZ logo. Looks so good!

But he isn't the only one who has a 3D printer at home. Kerbo has it too and he printed DayZ logo as a gift for our amazing streamer TheLoyalPatriot. The logo was made b a fan of DayZ called Meyk[t.co].

What about some videos?

This is an emotional story about what happened to Chernarus when the infection started by DudeiRage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD7xeASxnAI

Syl is an awesome guy. He opened a shop in Electro to interact with people. And he had a few nice customers! Check out his shop here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ECqzh6U1q0&t=

NeuroticEUROtic shared a cool picture with us. He called it "Friendly Planet Cherno", but here is a question: Are video game planets flat? Who knows!

Let's check out our riddle. Where was this mystery location from the latest Status Report?

Who guessed the riddle correct this time?

MisterrKain
Tempest Sojourner
‏Emu Threat
bullet head
Manatee
HumbleAtomicBohemian
Jonny K
‏Herbert J. Leder
DrDeSync

Good job guys! And the next riddle is:

I am looking forward to seeing you at Gamescom, and for people who can't be there, I am going to share everything with you on our social networks.

- Baty / Community Manager

Header image by Uncuepa.

Status Report - 31 July 2018

Tue, 31 Jul 2018 22:02 CEST

Today we have a quite exciting Status Report for you guys as we have several topics to cover. To start things off, Eugen is talking about the long-awaited content update for 0.63. Next, our Brand Manager Martin Culak will finally reveal some information on how we intend to deliver on our promise to bring DayZ to our fans on Xbox this year. Peter is talking about the introduction of scopes, the continuing debate of "Aimgate" and shotguns. Plus, there's a first glance at the return of vehicles. So, buckle up, and let's dive into it.

Dev Update/Eugen
Dev Update/Martin
Dev Update/Peter
Dev Update/Viktor
Dev Update/Filip
Community Spotlight

Dev Update/Eugen

Dear Survivors,

let's talk about the hot topics first. The content patch -while delayed- is shaping up nicely. During the extra weeks spent on the stabilization of its features, we have solved quite a large number of issues, while the main three that were blocking the release are confirmed to be fixed as well.

Three main reasons that the patch has not been released sooner are :

1. Client Freezes (Happening in random intervals causing 10+ seconds of no response whatsoever)

The issue manifested itself in specific situations and actions of multiple players in a single bubble. We have found the cause and were able to confirm last week that it's no longer happening.

2. Stability issues (Crashes, VME and asserts on the branch)

While important, these are definitely considered less damaging on the whole gameplay experience. However, we should be good to go!

3. Scopes

During the implementation we have come across a large number of issues from animations, clipping, shaking and more that needed to be solved.

Now that we have talked about these, I wanted to confirm that the content patch is getting released on the Stress Test branch tomorrow and that it will be focused on Player vs Player interaction. During this period we might try to raise the player numbers per shard and see where the additional optimizations can take us. After the Stress Test period is over, we will port the patch over to Experimental and enable the switch to do the same for server owners. I'm looking forward to the vanilla experience as there is so much more to explore with these new features.

While all this was happening the team was working on the BETA features. We're running several work groups focused on important parts of DayZ, specifically weapons, infected, vehicles and actions. As of now, the general production is running two weeks behind and we are ready to get back on track.

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Martin

Survivors! I've got a couple of great news to share with you all! There's something with DayZ on Xbox that caused some surprises and confusions, so let me start with that!

DayZ on Xbox - The road to Xbox Game Preview begins!

The rumors are right! Our guys in Bratislava and Prague have managed to get the first series of builds through the Xbox certification process, and have already made them available for preliminary testing to a closed group of players enlisted in the Xbox Insider Program[support.xbox.com] (basically a community of super hardcore Xbox One players and fans, as well as Xbox employees). While this is truly a smaller-scale test with only a handful of servers running, it's hard to hide our own excitement, as this is the first time we've let anyone outside of the office play the "full" DayZ experience on a console!

For obvious reasons, this also translated into a lot of excitement (and outrage) in the DayZ community, so it's time to share some update on where we are with DayZ on Xbox.

Current State of DayZ on Xbox

The first important thing to say is that the build that some of the Xbox Insiders are playing is pretty much on par with our current 0.63 build for PC, and shares the same features and content. The way our development pipelines are set allows for most of the progress with PC development to beimmediately used in the Xbox build, and since we've recently done quite a lot on that front, the Xbox version is already well playable. This will only get better as soon as the 0.63 content patch goes out on the Stress Test Branch. Of course, if it was all sunshine and roses, we'd probably just release the thing already, so unsurprisingly, there's a catch. A few of them, actually:

we're still applying some minor changes to the controls scheme
we're getting our server infrastructure ready
we're awaiting fixes for some Xbox specific issues (UI, some user actions missing etc.)

Despite these issues, the progress with PC builds, and some platform specific optimisations already bring a good enough gameplay to Xbox, along with a generally very good client and server performance, so as soon as we get ahead of the listed issues (and as long as there aren't new ones appearing), we will proceed to the next step!

Closed Preview

If you've been following our friends from the Vigor[vigorgame.com] team (they have released Vigor into Game Preview just yesterday, go check that out[vigorgame.com]!), you'll get a decent idea about what that next step is going to be for DayZ - a Closed Preview. Ultimately, that's where we'll get together a bunch of the most excited Xbox Survivors among you, and give you a chance to secure access to pre-release builds of DayZ.

In return, we'll ask you to provide us with feedback on your experience, and we'll also use the traffic created on our servers to further evaluate the performance there.

Even in the Closed Preview phase, we're probably not going to be ready for any large scale testing, so we'll pick our first bunch of Survivors very carefully, and try to involve some content creators at Mixer and Twitch to spread the excitement for others waiting to get their hands on DayZ.

We should get to that part rather quickly though, so be prepared! For Xbox fans around you, also one more clarification: we're currently not planning on expanding the Xbox Insider build to further rings, so the Closed Preview will be your only chance to get some early hands-on time with DayZ!

Game Preview

We're probably a bit further away from the last step - releasing DayZ for everyone in the "Xbox Early Access program", the Xbox Game Preview[www.xbox.com]. As we've been saying at press events over the past months, we'd like to bring DayZ to Xbox Game Preview at the end of this summer, and currently, it looks like we should be able to deliver. For the final confirmation though, we still need things to settle down a bit more, so your best bet is to wait for Gamescom (starting August 21, more on that below!) - by then, things should be more clear, and it's also a good opportunity for any release date announcements, so please cross your fingers that everything works out just fine!

As with any Game Preview title on Xbox, there will be a trial version available that'll help you decide whether DayZ is already a fun game to you in its current state. We're considering the trial to be limited to one hour of gameplay.

I'd like to clarify one important thing - the general timing of the Xbox One release. Up until now, we've been counting on releasing the Xbox Game Preview shortly after DayZ hits BETA on PC. Since we're able to come up with Xbox version of our PC content rather quickly, and we're also enjoying tremendous support from Microsoft, we'll probably take a turn on that position. If things keep going well, we may see an Xbox Game Preview release happening before the PC BETA.

And as a last bit: I know some of you are worried about this entire console thing slowing down the PC development. We've already said that on a couple of occasions, but let me repeat this again - our primary development, where most of the work is happening on daily basis, is the PC version, and that's where any progress with Xbox builds always comes from. While we have certainly grown beyond just having 2 programmers working on things related to Xbox releases, our primary focus is, and will remain on developing the PC builds. I may let Peter expand on that, but also the overall game design vision of DayZ has never been changed or strongly influenced by the fact that DayZ will eventually be released on consoles.

Even in Game Preview, and later on on PS4, DayZ will remain a hardcore, authentic survival game.

We're going to Gamescom (and maybe, just maybe to PAX West and Australia)

Brief update on upcoming events: we'll be at Gamescom again, yay! Gamescom is taking place between August 21 - 25, and we're bringing a much bigger team this year, with all the usual suspects (Baty, Eugen, Peter, Dan), and a very welcome addition of our Senior Map Designer Adam! Altogether, there will be 11 DayZ developers at the event (including our new Community Managers - Tim and Bestius), ready to meet you all and show you the game on all three platforms - PC, Xbox One AND PlayStation 4 (yes, that would be a premiere!).
We're also doing our best to answer the many invitations (yes, that's you too, Boydy!) and arrange at least a brief visit of PAX West in Seattle, and PAX Australia in Melbourne. We'll keep you updated!

That's all for today - see you at Gamescom, Survivors!

- Martin Čulák / Brand Manager

Dev Update/Peter

As mentioned in our last Status Report, when it comes to firearms we are focused mainly on the scopes right now. In the following GIF you can see the new PSO 1 scope in action together with the new post processes. Aiming down the sights uses depth of field to blur the firearm while keeping the front sight focused. The scoped-in view is using a circular mask to blur the surroundings and creates spherical distortion to make the magnification effect more prominent.

The next GIF shows how the combination of ADS and scope is operated in a case where such possibility of firearm and scope allows it. The last mode used for precise aiming (sights or scope) is remembered and the next time the aiming action is called it switches right into it.

Regarding point shooting (not precise aiming, in other words hipfire from raise), there was sway applied from the very first implementation. However, it used the same strength as in ADS which isn’t enough for such a situation. It lead to the belief that the projectiles are always landing in the exact center of the screen. Now, we have a multiplier for sway implemented, to make it harder to hit targets further away. On the screenshot below, the left target was fired at with point shooting, the right target was fired at with ADS, both using a pistol at 25 meters. You see the results displayed by the trajectory lines and their bullet impacts.

By the way, due to the controversy revolving around "Aimgate", it’s also a common belief now, that the projectile direction when fired while point shooting is drastically bend, which isn’t the case. The angle is getting smaller with larger distances. You can see two lines on the following screenshot, the white line is the direction from the camera, the orange line shows the actual direction at which the projectile was fired. Using the 3PP camera, which has the largest offset from the axis of the weapon barrel and with the target in a distance of 10 meters, the angle between the direction of the gun barrel and the fired projectile is around 2 degrees. And to display even this minimal change in projectile direction to the players, we plan to have the weapon visually realigned towards the center of the screen.

Last but not least, alongside with the implementation of the pump-action shotgun in the new weapon system, we found what was wrong with buckshots all the time. After a rewrite, buckshots are now spawning the set amount of independent projectiles which are getting dispersed with distance and can penetrate materials.

I’m excited this change will make shotguns finally valuable and deadly - exactly how you would expect.

Come get some... see you in Chernarus folks!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

Dev Update/Viktor

In the past two weeks our animators have been working on:

vehicles: steering wheel poses so the character can steer the wheel nicely. This includes animations like starting the vehicle, adjustments of enter/exit animations and idles.

Please be aware that everything you see here is still WIP and subject to change:

Getting into V3S[media.giphy.com]
Starting V3S[media.giphy.com]
Turning[media.giphy.com]
Jumping out of the vehicle / Getting back in[media.giphy.com]

surrender/restrained: implementation and missing animations
hit reactions for crouch and prone for when player character gets hit
bugfixing related to firearms

- Viktor Kostík / Lead Animator

Dev Update/Filip Čenžák

Just a very brief update from the audio team:

new reload sounds for the MP133
new sounds for falling trees and bushes (after hack tree and bush action)
shooting controller for ambient sounds. Birds and insects go quiet for a while after shooting
Coast ambience is positional now. You hear the ambience from the direction where the coast is.
Sound Occlusion for gun shots. Gun shots are attenuated if there is any obstacle (like wall or structure) between the shooter and listener

- Filip Čenžák / Sound Designer

Community Spotlight

Hi guys,

I would like to dedicate my first post to server admins. As development towards BETA is progressing, and more players are interested in permanently playing on 0.63 Experimental, we want to extend our communication when it comes to server owners and communities. We know how much time, passion and resources go into the proper management of a DayZ server, and with the upcoming changes we want to keep you in a better loop on what's coming next. This information starts with the upcoming optional switch for community servers from 0.62 Stable to 0.63 Experimental and will continue covering further changes that will affect server management.

Please be aware that we are not talking about access to "exclusive information" or a "direct line" to the development team. This newsletter will be designed to keep interested server owners informed about all changes and events coming to the very backbone of our community.

If you are a server owner, you can register HERE for the newsletter.

Sometimes I am very surprised how the community can help each other. For example XAMpew, who wants to help all poor lost survivors with an interactive online map of 0.63 that is currently on the Experimental branch. It is still not ready, but he has done a good job so far. Thank you XAMpew! You can find the map HERE.

We have already received several packages from you. Blue and Quennie[www.twitch.tv] sent us a teddy bear, Boydy a big bunch of Australian goodies, but one day there were seven boxes full of scotch beer in our office and we were pretty surprised! We would like to thank you Spaggie again because you made us come together in the evening and just talk about other things than just work after a long time. After all, we are not only colleagues but also friends.

I would like to introduce you to these two players who love to make wallpapers and screenshots. One of them is Harold Palmer, who has been supplying us with his great screenshots for years and he has his own web page. Check out his work HERE[www.haroldpalmer.co.uk].

The second player is called Squad Crow and Chernarus is so beautiful through his eyes. You can find his work HERE[www.behance.net].

Let me introduce you MrOG, the streamer who is known (besides for his fear of wolves) as an excellent sniper. And if I didn't add his clips to this Status Report he is going to snipe me too.

https://clips.twitch.tv/AnnoyingWanderingClintPermaSmug

https://clips.twitch.tv/SuperIronicFriseeHassaanChop

IS DAYZ TRASH? This question has been asked by Polish streamer TopeREC in this video. Okey, it is just a click bait header but the video is hilarious. Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvMmTbCeJWk

SepticFalcon started a new series called "How To Survive DayZ 0.63 & Beyond!" and it is really handy for new players of 0.63. So if you are a 0.63 newbie, check it out, it is worth it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVGIDMJy7-Q

I want to show you a picture of a bug we found during our internal testing. I am not an expert but I am sure this is not the way how to aim correctly with a weapon.

And it is time for another riddle! I found only three correct answers this time:

Matt
MisterrKain
Andi Carpenter

Here is the location:

And here is a new one. Where is it located? Send an answer to our Twitter account with the #DayZriddleTime hashtag.

And this is all from me, see you in two weeks, Survivors! I am looking forward to see your content!

- Baty / Community Manager

Header image by apd23.

Status Report - 17 July 2018

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 20:15 CEST

This week, we are moving to push our first content update to the public Stress Test branch. To start today's report off, Eugen is going to talk us through the remaining issue of the week as well as last weeks challenges for the team. Our leads from animation, sound and map design share a few insights on their past work. We close everything with our beloved Community Spotlight.

Dev Update/Eugen
Dev Update/Eugen
Dev Update/Viktor
Dev Update/Adam
Dev Update/Filip
Community Spotlight

Dev Update/Eugen

Dear Survivors,

it's been quite busy around the office in the last two weeks, and there is a lot to talk about in general. I wanted to cover a couple of topics: the first content update for 0.63, and issues you have been experiencing in the past few days.

Database issues with 0.62

The problem with the legacy 0.62 Stable branch had manifested in two different ways:

a) an infinite spawn timer
b) by loading a wrong character

During the last maintenance, we switched to a temporary database to figure out a solution, making sure the issue does not repeat in the future. Since then we have identified the culprit, fixed it and will be moving back to the Stable hive during our next regular maintenance tomorrow morning. Most of you will be getting your old characters back as the data itself has not been tampered with.

Blue Screen of Death crash issues

This issue was quite rampant - luckily, we managed to get it identified and fixed in a patch released last week. The problem was caused by an interaction of multiple external factors that we have since looked into and found a workaround that will keep us stable going forward.

New content and features for 0.63

I'm happy to say that we no longer track any major gameplay issues with the upcoming 0.63 update there were assigned a priority of blocker/critical. There is a number of issues being tracked, and on schedule to get fixed, but most (if not almost all) of them can be described as visual glitches.

As of now, the patch is scheduled for a large internal playtest tomorrow and if we don't run into any more issues, we will release the update on the Stress Test branch. One thing we're quite excited about is not only the features that we're bringing back but also the huge number of bugs that have been fixed. All this together should bring a more stable and interesting DayZ experience.

As we're seeing the comeback of the unconscious state, as well as everyone's favourites - the M4A1 and Mosin, alongside numerous scopes - we will consider using a specialized mission for testing these, probably switching back and forth from the regular survival gameplay to a more action packed combat scenario.

I'm extremely excited to see those unconscious clutch situations getting back to DayZ, as saving people and playing a hero has always been my thing a lot more than being a bandit :)

I don't want to spoil everything, but I do believe it's going to be tons of fun!

See you in Chernarus! ;)

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Peter

The implementation of the firearms scopes back into 0.63 version is ongoing for some time now. Long range combat has always been a staple of DayZ and you can count on the fact, that it will be in the future as well. The focus is to bring back scopes for firearms currently in the game and those which are coming.

Switching between iron sights/scopes
The new implementation introduced the ability to use iron sights along with scope view. Of course, that’s possible only when a given firearm and scope combination allows it. If you are curious, we are not planning to do slanted sights for now.

Zeroing and accuracy
With upcoming scopes, allowing encounters over long distances, it’s time to utilize zeroing to compensate projectile ballistic trajectory. Similarly, you should be aware of the accuracy of different firearms to choose the best tool for the job. As a side note, barrel dispersion is already back in Experimental 0.63 version for quite some time, however it seems it’s not that noticeable without magnified view of scopes.

While aiming down the scope, projectiles should be fired directly from a barrel of a gun, same as it’s while in iron sights. This will prevent the possibility of some additional angle to be added to the trajectory.

Unfortunately, we found out that there is a divergence between actual projectile trajectory and directional vector of the barrel, which is definitely an issue on longer ranges. We are currently going through all aspects of range combat as we are trying to isolate and fix the underlying problem.

Revision of scopes
Reimplementation of scopes is also a good opportunity for us to revisit individual scope models, as well as their configuration. Especially their camera positions, reticles, magnification levels and zeroing ranges.

For some of them, it’s needed anyways, for example the PSO 1 can be used along iron sights, and it’s being turned into a 3D scope now, instead of just a 2D texture. This change alone requires a removal of the eyepiece to avoid the first person camera clipping, and will allow for a in-scope view as large as possible.

We don’t have a picture in picture rendering, so we're looking into adding some post-processes such as depth of field, sphere distortion and colour tints to make scopes more visually pleasing. I believe that scopes will now be be easier and more fun to use.

Zoom in... see you in Chernarus folks!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

Dev Update/Viktor

The animation team has been quite busy over the past two weeks, creating some completely new animation and improving existing ones. Let me go over a few of those.

New usage animations for items like a shovel, pickaxe, or hoe

These should provide more variety in animations and a better representation of each item in general.

Improved holding of items emitting light

We have added a new animation instance and a new set of animations (walking, running, holding) for flashlight, torch, and a flare. Players are now able to have the light in better positions.

Animations related to vehicles

We are testing and finding the best way of adding animations for changing gears, starting the engine, and other related actions.

Improvements to existing animations and systems

We created new animations for when the player gets hit and added more unconscious variations for different items and stances. Additionally, we polished attacking animations and fixed bugs related to firearms animations. We've also made a bunch of new holding poses for various items, so your character can now hold items in a visually more pleasing way.

- Viktor Kostík / Lead Animator

Dev Update/Adam Franců

This time around I won't be sharing anything brand new, as I have spent most of past few weeks squashing bugs all over the Chernarus terrain. While the 0.62 update has definitely brought Chernarus up to whole a new level, the vegetation swap also introduced a lot of issues with the object placement.

This trend continued with the update 0.63, which introduced a revamp for rocks, stones and bushes as well as a number of model updates to the environment assets (be it a complete replacement or just smaller changes to the doors and ladders). It has been a long time since a proper bug fixing passed and as the updating of 0.63 is progressing, Chernarus should definitely receive some bug fixing love from us.

Over the past weeks, I have squashed literally thousands of issues (major issues like getting stuck somewhere, problems with swimming, ladders, but also minor ones such as frequent object clipping). I am certainly not done yet and plan to continue this bug bash in the upcoming weeks before returning to the general map updates (for example we have got buildings like the city police station to add to the major towns).

