Over the next few weeks you will hopefully begin to see some small (but effective) changes to how the Status Reports, Dev Streams, and DayZ website are laid out. In order to facilitate this, the traditional format of our dev streams will change and the Status Report will begin to focus more on the tech side of DayZ, as well as the existing discipline soap boxes, and stand up notes. The DayZ website will soon feature an "Early Access" calendar covering our intended experimental and stable branch updates, play sessions, dev talks, special events, and consumer show attendance.
That aside, this week hopefully sees the release of 0.50 to Stable Branch on steam. Paired with the recent support of private shards for consumer rented DayZ server instances and the ongoing drive for server performance enhancements we hope to finish off the first year of development on DayZ with a strong support for player communities. Persistent storage stability, as well as transportation, and A.I. redesign are goals we aim to be able to begin implementing into our steam branches before the Christmas holiday. As always, we will discuss the progress of these goals in our status reports and external communication moving forward.
UPDATE: As mentioned via the DayZ Dev Twitter (@dayzdevteam) we are currently working to address issues encountered during pre release testing for 0.50 to stable branch. Current goals are aimed at a release during next weeks regularly scheduled maintenance, however we will keep you all updated as to the progress.
In the mean time, experimental branch is updated with the latest 0.50 build - for volume and stress testing prior to next weeks maintenance window.
Make sure to check the DayZ dev hub weekly, and keep an eye out for the changes to DayZ.com - Brian Hicks / Lead Producer
Peter / Lead Game Designer
"The end of the month is around the corner and that means only one thing: After the three experimental releases in a row it's a time to deliver the latest stable branch update to DayZ. The Last few days we were fixing the last few issues here and there and polishing current state of the internal dev branch version so it can be distributed to stable branch and shine there for another month. As well I can tell you that you will have plenty of stuff to try and do. Let me recap quickly the features and content added to the game this month for you.
With proper tools you are able now to plow the soil in the greenhouses and plant the seeds which will grow into plants and produce crops which can be picked. For this initial iteration of horticulture we went with tomato plants and with the fixed placement, in the near future we will add more plants and planting spots will become arbitrary. After doors were re-implemented in the engine we were able to add opening/closing sound effects to them as well as locking/unlocking their locks with lock picks which is the very first basic iteration of barricading. Doors can be also unlocked with brute force so don't worry that someone will lock you up and leave you for dead. Taking care of your character was also extended with shoes degradation which is dependent on shoes durability, surface roughness they are used on, movement speed and distance walked. Character exposure to weather, temperature and wetness was tweaked and with addition of heat packs even snipers must not fear they will freeze out during their camping. Also other features were expanded as well, repairing items and clothes with duct tape and leather sewing kit. You can also use sewing kits to stitch your wounds. New animals were added as well, you can meet new the goat and hen now in Chernarus. As far as new items goes I just mention some of them. From weapons there is a set of long awaited ones containing MP-133, R92, AK-74, AKS-74U and as a bonus the handy Derringer. For melee usage there is sledgehammer, and brass knuckles. Clothes were enriched with now complete firefighter uniform and other pieces. Backpacks have also some newcomers like SPOSN and waterproof backpacks. We fixed some ongoing annoying issues like struggling from restrains, seeing thru burlap sack when logged in with it on head, unconsciousness compatibility with both states, character drowning, fireplace and tent placing, container inception and many more.
I teased you in the last status report that I'll write something about the upcoming new inventory. Current inventory is good and is doing fine but there are some little flaws. What I especially like is the micromanagement of items in given space which provide nice immersion - it's not just some text list and I also like easy usage of it with drag and drop functionality. We would like to expand on good sides and rectify not sufficient ones like virtual hands slot or some inconsistencies in manipulation with inventory in general. With new inventory system we will be able to do things like creating container on any object, locking it, dynamically change it's capacity, dynamically change number of quick-bar slots according to given container and a lot more, maybe rotating items will be possible as well. Our senior designer Jan Tomasik is currently playing with GUI layout of inventory screen and here is what he has to say:
"Horizontally oriented inventory uses better screen space of nowadays 16:9 monitors. This layout reduce necessity to scroll through inventory to minimum and doesn't obscure view on players character and its surroundings. Player has better overview of items he posses and time for all management of loot is significantly reduced. Inventory is fully modular so it fits even on 4:3 and offers future possibility to be even organizable by players themselves. All slot sizes are same through whole UI so player is always sure whether item fits in slot or not. Player can choose whether he wants to have avatar panel on left or right side of the screen and can also organize order of containers.".
You can see Jan's concept of horizontal layout in attached screenshot on the official DayZ website (http://dayz.com/blog/status-report-week-of-27-oct-14), of course the visuals are just temporary mockup.
Enjoy the new stable release and in the meantime... see you in Chernarus folks! "
Viktor / Lead Animator
"The animation team has been busy bringing new animations to the game like reloading for derringer, wringing clothes, using grenades, flares and chemlights and other.
We have also slightly redesigned the sitting animations. The new pose greatly reduces amount of clippings when holding pistols, one handed and two handed items.
There is also progress with the new zombies as they are internally running around using new systems. The animation graph and AI now has to be improved so it can start using new animations.
Last weeks we had many discussions about some great stuff coming to the game. One I am most excited about is the injured player also known as limping animations already showed a while ago. It wasn't the right time to bring this to the game yet because it is very tied to many systems and most of the default animations have to be done and finalized first. We have agreed on how many injured stages there will be and also we would like to represent some illnesses with an animations like cough, sneeze, fever and more. To be clear this is something we won't get sooner then sometime next year. But I'm sure it's worth the wait."
Standup Notes for the week of 27 Oct 14
Design:
- Bugfixing before stable release
- Configs and scripts for new items
- Polishing current state of things
- Loot tables maintenance
- Loot distribution
- Crafting
- Controls
- Inventory
- Vehicles
- Zombie AI
Programming:
- Critical inventory fixes
- Vehicle control
- New gamecontrols
- Door states persistency
- Loot distribution improvements
- Zombie/Animal AI