Now that 0.50 has rolled out to stable branch, the focus of the team shifts to the incremental roll out of 0.51 for November’s monthly stable branch update. As with any monthly stable branch update, this comes with several new features, functional changes to existing systems, and its own unique collection of bugs and general game play issues. Those who encounter any frustrating blockers to their gameplay experience on either stable or experimental branch are encouraged to utilize the DayZ feedback tracker at feedback.dayzgame.com.
Looking towards the 0.51 update and the Christmas break, in addition to the obvious feature and functional goals - Server side performance is paramount. Addressing critical issues and blockers in releasing 0.50 on schedule has resulted in reduced server performance and with our end of year feature/functional goals coming up the programming team is focused on ensuring a smooth and solid server side frame rate. Experimental/Unstable servers will be used to profile and test 0.51’s performance throughout the month, so if you are looking to participate in this stress testing - make sure to opt into Experimental branch!
On experimental branch this week we’ve pushed out several new security related hotfixes, as well as pushing BattlEye’s upcoming changes. As always with security, working in tandem with our external partners (BattlEye and VAC) as well as observing exploits and behavior on experimental and stable branch servers allow us to iterate, and address via experimental > stable branch update paths.
It is important again to understand that during the Early Access Alpha period of DayZ’s development vulnerabilities will be introduced as the engine and systems surrounding it are created. Addressing these vulnerabilities and iterating via the experimental > stable branch update path is a constant tug of war. Through utilizing the DayZ feedback tracker to properly report valid information and issues encountered surrounding these areas, we can more quickly “patch the holes”
This Friday (the 14th) we had the first of our “dev play sessions” on experimental branch and the footage captured during this stream will be edited and commentated over in next weeks “dev experimental branch discussion” video to be released in next weeks Status Report. It is our hopes that combining general developer experimental branch gameplay with a “directors style commentary” alternating weekly will allow both the light hearted side of seeing the team play and experiment with systems in development, and the more serious gameplay and design oriented development discussion that the dev experimental branch discussion videos will allow.
This paired with the upcoming restructuring of the Dev Hub, as well as moving the Status Reports to Fridays and rolling out “Update Notes” for Wednesday experimental branch releases (via the dev hub) will be the first step towards increasing community/developer interaction moving forward into 2015.
Don’t forget about our private shard contest, announced during last weeks Status Report. Submissions are still being accepted! - Brian Hicks / Lead Producer
Peter / Lead Game Designer
“Not much has changed since the last status report update on our front. Vehicle implementation is still flagged with the highest priority. There are of course some issues down the road which needs to be tackled to some extent so it can be considered ready to go for public testing. We advanced a bit as we were passed the vehicle physics parameters in configuration to set up car behavior correctly which is not an easy task and can take countless hours of tweaking and balancing to get the feeling right and believable. For example we already had iteration where our beloved “V3S” was acting like a boat or was falling on its sides while steering.
At Thursday and Friday we had a visit from part of the Bratislava team here to talk about features and design. It was nice to have them there and discuss things in details - like animals, cooking and horticulture. In meantime we’ve added MP-133 with pistol grips and fixed walkie talkies. We also added one more way to gather meat. Apart from that there are some new issues with restraining and struggling which we are taking the care of now. We are also revisiting the way how the suicide was supposed to be working and if everything goes fine it will be seamlessly integrated into the gameplay at the end.
Come get some… see you in Chernarus folks!”
Chris / Lead Artist
“This week, I’ve been working closely with Peter regarding design of the V3S and will be working on a high quality interior of the V3S with functional gauges. The initial implementation of the V3S will have some placeholder interior as the high quality version is being created.
We have also finished the prison uniform and are closing in on finishing the prison complex, which will be an interesting area to explore. We plan to also create prison-themed zombies which you will have to face if you want to explore the facility.
The Steyr AUG model is done and we will soon send it for animations, cfg, and sounds. I am optimistic that it can be in for next stable release but its worth saying that it will be the base version only. We are looking into swapping barrels to convert from the standard AUG to an HBAR version.
The military tent is also finished. I expect it will be found in next stable release.”
Standup Notes for the week of 10 Nov 14
(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:
• Prison Complex
• High fidelity V3S instrument panel
• Steyr AUG
• Prison-themed zombies
Animation:
• Mp133 Pistol Grip Reload Animation done
• Player Suicide Animations in Progress
• Vehicle animations
• Throwing in crouch and prone
• Animation changes for new controls
• Zombies with new AI
• Vehicles
Design:
• Configs and scripts for new items (V3S Praga, MP-133 with pistol grips)
• Fixing restrain/struggling
• Fixing walkie talkies
• Fixing suicide
• Vehicles
• Horticulture
• Cooking
• Damage system
Programming:
• Critical inventory fixes
• Vehicle settings for physical simulations
• New gamecontrols
• Loot distribution improvements
• Zombie/Animal AI
• Player connection issues (possibility of attacking players before they can play)
• Character duplication fixes