There is one more thing that I would like to mention, as it is kind of tied with the topic bug fixing. Everyone knows (and loves :)) the all-Cyrillic directional and settlements signs (did anyone say KAMYWOBO?). For a very long time, a number of settlements, railway stations and road intersections in the new (non-Arma 2) parts of Chernarus were completely missing these features. As a part of this bug fixing pass, we have re-added them along with fixing many issues with the existing signs. These changes along with the already mentioned bug fixing pass (or at least a part of it) will be available in the Content Patch #1.

I hope that you all have a great time exploring Chernarus, see you there!

- Adam Franců / Map Designer

Dev Update/Filip Čenžák

The last couple of weeks brought a number of updates from the audio department - we don't have any samples for you, but most of the things should make their way into the game soon enough. Let's go over a couple of examples:

female character voice support has been added
some new character sounds have been added
- hacking down trees
- cutting bark off of a tree
- digging
- mining for stones
- cooking (boiling, baking, drying)
thunderstorm sounds were improved to capture the atmosphere of DayZ just right

For the upcoming new features and content for the Experimental branch, we've mostly contributed in terms of weapon sounds:

a sonic crack of bullets has been improved
impact sounds of bullets have been improved
Mosin and M4 sounds have seen some updates
- we have a brand new set of reloading sounds for each weapon
we've managed to fix a bug with weapon reload sounds while on the move

- Filip Čenžák / Sound Designer

Community Spotlight

Hello guys,

At first, I have a news for you. Our name on social channels has been changed. We were known as DayZDevTeam on our Twitter and Facebook for a long time, but now we are just DayZ. So no more weird tweets like "I am playing @DayZDevTeam right now, come and join me!", I am so proud of Martin, who managed to change it, it is not that easy. Don't forget to tag @dayz next time!

Let's check the community content.

Do you have a Samsung Gear S3 watch? https://twitter.com/FlipGamingde has an inspiration for you. He made the most perfect Watch face ever and of course it is in DayZ style.

Some of you went to real Chernarus and sent us nice pictures from your trip. Like NiloxCSHO from Reddit, who didn't need a map to travel around this area. He knows Chernarus very well. Check out the gallery here.

I want to show you a talented player, who can make really nice screenshots. His nickname is Sp1kerZ and you can follow his work on Twitter. Keep it up, man.

Streamer Reece McDowall shared a screenshot with us. It is about resolving struggle between players. The king is dead, long live the king!

Love is everywhere, even in Chernarus. WineDaddy captured a picture of two lovers who don't care about the apocalypse. I have no idea how you made it, WineDaddy, but you did it right.

And the last thing from your content is a story made by M1NDR. He infiltrated a group of cannibals and tried to destroy them from the inside…

And we want to congratulate M1NDR because he hit 100 000 subscribers on his YouTube channel today! You are amazing, man and we <3 you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9aWK_9PNtA

You've sent me so many answers to the last riddle, I was really surprised! But only a few were correct. Here is a wall of fame!

Puddin_TheKrow
D. E. Parry
Rustycaddy
CanisDirus
Go Up
Setup
Jacob_Mango

And here is a next one. Can you guess where is this location? It is not so hard this time! Tweet your answer to our official Twitter channel with a #DayZriddleTime hashtag. Don't forget, our Twitter is changed to @DayZ now.

Thank you for reading today's Status Report till here and see you in two weeks.

- Baty / Community Manager

Header image by CMDR_sunny.

Status Report 3 July 2018

Mon, 09 Jul 2018 14:07 CEST

Hello Survivors,

as this week we have some national holidays coming up in the Czech Republic and a big part of the team took this chance to take a few days of vacation, this Status Report will be shorter than usual. However, we are diving into exciting content regardless, as we will be talking about the upcoming first big update for 0.63. And we are happy to showcase another huge collection of your awesome community content - Let's get to it!

Dev Update/Eugen
Community Spotlight

Dev Update/Eugen

Dear Survivors,
it's about time to talk about the content update that's coming to Stress Test branch very soon and will get rolled over to the Experimental servers after making sure everything works as intended. We will try and batch the content updates in this way so we can stabilize and make sure the content works properly.

AI Sensors/Audibility/Visibility

With this change you will see your stealth options getting expanded by quite a bit: Besides stances, the colours and weight of items will affect your ability to avoid zombies and confuse their perception.

Hidden Stash

With this feature, you'll be able to hide your loot underground and put containers to use. The shovel will be spawning alongside the new containers ready to use. Same goes for corpses.

Character - Unconsciousness

Shock stat and weapon hits that increase it can cause the character to fall unconscious to be possibly saved by friends in your group. With the unconsciousness state, you'll be seeing more options to disable players and interact with them in combat.

CPR

The ability to CPR people with high shock values.

Gestures

The new radial menu alongside the newly added gestures will now be available for even more interactions and videos you may create.

Repairing

Items like the Sewing kit, Weapon Cleaning kit, Duct tape and more are seeing a comeback as durability matters again. Weapons don't jam yet but that's something you'll definitely see in a future content update.

New weapons

Yes, there are new weapons coming to the game and it's two classics that everybody loves. M4A1 and Mosin. Yay!

Scopes

There is no definite list of scopes coming yet in the first content update, but, based on the weapons currently in the game, we will deliver a meaningful selection.

Soft skills

The Soft skills are getting in, so you'll see the basic specializations working and your crafts bringing better results faster.

Environmental Exposure

The temperature system will start working without any repercussions first to gather more information on how harsh we want to get.

Jumping

We have started working on a huge animation set for jumps and climbing this year. So with the upcoming update, the first part of this package is gonna get in and give you the ability to cross some basic obstacles improving your manoeuvrability throughout Chernarus.

Diseases

Diseases and associated effects (coughing, sneezing and more) are returning as well as items that resolve possible negatives, such as purification tablets. This includes the possibility of diseases transfer from player to player and items.

Compass

The first part of the navigation system in DayZ besides the new map is the compass. Hopefully, it will help you to learn more about Chernarus and its intricacies.

Ambient Loot

One of the core features that we want to use to solve a possible lack of loot is a set of items that spawn not centrally but based on the player position and interactions. This might need a lot more tweaks, so expect its values to change even during testing.

Voice Communication

The whole Voice Communication system along with radios, public radios, megaphone etc. is coming to the game to give you objectives on the map as well as new options to communicate and meet with other survivors in the game.

So, how soon this is going to happen? The features listed here are undergoing testing as of now and the content has been branched away from the internal development version with many more fixes and improvements to stability, security and server performance.

On a side note, since in the internal version of this patch, we resolved the GDPR issues blocking the ability to switch to the experimental version, with its introduction we will enable this option for server owners. I'm personally looking forward to all this content coming back alongside things that changed and have been improved upon heavily. See you in Chernarus!

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Community Spotlight

Hello Survivors,

This weekend, Nine Inch Nails (a band that many of us in the dev team like) had a gig at the Aerodrome festival near Prague, and guess what - Alessandro Cortini, who's been a member of NIN for quite some time now, is a fellow DayZ survivor! We could not pass on the opportunity to meet with Alessandro, and so we did bother him for a bit before he went up on stage! It's been so awesome to chat and listen to some of his stories! Just a brief look at his DayZ t-shirt reassured us that he's serious about being a fan - the condition of the t-shirt has been way, way past pristine, and so we set him up with a new one :) Check out Alessandro on iTunes[itunes.apple.com] or SoundCloud[soundcloud.com], and look for him on Chernarus. Remember - talk to people! You never know who's on the other side, it could be someone from your favorite band!

Let's check out some new video content:

An emotional story of the life of Ricky Jameson by CamCANTRUN recorded in DayZ and the Arma 3 Eden Editor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAO1SrvzRnk

Ant made a DayZ fan trailer and it is really nice!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh_Xf1alkHY

Rustycaddy made a video in honor of our beautiful Chernarus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDQaQtKDJ1w

This is a story about the great opening of Uncuepa's bar. It starts really nice, there were a plenty delicious food, drinks and music, but what happened in the end wasn't nice…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWDGNnFsyhQ

And what about some of your pictures and drawings? Check it out:

The first one is a nice edit of a screenshot by the famous DrDesync.

Another edit is made by Reddit user TheWhishImBallHorson named "They Found Me". Good job!

Zarrov sent us a sketch of his idea of barricading. It looks impressive!

It is an end of a school year and Barrett5Bumpas is getting bored at his classes. So he made this DayZ inspired picture. It is really nice, but don't forget - education is more important than video games!

Do you know you can change the skin of your Steam? I didn't know until today. Mdswish shared his DayZ themed customized skin with the community, you can download it here[editor.steamcustomizer.com].

Do you remember the photo series Humans of Chernarus[www.dayzunderground.com]? It continues and it is still really cool. If you don't know it, it is a portrait of some DayZ characters living on the DayZ Underground server, the project is inspired by Humans of New York.

And the last community content for today are Joito's Twitch alerts made by the talented Cobalt_Smobalt. They are so awesome!

Let's check the riddle.

Who guessed the riddle from the last Status Report?

Emu Threat
basedBara_RL
CanisDirus

The correct answer was a Little Hill near Mogilevka.

And the riddle for this Status Report is:

If you know where is it, tweet it to our official Twitter account with #DayZriddleTime and you can be on the Wall of Fame next time.

Thank you for every content you've sent me and see you next time!

- Baty / Community Manager

Header image by A1ANNUAKII.

Status Report - 19 June 2018

Mon, 09 Jul 2018 13:07 CEST

Following the 0.63 Experimental release last week we are back with our Status Report. Today, Eugen gives us an update on the state of development, while Viktor and Adam from the animation team show us what they've been up to for the past couple of weeks. Our Map Designer Adam demonstrates changes to the weather system and we get some insights into the audio progress by our Sound Designer Filip. And of course we close with our community highlights, let's dive into it!

Dev Update/Eugen
Dev Update/Viktor
Dev Update/Adam Oresten
Dev Update/Adam Franců
Dev Update/Filip
Community Spotlight

Dev Update/Eugen

Dear Survivors,

the Experimental release is behind us, but the work does not stop here. So I would like to look at the issues present, troubling the community playing this version and also talk about the internal development that has happened and features you'll be seeing very soon on the Stress Test and Experimental branch. We kept both of the branches active to make sure we don't break Experimental too often and have features coming into it with more polish. While 0.63 is heavy on new technology, we know it's quite light on content. But you will be able to enjoy a lot of the new stuff in the upcoming weeks.

The issues that take longest to iron out are related to the stability of client and server, and problems that would end up interrupting your play sessions for various reasons. From locked characters, to server kicks or just unexpected crashes to desktop. Things are getting better, but there is more to be done in this regard and we continue to monitor the situation and apply fixes to make sure we eliminate this as soon as possible. We know its not there yet and its our top priority.

We should also talk about our plan to make the Experimental servers available to server owners currently running their communities. Sadly this had to be slightly postponed due to changes necessary for GDPR and memory leaks wreaking havoc on stability and performance. These seem to be fixed as of today, so very soon you will be able to switch over and enjoy the updated version with your fellow community members on your own terms.

In terms of development, we are currently moving along quite nicely with only small delays in features planned out internally. The benefits of the new technology are already showing themselves in the pace of implementation. We are also looking into possible solutions to issues that currently cause these delays and make sure we deliver. Let's go over the current state of development and features themselves.

We can consider finished for Experimental phase:

Hidden stash
CPR
Gestures
Repairing
UI Main Menu
Soft Skills
Environmental Exposure
Goat - Animal

Last week we have moved/continue to the review/bug fixing of:

Character Unconsciousness
Chambering Loop
Fireplace
Jump
UI Server Browser
Cooking
Weapon/Item Swap Action/Animation
Compass
Gathering Ambient Loot
Gathering Actions
Vehicles - Open/Close doors
Vehicles - Attach/Detach vehicle parts
Injured Animations

This week is dedicated to the internal implementation of:

Climbing
Weapon dispersion
Weapon zeroing
Weapons - Double Barrel
Diseases
Scopes
Enfusion Hierarchy
New Input System
Action Animations
Collisions during melee

So you might be asking yourself when these things hit Stress Test and Experimental branches. We plan to switch over a bunch of these very soon, and you can expect to have these available in batches over the coming weeks. However, we want to aim for at least unconscious state to be finished in different edge cases. As of now, there are still small issues with ladder/water unconscious state interactions that are not ready for the Stress Test, but this week we should see them fixed and as such moved to the Stress Test branch alongside many other new features and content.

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Viktor

Hello everyone, today I would like to share with you in this short update what the animation team has been working on for the past weeks and what is going on at the moment. Obviously, the player character is important to us, so we continue improving its behaviour and what it can do.

At the moment, we are revisiting some of the animations and improving them, or replacing them with better ones. This includes melee combat and its attacks. There have been some animation changes to better represent which item is the player attacking with, like a new sprint-attack with the baseball bat. Also, a lot of work has been put into finger poses so that the character is holding various items the best way it can. Some of the recent animation additions include the new IZH43 animation set, and some gestures like nodding head, shrug, and "OK".

One of the more significant improvements to player locomotion is the ability to jump over obstacles. The feature is still work-in-progress, as well as the animations, but the character is now able to overcome small objects that are in his way by jumping over them. We are now in the process of adding all the animation variations for different directions and items in hands. At the same time, our programmer is working on the climbing for players and soon, we will start implementing animations for it.

As we also started tidying up some animations and features, there is an ongoing work on player actions. This includes polishing of existing animations, some graph tweaks, but also some new animations to better visualize what the character is doing. Our Technical Animator Adam will share more details on what was happening over the past weeks regarding various animation improvements related to these actions.

Make sure to check out the gifs for the baseball bat attack, cutting down bushes and, jumping.

Cheers!

- Viktor Kostík / Lead Animator

Dev Update/Adam Oresten

For the past couple of weeks, I have been hard at work revamping, tweaking, and creating animations for many various actions. User actions are the backbone of the game, and as such, they require thought out implementation; what items can they be done with? What stances are they realistic in? Should the character be able to move during the action? All of these play a huge role in their realization, concept, and execution.

I’ve implemented animations for on back actions (mainly important ones; drinking, eating, etc), tweaked some action animations to be faster or slower and cutting out unnecessary parts, depending on which type of action. I’ve also created and implemented animations for placing heavy items (barrels, generators, etc) and smaller items (bear traps, mines, etc), and I’ve also revamped the horticulture action animations, such as cutting down a tree with a two-handed axe, or one-handed hatchet, cutting down bushes, and getting bark from trees with knives or machetes. As a part of these actions, I also implemented some smaller QoL (quality of life) representative action animations for viewing compass and viewing the map to properly convey what the player is currently doing.

We’re in “full steam ahead” mode with the actions and their corresponding animations, and every week we’re working on new actions and polishing the animations for the ones we already have!

- Adam Oresten / Technical Animator

Dev Update/Adam Franců

In our Status Report from 22 November 2016[dayz.com], we shared our plans to upgrade SimulWeather/TrueSky - a 3rd party library used to render volumetric clouds in DayZ. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, we had to ultimately cancel this plan and rather focus our attention on the current implementation that is present in DayZ since the beginning of Early Access. This has not only allowed us to make necessary performance adjustments but also to take a closer look at the visuals of clouds and what could be improved within the limits of the current implementation. Here is a short summary of what has been changed:

Regarding performance improvements we have reached a point, where we have decided to remove the ability to disable volumetric clouds on the client side - this change will take an effect once revamp of graphical options is finalized. There have been major changes in the cloud configuration, which are mainly aimed to make the clouds more visible and distinct from the skybox background. We improved the interaction of fog (in distance and height) and volumetric clouds, so that clouds should blend better with the horizon when it is foggy.

The silver lining effect of clouds has been greatly boosted during the early to late sunrises and sunsets. The movement speed of clouds during windy conditions has been reduced and we've brought additional improvements to the skybox background textures (overcast-dependent) along with some minor tweaks to the global lighting config to support the changes in the skybox and volumetric clouds.

In addition to the changes of clouds, we have also taken a look again at the visuals of rain. These new changes include:

Closeup raindrops are much more visible now.
Re-added effect that tries to visualize light refraction on raindrops.
Fogginess parameter has been tweaked so the rain blends better with the background.
Closeup rain drops are more visible during the night-time around light sources.
Rain speed has been increased.

Both clouds and rain changes should be available to test once the next major Stress Test branch update happens. We are looking forward to your feedback on these improvements!

- Adam Franců / Map Designer

Dev Update/Filip Čenžák

Hi all,

The latest sound feature we started to work on are voice sounds for the character. So far we've implemented breathing when the character runs out of stamina, the sounds for holding breath while aiming in iron sight mode. and hit reactions when the character takes damage. We plan to add more sounds to create a more immersive character representation. Some of the sounds will be connected to animations, like grunts while jumping, or picking up heavy items, or sounds to emphasize melee combat. Others should be connected to character states, like the feeling of hunger or representation of disease.

So far, all sounds are placeholders and in some cases, only male sounds are played.

- Filip Čenžák / Sound Designer

Community Spotlight

Hello everyone, the last two weeks were both really exciting and busy for us.

The release of Experimental was a big milestone all of us have been looking forward to for a long time. Even though we are aware of some issues on Experimental, we are happy, that you finally can play 0.63 almost whenever you want. If you haven't done it already, check our Highlight page[dayz.com] featuring all the good stuff from this update!

[dayz.com]

Another big event was our Community Live Stream. We knew that just a day after the release of 0.63 Experimental, there were going to be a lot of questions. Unfortunately, after announcing the stream, our beloved Eugen got sick and it was clear, that he wouldn’t be able to attend the stream. We still wanted to hold on to our promise and decided to take it as an opportunity to do our first Community Live Stream. We introduced new members of our Community team, opened Boydy's package (thanks again!) and tried to answer as many questions as possible even without the devs.

As I said before, we had a Community Live Stream. I just want to explain what it means. In future, we want to stream in two formats – a developer and a community stream. On developer streams, you can expect information directly from devs and detailed answers for your questions. The second format is more community-related. Our community team wants to talk with the community about events, content from creators and all the stuff from you because you are really important to us. We tried the first community stream and we had a lot of technical difficulties (as always, it is not fun without it, is it?). Here is the VOD from the stream:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/273523726

You asked who made the music on the stream. It is a member of our community from the Netherlands called L_K_P1 [soundcloud.com]who makes DayZ inspired music and we love it in the dev team! The song from the stream is named DayZ meme and here it is if you are interested:

Soundcloud[soundcloud.com]

Do you need a new wallpaper? I have a cool one for you made by ChernoMerlo from the DrDesync’s screenshot.

And here is another one. I have it on my desktop already!

Shane O’Sullivan sent me a really interesting piece of a newspaper. It is named Bohemian Post and he made it by himself. There you can find news about the infection spreading across Chernarus.

Now I want to show you a special project by DayZUnderground called #TwitterPlay. It is an interactive DayZ story within Twitter and it is updated daily. People are making a story through their votes in polls and they can decide what happened with a survivor, about whom the story is. It is a really nice idea and we love it! Join the story and make your own part! You can find the latest part HERE.

Cage, who we met personally at Pax East, sent us his custom advertisement inspired by our Nota Cola and Pipsi drinks and they are pretty creative.

And the last two pieces of content are videos. The first one is a cinematic trailer about surviving in Chernarus and it is sick. Everyone from the dev team loves it, this is amazing work by HookOak Productions!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAqpdS7FwtE

The last short clip is made by our loyal member NeuroticEUROtic and he is sharing his feelings when Experimental was near.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtOjKsAiWdk

Time for a riddle. The riddle from the latest Status Report wasn't so hard, the rock is situated on the North-West of Svetlojarsk above the train yard. Who guessed it right?

Megamente
Polski Tytan
Beehive1982
Kerbo

This time we prepared this picture with Adam:

If you know where is it, tweet it to our official Twitter account with #DayZriddleTime and you can be on the wall of fame next time. Thank you guys for your content and I hope you will share your creation with us next time!

- Baty / Community Manager

Header image by WaffelsBR.

DayZ 0.63 Experimental Update

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 16:51 CEST

Dear Survivors,

today, we are releasing the DayZ 0.63 Update to the Experimental branch! With this update, you’ll be able to experience some of the key engine changes brought to DayZ. Developing this new technology backbone for the game took the better part of the past 4 years in Early Access, and we’re very happy that we can finally let everyone play what we call “the new DayZ”.

