Neuer Wochenbericht - 10.05.2016

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors,

As I'm sure many of you are aware, 0.60's first few iterations have hit experimental branch. Despite our feedback tracker being offline for upgrades, our fantastic userbase has submitted hundreds of new issues on the temporary bug reporting sub forum over at the Official DayZ forums (forums.dayz.com) and we are all blown away by the support and engagement. The demand for access to experimental branch servers has been overwhelming, and far exceeded any previous experimental branch interest levels.

For those interested in what experimental branch is, or have questions as to why experimental branch servers are intentionally kept at a certain quantity - check out these two forum posts by myself, and our community moderator PurePassion.

http://forums.dayz.com/topic/2…-experimental-update-060/

http://forums.dayz.com/topic/2…anch-server-availability/

Past that, we have several blocking issues holding us back from pushing 0.60 to experimental branch. Let's take a quick look at some of them below:

- Error Messages when picking up any item with attachments that has been placed on the ground, and then moved to inventory
- Player Item Loss when logging off while holding backpack
- Several server crashes causing VERY short server uptime
- Client crashes when navigating certain coastal cities
- Weapon Attachments twitching randomly out of sync with weapon and player hands
- Client stuck on black screen after launching PC in some configurations
- Players seeing other players stuck in climbing animation in some situations
- Client crash after exiting to Main Menu in some configurations
- Character unable to see their clothing after initial spawn and login
- Client Crash when connecting to a new server
- Roads visible through some objects
- And more..

We've fortunately been able to squash several issues related to disappearing items after swapping, some blocking issues preventing some players from starting the client at all, and rolled out some new debug logs to help the programming team to analyze existing server crashes.

Now that we have 0.60 on experimental branch, we can let you all know what our milestone goals are for 0.61 build!

0.61 Milestone Goals:

- Server Login Queue
- Merge of New Audio Technology from Arma 3 Eden Update
- Update of Weapon Sounds for New Audio Technology
- Dynamic Spawning of Infected
- Predators (Wolves)

While 0.61 will more than likely have additional changes, the above updates are what we are focused on as priority for the 0.61 update.

We're all extremely excited and happy to see such a positive reaction to the Enfusion Engine's renderer, and the environmental improvements to the coastal cities in Chernarus. The entire DayZ development team is chomping at the bit to get 0.60 to stable branch and join you all in DayZ's latest update.

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

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Dev Update/Peter

With first experimental iterations of 0.60 version available publicly there emerged some questions related to gameplay mechanics. I would like to remind you that there is no need to worry since most features and mechanics are a work in progress, not to mention that everything is being currently rewritten in Enforce script including core gameplay functionality.

The current state of advanced weapons handling in 0.60 can be somewhat confusing as there are no proper animations connected to it, so it's nearly impossible to visualize and read the state of the weapon. New animations regarding weapons handling, some of which were already showcased by our Lead Animator Viktor, will be implemented with the new character as there is no point in doing the same work twice, which also applies for other features which were postponed a bit. I understand that it can be tiresome waiting for improvements but it's for a good reason and it will help us make the best game. Most of the mechanics can be rewritten in parallel so that old and new implementations coexist together. Good examples of this are user interface, damage system, animation system, the renderer and many others. However this sadly wasn't the case with weapons, where crucial changes have to be made directly in a living and functional system (a similar situation for this is with vehicles for example). Due to this limitation we went into release with a state of weapons handling which may be unpleasant to players as many of its mechanics are not obvious.

Of course, things like a higher chance of weapon jams or even jamming pristine weapons with pristine ammunition are purely on the configuration side of things and they are set like this because it's easier to test them especially in an internal environment and hand in hand (as it's the same build) with the publicly available build on experimental branch with a much wider audience. I'm not personally thrilled that such loose configuration can leave a bitter taste in the mouths of players when playing with new features, but you can count on it being set in reasonable numbers for stable release (I don't want to say balanced, as huge balance passes will take place in the future when most of the features will be in their final or nearly final state).

Carry on... see you in Chernarus folks!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer