Greetings Survivors!
Work is chugging along on 0.55 update for stable branch, and the department leads have been sharing information and images over on the Dev Hub. If you haven't had a look - head over and you'll see some awesome work in progress stuff - like the SVD Sniper Rifle, V3S Animations, and new zombie models.
Peter, our Lead Designer will be discussing below in more detail zombies and diseases. This week I'd like to talk about a few in progress updates that I'm looking forward to.
First off, we have the mentioned full randomization of weapon spawn configurations. This ranges from attachment configuration, quantity, type, and condition. When functional, each weapon you find should be as unique as possible per that item type. Be it the chance to spawn with a magazine, potential attachment, overall weapon condition, and so on. This expands upon the uniqueness of each persons kit in-game, and ensures that very few two firearms are exactly the same. Who knows, you might get lucky and find that M1911 Engraved you always wanted, -with- a clip!
Moving on to more advanced weapon customization, we've done a good deal of discussion on allowing more specific customization per weapon. Adding in rail systems, shoe horn mount scopes, barrel swaps, and so on. Controlling when and where this is done is critical to the flow of gameplay across the map. Creating hot spots, and high traffic areas for players looking to gear up, and create their favorite weapon. At this point, we're looking at adding in advanced crafting tables into this existing (soon to be enter-able) maintenance structure scattered throughout Chernarus.
Heading into April, we'll be discussing the tasks and accomplishments of Q1 2015, what the road ahead looks like and the status of long term engine tasks. From the new renderer, to the new player controller, server side performance, and so much more. Keep an eye on the Dev Hub, and the official DayZ forums for the latest news and information on DayZ Early Access.
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer
"It is clear that former, by purpose simplified infected AI wasn't a hit by any means and it was frustrating to play and look at. When I was talking about the new infected in the Status Report two weeks ago I had a feeling that it would stir things up a bit. A few days after that I made short video with a horde running after a player and recently we released experimental update with the first implementation of infected AI. There were so many positive reactions on the direction that the new infected are heading, that the entire team was pleased. However there were also some which were calling for changing the DayZ lore and turning the infected into slowly moving beings.
I appreciate different opinions but I can't see any reason why we should make infected as stationary as possible, it will just simplify the game too much in such case. It is important to understand that the infected in DayZ are not the undead, and to be honest I don't want to see DayZ to become a frenzied run and grab all you can simulator. I would like to remind you that DayZ isn't supposed to be easy and straightforward, it's meant to be hard and unforgiving. While they are pretty fast right now it is just the perception in comparison with current character movement speed, which is planned to be lowered in general as it was increased intentionally when we had decided to do a complete overhaul on how the engine handles vehicles, and thus they would be absent for some time. As well I'm looking forward to the implementation of a proper stamina system for characters which alone will cut off the constant sprinting across the map and thorough the structures which is just ridiculous. With the agile infected that are able to catch up with you while you are escaping the scene you will think twice about your approach and also the load you are carry as it especially determines how far you will be able to sprint to loose them. To balance things out, the infected have their own stamina and are slowing down during the chase and with the combination of the possibility that they can stumble upon it gives you a some chance to flee if you run into such situations. The infected AI will be continuously worked on, in terms of expanding it further and also balancing it close to the perfection.
I would like to mention that we are bringing to life the long awaited disease system which in fact was hibernating under the hood for some time, but was never finished due the other needs. Diseases are described by their virulence parameters like transferability, invasivity and toxicity and to determine the potential influence on character, which can vary from carrier to heavy impact, they are compared against his or her current state counting in the levels of health, blood, diet and exposure. Diseases can be transferred in both directions, which means it's not wise to eat from the same meal after your companion, if you suspect that he may be ill. Physical and chemical resistance parameters of disease determines how it can be treated or their effects eased by medicinal drugs and after the disease passed you are resistant to catch it again for some time. System also have the possibility to be expanded with the use of gloves, niosh masks or other wearables which can obstruct transferring of the diseases by specific actions, like crafting.
Stay healthy... see you in Chernarus folks!"
- Peter / Lead Designer
Standup Notes for the week of 17 Mar 15
(Note: Standup notes are not a change log - they are a quick high level look at tasks the teams worked on throughout this week)
Animation:
- Support for new player character system
- Hand poses
- Zombie animation bugfixing
- SVD Reloading Animations
- V3S Animations
Design:
- Central Economy
- Barrel Crafting
- Infected
- Diseases
- Triggers
- Plant Pests
- Fireplaces
- Cooking
- Vehicle Transmission
Programming:
- Inventory refactorization
- Dynamic Events
- Vehicle Transmission bugfixing
- Infected/Animal AI
- New Player Character controller
- Crash to Desktop Bugfixing
- Network and Memory Optimizations