Check out this article for more information. [dayz.com]

Status Report - 5 June 2018

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 21:26 CEST

To start off this Status Report, we are going to let Stress Test #18 run over night, so have a good time. Today, Eugen is going to talk about the upcoming weeks as our Stress Test versions gain more and more stability. Peter gives an introduction to the conditions of our new Central Economy system and Adam explains the ongoing changes to the Balota airfield. We close with some of the most memorable highlights of our community. Let's dive into it!

Dev Update/Eugen
Dev Update/Peter
Dev Update/Adam
Community Spotlight

Dev Update/Eugen

Dear Survivors,

As we are pushing a large amount of fixes into the current Stress Test Branch, our aim is to stabilize the build enough to launch an Experimental Branch that will be available on official Experimental severs, as well as community servers, as server owners will be able to switch over. We expect the 0.62 Stable to be played less often and we will move server resources to Experimental depending on the player interest.

We expect a couple more Stress Tests to be happening this week, aimed at least a couple fixes for crashes and locked character issues. We would like to confirm these fixes over the next couple of days and have the build available during the weekend for an extended Stress Test. This will be the version we will be launching for all the players interested in moving to experimental.
In the meantime, we have planned out the features that will be reviewed and connected to the new engine. This is done on the Internal branch of development and will move over to the Experimental in bundles. Last week we have moved to review/bug fixing of:

Hidden stashes
Chambering loop (Enabling weapon classes such as the Mosin in-game)
Character - Unconsciousness
CPR
Gestures
Repairing
UI - Main Menu Polished
Sensors audibility/visibility (Infected)
Sheep/animations, behavior

This week is dedicated to the implementation of:

Softskills
Fireplace
Environmental exposure
Jump
Weapons - double barrel
UI - Server Browser Polished
Goat/animations, behaviour

When these features will hit experimental, soon after the Experimental release we expect to switch over and keep doing Stress Tests for the newer builds before they move on to Experimental. The process itself is focused on connecting these features to the new character as a lot of them have been under development for a long time now. Each week we aim to deliver the implementation and dedicate the second week to bug fixing. Switching these over to Experimental will be done depending on the feature review and the community feedback that might affect priorities.
- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Peter

The new Central Economy (CE) is in charge of the spawn and clean up of items, infected, animals, vehicles and dynamic events. It is easier to setup than the old CE and allows us to be more flexible with the categorization and areas of occurrence. A more precise placement can be achieved as well. After a series of internal tests during its implementation, we deployed it to DayZ 0.63. The CE is a complex system, as its behaviour develops over time and reacts to player interaction. Testing on our side was limited in scale and time.

To check how the new Central Economy is behaving on a mass scale in the wild, we gathered data during the 11th Stress Test. From 18.5. to 20.5. we saved the storage files every hour across all servers which were constantly under full load. Loading this data back into the game allowed us to reconstruct how the CE behaved over time.

From all the items spawned by the CE we picked the ones that are crucial for survival - food (beans, spaghetti, peaches, sardines, tuna), drinks (Cola, Pipsi, Spite, Kvass, water bottle) and firearms (Makarov, FNX45, Skorpion, IZH18, MP5, UMP45, AKM). The presented data is from the UK 0-8 server. The overview maps show where these items were spawned over time and similarly, the graphs show their overall quantity on the map over time (note that one dot means at least one item or more). To put things into context there is also a map of character spawn areas.

Areas of character spawns along the coast.

https://youtu.be/TnqF2boItvI
An animated occurrence of food across the map from Friday to Sunday.

Amounts of food across the map from Friday to Sunday.

Positions of food in the map at its lowest, Saturday 11:00.

Amounts of drinks across the map from Friday to Sunday.

Positions of drinks on the map at their lowest, Saturday 09:00.

Amounts of firearms across the map from Friday to Sunday.

Positions of firearms on their map at their lowest, Saturday 15:00.

From available data granularity, it can be seen that in general, there have been enough food and drinks across the map to survive, as well as firearms to provide empowerment of survivors. Interestingly, the sum of all initially spawned food in 0.62 is lower than the sum of all spawned food at their minimal quantity in 0.63 (when an item hits its minimum threshold it will start to respawn back to its initial value). It would be nice to see players adapting to a new mindset of getting prepared before starting their next trip by checking more houses and structures at their location.

However, there are things which will be addressed down the road to improve the CE behaviour and its balance. It’s clear that some parts of the map are rather empty, especially in the bottom right corner. In such cases, areas for character spawns will be tweaked and more structures will be added where it makes sense. That goes hand in hand with lowering the safe radius around characters which prevents items to pop up, as in high traffic areas this can cause the lockout of entire cities.

Next, it’s the settings of the CE itself playing the decisive role. The randomisation of the lifetime of more common items has to be set in a greater range, as we noticed there were cleanups of large amounts at once causing noticeable dips. Moreover, the difference between nominal and minimal values of an item makes items spread across map even more unevenly. Most importantly, the short time frame we had to ‘boot up’ the new Central Economy and the truncated list of given items to spawn, led to a sub-optimal items categorization and defined tier zones. This is the area of the CE which will become crucial when more items start to flow back into the game and we really need to nail it.

With the new Central Economy we definitely have a great toolset to tune loot and its distribution as good as possible, but given the nature and complexity of it, it will take some time.

Let the looting begin... see you in Chernarus folks!
- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

Dev Update/Adam

As mentioned in our Status Report from April 25, we are re-designing Chernogorsk and its surroundings. If you have played on the 0.63 Stress Test Branch and visited this area, you may have seen where we are heading with this re-design. I should remind you that map changes, unlike other parts of the game, are something that is not receiving updates on the Stress Test Branch that often, because of the difficulties with the branching of map data. Anyway, I am happy to say that quite a lot of progress has been made over the past few weeks and we are nearing the final stages of polishing and optimizing the overall area.

If you have played the more recent versions of the 0.63 Stress Test Branch, you may have also noticed that we have decided to re-design the Balota airfield. This change was planned for a long time and originally set to be made at a later stage of development, but since the re-design of Chernogorsk is covering the area from Balota to Elektro, we have decided to include the Balota airfield re-design in it too. Balota is such an odd spot for any type of airfield to begin with, but we feel the need for a number of airfields across the Chernarus.

Now with the NWAF re-design close to being done, we have got a proper military airbase on the map and we feel like there is no need to have other military air bases. And so the airfield was completely de-militarised, the concrete runway was removed and the whole airfield was rotated a bit more facing inland (so the corridor is pointing away from inhabited areas). Given the relatively small and odd place, we have decided to transform this airfield into a local airstrip, maintained by a local flying club and have re-used NEAF buildings to support this idea (and if you ask, yes, we do have further plans for NEAF too, but not for 0.63). To give this newly re-designed airfield a backstory, it has been captured by the military forces, with most of its entrances sealed off by mostly improvised structures.

- Adam Franců / Map Designer

Community Spotlight

Hello guys,

Let's check out what the community has for us after two weeks.

I need to start with something really sad. Our community lost one of its members and a great streamer. Jen, known as Poisonantler[www.twitch.tv], died under unfortunate circumstances on 8th March. We decided among the dev team to commemorate her by placing a small cross and a bench in the place where she disconnected for the last time.

Our Brand Manager Martin Čulák accepted an invitation from our favourite Australian content creator Boydy and joined him in his podcast. Check it out, you can find interesting info in the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT50aSzwUFg

I didn't expect much from a video with just walkie-talkie recording. But I was really surprised by how entertaining the video is. This is a recording of a few people's conversations from The Village server which has a very interesting ending. I really recommend to check it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QilcAfCPMxQ

It is good to see that hand painting is not dead. This DayZ logo on a canvas made by danyuls0n's girlfriend makes us happy. We hope it is already hanging on the wall somewhere near a PC.

I know we didn't have a location riddle for a long time. Our Twitter is now overwhelmed, because of Stress Tests, so we need to identify the riddle tweets. Just tweet the location with #DayZriddleTime hashtag and I will find it!

Have a nice day(Z), Survivors!

- Baty / Community Manager

Header image by zombi.

Status Report - 22 May 2018

Tue, 22 May 2018 19:19 CEST

Following the 0.63 Stress Test weekend we are back with a new issue of our biweekly Status Report. Today, Eugen looks back at the first results from the weekend, Peter talks about missing visual indicators in the current Stress Test builds and Viktor gives a glimpse into the progress of the animation team. The Community Spotlight is defined by your first reactions to 0.63. Let's dive into it!

Dev Update/Eugen
Dev Update/Peter
Dev Update/Viktor
Community Spotlight

Dev Update/Eugen

Dear Survivors,
at first, I would like to thank you for the amazing participation during the weekend Stress Test. It has helped us to identify a number of new issues that we are investigating as I write this. Let's take a closer look at some of those issues.

Crashes and general game stability issues

There have been about 200 crashes altogether over the period of two days with a couple of different causes. Some of them are new, but most are known. Hopefully, the amount of data generated will identify the pattern to replicating these issues internally and getting them fixed.

Character locked in database

Besides the stability issues, we are still tracking situations where a player character gets locked in a database. Although happening less often than previously, this is still a major problem that is most likely tied to a server/client crash/freeze not closing the connection gracefully, and not unlocking the character as intended. We have a possible fix for these outlier issues and crashes in our internal main Development Branch of the game and should roll these out in next few Stress Tests.

Basic Central Economy balance

There is an investigation ongoing into Central Economy loot distribution. Specifically, we're looking at cases where the intended gameplay loop is not properly supported by items presented/spawned to players exploring even the most remote corners of Chernarus.

DayZ Central Economy

The Central Economy is a complex system that controls the distribution of loot across Chernarus. It's supposed to sustain a barrage of ongoing player interaction on a given server (player picking up and dropping loot, taking it across different servers...), with the goal to keep the core gameplay loop during a gameplay session challenging, encouraging players to learn, and eventually master the survival in DayZ. At the same time though, it needs to be a fun gameplay mechanic.

It's important to note that the Stress Tests are our first real opportunity to really see how the Central Economy behaves in 0.63, as we're just not able to internally reproduce the behavior of large amount of players in the game. That ultimately puts us at the very beginning of all the balancing. During Stress Tests, we are extracting economy states over periods of time to understand the players movement and their interactions. This in turn helps us understand where our priorities should be within the spawning system.

The second part of our loot/basic survival mechanic problem is the character representation itself - meaning how healthy/hungry/thirsty your character is. That sets the pace to this core gameplay loop of keeping your character fed and alive. Any potential tweaking of character representation values depends on the findings of our loot distribution tests. We will have to cover a lot of possible border cases that happen to players.

Additionally, we will (as previously suggested) also play around with the overall player numbers per server, and we will need to see how to scale the Central Economy with the player numbers going up, possibly all the way to a 100 players per server.

How do we prepare the Stress Test release packages

Since I've mentioned our internal Development Branch earlier, I also wanted to explain the process behind the scenes that goes into releasing a Stress Test itself. Internally, we have created a new branch of DayZ for data and changes that we specifically need to run public Stress Tests.

Software Branching

Branching, in revision control[en.wikipedia.org] and software configuration management[en.wikipedia.org], is the duplication of an object under revision control (such as asource code[en.wikipedia.org] file or a directory tree[en.wikipedia.org]) so that modifications can happen in parallel along both branches. More in a related Wikipedia article[en.wikipedia.org].

We've been merging various fixes and surgical tweaks to the game on that branch, while the regular development has been ongoing on our main Development Branch. With Stress Tests, we are trying to gather data on specific problems that require a high-stress environment with tons of players coming in and out of the server, pushing all gameplay systems to their limits. That is specifically the case with loot distribution and all player interactions tied to it.

Stabilizing these interactions and making them somewhat consistent with a decent amount of variety is our primary goal. We want you to experience that feeling of discovery when you find what you need at a certain moment. Especially if it's a rare item. Looting is a big part of the DayZ gameplay, we know how much this can affect the enjoyment from fighting for your life in Chernarus, so with each Stress Test, we set a goal and a particular combination of data that we want to gather within a specific gameplay element or system. Then, we add extra logging to these interactions, helping us to decide on the next action we should be taking.

It's only a small part of the development though. The Development Branch has seen a lot of additional optimizations already, even including fixes to several different issues that you have been experiencing, so our goal now is to leave the Stress Test branch to keep the development pace going forward. Our Development Branch is where the progress towards experimental goals happens, so it's about time we make sure this branch is viable for live playtests. To ensure we really are ready to do that switch, we will release a short Stress Test based on the code/data of that branch before we go on for another longer Stress Test.

Once again, I want to say a BIG thank you for the feedback coming in, it's what makes this community special. All of us want a great game, no doubts about it!

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Peter

In the last Status Report I was commenting on the community feedback regarding firearms in our DayZ Stress Tests. Today I will continue with different elements which are related to them.

Weapon switching animations

As is pretty obvious, the animations for swapping items from the inventory to the hand slot are missing. Especially with weapons, this creates a gameplay problem, as a lack of visual communication turns a harmless disarmed character into a threat in a split second.

Currently we are implementing these item switch animations and, along with them, we are changing one important thing - shoulder slots will be no longer be dedicated. That means you will be able to carry two long firearms or two melee weapons as needed. As we progress with 0.63, a slot for a belt will also be added, opening possibilities for an additional pistol holster, knife sheet, or quiver. A slot for the bow is considered as well, but there needs to be a bow implemented first to see how it will work with non-dedicated shoulders.

Hit feedback

Another part missing is animation feedback of a target being hit with a projectile, as we turned that specific feature off for the Stress Test. We ran into a problem where even additive impact affected the aim of a firearm. Such an authentic affair quickly becomes a very unpleasant mechanic, preventing a reaction by putting you in a disadvantage after being hit - the only chance was that the shooter will miss or have to reload so your aim can recover in the meantime. We will have to address this issue as we would like to have animated feedback following a projectile hit.

Bleeding

On a different issue, bleeding and its treatment are basic DayZ mechanics. Unfortunately, without the new parent-child hierarchy, which is being implemented as we speak, we cannot pin particle emitters to the character properly and animate them with it. We've decided to postpone the visual representation of bleeding particles as well. Admittedly, this is a bad timing, as in 0.63 you have to treat every bleeding source individually. With slightly unresponsive progress arrows of the blood stat icon (more about indicators later) and no way to tell if there are some bleeding wounds left, it’s hard to say how many times you should bandage.

Overall balance

Apart from that, please be aware that many elements you see in the game right now have not been not through a basic balance pass just yet. From digestion, regeneration speeds and stamina, through damages of melee and projectiles to the weight of items, their sizes, and cargo spaces... it’s safe to say that basically everything will be adjusted more or less and it is connected to some degree with the lack of features, mechanics, and content, which will be added down the road during the 0.63 Experimental phase.

Oh, and it will be a ride... see you in Chernarus folks!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

Dev Update/Viktor

The animation team is now focused on several parts of the player character. We are now in the phase of improving and finalizing the prone system. Animations for crawling in prone on the back, which have been missing until now, are being added. The cameras and some poses are not final yet as well. And of course, after the animations are finished, we will have to do a couple of rounds of bugfixing for prone on the back before we tick it off as done.

Another important part that is in progress, is overcoming obstacles. We now have a working prototype for jumping, but we are still in the process of adding missing animations. Meanwhile, there has been some work done on climbing over higher obstacles. These are divided into multiple levels, and different animations will be played depending on the height of the obstacle.

Close combat will see some changes as well. As we want to have more variation to the combat, we are adding new animations for the baseball bat. These should better reflect the item. In the future, we want to continue with this and add more item specific attack animations.

Last but not least, there is ongoing work on firearms, vehicles, user actions, infected and also tons of general bugfixing. All of these areas are a longer term task, but you should see constant improvements in the game with everything related during Experimental. But for now, let's check out some gifs! Cheers!

- Viktor Kostík / Lead Animator

Community Spotlight

Hey Survivors,

I hope you had a weekend at least as amazing as I did! Why was it so amazing? Because of you! You were simply being a fantastic help during the Stress Test! 30 482 of you have already tried the first version of update 0.63. Wow, thank you! We've had so much feedback, that I wasn't able to read it all in just one day!

We were watching streamers the entire weekend and we are really happy to see your love for DayZ. You had a lot of fun, we saw all the emotions, it was so awesome.

For a while, DayZ was the second most watched game on Twitch this weekend, it reached more than 76 000 viewers and it has been played by some of the biggest streamers such as Summit1g[t.co], Anthony Kongphan[t.co] or shroud[twitch.tv] and they were having a good time too.

https://clips.twitch.tv/SweetSingleSparrowUnSane?tt_content=player_title&tt_medium=clips_embed

https://clips.twitch.tv/SmokyAstuteSharkPeteZaroll?tt_content=player_title&tt_medium=clips_embed

https://clips.twitch.tv/BetterImpossibleAniseBIRB?tt_content=player_title&tt_medium=clips_embed

You did a great job with videos this week.

I found this cinematic made by DaGuyd and it is pretty impressive. Check it out, it is only under 2 minutes long:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlDXNh2oTdI

Another cinematic short named Loot Lost is made by our favorite Status Report reader Septic Falcon. And we like it a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Iu0gJhTZpk

And here is a creepy story about a cannibal doctor who loves the flesh of his patients by MarcusGalic. Eating people is bad, isn't it? Who knows…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPKrkNui700

Look at this true hero! His name is Reginald and he is a humanitarian in Chernarus. His mission is help to people and he is very good at it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL3oMU62or4

The last video is from the well known double trouble creators - Vertiigo and MrMoon. It is a really funny story of friends lost in the wilderness - they are best friends until the hunger comes… I almost died laughing watching this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZNxnoxXLEY

I love your creativity and your passion for DayZ on both real and virtual paper. Art pieces like these make me happy and I thank you for them.

This one is made by AStupidAnt from Reddit. It took him about 4 hours and he did a really good job.

This photo is from a true DayZ fan, ScarecrowCOD. He even has a gas mask! And check the painting on the wood he made. Nice!

That is all from me, have great two weeks and see you on the next Stress Test!

- Baty / Community Manager

Header image by BubsonHD.

Status Report - May 8, 2018

Tue, 08 May 2018 20:37 CEST

Following an entire week of Stress Tests, the team has gathered around to report on the results of our first public testing phases for 0.63. We’ve received so much feedback from you guys and we’re going to dive right into it; but first, there is someone you probably haven’t read in a long time!

Dev Update/Brian
Dev Update/Eugen
Dev Update/Peter
Dev Update/Mirek
Dev Update/Filip
Community Spotlight

Dev Update/Brian

Greetings Survivors,

I can't begin to tell you how great it has felt for myself, for Peter, and honestly for the whole team to see all of your reactions to the work that has been done on .63, and DayZ as a whole. For what seems like years, a big part of the team (especially Design and Animation) have worked on documentation and internal prototypes without hardly any feedback. To finally be able to start sharing some of this with you all (and thanks to platforms like Twitch, Youtube, Mixer, etc - SEE) and hear your thoughts has been the most uplifting since the Early Access launch on Steam.

It’s a good day for DayZ and the DayZ community. I can not wait for .63 to hit experimental (and stable as well of course!) and begin to be able to spend more time with you all in this new DayZ experience in longer play sessions.

With that said - I feel DayZ has reached a point in which I, much like how Dean felt years back - am no longer needed. I've spent years talking to you all, working with the team, and collaborating with Peter on where we want DayZ to be, how we want DayZ to feel. Now that you have started to see, and touch DayZ .63 I feel like our plans, our dreams are finally within grasp. Peter Nespešný and the design team have a rock-solid grasp of what DayZ is, and what it needs to be. All of our systems have been discussed, documented, and discussed again.

For the last year, I have been slowly taking more and more of a back seat (as I'm sure some of you have noticed) and tried to push folks like Peter, Adam, and others to let their voice be heard. Over that year I have made plans for what is next for me and worked for free with Peter Nespešný in a design consultant role.
I won't lie - it hasn't been easy, and there have been times where Peter and I both were uncertain about how .63 would be received, or how it would perform under full-scale load. I don't want to be a broken record - but I am so happy that all of those concerns have been washed away.

