Dear Survivors,

We are thrilled to announce that Update 1.30 is now entering the Experimental phase on Steam.

View game pageThis marks the beginning of the release of DayZ Badlands, which you’ve all been waiting for. Normally, we’d include all of the assets that come with the expansion. This time around, however, we’re keeping some of them until the release. There are a few exceptions, like the motorbikes, which we need to test more rigorously in advance. You can find the full list in the patch notes here.

Let’s get into it.

Once you jump into the game and inspect your character, you may quickly realize that all the inventory icons have been upgraded. Or you may not. We had veterans try out DayZ Badlands this summer and it took some of them a few minutes to notice the change. This reflects our goal of improving the game’s accessibility for newcomers and veterans alike.

As a long-running game shaped by many artists and designers, DayZ’s HUD visual style has naturally evolved over time. This has resulted in some shortcomings in recognizability and consistency. These include the same item looking different across icons (e.g. firewood), as well as a mix of visual styles ranging from pixel art and polygonal visuals to realistic shading. We went through more than 150 icons and improved their visual consistency and legibility. The new icon set follows a consistent visual language, with a unified capture angle, consistent outline weight, and enough contrast against the slot background for players to recognize items at a glance, even at small sizes. We believe we have balanced familiarity and improvement with minimal compromise. The result should feel good for veterans too, once they consciously or subconsciously notice the improved consistency across the UI.

The most important additions coming to Experimental are the motorbikes and their accompanying physics. If you’ve been keeping up with the dev blogs, you may already know the nitty-gritty from Dev Blog 7, which was published last week. Long story short, we are introducing two motorbikes: the moped and the enduro, along with several color variants. The moped comes in three fixed colors: blue, red, and yellow. The enduro comes in four base colors and additional plates in those colors that can be swapped, mixed, and matched. Both come with a new two-wheeled simulation, featuring leaning characteristics that have not previously been available in our game, as well as ragdoll physics for crashes. Keep in mind that you won’t see the ragdoll from your point of view if you crash because you will fall unconscious, but all clients will see the character in the same position.

You should be able to test the motorbikes on the “Many Motorbikes” servers coming to Experimental. For the past few updates, whenever we wanted to test cars, we deployed “Many Cars” servers where we could monitor the performance of the game and its vehicles. “Many Motorbikes” will work in the same way. Please test them out and let us know what you think via the Feedback Tracker. Since we have also put significant effort into updating our animation systems, we would like to give the modding community a heads-up that you might encounter problems with animation-related mods. Check out the 1.30 Exp stream we did yesterday:

Aside from the animations for motorbikes, we are also bringing animation updates to the infected, specifically the attack animations. Infected attacks now better reflect the position of their target. Previously, infected consistently used downward-facing attack animations, regardless of the player’s stance or relative position. They can now select between upward, centered, and downward attacks based on the height of the player’s head relative to the attacking infected. This means their attacks will respond more naturally when you are standing, crouching, or prone, as well as when fighting across stairs, slopes, and other uneven terrain. For example: an infected chasing a player downhill may aim lower, while one attacking a target above them can direct its attack upward. Infected can now also perform a new running heavy attack, bringing further variety to their attack animations.

Continuing our efforts to tailor the aesthetics and colors of firearms to each terrain, we are bringing back color variants that were available during the alpha days, now with upgraded visuals and textures. These will be available for select firearms, and we are bringing some of them to Experimental. We will let you discover them on your own.

Last but not least, we are happy to announce that we are once again partnering with Lurkit to bring back the Creator Program for the release of DayZ Badlands. Similar to the program for DayZ Frostline, it will give DayZ creators, press, and other content creators an exclusive first look at Nasdara. The program is designed to give more creators exposure through exclusive access to DayZ Badlands, while also helping us introduce the expansion to more players.

We will announce the exact dates soon. This time, however, the program will run for approximately one week, compared to two weeks for DayZ Frostline. Stay tuned for more information.

View game pageWe put a lot of love into the motorbikes and DayZ Badlands, and we cannot wait for you to try them out! DayZ Badlands is coming out in four weeks on October 15. We will publish as much dev blog content as we can before that time. Make sure you and your friends have wishlisted it! It’s going to be a blast!

Thank you all for your continued support and patience.

Big love,
The DayZ Team