Afternoon Survivors,
We have an update from Brian, Mirek and Dustin for you. They'll be sharing the latest about the 0.62 presentation at PAX Australia, 0.61 Experimental public testing, and some details about what's going on here at the DayZ offices.
Contents This Week
- Dev Update/Hicks
- Dev Update/Mirek
- Dev Update/Dustin
- Community Spotligh
Dev Update/Hicks
Greetings Survivors,
It has been a pretty exciting (and potentially stressful at times) two weeks for development on DayZ, both in the .61 development and the discussion on moving forward beyond that. This Status Report I'll go over what we're currently focusing addressing on 0.61 experimental, and then I'm going to summarize the main points from the 0.62 and Beyond talk at PAX Australia.
As many of you may know, we've gone through several iterations on Experimental/Unstable branch for 0.61. With our principle focus being on server stability, and performance. The gameplay programming team has been experimenting with several possible options in improving our server side performance, which you as survivors will directly see as improved infected responsivity and speed, faster user actions, and general overall improved responsivity to your interactions with the world. While we've made some strong improvements in regards to stability, we're not quite where we'd like to be with server performance. As I've mentioned many times before - server performance is and will continue to be an ongoing area of focus for us throughout development and into the beta phase. That said, it is especially important to the 0.61 experience, given that at a gameplay level the dynamic spawning of infected is such a corner stone. I won't spend too much time talking about this, as Mirek is going to elaborate a bit on some of the different changes his team has been working on in this area further in to the SR.
Enough rambling, lets take a look at what critical issues we have on 0.61 Exp/Unstable.
- VOIP Icon missing when using VOIP
- Server Performance can dip below acceptable line
- Character deformation when entering structure under high ping
- Character model twitching when standing on bodies
- Client side crashes (Several)
- VOIP Volume balancing
- Character sounds balancing
- Characters hands stuck raised in some situations
- Server side crashes tied to specific item
- Character roll backs during some server crashes
- Reconnecting / Manipulating weapon magazine can prevent magazine use
Keep in mind this is just a list of critical fixes for 0.61 Stable - and is fluid based on the feedback and data we get back from 0.61 Experimental/Unstable builds. If you've encountered other critical issues, please let us know about it via our feedback tracker or on our official forums .
As mentioned earlier, I was at PAX Australia in Melbourne this last weekend and had the opportunity to talk about where we are headed after 0.61 hits stable with the Australian and New Zealand community. For those that would rather not read my rambling wall of texts, I will be re-recording the audio along with the presentation slides. However, for those that *don't* mind reading - I'm going to summarize the presentation in this Status Report. (We'll jump past the start of the presentation that talks about .61, as if you are reading a Status Report this is probably redundant information)
Now that .61 is on Experimental/Unstable - lets take a look at what our plans internally are for development beyond .61 hitting Stable branch on Steam. Once this occurs, the primary bulk of the DayZ development team will be switching their focus to the "Beta" milestone for DayZ. Beta for us is a major point in our development, and it goes without saying that it has its own challenge and hurdles. This milestone is focused on the following areas:
- New Animation System
- New Player Controller
- New User Actions
- Improved Vehicle Physical Simulation
- And that big ol' feature/content backlog (that is dependant on these technologies)
Now what do I mean when I say "Backlog"? Well, as many of you may be aware - there are a good deal of gameplay systems, mechanics, items, and more that we have talked about in previous Status Reports, presentations, and are sitting in the "In Progress" column on our Trello. Nearly every single one of them are dependant upon the technologies listed above, either through technical limitation, or having just been written from the ground up on Enforce script and designed with the new tech specifically in mind. At the presentation in Australia I gave the following examples:
- Base Building Improvements
- Electrical System items Improvements
- Character Lifespan
- New Vehicles
- New Items & Weapons
Now, one of the key points I tried to point out during this presentation was how critical this milestone is to the progress towards the final version of DayZ. Work on not only the technologies that power this milestone, but all the content and mechanics that we hope to hit with it, has been an ongoing task throughout DayZ's development. Artists, Designers, Animators, and Programmers have been working for quite some time on changes to DayZ that can't hit the Early Access userbase until these changes to DayZ's engine are ready to be merged into the main trunk of our development. This won't be a simple task, either. The work described is very similar to the change to DayZ's rendering technology in its risk and complexity. I've likened these milestone goals to a changing of the spine of DayZ, at least at a gameplay level. So, as mentioned before - once we get 0.61 to Stable branch - the primary bulk of DayZ's development team shifts all its focus on this goal. Exactly how much of that feature backlog we will be able to get into this milestone will be discussed in more detail in future Status Reports, once we can properly gauge any potential risk - but make no mistake, this is both an exciting time for us on the development team, but also a major task.
While the primary bulk of the team is focused on this, our beta milestone - a small 5 man team (Comprised mostly of artists, environment designers, and support from one programmer) will be branching off to work on a 0.62 update to DayZ Early Access focused on a much needed overhaul of Chernarus's visual fidelity. What exactly do we mean by that? Well - lets take a look.
For the full status report, please use the following link:
https://dayz.com/blog/status-report-08-nov-2016