DayZ has been my life, made my life - and been so ingrained in who and what I am that I won't be able to just walk away. Hell, I've just crossed 7,000 hours between two accounts. From here, I look forward to opportunities back home in the States, being closer to family, and playing DayZ as much as I possibly can. I certainly have not forgotten my promise to TSM Smak to do a 24-hour stream when DayZ hits 1.0.

See you out there in Chernarus folks, the sun is rising and the future looks bright.

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

Dev Update/Eugen

Dear Survivors,
before I start, I have to thank Brian for his contribution to DayZ over the years and wish him the best in his future endeavors. His passion is an inspiration to many. And I’m pretty sure we will be seeing each other in DayZ all the time :). I know we both wish for the game to grow and improve and finally testing the 0.63 has been a step in the right direction although a lot of work remains to be done.

On that note, I want to thank you for participating in the last few stress tests. Feedback is coming in from every channel and we read all of it; from our forums, Reddit, Twitter, and more. I noticed a couple of topics that are coming up, and I want you to know we will be looking at these in the testing of both stress test build and experimental. We will prioritize resolving issues depending on their severity or their impact on the gameplay, while also working on more advanced features like climbing, vehicles and base building alongside that. I want to remind everybody that these will be part of the experimental build but probably won’t appear in its first iteration. It is extremely important to test these during experimental because as soon as we move the build to the stable branch, we want to focus on bug-fixing and tweaking. Don’t forget that as soon as we hit experimental, customer servers will be able to switch over.

Now let’s get back to the things that were tested thanks to Offline DayZ being available, although it is definitely not representing the DayZ experience yet.

Distant sounds, not hearing a gun or where is it coming from, or megaphone audio not traveling far enough; all of these things require tweaking as most of the initial configuration has not seen a revision yet, we will be looking into these as we progress with experimental.
Distant lights, either a flash from a gun or a camp far far away; now these issues sadly have no simple solution, but we are talking about possibilities and will experiment with those as we get further down the development.

Inventory visuals and functionality; a lot of the underlying tech is in, and visuals are still WIP. However, there are a lot of things we want to improve and work on during the ongoing testing. We want the game to feel physical and consistent in its behavior, as well as making sure things are telegraphed to a player when they need to be, focusing on the user experience of crafting and manipulation. The idea is there it just needs a lot of bug-fixing and tweaks.

Besides the issues mentioned above there is an amazing amount of gameplay feedback, from the crosshair interactions, reload mechanics, aiming, shooting, controls, actions and more. We will be looking at what has been said and discussed and I know Peter will talk about these in much more detail over the next few status reports. As already mentioned before our next goal is multiplayer testing with infected and I’m definitely looking forward to that one!

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Peter

Two weeks passed since the first Stress Test of DayZ 0.63. In the meantime, there have been another three more Stress Tests plus we added the possibility to play in an offline mode if you are interested in trying out what’s on the table with the “new” DayZ.

During this time we gathered a lot of qualitative and constructive feedback from you - our community, which I am very glad for (read past Status Report to find more about my feelings designing something without feedback for so long). Now I would like to comment on the most important things through the Status Report, which is the most effective way on how to reach most of our players.

As most of you know, our goal is to make everything to feel as tangible as possible, so you really need to be making things over time, at least most of the core actions. In this respect, we chose to have reactive raise of hands. To maintain the active stance, in which you can endanger others or defend yourself against them, you need to hold a dedicated button. Once you remove your hands from controls, the character should be rendered as relaxed and harmless. Telegraphing intentions and what’s going on is one of the most important aspects of DayZ.

However, from feedback it seems like there is no problem with holding raise to become actionable, but more with the actual switching to iron sights while the firearm is raised. Currently, this is bound to MMB/LSHIFT, which obviously feels awkward and clunky, especially when it’s on another hand than the one controlling aim and shooting itself. One solution is to a double-click of raise and then hold it to enter ADS directly, but unfortunately, proof of concept which was available in first Stress Test, was implemented in a very crude way and it felt very unpleasant, confusing and it did not meet with understanding.

Personally, I think a chain of actions is fine, firstly I’m raising my firearm to do some immediate shooting or I enter aiming down sights to get better precision, especially on mid to long range. On the other hand, I know that I will be upset finding myself in an advantageous sniper position and having to hold raise for the whole time waiting for the right moment to strike the target. I can assure you that we are very aware of this discrepancy and we want to solve it. As many of you already suggested, and we are tending to it for some time already, the solution is to simply have raise still on hold, but ADS (aim down sights) togglable from a lowered stance. While I’m not a huge fan of such kind of “togglability” of states (you won’t believe me how much it triggers me off watching friendly survivors talking by a fire while aiming at each other's faces), we will definitely try some other ways to address this until we end up with implementing this simplest solution.

Another thing which is causing some tables flipping around is ‘hip fire’, respectively how accurate it is. Actually, it’s not hip fire, as the firearm is in the same position as while being ADS - the only difference between these two is the camera position - but for simplicity’s sake let’s call it ‘hip fire’. In the first place, it needs to be clear that ‘hip fire’ is not meant to be accurate by any means. It should be used for immediate reactions at very close ranges. Anyways advantage of it in its current state is coming from several factors. I already mentioned non-ergonomic switching to ADS above. First off we changed how the direction of the projectile trajectory is calculated while shooting from ‘hip fire’. Currently, it’s always heading from the weapon to the center of the screen. In the previous version .62, bullets were always fired out in the direction of a barrel of a gun, which didn’t make sense to anyone, which led us to introduce a floating crosshair to show where the barrel is pointing at (you kinda know to estimate that direction even when firing from hip IRL). However hunting this floating crosshair which is jumping across the screen like crazy is unpleasant and in the end, doesn’t make sense. So why not simply shoot towards the center of the screen - hence the change. Of course, the current implementation has a few worst cases where it’s not working properly or very badly to be honest, but those will be fixed one by one.

Another thing is that after the rewrite of the weapons we are missing implementation of dispersion - random cone-shaped spread defined by angle. Previously it was used as kind of an inaccuracy from the manufacturing process where long barrel weapons were most accurate and short barrel ones were least. We are not using it anymore as I think ‘fighting’ some random nonsense on mid to long ranges is over the top, as players are already challenged enough by mechanics like sway, recoil, zeroing, actual bullet speed and drop - all that combined with character movement, which is enough. However, if it’s applied only while using ‘hip fire’ it can help to introduced much welcomed inaccuracy on mid to long ranges. For now, we will try to address it with modified sway while not in ADS to see how it works out.

Next thing is the overly precise crosshair for ‘hip fire’. The former crosshair was ugly for sure, but in its size, it wasn’t precise at all, thus it was hard to assess the center of the screen, but still good enough to show the direction of shots. After a massive outcry about how ugly the crosshair is, we change its look as it is very simple to do - and to show you how a simple change can have a huge impact on gameplay, which, not surprisingly, you don’t like. In the past during internal playtest we ran a series of tests without a crosshair, but people were mostly unable to shoot anything even on close ranges during stress situations which required fast reactions. Personally, I’m for the complete removal of the crosshair, but then there are plenty of 3rd party software or monitors allowing to overlay crosshair on screen, making it unfair to those playing fair. By the way, you can disable crosshair (along with dot) from options (game>crosshair>off). Forcing disable of crosshairs will be also available server side.

As a mix of all the above, there is a possible exploit now with ‘hip fire’ where you can fire immediately after pressing the button for raising firearm where the dot can be abused for super precise aim. Of course, this will be fixed down the road.

Advanced firearms manipulation and subsequently accentuate usage of quick slots as pockets with instant access to items in them, is related to the philosophy of DayZ’s survival element - being prepared for possible things to come. Using quick slots for anything else beyond the switch of items in hands is not standard at all and it needs some time to get used to it for sure. Compared to old DayZ (.62 and previous versions), we changed loading weapons to hold-action, instead of just click, for a reason that weapons with internal magazines will be loaded continuously - same as how feeding detachable magazines works now. Next, we enriched the usage of quick slots for initiating any combining actions, basically crafting, but I have to see someone to using it like that yet, as it can save a lot of time and inventory access.

Anyways quick slots have that disadvantage that they are kind non-ergonomic, especially for hold-actions which is of course a problem. Just the fact, that R key isn’t working as it’s used to work across all action games, which is so deeply rooted standard, inflames most of the players. I would like to point out, that currently, we cannot present you the big picture, where the pieces fit together - and that’s manually charged firearms like bolt action rifles or pump shotgun - which internal magazines can be continuously loaded and have to be manually charged prior to every shot, where R is used for now as it’s manipulation using a mechanism of the weapon. Even if it will be still unclear and uncomfortable after that, we have already plan B prepared, which makes R key to behave in ways people are more accustomed to. In that case, R would reload magazine or chamber (most probably from pre-prepared items in quick slots) while holding R would manipulate with the mechanism, or unjam it in such chase. We will be able to see and evaluate once manual firearms are implemented.

There is also critique regarding weak recoil. It’s good to know, that the new system for recoil is good, however, there is only one setting used across all weapons for now if I’m not mistaken. As it was tweaked for low caliber pistol, of course, it seems very off using an AKM. Better recoil patterns will be added gradually.

From other stuff related to gunplay which is also being questioned is hold breath. To be more specific - its default keybind, which is currently set to left CTRL. At first it seems to be non-ergonomic, but on the other hand, it makes sense as it’s paired with the walk modifier. With the upcoming new input controller we will separate these actions from each other, so we will be able to bind them independently. It’s worth to mention that most actions of the new character are hardwired to the actions of the old one which is gone for a long time now. This means we are in some occasions limited in achieving the desired result (for example we are still missing hold-action for environment interaction - currently bound to F, which limits us in the introduction of continuous actions, like drinking from the pond). Until the new input controller is in I would advise you to not rebind controls as it can completely mess up a new character in some cases.

Seems like I already made it into a solid wall of text even as I wanted to comment on other stuff as well in no particular order, like weapon changing animations, bleeding, hit impacts, falling, stamina, HUD and tendency icons, headbob, fake inertia, clipping issues in FPP, inventory, infected behavior, melee combat, balancing in general, lack of content and more. But I would better stop right there and leave those for next Status Report.

Brian, thank you for all your hard work for DayZ, your passion will be missed... see you in Chernarus man!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

Dev Update/Mirek

Hello survivors,
today, I'd like to write about current Stress Tests, how they are helpful to us programmers (especially server-side stuff) and what's the plan with next Stress Tests. Secondly, I will write about our progress on the infected.

First of all, I want to thank all of you who are participating in these Stress Test sessions. They already helped us to find performance bottlenecks, some thread deadlocks, sources of crashes and connection issues. We fixed several of these issues and we're working on the rest. We've prepared some performance optimizations, which are in our internal branch and are ready for internal testing.

Our current Stress Test scenario, where all players are spawned in the same city, is probably the worst case for server performance and network traffic. Although we're quite happy with the numbers we received, we'll continue to improve performance till DayZ hits stable in version 1.0.

The next Stress Tests scenario (I'm not sure now when it will happen) will look like your ordinary DayZ session, which means that players will be spawned at different places and infected will be present. In these sessions, we will try to continuously increase player and AI numbers to see how intense we can populate Chernarus. Please keep in mind that the AI can be still buggy in these test so don't be angry if you'll be killed by infected which went through a wall (I will explain why this is happening in next paragraph).

So, now about the infected status. Some of you have met them in our recently released offline mode and noticed that they can go through obstacles sometimes. This is known to us and it's happening because we decided to save some performance on collision detection, therefore we've disabled collisions between AI units and static objects during movement - the navigation system should keep AIs on the navigation mesh and that's the reason why we disabled this collision detection. This bug is one with the highest priority and hopefully we will fix this navigation issue soon.

About infected and their features - basic movement, stealth mechanics, and fight logic are in place and we are iterating them. Designers are tweaking infected senses, which means they are balancing how infected can spot a player depending f.e. on player's stance or clothing which they wear.
We're adding some more movement features right now - turns and crawling. Crawling will be there a little bit later because not all animations are ready now for this movement state, but here you can at least see transition animations in the game:

Turning - I think it will be best if you look at these samples, to see what that means - I believe these will make stealth and fight funnier:

'

And that's all for now. As you can see, stability improvements and infected are our current milestone. Hopefully next SR we will be able to show you more from other game features.

- Miroslav Maněna / Lead Gameplay Programmer

Dev Update/Filip

Hi all,
over the last couple of weeks, we've made several improvements. We’ve implemented ambient sound attenuation for interiors and added a smooth transition between outdoor and indoor states. The number of ambient sounds that can play simultaneously is now higher plus we’ve added a few new controllers, so sound can react more dynamically to weather changes. Regarding doors, we redesigned door open/close sounds and added over 200 new sounds in the process.

On a different issue, the localization of sound sources in 0.62 did not work very well. The visual position did not correlate with the position of the sound. Especially with animals, which you can hear over long distances, this slight offset made them hard to locate. This is why we decided to redesign vector panning. We are very happy with the changes we did for stereo configuration and now we are concentrating on surround configuration.

- Filip Čenžák / Sound Designer

Community Spotlight

Hello Survivors,
it is finally beautiful weather outside, but who cares when you can play the Stress Tests! We released four Stress Tests already as well as an offline version of DayZ and we received a lot of feedback from you. We are glad you are helping us to fix all these annoying bugs and crashes.

Let's check what you've sent us through our social networks.

This is really cool. An old friend of Sweetest_Kill gave her a DayZ-themed bat with her name on it. It is a nice gift, but please, don't use it on living creatures.

Guys, I want to show you a great video made by HandZ. It has everything - sadness, regret, violence, moral decision-making, betrayal and death. Great work HandZ, it is one of the best live action videos we ever saw.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwUjeJmc66E

DickieTheChamp made a cute DayZ inspired USB. It is a small can of Pipsi and I want it so bad!

If you think it is only violence and blood in DayZ, we want to show you that you are not right. You can find love there as well. Mach and FubarBundyy can confirm we are right because they met in DayZ and they fell in love with each other. They are just celebrating one year together! So adorable!

Willkillshill shared his selfie photoshoot with us, from when he was playing on one of the Stress Test session. And it is hilarious.

And now some real Chernarus thing - on Reddit, zverus showed pictures of the real Nord East Airfield named Nalivaikivka airstrip, which is located near Kiev in Ukraine. Check it out, it is really interesting:

That is everything from me today, If you have anything you want to share with us, just send it to our official Twitter account and I will check it out!

- Baty / Community Manager

Header image by Punchy McSlap.

Status Report - 13 April 2018

Fri, 13 Apr 2018 21:14 CEST

Latest Development news from Eugen, small teasers of the upcoming changes to radios and other VoIP devices, as well as the final particle effects for gunshots, and also a nice summary of our trip to PAX East! It's not Tuesday, but it's still Status Report time, so let's read!

Contents This Week

Dev Update/Eugen
Dev Update/Jan
Dev Update/Boris
Community Spotlight

Dev Update/Eugen

Dear DayZ players.

All of us here are both playing and tweaking the version for the first Stress Test. You might be asking why it's not out yet, and how on earth we are enjoying it and not sharing that with you? :). The current state of the build, although fun and quite consistent, is still a bit unstable. And what I mean by unstable? In the worst gunfights with large numbers of players and looting, we can still see at least up to 10 different crashes averaging in up time of less than an hour. We fixed about 500 bugs so far for this Stress Test alone, and there is about 50 left. About 10 of those are crashes that have been plaguing our most recent internal playtests. The good news is that we were finally able to debug the reasons behind these, and are working on fixes as you read this.

[i.imgur.com]

Quick look at the issues that need fixing for 0.63 Experimental as of this afternoon (not including features that still need to be implemented).
Click to Enlarge[i.imgur.com]

Once these fixes are confirmed, and if nothing else pops up (usually does, but fingers crossed!), we will evaluate the state of the build again and start with Stress Testing. We are as anxious as you to get this ball rolling :).

Now for the work invested into things that are not launching with either Stress Tests or with the first Experimental build: there are about 1000 bugs fixed so far for Experimental and we are doing some heavy work on UI visuals and functionality to go beyond the basics needed to develop on the new engine. Jumping has got into the game with its first iteration and will be followed by climbing later as we polish animations and possible edge cases where players get stuck.

On the notion of having other means of movement rather than walking and running, we are still working on 0.63 vehicles, and also the first helicopter iterations for internal testing. These are still heavy work in progress as vehicles, base building, and several other features are still waiting for a commit (= implementation to the main game code) of technology that we have mentioned a couple of times: enabling hierarchy between entities in the game. We will move on to that commit once we confirm that there are no larger issues during Stress Tests.

Just to give you some scope (since I started using numbers) over the years, we have tracked around 30 000 issues and resolved about 25 000 of them, where resolving means that some have become irrelevant on their own either due to change of tech or design (Expired, Won't fix, Duplicate, As Designed and other resolution types in the chart below except for Done or Fixed). Part of the remaining unresolved issues is also related to post 1.0 content and features:

A quick look at the issues that need fixing for 0.63 Experimental as of this afternoon (not including features that still need to be implemented).

I'm excited about what's to come with the first stress test and feedback that we can work with. I'll be there trying to survive there with you! :)

Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Jan

Hello everybody!

Voice communication is something we haven't really talked about for some time. So I'm here to introduce you to the changes we've done on the gameplay side. But since this is my first Status Report, I'll start with a small introduction. My name is Jan Huňka (on the internets, I go by the nickname Zoidy) and I work on DayZ as a Gameplay Programmer specializing on networking - but I also worked on the new damage system, login/logout process and a bunch of other things.

The main goal of these changes was to make the communication as seamless as possible. As soon as your radio has a battery in, you can talk on the selected frequency. If you turn it off, you're automatically using direct communication again.

Currently, we have three types of communication devices in the game. Megaphone, personal radio and also a Public Address System.

Radios

Personal radios are very easy to use. You don't need to hold the radio in your hand, it can be anywhere nearby like in the inventory or just on the ground and you can still use it. Other survivors nearby can also use your radio if they're close enough. To transmit on larger distances, you can use big radio stations. Signal strength is based on the maximum distance. The closer you're to the maximum distance, the more noise you're gonna hear. The same goes for the text chat. The closer you're to the max distance, the more can your text message be corrupted.

Public address system (PAS)

We placed quite a few PAS loud-speakers across the cities of Chernarus and now you'll finally be able to use them. PAS broadcaster can broadcast your voice to all loud-speakers in range. You just have to stand close to the broadcaster. It is also possible for multiple players to use the broadcaster at the same time. Listening players are hearing voices of the speakers from the loud-speakers based on its distance and direction.

Megaphone

Megaphone needs to be held in hands to use and it basically allows your voice to be heard on larger distances than just talking.

Server keeps information about nearby communication devices that every player is currently able to use. This information is then cross-referenced against other players and the result is a "list" of players that you can communicate with. All voice messages and also text chat messages are routed to appropriate clients using this information. Thanks to this, you can transmit your voice to multiple devices at the same time. For example, if you want to set up some radios on different frequencies nearby your PAS broadcaster and then broadcast your amazing speech on all possible channels and PAS at the same time, it is completely possible.

Contrary to the original plan, you cannot use one device to transmit to another device. Like leave your personal radio nearby PAS broadcaster. The chains of devices that could be created using this feature could become very complex really fast. We would also need to constantly check all communication devices on the whole map to update these chains, which could get costly in terms of resources. But we'll try to keep this in mind and maybe this feature could make it to the game on some smaller scale.

We added and tweaked the sound filters for different types of devices. Radios still have their typical noise, but megaphones and public address system received some nice echo effects, so you should be able to tell what device is the source of the sound.

If, for example, there are three radios around you on the same frequency, you're gonna hear the same voice with a little echo, so you can recognise the same voice is coming from multiple sources. The echo is calculated based on the number of devices and their distance from the player.

Thanks for reading and I hope you're gonna have a lot of fun with the new communication system in Chernarus!

Jan Huňka / Gameplay Programmer

Dev Update/Boris

Survivors! I have some news from our scripting team - I'm happy to say that the system for weapon particle effects has been finished for some time now, so here is a small sample of the quality of muzzle flashes you can expect to see in the 0.63 Stress Test:

Note that rapidly firing for a prolonged amount of time will heat up the barrel, causing a continuous stream of smoke until it cools down. In later experimental updates, badly worn out weapons will tend to smoke more as build-up collects in them, which prompts players to use the weapon cleaning kit to avoid malfunctions.

