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.com whenever 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.."
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