Status Report - 29 Mar 2016

Evening Survivors,

It's time for that update on what's been going on during the past two weeks. We have a bit of info on blocker issues for 0.60 as well as which subjects will be in focus for the immediate future.

Contents This Week

• Dev Update/Hicks
• Dev Update/Peter
• Dev Update/Viktor
• Community Spotlight: Days of Z

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors,

Hey everyone. While I don't have an experimental build for you today - I do have good news and an update on what is going on with the blockers, how far we've got with them, and so on:

• Inventory UI
  • User controls within the new inventory look to be at parity with the old inventory system. The last few remaining issues are a few nasty blocking bugs on the functional side, such as items missing their icons.

• Reload mechanics
  • The QA team have worked with the design and animation teams to get a firm handle on exactly where the inconsistencies are with the new reload mechanics, and said teams are working on resolving the issue. I think we can all agree that when we push a large change to how weapons reload - they damn better all reload with the same mechanics ;)

• Character Loading/Saving
  • Proper character loading/saving is back, and in the process some nice network optimizations in this area were made!

• Renderer based blocking issues
  • We've cut the list of blocker flagged issues tied to the new Enfusion renderer in half since the last time we talked - and in the time since our last Status Report the Enfusion engine team has made some outstanding optimizations across Chernarus - which you can see the result of in the latest .60 Dev Log video that you see below.
  • In addition, while the Enfusion engine team was able to commit and test their latest optimizations, the automated performance benchmarking tool briefly discussed in the latest .60 Dev Log video has enabled the environment team to begin to isolate problematic issues with certain areas of the map that would not otherwise be noticed. We're excited to see these fixes give us yet another small bump up in Enfusion's new renderer performance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heXxEX1XVTg

As we get closer to bringing .60 to experimental branch, I lightly urge you all to temper your excitement with a few brief statements of reality about public development of a title, and its engine:

• .60 is focused on UI, and Renderer - it does not feature the new animation system, player controller, or user actions
• We still have plenty of issues ahead of us to tackle, the renderer is but one hurdle on the road to a complete DayZ
• Network Optimizations, Server Performance Optimization (This is a big one, standing between us and more players, more infected, more animals), Animation System, Eden Update Audio Tech merge, and more are all ahead of us

So I encourage you to keep your eye on the proverbial prize here and report your bugs over on the official DayZ forums, be active in testing these new technology changes, and be a part of moving DayZ towards 1.0

Before I wrap up my part for this Status Report, I'd like to include an excerpt from a post I made over on the official forums - that I think a lot of you might have missed:

"I frequently get asked why a specific bug might not be resolved yet, or why something hasn't been addressed yet in development that from a players perspective might seem critical.
There are a lot of things to take into consideration in development when weighing a bugfix, not to mention when you're dealing with a title transitioning from one engine, to another one that is *in development* Lets take a quick look into a brief break down of how the thought process goes:

- First off - what is the risk of this fix at the current time?

• What are the goals for the upcoming build? Does this potentially represent larger issues that will push the build back?
• Is this issue tied to a technology that is going to be replaced?
  • For example - Is this an issue tied with the legacy renderer?

• Is this issue related to ongoing investigation of a larger issue with wider sweeping impact on the title?
  
• If this issue IS tied to a system scheduled to be rewritten or replaced - what is the estimated time involved in:
  • Work resolving the issue itself
  • Test pass on the issue
  • Overall BVT test pass to ensure related issues are not encountered
  • Regression testing on the issue

• A lot of issues consumers see in the way of:
  • Duplicating (Old action system)
  • Glitching into models
  • Damage / Projectile cheats
  • Balancing / etc

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

For the full Status Report, please use the following link: http://dayz.com/blog/status-report-29-Mar-2016