The next task related to gunfights is the improvement of bullet impact effects (including blood splats), which are meant to better visualise our advanced ballistic system. Currently, we have a simplified placeholder system implemented until the final solution is fully prepared.

Fire away, survivors, but mind the heat of your gun barrels!

Boris Vacula / Scripter

Community Spotlight/Baty

Hello guys!

I don't know if you noticed, but me and my colleague Martin were invited by Microsoft to show you the Xbox One DayZ DEMO at PAX East in Boston. Yes, we already have a playable single player 0.63 demo that runs really smooth, and this was the first time we presented the Xbox version to public!

We were a bit nervous about the reactions, but your enthusiasm about the demo calmed us down and we were really happy that you liked it. Xbox players had a chance to try the demo for the first time, running around and exploring what DayZ is all about. Meanwhile, experienced PC players were testing new features, because it was also the first opportunity for the to get their hands on 0.63.

If you want to see a personal experience of one of our players, here is a video from Jake:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGOH6h2KZtk

And of course, we've met so many nice people who we know only from online communication. For me, that was the highlight of the show. Thanks everyone who stopped by and talked to us or just tried the demo!

Our little station was right there. Massive thanks to Microsoft for inviting us to their booth!

Pax East was so crowded!

We've met a couple of survivors in DayZ cosplay!

Some streamers like MarkstromTV, TheLoyalPatriot, LtDanOfficial, Mr. Moon, Deadly Slob, GamerDad, Johny Rotten, Puhdado, Acesfury and Jakon tried our demo too.

So many amazing people came to Pax to meet us. We love you guys.

Community Events

Let's check out some events on private servers.

The first one is organized by DayZ Underground server and it is called "king of Severograd". Be ready tomorrow at 4PM EST. Don't forget to register[www.dayzunderground.com]!

Another one will be on Saturday at 7pm CST on the DayZ Noob server and it is melee weapons only. You can win a fully decked M4A1, AK101, AK74, FAL and AKM. Nice prizes!

And the third one is today, so run and join other survivors on TopeRec&Spaggie's server (185.16.86.37:2602) at 20:00GMT as soon as possible.

Community FAQ

The last thing for today are some of your questions (we'll do the riddle next time):

Is PC your primary platform?
Yes, it absolutely is our primary platform. Every piece of new content, every feature, every new bit of technology always gets into the PC version first. Both Xbox One and PlayStation 4 run only what already exists on PC. Ultimately any development progress made now is always implemented on PC first.
Should we be worried about DayZ being on consoles?
No! Quite the contrary: we need to squeeze every frame, and every possible line of code optimization out of DayZ in order to make it run well on consoles. This massively contributes to the overall improvements of the PC build. Exploring new platforms with DayZ also opens more possibilities to cooperate with different partners - if we did not make DayZ on Xbox, it would be harder for us to visit you in person or events, for example.
Is it going to slow down PC development?
No! Remember, PC development is console development. It's not two different things. There is, of course, some amount of work associated with specific platform support and bug fixing, mostly in programming and QA, but we're not taking the time of any developers that are critical for reaching our Experimental, Stable and 1.0 goals for PC.

And that is all from me today. Don't forget to send us your videos, pictures and everything DayZ related you've made, because we love it!

Header picture by Lith3on

Baty/Community Manager

Status Report - 27 March 2018

Tue, 27 Mar 2018 21:21 CEST

We're back from a trip to GDC, and also back to the regular Status Report schedule. Let's read more about our upcoming 0.63 public stress tests, our progress on Xbox, and plans for PAX East!

Dev Update/Eugen
Dev Update/Filip
Community Spotlight

Dev Update/Eugen

Dear DayZ players,

There is a lot of commotion in the office as we get near our first 0.63 public stress test (which I will talk about more today and share details of why and how we are approaching this step, and what should be the outcome for both you, the players, and us - the developers). Besides the obvious focus to get things into public hands for testing, we are dealing with issues related to weapon collisions with environment and zombies. While also working on climbing and jumping to make traversing through the environment a much better experience.There is a lot to cover in the coming weeks, and we are looking at the missing pieces[dayz.com], as well as pushing for the level of polish we want to achieve before we finally move 0.63 to the Experimental branch of DayZ on Steam.

0.63 Stress Tests

As we've mentioned during our 0.63 Dev Live Stream, the initial releases of 0.63 will take the form of time-limited, focused stress tests. To differentiate these stress tests from the more traditional Experimental testing phase, we'll create a completely new "Stress Test" branch of DayZ on Steam, which anyone of you will be able to switch to, and play on test servers provided by us.

Once 0.63 gets ready and releases on the Experimental branch, this option will be gone, but we expect to have more than one of these stress tests happening in the next couple of weeks, so you might get a chance to hop in early and test the game in a limited capacity.

Our main goal with stress tests is to test server load and see the number of players we can handle on one server. These stress test can both happen very often, or there might be some delay between them. We will be auto collecting logs and servers crashes for further analysis, as well as profiling the server performance. A big chunk of the work will go into making sure we get lots of data to sort through and evaluate.

We will announce the time of each stress test on our social media channels so that you can prepare at least a little bit ahead of time. Besides the timeline of availability, we will try and provide you with a list of things that we've assigned the highest priority for getting feedback on.

I know a lot of data miners are going to look into everything we've done with the game, as there is tons of work in progress features hidden inside the client data, possibly including some not yet covered details that may cause a little bit of premature excitement. While we totally expect that this will happen, we will be, however, pointing our focus towards a more limited set of things at one time in these tests. For the first test, we will try to take a close look at the new implementation of gunplay and player synchronization.

You will be spawning in a much more concentrated manner on selected locations in Chernarus, already equipped with basic gear that we have ready for testing. Many things in those builds will still be either disabled completely or not spawning. On the other hand, we will try and increase the player numbers per server to see how far we can go. It's going to be a bit of a bloodbath, that's for sure!

For the first bunch of stress tests, there will be a limited time window, with a limited number of items spawning, and also with a somewhat limited functionality so that the data we are collecting is helpful. We are at a point where we need your help, your feedback. It's necessary for us to move forward, and to make sure that when the game goes live for everybody, it’s as consistent and reliable as it can get. For now, there will be broken animations, bugs and different annoying details that we know about. However, I cannot state how important for us it is to start testing now, and not wait any longer. Some of the issues we might encounter will take some time to solve, and will only be able to be reproduced in the high traffic environment of public testing.

Now to answer the question why we do so with a limited feature set and in a limited time window: any data collection past the initial findings and blockers is diluting the effectiveness of such efforts. Problems can be hiding in layers - as you fix one, another appears because with the first problem in its way, it never had a chance to occur. We think we know about a lot of them - if not most - but we realize there is more to do. It's going to be fun either way - we are ready to face this head on, and roll fixes in quickly. Ramping up our communication both ways is an important part of the process that's coming both during stress tests and in Experimental.

For feedback, videos are one of the best mediums for us to understand what’s happening, so if you have a chance to share them with us on the Feedback Tracker[feedback.dayz.com] and the DayZ forums[forums.dayz.com], they are more than welcome! We'll talk about this when we release the notes for each stress tests, but as mentioned, we will mostly be looking for inconsistencies in player movement and gunplay. You'll definitely experience a lot of weird inconsistencies or bugs with things like melee, environment actions, or crafting, but we're working on those, and these just require time, but meanwhile, we can already run tests on those focus areas that will help us move forward faster.

As for when do we start those stress tests - again, as mentioned in the Live Stream, we were looking at the initial releases of 0.63 as something that's weeks, not months away. It's been two weeks since the Live Stream now, and so it goes without saying that we'll all get to some testing rather soon!

Keep following us on Twitter, Facebook, and our Forums[forums.dayz.com] to be notified when a stress test goes online!

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Filip

Hi all!

Over the course of the last couple of weeks, we have worked on several smaller tasks and features such as swimming, footsteps in water, ladder climbing, user action and fireplace sounds.

We've also finished the work on the interior controller for weapons and character sound. Now we can have different tails for indoor shooting, reloading magazines of footsteps. Indoor ambient sounds are still in progress.

For next few weeks, we will be focusing on melee fight. We will re-design sounds for attack animations and also make many new melee hit sounds.
https://youtu.be/s_jVKGVzOmM
- Filip Čenžák / Sound Designer

Community Spotlight

Hello Survivors,

In case you haven't noticed, we skipped the last Status Report and we broadcasted a Live Stream of the 0.63 build instead, with dev commentary. And we are really happy with your feedback, thank you for that! We are improving our streaming skills and we are hoping to stream more often in future, to share our DayZ development goals with you!

If you missed the stream, we exported it to our YouTube channel and you can watch it here:
https://youtu.be/-RmJrnp85K0
Part of our team was attending GDC last week, where we've met with a bunch of journalists at a closed event organized by ID@Xbox - to all of them, we've presented a short Staroye DEMO of DayZ on Xbox One. People who tried it were amazed by how smooth the game runs, and how good it feels. Here is a short video of the press event on Tuesday:

If you are sad you couldn't have tried it at GDC, we have another chance for you to get your hands on our DayZ Xbox demo! We are going to PAX East in Boston next week and we will be there ready for you from Thursday 5th to Sunday 8th at the Xbox booth.

[i.imgur.com]

I know you always have questions about the console versions! I chose the three hottest ones:

Are you developing DayZ for Xbox One X only?

No, we’ll be releasing on all Xbox One consoles, and on PlayStation 4 as well!

How about the frame rates on Xbox One X?

It’s all work in progress, but we’re already peaking at 50-60 FPS in 1080p on Xbox One X, and we plan to support 4K@30 FPS. We’ll see where we end up though!

Will there be cross-platform between platforms?

That’s unlikely - while it’s perfectly viable from the technology perspective, we’d rather not mix PC and console players because it would cause a noticeable disbalance in gameplay.

Let's check out the content you have done since the last Status Report. There is a lot of it, so I had to choose just some of the things you sent me.

I know we highlighted Gaming Roach Entertainment before, but he is so original and we love his videos very much! He made a DayZ parody of the TV show "Friends" and it is stunning. You need to see it!
https://youtu.be/g-X3RMdartg

I saw a picture on Twitter that made me hungry. And I hope it will make you hungry too. This amazing package was sent by PetitPoney to his DayZ friends. Looks like human meat, doesn't it? I asked the recipient EVILZ if he likes human meat so much, and he replied to me that it is just pork meat and he made a backpack from its skin. Okay, I am going to trust you for now.

Look at these cans, can you recognize them? They are just like the ones from the game! This picture was sent to us by Wallamys Uchiha, who made some for himself in real life. Do you want them too? You can make it yourselves, Wallamys shared the labels with us here[mega.nz].

I love your artworks guys. Please send more to me! This one is made by Dominik Figlhuber and it is in 80s style. Amazing work Dominic, I am looking forward to your next fanart!

Let's check some events that servers prepared for you.

Do you know the server Mafia of Balota? Admins prepare events every week and they have some safe zones around the map, so don't forget to read the rules before joining. The event for this week is in medieval style. If you want to participate, just join their Facebook group and learn more there.

The Village server prepared a screenshot contest for you. They are looking for the most beautiful post-apocalyptic screenshot taken on The Village server[barelyinfected.com]. The contest ends at the end of the month so hurry, you have just a few days to participate.

And your favorite riddle!

It was really hard last time. The house is between Black Moutain and Svergino and these guys are hardcore fans who really know the place:

Uncuepa
Jake
Goof3y‏
CanisDirus
CryDoXz
GaryWalnuts

And the new riddle is a really hard one, too, because it is from Adam again - he likes to challenge you!

[i.imgur.com]

If you know this place, tweet the location to our official Twitter account and you can be featured in the Status Report next time!

Thank you for your amazing work guys and I am looking forward to seeing your content in two weeks. Don't forget to check our Instagram[www.instagram.com] next week, we will post some pictures from our trip to PAX East there! Love you all <3.

- Baty / Community Manager

Header picture by RageBruh.

0.63 Experimental Release Check list

Wed, 07 Mar 2018 15:59 CET

How long do we still need to wait before the 0.63 Update is released on the Experimental Branch? That's a question we get asked every day. While it's still hard to estimate exact release dates at this stage of development (we've learned our lesson about estimating dates), we at least wanted to provide an overview of the work that remains to be done before the release is a go.

Before you start scrolling through the list, we strongly recommend that you take a peek at the detailed Status Report we posted on November 2017 last year - back then [www.dayz.com], we provided a list of 0.63 goals that served as a basis for this particular checklist. In general, that Status Report contains a pretty decent breakdown of our development plans all the way to the 1.0. release - go ahead and read it if you haven't done that yet!

We'll do our best to go through this list twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays - even if it would mean that the state badges for each feature/system stay the same. With each update that has some new things marked as "Ready for Experimental", we'll also share that information on our social media channels! We hope this will make our development progress a bit more transparent, and hopefully, you'll also get at least some sort of estimate for the Experimental release.

https://dayz.com/blog/0-63-experimental-release-checklist#/

DayZ Stable Version 0.58.129143

Thu, 27 Aug 2015 21:22 CEST

DayZ stable version 0.58.129143 has been released on Steam.

Added:

Chambering animations.
Jerrycan drink and emptying.
New improvised torch model.
SVD chambering animation.
3 variants of Canvas Pants to Default Character options.
Animations for player catching rain into a pot.
Animations for consuming tablets in prone and erected stances.
Oil barrel.
Nurses Dress.
SSh68 Helmet.
Car Tent.
USMC pants.
GP5 gasmask.
Glow plug.
Basic models of Picea Abies trees.
Pouring water into barrel.
New steering pose for V3S .
Crossbow Holosight.
Lighting torch using handrill.
Lab Coat.
Door slamming sound for V3S.
Wheel (spare) for V3S and tire repair kits.
Torch can be extinguished with liquid.
Truck battery.
Drinking added to domestic herbivores life cycle.
Random items to spawn in fridge world container.
Tripwire model.

Changed:

Universal light can be attached to UMP45.
New Berezino (upper part).
Tisy updated.
Chernogorsk roads is broken now.
Wooden timbers and wooden piles is in.
ItemSize of BurlapSack and BurlapStrips.
Torch can be ignited also on ground.

Fixed:

Dynamic events are not respawning.
Excessive amount of military loot is spawning in military/evacuation camps.
Anti-teleportation protection now takes into account higher possible speeds. Solves rubberbanding of high-speed cars.
Animals fly over Chernarus and eventually teleport.
Switching "weapon" to "magazine" via quickbar makes "false duplicate".
Zombies slide when deciding whether to aggro on player or not.
Player gets stuck when leaving V3S shortly after the server was launched.
Arrows shot into a tree crashes the client if tampered with.
Unable to remove items from "in hands" slot.
Swapping items by drag and drop makes false duplicate in the inventory.
When using rounds and firing the last one, 0 quantity round remains in the weapon.
When swapping 1h item with a 2h item the 1h item disappears.
Player can manipulate/loot inventory of 2nd player after he/she wakes up from unconsciousness.
When crafting something with full inventory, result is not visible.
Switching weapons when entering water / ladder makes weapon disappear, hand slot stuck and creates false duplicate.
Security cage around ladders.
Unable to take magazines into hands via quickbar.
Disabled the issue where player was able to swing 2H weapon while sprinting. This should be no longer possible.
Raincoats and armbands are now repairable with a sewing kit.
Some vests, jackets, hoodies, hats and shoes were not repairable with (leather) sewing kit.
Fireplace can be moved from inventory to vicinity and vice-versa.
AK muzzle and bayonet attachments can't be attached at the same time.
Not possible to place multiple fireplaces into one spot.
Suppressor position for AKS74U.
Tanned leather is now repairable with a leather sewing kit.
Changed recoil for izh18.
Tanned leather is now impossible to craft from ruined components.
Nail box needs to be in the inventory in order to be unpackable.
Skater helmet, gorka helmet and firefighter helmet should not allow masks to be worn at the same time anymore.
Damaged/destruct materials for numerous items.
Damaged states for Hatchet.
ItemSize of HikingJacket and TacticalShirt.
Extending neck during getting in to a cargo position on V3S.
The player can now rotate during vault animation.
Disabled aiming in vomiting animation, which was causing a clipping glitch when activated.
Suicide with a rifle: Player now can disarm without getting stuck in the animation.
Removed duplicate spawn location for fridge.
Player is able to see through the black screen by pressing escape during respawn/countdown timer.
Ammunition type in UMP45 25rnd magazine.
Bark stack size.
Hand drill torch ignition.
Create sound trap with cans.
Bleaching allowed for white tshirts and armbands only.
Damage states for WaterProofBag.
Unable to reload full magazines of different types.
Police cars disappear very shortly after spawning.
Cannabis buds cooking states should be fixed now.
Melee suicide gesture returning to an armed state without a weapon in hand. Fixed by changing the gesture destination to unarmed.
Attachments - Camera moves with zoomed in optics when changing stances.
Torch cannot be ignited inside inventory.
broken quickbar when spamming it with many requests from and to hands.
Torch cannot be ignited multiple times during igniting animation.
Fixed the neck stretching during sitting reloads.

Tweaked:

All nervous, grazing, and walking poses tweaked for new roe deer skeleton.
Spawn location for fridge to prevent levitation.
Additional transitions to running for multiple skeletons.
Recoil tweak for AK74, AK101, AKM.
Tweaks to CLE for several different structures.
Player can wring clothes/bags only when their cargo is empty.

Known Issues:

Door States are currently experiencing issues. In these situations, sometimes players can hear the sounds of doors opening/closing that might not actually be being interacted with.
Cooked Meat can in some cases cause survivors to become ill.
Server / Client position tracking improvements are still being worked on. In some cases, desynchronization of this information can occur and server/client or client/client disagreements will happen.
While the long running animation state problem of survivors constantly shouldering weapons seems to have been slain, we still have some edge cases where odd animation state behavior can be observed.
There are a few low repro server crashes still present, the frequency of these are fairly low and investigation on repro steps is ongoing.
Passenger Vehicle Position desynchronization is still below acceptable, and is slated for priority work on 0.59.
In some cases, while manipulating your inventory or crafting certain items a "false duplicate" item can be created. While this issue is currently under investigation, players can mitigate this by logging out and back in.
In some situations, all clients involved in a gunfight will not receive all proper gunshot sounds. This is currently being investigated.
Player camps of large size may experience issues interacting with and manipulating items.
Survivors are encouraged to spread out camps of large size (2+ tents) until this issue is resolved.

Source : http://steamcommunity.com/games/221100/announcements/detail/101683288079759143

DayZ Status Report - 18 August 2015

Wed, 19 Aug 2015 12:59 CEST

Evening survivors,

For this week's Status Report, Lead Producer Brian Hicks will be informing us on the upcoming plans for the CLE as the team moves closer towards BETA. Additionally, he'll tell us a bit about what will be in focus for 0.59 Experimental once we progress past 0.58 release on Stable branch.

Contents This Week

Development Board Spotlight [dayz.com]
Dev Update/Hicks [dayz.com]
Community Video: "The Chronicles of 0.58" [dayz.com]

Development Board Spotlight

[trello.com]

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors!

Much like the last Status Report - we've still got the gameplay programming team working on the blocking issues preventing 0.58 to hit stable branch. The primary issues of which were a result of some tests on resolving animation looping, and related problems we are still aiming for 0.59 to address. We've been working hard to resolve these issues so we can provide as compelling a gameplay experience w/ 0.58 as possible while still in development.

Once 0.58 leaves incubation on experimental branch, survivors will notice a sharp difference in how loot is distributed across Chernarus. We're still pretty early on in where we want to be with the central economy by release from Early Access, however we do now have much more precise control over the distribution. The system allows us to dynamically modify quantities, spawning frequencies, spawning priority, and so on without having to push an update to stable branch. We'll be closely monitoring active item concentration across official servers, and adjusting based upon this. Those more stalwart survivors might notice higher quantities of canned food goods than are specifically required - we've found that the best method to acclimate players to having to scavenge for supplies versus the placeholder prototype systems distribution is to slowly dial the quantities incrementally down - until the balance reaches a playable state.

