Beiträge von saiboT

This week, the Status Report fully focuses on recapping our Gamescom experience. We've been presenting the 0.63 playable DEMO in Cologne, Germany the entire past week, and met literally hundreds of players who tried the DEMO live at our booth as we watched them play. We've gathered a lot of important feedback, which both Eugen and Peter cover in their texts. There are also VoDs of Gamescom live streams, some exciting Gamescom gameplay from our community, and more! Let's get to it.

Dev Update/Eugen

Gamescom DEMO has been an amazing experience for all of us. Being able to finally get direct feedback on 0.63 and talk to our old school players, or see the new ones playing it for the first time has made me more than a little happy. After getting this DayZ potential ready tech wise, we had a game to share, and talk about. It was exciting and exhausting. We are looking forward to sharing more.

At the same time, I have some less exciting news for you. As the build we brought to Gamescom would still take weeks to get ready for public testing, we will not be releasing the DEMO for Steam. We really wanted to, but it just no longer makes sense to spend time polishing a very small part of the whole BETA experience. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive on the floor, and I do believe we are hitting the right notes on what BETA should feel like. Rather than releasing a DEMO, our goal is to get the BETA/0.63 update out as soon as possible in its entirety on Experimental branch when ready. That does not mean it's going to be rushed. We do believe that the only way out of this hellhole is a really good game that all of us want to play.

We are going to focus on the combat a little while longer to incorporate some of the good feedback that we got, as well as features missing from the DEMO that were cut before it was used on the show floor. There is still a lot of details to implement, or content to convert in that regard. Since we have only returned from Gamescom floor on Sunday late night, we plan to have an internal post-mortem first and get the team together to plan out the next month in detail.

However, as you may know, the scope of BETA is huge, and even though we have developed a lot of these features during the same time as technology, now it is time to put it all together. It’s a painful process, but the game is finally there. We are going to need a lot of balancing runs, polishing and bug fixing before we are happy to put it out. We will be reading the feedback on the details available and try and share with you more as we recover from the trip.

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Peter

Gamescom 2017 has ended, so let my write down my impressions. At first, knowing all that stuff which was completely missing from the DEMO, or just in early prototype state, and all the remaining limitations we still needs to figure out, I was feeling a bit insecure about the quality of the DEMO build that we brought for showcase at the Gamescom booth. I'm a person who likes to have things in order, and as polished as possible, which leads to situations where I’m just not pleased enough with the current state of the game. So naturally, I was very curious how it's all going to turn out in the end.

To quickly recap what was presented in demo:

New rocks, roads and their decals with parallax mapping.
New characters with better body proportions and heads with lifespan, containing growing shaveable beards, washable bloody hands from skinning bodies
New character controller and animation system with very responsive and fluent character movement, coupled with new physics for better collisions, allowing for smooth traversing through environment (yes even running down/up the hill!)
New movement sets for turning, injured, falling character as well as carrying heavy items around in hands
New gestures with the ability to move while using them
New stamina system, differentiating character movement speed depending on their load
New melee combat system with attack and hit impacts animations
New ranged combat with extended weapon handling and aiming with new sway and recoil
New intuitive way to perform actions with items in hands even while moving, crafting new ones even directly from world and interactions with environment without pixel hunting
New HUD and inventory with clear layout and resized cargo and item sizes
New voice communication including personal radio, megaphone and public address system
New advanced placing which will be used for precise placement of specific items
New electricity system with cable reels to reach far places
And much more...
There were thousands of gamers and content creators looking forward to get their hands on the first iteration of what DayZ will become in BETA. It was an interesting mixture of people that never played DayZ before, ones who put it down waiting patiently for BETA, and those who still play DayZ regularly and spent from hundreds to thousands of hours in-game. I've spent a great amount of time observing how people play the game, and discussed with them about what they like on the new DayZ, what would they still like to see improved, and why.