Above you can see the current top 10 distributed items on an example experimental branch server. Non persishable food currently has the highest priority / quantity for entry level items in the respawn system. Primarily to allow folks to acclimate themselves to the need to move *around* Chernarus to continue to find the supplies they need. Ideally, we'll dial these quantities back in increments of 10 until we find a comfortable balance. Past non perishable goods, basic tools have the highest quantity of items spread across Chernarus. Wood Axes, Matches, Burlap Sacks, Water Purification, and so on.

Again, once 0.58 stable hits and has time to settle - with a larger player base than experimental roaming across the environment we'll make changes according to how the distribution looks and performs. Moving past 0.58 and looking at 0.59 experimental - in addition to the new features, content, and so forth - We'll be looking into more QoL improvements for the stable player base. Vehicle position sync optimization (no fun riding around in new vehicles if your passengers want to vomit from desync!), animation state sync between clients, animal herd behaviour, position & projectile synchronization bugfixing, and much more.
As well, with 0.59 experimental we'll be testing the potential effect of players spawning with radios and how it may or may not impact player interaction. The range of the radios should be temporarily (for the duration of the test on Exp 0.59) increased to cover the whole of Chernarus. Once this hits experimental, I encourage you to head over to the official DayZ forums[forums.dayzgame.com] (forums.dayzgame.com) and share your experiences (be it good, or bad) with how this impacts your gameplay!

As mentioned during our RTX panel presentation, longer incubation times on Experimental and dedicating more time to QoL issues on the primary branch may end up costing us some time here or there, but we firmly believe it will present a higher quality player experience during DayZ's development. Of course, there will still be plenty of bugs - but we'll do our best to make sure the experience is still enjoyable.

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Community Video: "The Chronicles of 0.58"

This time around we present you with a series of videos called "The Chronicles of 0.58" created by:

The 5 episode series chronicles a 10 hour session Mr. Blackout completed together with Brian Hicks. During the session, the duo showcase playability in version 0.58 which is available on our Experimental branch servers. While the guys embark on their trek through Chernarus, the guys show their looting, friendly encounters, hostile encounters (where Hicks assists Blackout by soaking bullets like a sponge, hardcore MLG style), and all that good stuff.

At the end of the series, some 1,5+ hours had passed by without me really noticing, so if you have the time I'd definitely recommend you having a go at the episodes. Quite impressive that Mr. Blackout managed to go through a 10 hour session that included hostile encounters without even dying once.

If you find yourselves hungry for more from Mr. Blackout, you can find tons more content via hisYoutube account, you can watch his streams via his Twitch[www.twitch.tv] account, and you can contact him via Twitter and Facebook.

As always, if you have a nice video containing DayZ footage you'd like to share, or if you have come across some DayZ footage from other content creators, just post it in theGallery[forums.dayzgame.com] section of the DayZ forums and we'll happily have a look.

Header image credit: Jack Smith

- Michael aka SMoss / Community Manager

Source : http://steamcommunity.com/games/221100/announcements/detail/101682628864192946

DayZ Status Report - 29 July 2015

Thu, 30 Jul 2015 12:02 CEST

Evening survivors,

For this week's Status Report, Lead Producer Brian Hicks will be informing us on what the team has been working on for the upcoming update on Stable branch. In this regard he'll go over subjects such as the loot distribution and persistence.

Contents This Week

Development Board Spotlight
Dev Update/Hicks
Community Video: I'M HUNTING

Development Board Spotlight

[trello.com]

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors!

The team has been crunching away on our last blockers for stable release, as well as working on values for loot distribution. Tomorrow morning we should see our (hopeful) final experimental release hit Steam, which will be tested over the weekend. Assuming we notice no new issues, we're hoping to hit stable branch on Monday or Tuesday next week.

The only issue we currently see as a blocker on experimental (0.58.128852) is visually represented as "floating loot" currently caused by an issue with items that have been "swapped" by players. (Most commonly seen as loot floating above deer stands, police stations, etc). As mentioned above, tomorrow should see an experimental push that will see this resolved - and this build will be tested over the weekend to see its viability for Stable Branch.

While this fix has been underway, we've been dialing in the balance for non perishable food, firearms, and military loot. Currently, the highest quantity and priority in the economy is given to non perishable food goods. (Tuna, Beans, Rice, etc). With civilian pistols being the most common firearm, followed by civilian rifles such as the trumpet, blaze, IZH43 Shotgun, and so on. Military loot is distributed across all military points across the map, mostly of which are up in the Northern areas. Military grade firearms are relatively rare, and there is no guarantee that visiting the military bases will yield you the weapon you want. With most items on a 30 minute timer (without being "refreshed" by being manipulated by players) - getting fully kitted up as a "military" player with all the gear you want could take some time.

Super Rare items (M4A1, Steyr Aug, SVD, and so on) that spawn on dynamic events operate on an even rarer chance. Dynamic events have a varied pool of potential items that can spawn, with only 3 active helicopter wrecks at any given time - and an approximate 4 hour clean up, continued hunting will be required to find that super rare weapon or item you are seeking.
Please keep in mind, we are now fully able to update quantities and rarity without requiring an update - so if we should see issues with loot concentration, or quantity once .58 hits stable branch, we will be able to address this rapidly.

Fortunately, players can now create camps and store their supplies and weapons at them during their treks across Chernarus. Different containers / objects have different lifetimes. Currently, they operate as follows:

- Medium Tent (Pitched): 45 Days
- Military Tent (Pitched): 45 Days
- Car Tent (Pitched): 45 Days
- Barrels: 45 Days
- Ammo Boxes: 45 Days
- Protector Cases: 45 Days
- Backpacks (All types): 3 Days

Current functionality on experimental does not allow for refreshing the lifetime of an object without picking it up, so tents and barrels were set to a lifetime that will cover the time to .59 + some safety room in case of .59 stable blockers. Once .59 is pushed to stable, we will support the refresh of a base objects lifetime via interacting with it (moving, placing, picking up any item inside it) - which will operate as follows:

- Medium Tent (Pitched): 7 Days
- Military Tent (Pitched): 7 Days
- Car Tent (Pitched): 7 Days
- Barrels: 7 Days
- Ammo Boxes: 7 Days
- Protector Cases: 7 Days
- Backpacks (All types): 3 Days

This system will also allow for the refreshing of advanced basebuilding objects, once they are implemented.
Speaking of advanced base building - I'll be speaking at RTX 2015 in Austin, Texas on Saturday, August 8th at 5:30 PM to discuss a recap of things covered at E3 2015, what we'd like to do with advanced base building, what soft skills means exactly, and show the new vehicles coming in 0.59. For those unable to make it, we'll be providing the presentation + audio in the Status Report following the event (Wednesday, August 12th).

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Community Video: I'M HUNTING

Hey survivors,

While looking for some videos of players doing some hunting and fishing while living the hermit lifestyle in Chernarus, I came across a video simply called "I'M HUNTING". I could see in the description that it was probably not exactly what I was looking for, but I decided to give it a go just the same. Sure enough, the content didn't disappoint. In the video we get to see a glimpse of the unjust killing of a freshspawn and the subsequent hunt and sweet, sweet revenge towards the end.

The video was brought to us by the following content creator: Musse Plays

As always, if you have a nice video containing DayZ footage you'd like to share, or if you have come across some DayZ footage from other content creators, just post it in the Gallery[forums.dayzgame.com] section of the DayZ forums and we'll happily have a look.

Header image credit: Jack Smith

- Michael aka SMoss / Community Manager

Source : http://steamcommunity.com/games/221100/announcements/detail/101680812176197368

DayZ Status Report - 30 June 2015

Tue, 30 Jun 2015 21:10 CEST

Greetings Survivors,

While development keeps moving along as usual, a lot of you have patiently been waiting for info on the new renderer, and for this week's Status Report Lead Producer Brian Hicks touches upon that very subject. Also, Senior Designer Jan Tomasik gives us some input on the ingame FOV; the theory and thought process behind the design solutions as well as decisions for the current iteration of FOV.

For this week we also present you with a link to the DayZ Trello board where Lead Artist Chris Torchia provides us with a small peek at environment updates, and lastly, we have a small feature on one of DayZ's content creators - Super Dan.

Contents This Week

Development Board Spotlight

Back to Contents

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors,

This week we'll touch on two topics. We'll start off discussing the work ongoing with the new renderer for Enfusion, and then wrap up discussing the current behaviour and mechanics behind sprinting, holding breath, and so on.

Players who have been actively following the development of DayZ are aware of the large task the engine team undertook to separate the legacy RV renderer from the simulation, and replace it with a more modular and updated version. The task itself of creating a new renderer is not huge, the length and weight of the task is related primarily to:

- Separating the legacy renderer from the simulation
- Ensuring the separation is complete, as the RV engine and its functions tied to it are extensive

Once the above was complete, the new renderer itself was broken into three primary modules. (Bear with us, this can be moderately technical)

* Pipeline module (1)
   * the pipeline of objects rendering is new (defines the "way" how the objects are moving from entity in world to set of rendering commands)
   * is responsible to prepare meshes to be rendered
   * is multi-threaded
   * filling of pipeline will be also multi-threaded, in phase of testing and debugging

* Material system module (2)
   * objects are rendered using new material system, old one is still present to have the comparison
   * each mesh has assigned a material (not rvmat) with material class which is responsible for it's rendering
   * setting of material is editable in workbench editor and you see real-time the changes in render
   * each material class was written from scratch, visualisation currently as much similar as possible to old render but now we can add simply new features (like PBR)
   * huge simplification for filling GPU command buffers, can be easily sorted to minimize changes in command buffers
   * all renderable game objects have now representation in material class

* High level rendering API module (3)
   * GPU API is DX11 for now (With DX 12 supporting coming later)
   * implementation of GPU API now hidden behind rendering API, no one is allowed to use direct GPU API commands
       * it allows us to add new GPU API like DX12, XBOX one, PS4...much easier
   * Initial implementation done, currently in testing and bug fixing phase (optimization still in progress but looks promising)


In addition:

* GUI manager
   * GUI pipeline and rendering system is completely new   and different from the one in original RV engine
   * GUI layouts will be defined in workbench using graphic editor not by config system (huge improvement for designers)
   * rendering works, currently debugging and working on the editor
   * In a future experimental build it'll be possible to try it using command line switch (startup switch)

* other notes
   * postprocesses were completely rewritten into new system of effects
   * more worlds can be renderered in one frame, it allows to create independent scenes
       * needed for workbench
       * usable also in game to create e.g. mirrors, cameras...

As work on the new renderer continues and we look at our plans for the eventual push to experimental we have several goals:

- Testing partnerships with Intel, AMD, and nVidia to ensure compatability with market leader and average hardware configurations
- Marked performance for gameplay in large cities (Elektro, Cherno, Novod, Severograd, Berezino, etc)

Next up - There has been a good deal of discussion, and questions on exactly how hold breath, lung capacity, and dispersion when characters are tired. Below we have a few example videos with debug data on screen so you can see the specific values.

In the first video you see the user start out stationary - not tired, and begin to hold his breath. With the inaccuracy value falling sharply upon holding his breath, as the character continues to hold his breath and his lung capacity drains - the inaccuracy slowly starts climbing.

With the second video, we have a character who starts off tired (has been sprinting for an extended duration - 90 to 120 seconds of solid sprinting) who takes a knee (supported firing position) as his tired value decreases, his lung capacity increases - and he begins to hold his breath.
Mind you, this is only how it performs now (on 0.57 stable) and this is prior to the implementation of weight and character stamina. That said, we would love to hear your thoughts on the current behavior of the mechanic. Please make sure to head over to the Official DayZ forums and discuss this in the latest Status Report discussion thread!

Finally - the gameplay programming team has made headway on the annoying issue of sounds playing globally (splitting ammo, bandages, etc) and 0.58 should see the issue resolved! If you happen to still manage to repro, please open a ticket at feedback.dayzgame.com!

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Back to Contents

Dev Update/Jan

Since there's been some discussion regarding changes in the character zoom mechanic I decided to jump in and explain what are we trying to achieve.

We should probably start by asking the question "Why have a characters-eye zoom in the first place?". It's the old problem with emulating a 3D world on insufficient hardware. The human field of vision (fov) is around 190° and the area where the vision cones of both eyes overlap is around 100°. Unfortunately, most of todays monitors viewed from a regular distance usually tend to cover only 45°of human fov in real life. This means that if you want for target on screen to appear in real-life size you are only able to display around ~1/2 of what you would see in reality, stereoscopically.

And so as a designer you have to choose - Should I display objects in the distance properly but sacrifice the overall vision or set the fov to 100° but deform the whole picture? The trick of Arma is actually not to choose and instead introduce an "eye zoom" instead. This way you can keep the surrounding awareness by setting the default fov to 100°, but when necessary to perceive a depth of field properly occurs (ie. you are shooting), you can "zoom in" to 45°.

0.57 Unzoomed Eye Vision

0.57 Eye Zoom

But is it ok to force fix a fov on players? We thought not. Not only because 100° fov does not feel right to everyone, but some players can't even physically play with it. (Motion sickness, performance of PC, different monitor setup...). So the FOV slider was introduced and with it multiple problems we are ironing out now.
The most important step was to even out players by moving fixed fov to ironsights. This way you can most of the time play with whatever fov you like, but when the fov becomes a matter of life or death (shoot outs) it is set same for everyone to keep the game fair.

We know that zoomed fov or ironsights must be 45° because it emulates the eye and we stated earlier that 45° is realistic. But what should the unzoomed fov be? It can't be higher than a number the player can set through FOV slider. (This way would going into iron sights actually shows the unzoomed picture which is definitely not something you would desire). So the fov of ironsights should be also the the smallest fov we allow players to set by the fov slider.

We decided to set range of fov slider from 60° to 90°.

0.58 Eye Zoom

It's important to keep in mind, that double pressing + or - extends it to 45° or 105°, so the range is not so small as it might appears. It also doesn't matter what is your current fov - double pressing + key will always set it to 45°. This means you can quickly switch between observing surroundings and focusing on objects "modes", while being able to play with your prefered fov for most of the time. I belive this descision helps equalize players and reduce fov slider abuse.

Of course all those settings are opened to iteration and changes if they prove to be wrong, or they just feel bad.

- Jan Tomasik / Senior Designer

Back to Contents

Community Spotlight: Super Dan

Hey all,

It's been a bit of a hard decision in selecting which content creator to feature for this week what with all the great stuff produced by players! For this week though, we present to you the work done by: Super Dan

Super Dan has created a good amount of DayZ videos where he showcases plenty of different player interactions as he meets random players across Chernarus. The first video for this week shows the choices players sometimes have to make when finding themselves in a tight spot (it could also be the choices that some players make when they just want to be mean towards others, heh). Nice enough though that Super Dan's victim is a good sport about it all :)

In Super Dan's library, I also came across the following video in which he uses the chance to encorporate a bit of cinematic feel into his video based on the experiences he has with a couple of other players. It's all fun and games until you start outliving all the players that you come across. Nicely done Super Dan!

As the last video for this week, we bring you Super Dan's video “A Normal Day in Chernarus”. What starts out as a seemingly friendly meeting of random players takes a funny turn for one of the survivors as he tries to form an alliance with another one of the guys:

Source : http://dayz.com/blog/status-report-30-jun-2015

DayZ Status Report - 23 June 2015

Tue, 23 Jun 2015 22:05 CEST

Greetings Survivors,

As the team continues pushing development of DayZ, we have Brian, Chris, and Viktor providing us with a peek at what is on the plate for the team. For this week, Lead Producer Brian Hicks will discuss development going forwards in regards to the DayZ audio module, while Lead Artist Chris Torchia will discuss the decision making behind the firearms design, and Lead Animator Viktor Kostik will discuss the development of transitioning the player character across to the new animation system.

Like always, we have a couple of links to our DayZ Trello board, and towards the end of this weeks' Status Report we showcase a video showing an interesting game session springing forth from a Vybor spawn.

Contents This Week

Development Board Spotlight

Back to Contents

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors,

Its been a hectic few weeks, with 0.57 release and E3 - but I'd like to take some time out this week to discuss pending changes to the Audio side of the Enfusion engine, as well as some critical audio bugs plaguing DayZ Early Access players.

We've talked about replacing the existing Audio system in DayZ with a new Audio module better suited to DayZ's needs, but we haven't really outlined what some of that means. As many players may know, the inherited audio technology from the Real Virtuality (TKOH / Arma 2) side of the family has its strengths, but it also has quite a few weaknesses. As we began looking at the time and resources required to update this portion of our base engine, we looked at several key areas we wanted to improve:

- 3D Positional Ambient Sound: Supporting true 3D Positional Ambient sounds is integral to proper immersion within Chernarus. As well, once we support this - the roar of the coast, and the confusing positional ambient noises should be a thing of the past.

- More complex configuration options for vehicles, weapons, etc: Current technology supports a very basic methodology for potential sounds and triggering events for weapons, vehicles and the likes. Moving to the new Audio module will begin to allow the design and audio teams to implement more complex audio configurations for items and vehicles in game.

As development on this portion of the engine continues, we'll be looking at other features existing internal projects offer (such as Arma 3's tech) to ensure that the support the Enfusion engine offers is as comprehensive as we can allow.

In addition to this, work has continued internally on slaying the ever illusive audio bug beast known as "Ghost sounds" - Potential headway was revealed during a conference between key members of the Arma, and DayZ teams. Potential related causes of the issue, as well as fixes implemented on the Arma side of the company are hopefully going to be implemented. We'll be testing this out on experimental hopefully with 0.59 - I'll be speaking with people about this on the official DayZ forums when we begin testing, and anyone encountering the issue at that point is strongly encouraged to utilize the Feedback Tracker.

See you all in Chernarus!
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Back to Contents

E3 - DayZ PC Gaming Show 2015

Also, we have a little bit of info in regards to modding and the singleplayer part of DayZ in the following video featuring Brian Hicks at this year's E3 convention. Thanks and props go out to the fine people of DayZ Underground for providing the video!

Back to Contents

Dev Update/Chris

From the beginning of the project, Dean and I worked closely on the initial design of firearms in DayZ, including which kinds of attachments they should be able to use as well as which specific firearms would best fit the environment.

The requirements from Dean for creating the final list of firearms included:

- 50/50 mixture of 'Western' and 'Eastern' firearms.
- Bias towards civilian models.
- Expansion of the weapon set should occur with minimum expansion of calibers and attachments
- Emphasis on short and intermediate range firearms

Peter also required that each firearm should be as visually distinct as possible from one another and that we should add some of our more unique items.

To figure out which sort of guns we should add, I took several trips to zbraně a střelivo obchod (gun and ammo stores) in Prague as well as investigated the websites of local gun ranges for firearms for sale and rent and was shocked at the massive spectrum available to civilians.

Here are some items I found in Prague. See if any of them are familiar:

-Mosin Nagant
-Modded AR15s
-AR10s
-VZ58 (by the way, I'd love to buy one and export back home to the US :) )
-SVT40
-Tiger rifles (civilian SVD)
-Various bolt action rifles of every make and kind -Ruger 10/22
-Derringer pistol
-Single action revolvers
-Kimber 1911
-P38 Pistol
-Civilianized AK clones of multiple origins
-Various pump action 12 gauge shotguns

The list goes on...

In addition, we wanted to remain faithful to the lore of DayZ's roots in Arma2 so involvement of NATO and Russian forces and their equipment. This meant our options were wide open to consider some more exotic items like the AK74M, VSS, UMP45, etc...

We hope this approach would provide a large variety of experiences for our players as your strategy must sometimes change, depending on what kind of firearms you end up with in your journey.

- Chris Torchia / Lead Artist

Back to Contents

Dev Update/Viktor

In the last weeks all animators were focused mainly on the new animation system since all animations need to be reexported and adjusted for the new skeleton.
Our initial goal is to reproduce the character as we know and then focus on the improvements which new system will allow us to do.

Player already has all movement animations, can reload all guns, climb ladders, enter and drive vehicle and do other things as old character.

The big chunk of work is done although some major things still need to be implemented like most of the user actions.

Some animations were improved on the go. So now we have new climbing ladders anims, falling and landing, picking up and carrying heavy items, some additional gestures and other polishings. The reload animations at the moment work the same way but we just started on advanced behaviour where chambering and loading rounds will get it's own animations for each gun.

In the Phase 2 of transition player character to the new animation system we will do some major improvements regarding animations.
There will by synchronized walks and runs which will enable us later to do some fancy stuff with upcoming wounded character and stamina.
On to do list is also improvement of animations for first person view, improved IK for feets and hands, detailed animations of guns, and more.

- Viktor Kostik / Lead Animator

Back to Contents

Community Video: "Long Story Short - I Got a Vybor Spawn"

For this week, we have a small gem created by "Dog the Bandit Hunter". This video popped up in the sea of DayZ content while looking for a bit of entertainment one weekend. From the tumbnail it looked like it was a video dedicated to depicting the Vybor spawn bug itself, so I thought I'd have a look see. Very quickly did I find out though that it was a bit more than that. Instead, the video turned out to be a somewhat hectic documentation of Dog's experiences, as a result of the Vybor spawn, during a gaming session.

In short, many lols were had that afternoon while watching (and re-watching) Dog's video.

Unfortunately, it seems like "Dog the Bandit Hunter" have hung up his spurs in regards to editing and uploading gaming videos on YT, but luckily there's still quite an archive of entertainment goodness on his channel. If interested in more, please feel free to have a look:

Dog the Bandit Hunter

As always, if you have a nice video containing DayZ footage you'd like to share, or if you have come across some DayZ footage from other content creators, just post it in the Gallery section of the DayZ forums and we'll happily have a look.

May is long gone, and again we are extremely grateful to see how many bugs we received from players. A quick look at the Feedback Tracker tells us that Darcion did very well in terms of finding new bugs, so for the month of may, Darcion is the top bug hunter! As mentioned before, we'll keep track of this in the background, and those of you guys that make the extra effort to help out the team in terms of filing them bugs will be mentioned in the Special Thanks section on the rolling credits for DayZ.

Header image credit: T1M #pepe

- Michael aka SMoss / Community Manager

Source : http://dayz.com/blog/status-report-23-jun-2015

DayZ Status Report - 09 June 2015

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 22:03 CEST

Greetings Survivors,

Work continues on experimental branch as the team keeps hammering away at the next Stable build candidate. It's been a tough wait, we understand, but major issues encountered during development required fixing before the push to Stable branch. This week, Lead Producer Brian Hicks will be dishing out some handy information regarding the Central Loot Economy - what it is, how it's supposed to work, as well as the thought process behind the design choices for the CLE. Also, Lead Designer Peter Nespesny will be telling us about future updates to the vehicles found throughout Chernarus. Peter will go over subjects such as operation, maintenance, as well as the design choices behind these upcoming updates.

Lastly, we have a couple of links[forums.dayzgame.com] to the DayZ Trello board and DayZ forums discussion thread related to the new bus animations, and at the end of our Status Report, we have a small feature on one of DayZ's content creators - Barely Infected.

Contents This Week

Development Board Spotlight[dayz.com]
Dev Update/Hicks[dayz.com]
Dev Update/Peter[dayz.com]
Community Spotlight: Barely Infected[dayz.com]

Development Board Spotlight

[trello.com]
[trello.com]
[trello.com]

Dev Update - Hicks

With 0.57 on the horizon, this week I'd like to take time to talk a bit about player progression across Chernarus, the Central Loot Economy (and its impact on this), and the challenges DayZ faces compared to the Arma 2 Mod experience.

First lets go over exactly what the Central Loot Economy is, and what it offers DayZ.

- Migration of control over what items spawn from legacy method (script) into a more easily and rapidly updated system
- This means the dev team can rapidly (and without requiring an update to the game) completely change / update the amount of items that spawn
- This is done on both a global, and a per server level - in the future allowing custom server operators fine control over their server and its item spawn quantities without requiring any base modification to the game
- Control over item lifetimes (speed of decay / time to item cleanup)
- Control over how many of each item time is supposed to be present in the world (Min / Max / Nominal)
- Control over item cost (rarity vs spawning methods)

Why is the Central Loot Economy critical to DayZ's design - versus the original prototype placeholder loot spawning script? Simply put - the original method was a very rough prototype, designed to start populating the initial memory points for each structure. In order for the design and environment teams to be fully free to create a comprehensive, living breathing world - we first needed to begin to have fine and robust control that can be rapidly pushed to all servers. The original prototype method was very time resource heavy for updating, limited our options to traditional DayZ Mod style building definitions only, and in short pidgeon-holed the team into very limited control.

One of the images that has been circulating the DayZ Community over the last week is a map covering player progression across Arma 2's original Chernarus map. The layout of the original Chernarus, as well as the very limited amount of enterable structures, and thus very limited amount of potential spawn points for items meant an inherent flow of player movement across the map. It required very little work on the design side - High end military loot spawned mostly entirely at Barracks structures, Basic Supplies / Weapons at Firestations, Grocery Stores, Barns, and so on, and Medical supplies at Hospitals. The structure of *how* items spawned within the original Chernarus just -fit- the limited scope of that map perfectly.
Moving into DayZ as a standalone project, one of the first tasks undertaken was the decentralization of core resource (points of interest) buildings - and the expansion of Chernarus into a more robust and living world. Nearly every structure was made enter-able, and thus nearly every single building on the map was a potential (or group of potential) points for items to spawn. At first this might not seem like it should have a major impact on the design, and flow of player progression across the map - but when you look at the statistics, it is rather telling.

- In DayZ Mod, with vanilla Chernarus - Potential item spawn points number in the thousands (Sub 10k)
- In DayZ Chernarus + the potential locations for items to spawn exceeds 1 Million.

Source : http://steamcommunity.com//games/221100/announcements/detail/130949078739679457

DayZ Status Report - 02 June 2015

Wed, 03 Jun 2015 01:10 CEST

Greetings Survivors,

As the team continues iterating and testing on experimental while moving towards the upcoming stable update, We'll hear Lead Producer Brian Hicks discuss a bit of the methodology behind dynamic events and vehicle positions versus player spawn locations. As well, Lead Designer Peter Nespesny discusses ongoing testing work over on the experimental branch related to player data updates, and scheduling.

As well, we've tossed in some links [trello.com] to the Development Board entry for Hermit Playstyle enhancements, and their accompanying discussion thread on the Developer forums. Check the end of the Status Report for some heart pounding Player Vs Vehicle action outside the Veresnik Military Base.

Contents This Week

Development Board Spotlight

[forums.dayzgame.com]

Dev Update - Hicks

I'm frequently asked about player spawns, vehicle spawns, and the mentality behind where and why they are placed. I thought I would take the opportunity this week to discuss exactly that.

For those aware of how DayZ Mod's gameplay flow operated - it was fairly simple. Players started along the coast - from Kamenka to as far as Berezino. Players progressed (for the most part) from the South - to the North. (For the most part, the North West) This gameplay required very little design side control to influence it. Natively the original Chernarus had very few buildings, and thus very few potential item spawn points (compared to say - Chernarus +). One of the initial goals of DayZ was to decentralize the flow of high value or required resources. Think medical centers, military installations, and so on.

When approaching player spawns - early on my approach was to try and replicate the familiarity of player spawns in the earlier versions of DayZ Mod. (DayZ Mod circa Summer 2012 was used as a touch stone) We quickly learned that this approach did not work with the massively altered layout of Chernarus. Not to mention some of the changes to key coastal areas. The next experiment we ran with player spawns was to flip the map of Chernarus, and look at the player progression as East > West. From a design perspective this approach seemed the most logical in how we wanted to layout the world, and seemed on paper like it should find strong success.

Never let it be said that nostalgia and familiarity has no merit.

Players were very vocal in their longing for the familiar DayZ spawn points, Chernogorsk and Elektrozavodsk especially. Internally we were very reluctant to change this up as the early loot spawning system did not allow us any region control, and the design of Chernarus was heavily leaning towards letting us use any building model we wanted, where it made sense. (Think Military Police buildings in Chernogorsk, Balota Barracks, etc) However, as early prototyping on a more robust control over where region-wise certain items spawned, the idea of spawning in some of those core DayZ Mod areas was revisited. Obviously some small changes would need to occur to the layout of the world, as the system would take a good deal of time to develop - so Balota and the Northeast Airfield both got a redesign - and spawns from Kamyshovo to West Chernogorsk were reintroduced.

As Dynamic Events, and Vehicles entered the equation their spawn placements were heavily influenced by where the existing player spawns lay, and how we wanted the flow of players across the map to operate. Obviously Dynamic Event types used to prototype the system were also used as a control point for "Very Rare" items - with the desired intent to ensure that in the final product, players could not farm one location across many servers to quickly gain an item the design team intended to be incredibly hard to find. (See: SVD)

Vehicles themselves followed a similar principle, as the prototype vehicle was a heavy vehicle designed to carry large amounts of both gear and players - the spawn positions for this were placed at the highest concentration in West / Northwest. As smaller, more civilian vehicles begin to be implemented we'll see more spawn types for them a bit closer to where player spawns are located.

I hope this brief look into the thought process behind these areas helps you to understand how they evolve a bit better.

See you all in Chernarus!
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Source : http://steamcommunity.com/games/221100/announcements/detail/130948446732465981

DayZ Status Report - 26 May 2015

Wed, 27 May 2015 22:18 CEST

Greetings Survivors,

This week we're switching over to a new Status Report format, and merging in some of the community focused features from the dev hub into a single weekly report. We'll need to work a few kinks out over the coming weeks, so bear with us as we get this new format to the structure we want. 0.56/0.57 Development continues over on the experimental branch - the team is rapidly approaching a candidate ready for a stable branch update.

This weeks Status Report features info on E3, goals for the 0.56/0.57 stable update, and some outstanding charity efforts by DayZ community members.

And remember - the latest news and info on DayZ development is always available via the Dev Hub.

Contents This Week

Development Board Spotlight

[trello.com]

[trello.com]

Back to Contents[]

Dev Update

Those watching the experimental branch over the last few weeks have seen a high frequency of updates, configuration changes, and restarts as the development team ramped up volume and stress testing in preperation for the stable branch update. Strong gains in server side performance were made, and thanks to player stress testing on experimental branch - critical issues were identified in the performance of infected AI. With the gains in over all performance (server side) with player and simulation handling, we were able to isolate and identify the AI related issues - and the gameplay programming team is hard at work on resolving those issues.

In the mean time, as development continues - a firm red line on server side performance for stable branch has been established. This is to ensure an enjoyable experience, as well as reduce the amount of noise to signal ratio on the feedback tracker, and greatly improve the quality of repro steps, and critical identified issues coming in from that branch.
Over all, we expect that the experience will be significantly more enjoyable than 0.55 (but not where we want it to be for the release from Early Access)

    In the interest of getting an update to stable branch as soon as possible, work on the programming side will continue internally on several key issues identified by players on that branch in 0.55 / 0.56 experimental.

- Intelligent spawning per building / Item per building capacity limits
  - AI Performance costs (Infected - Animal)

As these systems are actively being worked on by the gameplay programming team - the stable branch update will have the spawning of infected, and the persistence disabled on stable branch servers. This is only a temporary measure while these two issues continue to be worked on, and we'll see both base building, and infected return with a vengeance as soon as possible.

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Source : http://steamcommunity.com/games/221100/announcements/detail/130948446710011552

DayZ Status Report - 14 May 2015

Fri, 15 May 2015 00:10 CEST

Greetings Survivors,

This status report came a bit later than usual as we wanted to include some of the results and findings from this weeks experimental releases, as well as shed a bit of light on the intent of said releases. As we tread on into May, we'll be rolling 0.56 into 0.57 development with the intent of a regularly scheduled end of month release. Ramping up to this, you'll see frequent experimental branch updates and experiments ongoing on that branches servers.

As internally we spent time investigating server side performance, as well as the effect of various systems on production server performance we discovered abnormally high performance cost related to infected AI. As said performance should be lateral at a certain point, we've been fluctuating configurations and builds on the experimental branch to properly replicate the production environment and profile the exact location and behaviour of the source of the performance drop.

On the player side, we've made strong gains performance wise. We're seeing a gain of 4x higher performance per average player count, and this is instantly visible in gameplay. As the programming team moves ahead on investigating infected costs on server side performance, we'll be disabling infected spawning on stable branch servers (post-stable update)to ensure the highest quality of gameplay on that branch. Experimental will proceed with infected performance tests so we can as soon as possible return the infected to Chernarus en masse.
If you're curious how this work is going, once the end of the month stable update (0.57) releases - keep an eye on experimental branch.

I'm personally excited to see the gains on the player and gameplay side - we've still got a long way to go until feature complete, but I'm excited to chase you all across Chernarus.

Really not a bandit,
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Standup Notes for the week of 14 May 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
Civilian Bus
VZ61 Scorpion
New Zombie Models
Civilian Hiking Jacket

Design:

Transfer of skinning to EnScript
Transfer of traps to EnScript
Tripwire Traps
Design of damaged barrel usage
Bugfixing
Profiling server performance for existing scripts

Programming:

Inventory refactorization bugfixing
Dynamic Events spawning bugfixing
Loot Distro bugfixing
AI Performance Analysis & Bugfixing
Character Controller
Login Que Design
New Damage Sys.
Server & Client Crash Fixes

Source : http://steamcommunity.com/games/221100/announcements/detail/130947174376316464

DayZ Status Report - 6 May 2015

Thu, 07 May 2015 23:03 CEST

Greetings Survivors,

We're rapidly approaching the experimental push of 0.56, and we've discussed over the last few weeks some of the things you can expect from this update to the Steam branch. I'd like to recap a few key points though, as we're close to this push:

- Rebalancing of Infected damage threshold
- Redistribution of existing infected spawns to high population areas
- Bugfixing on Per-Item-Quantity control (Central Economy)
- Bugfixing on Infected Alert SFX
- Bugfixing on Infected movement
- Redesigned Inventory tech (engine side)
- New firearms / long range optics attachment
- Stary Sobor evacuation camp
- Bugfixes on various known duplication vulnerabilities

Tied with the 0.56 update to Stable branch, we'll see a hive wide reset (public/private) - including local storage data (player camps, vehicles)

Development is ongoing with the hive side economy control, in addition to future bug fixing development continues on the functional side, with the next major goal being region control over item spawn types. (removing the restriction of structure types only in certain areas of the map). Internally, the programming and design teams are working hard on analyzing server side performance, player position desync, and other critical issues affecting Early Access gameplay.
In some cases, resolutions to these issues are tied to the implementation of new technology to replace the legacy systems inherited from the start of the project - all of them however will be ongoing goals for the team over the coming months.

The bulk of the workload over the last month was centered around the refactorization of the inventory system. It became clear that the existing tech behind the inventory wasn't going to be able to meet the needs of the project, and carried with it its own vulnerabilities. The redesign stripped large amounts of the system, and redesigned specifically to meet the needs of DayZ and upcoming changes to DayZ's core technology.

- Support for AI and Vehicle Inventory
- Removing limitation on "in hands" as a virtual slot (still occupying space in container)
- Dynamic changing of cargo capacity - eg: lowering when damaged, raising when repaired
- Manual item rotation
- Support for redesign of Inventory UI
- Support for EnScript (Enfusion Scripting Language)
- And much, much more..

Looking at the Central Economy side of the fence, tracking the metrics on loot spawning provides some interesting details:

- Chernarus + features 8,725 buildings (and wrecks combined)
- 1,742,796 potential item spawn points are spread across the entirety of Chernarus + (Not counting dynamic events)
- Of the 8,725 buildings/wrecks across Chernarus + 410 of them are greenhouses

With the 0.56 iteration of the central economy we gain finer control over item spawn locations, but we still have a ways to go. As each update gets pushed to steam, we'll see finer and finer control over item spawn locations and types, as well as supporting dynamic random spawns - that will ensure unique spawns of valued items across the map. Who knows, maybe someday you'll get really lucky and find an M4A1 in that barn over the hill?

As you all dive into the experimental push of 0.56 (not yet live) please keep in mind that like many things in the development of DayZ, the new systems and tech are works in progress (much like DayZ itself) and are incomplete, and more than likely contain their fair share of issues. Please make sure to report any issues found on the official feedback tracker athttp://feedback.dayzgame.com

See you out there,
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Source : http://steamcommunity.com//games/221100/announcements/detail/130946540490971832

DayZ Status Report - 29 April 2015

Wed, 29 Apr 2015 22:05 CEST

Greetings Survivors,

As expected, work continues towards securing a 0.56 build for experimental branch. With the core remaining tasks being focused on closing major bugs with the systems changes core to 0.56 the design, art, and environment teams have also had time to slip some fun and interesting content into the update.

Coming up next week we're looking at the audio team taking a trip out to capture new sounds for our list of 1.0 land vehicles, and this week Andrej our Audio Designer continues work on the new infected sound effects. As well on the audio front, as we move forward with 2015 - we're looking again at how we approach the volume and impact of gun shot sounds. Our aim and intent by 1.0 is for the audio side of discharging a fire arm to be a psuedo traumatic event. Gun shots should be -loud-, and your concern prior and post firing off a shot ideally would be "Who/What might have heard me?". This will be an ongoing task, but one I'm excited to see evolve.

With 0.56 comes some changes to how long range optics are mounted on our hunting rifles, Assoc. Art Director Chris Torchia posted several renders and screenshots of the current status as well as went into brief detail about what we're looking at. With the original long range optic being phased out in favor of a new 12x hunting optic, with proper mounting to attach to the Winchester M70, Blaze 95, CR 527, and Sporter 22. Moving forward, the Mosin Nagant will support the PU scope only (within the basic attachments).

Our Environment Lead, Senchi has been working on several changes to Chernarus + for 0.57 and on - but looking at 0.56 we'll be seeing the new Village Potraviny (Store) placed across the map, as well as a refactoring of some of the key police station locations along the coastal regions. In addition, time allowing - we will see some small changes to the iconic Stary Sobor barn location as well.

Not too much to report this week as again, the team is focused primarily on prepping 0.56 for the Experimental (Unstable) Branch and later on the Stable (Main) Branch update.

Stay safe out there folks
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

With april coming to a close, we are both happy as well as grateful to see that we received a really nice amount of bugs from you guys. On the Feedback Tracker we can see that Darcion did very nice in terms of filing plenty of bugs, however, quite a bit of those were duplicates, so for this month we'll go with Zyryanoff as the bug hunter for april.

Other than that, it was a good effort Darcion, and we appreciate it!

While Zyryanoff did not necessarily submit the largest amount of bugs to the team, we did receive a good handful of nice bugs that we could add to our database.

Going forwards, we hope that you guys will keep helping us out with testing DayZ as development progresses. As mentioned, players that submit bugs from DayZ will get the chance of appearing in the Special Thanks section of the credits once DayZ goes into full release.

Remember, that all bugs can be filed on the Feedback Tracker and while doing so, please remember to perform a search before filing your bugs so as to avoid duplicate tickets. Thanks again everyone!

- SMoss / Community Manager

Standup Notes for the week of 29 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)

Programming:

Inventory refactorization
Dynamic Events
Vehicle Transmission bugfixing
Vehicle wheels simulation improvements
Adv. Loot Distro Bugfixing
Player Statistics
Character Controller
3rd Person Camera
Network Desync
New Damage Sys.
Crash Fixes

Animation:

Mauser Red 9 Anims
Ladder Animations
Infected crawling state animations
Gesture Implementation on new Anim Sys
4X4 Hatchback Animations

Source : http://steamcommunity.com/games/221100/announcements/detail/130945904545536969

DayZ Status Report - 22 April 2015

Wed, 22 Apr 2015 22:25 CEST

Greetings Survivors,

As expected, work continues on 0.56 stable branch release. This release as mentioned prior will hit in the early weeks of May rather than the standard end-of-the-month update for April. This is mostly due to bugfixing that needs to occur related to the inventory refactorization in order to get the build to a state that can be used by the Early Access audience. As well, the gameplay programming team are resolving the bugs discovered in the loot spawning system several weeks after the 0.55 stable date.

Given that most of the core work these last few weeks has been on such major systems as the inventory, and central loot economy - I thought I would take the opportunity to discuss a few points people have requested hearing information about. First off, I feel the need to reiterate on Early Access, development builds, and what to expect.
A few status reports ago I mentioned the fact that as we move forward through the development of DayZ, people *will* see more things break, more bugs, and so on. Part of getting access to DayZ as early as weve allowed via the Early Access program means that youre seeing the real ups and downs of game development. Ive seen people over the last few months on forums, twitter, and so on mention the back and forth stability of builds as if this is an anomaly - an oddity in software or game development.

Photo Credit: DayZIntel

Early Access is as the fictional character James Kirk once referred to the USS Excelsior - "The Great Experiment". DayZ approached this at its truest form, 3 months into our principle development - and as said development has continued, the scope has expanded to include the development of the next game engine from Bohemia Interactive, Enfusion. It should go without saying, that the development of any large scope video game takes years. A multiplayer only title, that also aims to fully support Steam Workshop modding is no short order. Developing said title, the game engine powering it, and maintaining a steady monthly cadence of updates to the consumer is no short order.
So I ask you, the Early Access user - when you encounter a bug that frustrates you - make sure it is listed in the feedback tracker, make sure you read the Status Reports (although, it seems that if you are reading this youve already completed this step), engage with the development team on the DayZ forums. Ive found that when it comes to the Early Access program and your experience with it, we'll all get out of it - what we put into it.

Moving past that, many people have asked about the audio side of the Enfusion engine. Obviously fairly early on into the Early Access program, we realized that the existing audio technology interited from the RV engine wasn't going to suit the needs of the project. Problematic (and annoying) audio bugs began to reveal themselves, and resolving those within the legacy technology clearly demonstrated it would be time lost. Thus, work began on a new audio module to be paired with the in-development Enfusion engine. As with any core engine work, this is not a short form task. Obviously the goal for initial deployment is feature parity with the legacy audio technology, it is my personal hope that once this is achieved - we can look to expand the options for enhancing the audio experience in Chernarus, as I firmly believe audio in DayZ is just as critical as any core technology and part of the immersion into the world.

My personal holy grail throughout the development of DayZ has, and will remain the server side performance. Much of what folks attribute to "lag" or "desync" can be traced back to poor server side performance. 85% of which comes from the performance heavy usage of SQF engine script for many gameplay systems. Mentioned in prior status reports, EnScript (the name for Enfusion's engine scripting language) is leaps and bounds ahead of the legacy SQF in terms of performance. This, the portion of the performance budget currently consumed by SQF usage is the largest roadblock between 50 player servers, and 100+ player servers. Moving the title completely away from legacy engine scripting tech, and onto the new engine scripting language for Enfusion is by no means a small task, and will be an ongoing goal for the team (and in my opinion 100% required for DayZ to reach 1.0)

Sample EnScript - Not actual in-game

Last on my list for this week is some comments I wanted to make in regards to play styles, difficulty, and exactly how to play DayZ.
Obviously, as DayZ is an open world sandbox title, nearly anything is technically possible (in regards to play styles). As the initial deployment of the new infected A.I., as well as the central economy ramped up the difficulty within Chernarus, there were people vocalizing how they disliked how difficult DayZ was becoming. Now, obviously I've spoken on this before - but I feel the need to reiterate, and clarify a few things.

Surviving in Chernarus is intended to be difficult. I want you to value each bullet, I want discovering a roaming boar in the forest to be a stroke of good luck. However, this does not mean the play styles of "Coastal Chaos" or "Squad play" and so on are not viable playstyles.

You can, and should be able to play DayZ however you want. Be warned however, every choice - every play style should, and will have its own cost. You can choose to spend your time in Elektro, fighting over sniper hill, or pitting your squad against a rival group up at the Northwest Airfield each have their own requirements to maintain, and overall costs (be it in time, health, resources, or life duration).

Lastly, as the text below calls out - Standup notes are not a change log, they are a list of the things the teams have been working on this week, to give you all transparency into the current task priorities. So try not to get upset if you see a task thats being worked on not be in the latest stable branch update, and so on.

See you guys up north,
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer
Header image credit: [TDay]Spalte

Source : http://steamcommunity.com/games/221100/announcements/detail/129819371753526293

DayZ Status Report - 14 April 2015

Tue, 14 Apr 2015 22:27 CEST

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.

Vidéo YouTube™: Survivor GameZ VI Trailer - April 19th 1pm PT/9pm GMT

The Survivor GameZ VI Finals features a rocking roster of top-notch streaming talent in an epic battle to the death between 16 teams of two.

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

Source : http://steamcommunity.com/games/221100/announcements/detail/129818549700843211

DayZ Status Report - 17 March 2015

Thu, 19 Mar 2015 16:05 CET

Greetings Survivors!

Work is chugging along on 0.55 update for stable branch, and the department leads have been sharing information and images over on the Dev Hub[dayz.com]. If you haven't had a look - head over and you'll see some awesome work in progress stuff - like the SVD Sniper Rifle, V3S Animations, and new zombie models.

[dayz.com]

Peter, our Lead Designer will be discussing below in more detail zombies and diseases. This week I'd like to talk about a few in progress updates that I'm looking forward to.

First off, we have the mentioned full randomization of weapon spawn configurations. This ranges from attachment configuration, quantity, type, and condition. When functional, each weapon you find should be as unique as possible per that item type. Be it the chance to spawn with a magazine, potential attachment, overall weapon condition, and so on. This expands upon the uniqueness of each persons kit in-game, and ensures that very few two firearms are exactly the same. Who knows, you might get lucky and find that M1911 Engraved you always wanted, -with- a clip!



Moving on to more advanced weapon customization, we've done a good deal of discussion on allowing more specific customization per weapon. Adding in rail systems, shoe horn mount scopes, barrel swaps, and so on. Controlling when and where this is done is critical to the flow of gameplay across the map. Creating hot spots, and high traffic areas for players looking to gear up, and create their favorite weapon. At this point, we're looking at adding in advanced crafting tables into this existing (soon to be enter-able) maintenance structure scattered throughout Chernarus.


Heading into April, we'll be discussing the tasks and accomplishments of Q1 2015, what the road ahead looks like and the status of long term engine tasks. From the new renderer, to the new player controller, server side performance, and so much more. Keep an eye on the Dev Hub, and the official DayZ forums for the latest news and information on DayZ Early Access.

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

"It is clear that former, by purpose simplified infected AI wasn't a hit by any means and it was frustrating to play and look at. When I was talking about the new infected in the Status Report two weeks ago I had a feeling that it would stir things up a bit. A few days after that I made short video with a horde running after a player and recently we released experimental update with the first implementation of infected AI. There were so many positive reactions on the direction that the new infected are heading, that the entire team was pleased. However there were also some which were calling for changing the DayZ lore and turning the infected into slowly moving beings.

I appreciate different opinions but I can't see any reason why we should make infected as stationary as possible, it will just simplify the game too much in such case. It is important to understand that the infected in DayZ are not the undead, and to be honest I don't want to see DayZ to become a frenzied run and grab all you can simulator. I would like to remind you that DayZ isn't supposed to be easy and straightforward, it's meant to be hard and unforgiving. While they are pretty fast right now it is just the perception in comparison with current character movement speed, which is planned to be lowered in general as it was increased intentionally when we had decided to do a complete overhaul on how the engine handles vehicles, and thus they would be absent for some time. As well I'm looking forward to the implementation of a proper stamina system for characters which alone will cut off the constant sprinting across the map and thorough the structures which is just ridiculous. With the agile infected that are able to catch up with you while you are escaping the scene you will think twice about your approach and also the load you are carry as it especially determines how far you will be able to sprint to loose them. To balance things out, the infected have their own stamina and are slowing down during the chase and with the combination of the possibility that they can stumble upon it gives you a some chance to flee if you run into such situations. The infected AI will be continuously worked on, in terms of expanding it further and also balancing it close to the perfection.

I would like to mention that we are bringing to life the long awaited disease system which in fact was hibernating under the hood for some time, but was never finished due the other needs. Diseases are described by their virulence parameters like transferability, invasivity and toxicity and to determine the potential influence on character, which can vary from carrier to heavy impact, they are compared against his or her current state counting in the levels of health, blood, diet and exposure. Diseases can be transferred in both directions, which means it's not wise to eat from the same meal after your companion, if you suspect that he may be ill. Physical and chemical resistance parameters of disease determines how it can be treated or their effects eased by medicinal drugs and after the disease passed you are resistant to catch it again for some time. System also have the possibility to be expanded with the use of gloves, niosh masks or other wearables which can obstruct transferring of the diseases by specific actions, like crafting.

Stay healthy... see you in Chernarus folks!"

- Peter / Lead Designer

Standup Notes for the week of 17 Mar 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)

Animation:

Support for new player character system
Hand poses
Zombie animation bugfixing
SVD Reloading Animations
V3S Animations

Design:

Central Economy
Barrel Crafting
Infected
Diseases
Triggers
Plant Pests
Fireplaces
Cooking
Vehicle Transmission

Programming:

Inventory refactorization
Dynamic Events
Vehicle Transmission bugfixing
Infected/Animal AI
New Player Character controller
Crash to Desktop Bugfixing
Network and Memory Optimizations

Source : http://steamcommunity.com/games/221100/announcements/detail/129816200691357460

DayZ Status Report - 10 March 2015

Thu, 12 Mar 2015 16:47 CET

Greetings Survivors,

As the 0.54 hotfix hit stable branch last Wednesday, work has continued on toward 0.55 and beyond. Over the last week with myself at GDC and PAX East, our Lead Designer - Peter Nespesny has shared some of the prototype functionality currently being worked on.

From ongoing work with the infected A.I., to the many crafting options for your survivor base with the multipurpose barrel - the design team has had their plate filled with some pretty interesting stuff over the last week.

Peter spoke briefly on the development board[dayz.com], and the official forums[forums.dayzgame.com] about the intended use of the multipurpose barrel.

[i.imgur.com]

Beyond what Peter spoke of, the potential usage for a multipurpose barrel for player bases is extensive. Ranging from lightly effective cover from incoming fire - to the storing of fluids such as fuel, and my personal favorite - catching rain to increase your water stores - I think when paired with functional persistence and global cleanup, the multipurpose barrel will be a must have for any decent sized player encampment.

Even more exciting, pairing with work from the gameplay programming teams - the design team has been able to get their hands on the early implementation of the new infected A.I. - Petershowcased on the forums[forums.dayzgame.com] a brief video of basic grouping and horde mentality responding to a players gunshot.

Again - this is very early implementation, however as work progresses into the next week the design team are working on sneaking and stealthy tactics when dealing with this new A.I. system. Moving into the next experimental branch window, we'll be looking at pushing the early implementation work out to this branch and testing with varied numbers across all servers.

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Source : http://steamcommunity.com/games/221100/announcements/detail/136570966973107453

DayZ Stable Version 0.54.126646

Thu, 05 Mar 2015 23:22 CET

DayZ stable version 0.54.126646 has been released on Steam.

New items:
- Improvised suppressor.
- Water Pouch.
- Bone Hook.
- Bone Arrow.
- Pile of bones.
- Carrier plate with attachable holster and pouches.
- Blood bag now gives and takes twice as much blood.
- FN Trombone.
- New animals.
- V3S Cargo version.

New mechanics:
- You can craft improvised suppressor using water bottle and duct tape.
- You can craft bone hook out of pile of bones.
- You can craft bone arrow out of pile of bones and improvised arrow.
- Weight added to all items and clothes.
- Caliber of ammo affect suppressor degradation.
- Horticulture - Potato plant and its growing process.
- You can dismantle the FN Trombone.
- Continuous consumption and item use prototype.
- Items now shows only rough estimates about its weight and volume of containment.
- Cooking mechanics changes.
- Fireplace mechanics changes.
- Fluid mechanic tweaks.
- Blood mechanic tweaks.
- Weapon degradation.
- Suppressor degradation.

New animations + audio:
- Placeholder SFX for improvised suppressor (standard suppressor SFX).

Reworked locations:
- Devil's castle.
- Pik Kozlova.
- Black & Willow Lakes.
- Bor village.
- Quarry near Solnichny.

Map:
- All old rocks models have been removed and replaced with new ones.

Programming:
- New spawn tags added to all buildings.
- Degradation values set for pistols, rifles and silencers.
- Blood regeneration nerfed.

Fixed:
- Pouches for vest is now displayed properly in hands.
- Suppressor position on Longhorn while reloading.
- Message when loading ruined ammo.
- Spliting stone using pickaxe will give you smaller stone with correct damage state.
- You can no longer use mace for cutting raincoats into armbands.
- Mace can no longer be used for skinning.
- Force feeding guts text.
- Thermal mechanic fixes.
- Server stability fixes.
- Performance fixes (server).
- Bullet penetration fix.

Known issues:
- Animals spin in one place.
- Animals die randomly.
- Animal navigation.
- Animal animations are playing at a wrong resolution.
- You can drive v3s while knocked out.
- Only 1 person can get on back cargo of v3s.
- Random desync.
- Random client crashes.
- Random server crashes.

Source : http://steamcommunity.com/games/221100/announcements/detail/136570245711653391

DayZ Status Report - 24 February 2015

Wed, 25 Feb 2015 14:24 CET

Greetings Survivors,

As we move towards the 0.54 stable branch update, I’d like to cover a few points that you all should know. As with all updates during Early Access, this is a development build and thus has its own issues, bugs, and so on. If you encounter any of this, please open a ticket over atfeedback.dayzgame.com.

More specifically, for those who may be experiencing issues seeing servers in the server browser – please make your way over to this thread[forums.dayzgame.com] on the Official DayZ forums for instructions from Community Manager SMoss, and BattlEye developer Bastian.

Part of the 0.54 is the tech required to support the redesign of our user interface. This is just the initial work required to support said changes, not the changes itself. Thus everything will –look- different, but not necessarily how we intend it to look by the time we hit 1.0. The user interface is just one part of the evolving technology coming in from the engine and gameplay programming teams, and will be iterated throughout Early Access.

As well, with 0.54 comes the initial implementation of the new animal A.I., this system is still early on so odd behaviour will be encountered. However even with the system in this early state, this is a strong step in the direction of a more robust, lifelike animal behaviour system. I for one look forward to the hermit-hunter lifestyle the next time I log in on my public hive character.

In addition to a large amount of new content to explore, new enterable structures, villages, redesigned areas and more – 0.54 features continued security enhancements, bug fixes and more.

Over the coming weeks SMoss will also be rolling out some new features over on the community side of DayZ.com, including a weekly Community Focus that showcases user created content, streams, art, and so much more. Head over to the Community hub at DayZ.com and take a look.

As always, developers are on hand to take your suggestions and feedback on the Official DayZ forums at forums.dayzgame.com.

Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

As we are getting closer to the release of the next stable branch update of DayZ with version number 0.54, we are focusing more on tidying up and fixing the most annoying bugs and issues instead of working on new features or expanding existing ones. For example we identified and fixed a long timer related to synchronizing the temperature of objects, which was consuming relatively large chunk of communication between server and client. Fortunately it didnt happened often or in large scale but its really great to have it fixed now with upcoming refactored fireplace which will become more usable with more items thus used by survivors. There was also few issues which was fixed related to the independent liquid types we introduced in last version, one worthy to mention is the issue which completely breaks character stomach, energy and water statuses.

I already mentioned the fireplace which is undergoing a refactoring for some time now and its getting seamlessly to the fixing and polishing stage. Now when there is the solid foundation of the system the next step is the cooking process in general. With plenty of the different food available in the game and three distinctive food processing types, to name them - boiling, baking and drying, things can get out of control really quickly. Well at least especially when we want to stretch the possibilities and interactions to the maximum and want to visualize the outcome of the process. What will happen when food is already baked and you start to boiling it? Do you need to pre-process the food before drying? What about moldy food? And plenty of other questions related to that topic which needs to be answered beforehand. After the intended cooking mechanics are in place and the central economy is working as it should, we can finally say good bye to the generous amount of spawned non-perishable food.

Most of you are probably waiting for the enrichment of the vehicles controls - manual transmission. We had some quality time already while trying it on our internal build, but it needs a little bit more time to be tweaked into the state which is safe for public release. Good thing is that with its implementation some of the issues with vehicles behavior were properly addressed so little bit of waiting doesnt hurt. As far as vehicles parts goes I owe you at least quick update, their functionality is dependent mostly on the new inventory system that is currently being implemented and of course on the support from the extended vehicle simulation itself.

Last but not least we are making steady progress on the new AI for infected which is getting along nicely and I hope you will be able to experience it and its benefits soon on experimental versions before it hits the stable release later on, however animal AI will be released beforehand.

Start preparing your nerves for some intense encounters... see you in Chernarus folks! "

Peter / Lead Designer

Standup Notes for the week of 24 Feb 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)

Animation:

Trumpet reloading animation
Winchester reloading
Zombie attack animations
V3S Animations
MoCap Session

Design:

Manual transmission
Firearms Damage
V3S Cargo
Gas cooker refactoring
Fireplace Polishing
Diseases transfer
New script language
Central economy
Bugfixing

Programming:

Inventory refactorization
Loot distribution per buildings
Zombie/Animal AI
Character controller (animations & physics)
Vehicles - Manual transmission and bugfixing
Flaregun Improvements
Security Bugfixes

Source : http://steamcommunity.com/games/221100/announcements/detail/136569154871096894

DayZ Status Report - 17 February 2015

Tue, 17 Feb 2015 14:51 CET

Greetings Survivors,

As some of you may be aware, we've been experimenting a bit with the format and release day of the Status Reports coming into 2015. With upcoming changes to DayZ.com as a centralized point of information on the development of DayZ, the Status Reports will be released on Tuesdays from now on. Additionally, we'll be making an effort to make the Status Reports more visual, for those who do not have the time to read what is new in the world of DayZ development.

Moving onto said development, you'll soon be seeing the spawning of a different variation on the V3S. This variant will allow for the transportation of larger groups of players. The spawn rate across the world will remain at fifteen vehicles for the time. Initially you will not be able to access the inventory of the vehicle, this will be supported shortly on stable branch. As well, finalized animations, and firing from passenger positions will be supported in later builds on stable branch. The initial intent of spawning vehicles supporting large groups of players is to gauge both the performance, and functionality of large player groups moving together at high speed across Chernarus. Any issues discovered should be reported to feedback.dayzgame.comwhenever possible.

In addition, Chernarus should soon also begin to see the roll out of the new animal A.I. system that briefly made an appearance in 0.53 experimental branch. Animal behaviors should be significantly more complex, and add a great deal to the immersion and feel of hunting for your next meal, or resource. Initially this will roll out with the deer, and then progressively expand to support the full list of animals residing in the world of DayZ.

Lastly for me, we've been discussing the subject of blood regeneration, transfusion, and all the mechanics surrounding them for awhile. With blood regeneration at the rate it currently is, and the reduced amount of blood gained per blood bag, not many folks use or interact with these mechanics in the current stable build. Given that now is the time to experiment, and alter these mechanics to gauge viability through use on our steam branches we'll be reducing the blood regeneration rate, and increasing the amount of blood gained through proper blood transfusions.
Personally I cannot wait to see how the survivors of Chernarus adapt to this change.

Mr. Black0ut picked up his Hardcore DayZ Series again, you should all take a look.
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Mirek / Lead Gameplay Programmer

"I'd like to mention a few brief words about the new character/player controller. The physics part of this controller will be implemented using Bullet physics, so there will be a visible improvement in interactions between static and dynamic objects.
e.g. there shouldn't any camera clipping issues, it will improve melee combat, movement on stairs, and it will be possible to get over dropped items and dead bodies. It will have also positive impact on performance.
The animation side of this will be using Enfusion's new animation system and will allow us to have more animation layers on character, so it will be possible to play more animations at once. With this, we can achieve moving during shooting from the bow or adding injured animations.
The character/player controller will be used for players and for AI units. We would like to introduce the physical part on character controller in 0.55 experimental. As for the animation part (which is already used for animals), there is a lot of work with exporting data to the new system and with complete rewriting of current system, but its in progress now and we hope, that we will introduce it in 0.56 (0.57 more likely) experimental build.."

Read more on http://dayz.com/blog/status-report-17-feb-15