With this approach, I gained a ton of feedback. It was very positive to see and hear that we are actually on the right track, and people do like what they see, and especially how it plays. Bear in mind nothing is set in stone yet, and everything could be changed, especially after valuable feedback we received. It will allow us to refine the design a bit more, so in it’s final form, DayZ could unleash its full potential, and allow people to enjoy what DayZ is so well known for - an emergent gameplay full of interactions, which creates stories filled with unique experience and leaving strong memories in atmospheric world.

After meeting you at Gamescom 2017... see you in Chernarus folks!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

Dev Update/Martin

As both Eugen and Peter mentioned, Gamescom was a really positive experience for us. The very stressful couple of weeks before we left the office and travelled to Cologne were definitely worth it in the end, as we've been met with a very warm welcome at Gamescom, and also fulfilled our mission: to gather preliminary feedback on an early 0.63 build.

As Baty will share in her part of the Status Report, we did our best to provide some meaningful coverage for those of you not visiting Gamescom. The couple of live streams we organized with Twitch and GameStar.de were quite full of interesting news, so do check them out below, along with content from M1ndr, Barely Infected or Merlin from DayZ Underground.

It's a bit unfortunate that we were not able to capture a better gameplay clip for both live streams in time (due to both time constraints and last minute fixes to the playable DEMO build), so the presented footage was a bit bare bones and glitchy at times, but as promised, we will deliver a good amount of quality 1080p/60FPS footage in the following days. The footage will take the form of a Dev Log video similar to those made for 0.62, and you can expect around 10 minutes of new content with Eugen's developer narration.

Also, since we decided not to make the DEMO available on Steam, we'll see if we can at least organise a live stream where you can see live gameplay, and ask us questions. Our pre-gamescom live stream was a bit of a technical failure, so we need to spend some more time planning the live stream, but we have a decent combat plan to make it all happen.

That's it from me this week. Thanks everyone who visited us at Gamescom, you were awesome! Now, let's see some of the community content from our booth.

- Martin Čulák/ Brand Manager

Hello survivors! Where the last couple of Status Reports felt a bit dry and lacking on exciting content, we're doing our best to improve our track record this week! Starting off with Brian, and his excitement which clearly shows that we've had a good couple of rough, but good weeks, through Eugen, who's offering a closer look at the contents of the upcoming Gamescom DEMO, and then over to Peter, who details the changes made to melee and firearms behaviour in 0.63, it's a joyride of teasing new and exciting content. Adam continues by sharing his bits on new decals updates, our Brand Manager Martin assures everyone that the Gamescom news will make its way to everybody, and Baty invites you to Gamescom AND to our upcoming community event next week that goes together with a pre-gamescom developer live stream. Oh hey, and there's also GIFs showing some new stuff (because yes - it is a long read again). Ready? Go!

Dev Update/Brian

Greetings Survivors,

As we approach Gamescom I can't help but reflect back on all the work, stress, and dedication that has preceded where we are now. Back in the end of 2013 when we were trying to prepare a build for Steam, we couldn't have imagined the opportunities all the time that has been spent on technology, and the foundation of the project would afford us. Looking at the Early Access release of one of my personal favourite pure survival titles, The Long Dark I can't help but remember what that experience was like when it first hit Steam, compared to how amazing it is now.

The team has been working tirelessly for quite some time, and the focus over the last month or so on preparing a functional vertical slice build for Gamescom, which should raise spirits a great deal internally. One of the most frustrating professional experiences for me has been working on adapting the design and experience of DayZ over the years, but knowing that you the consumers couldn't see these changes and get hands on with them until the underlying tech was ready to support it. Gamescom is just over the horizon, and I know everyone here on the team is really focused on trying to get an outstanding snapshot of the new DayZ experience for you all.

Not losing focus on the fact that the development teams' core goals have been aimed specifically at setting the foundation of DayZ for the years to come is a difficult order. The technology that we hit Steam with fundamentally just can't do justice to the experience we want to bring, and fortunately leadership inside the company has understood that and supported our drive forward. BETA by no means is the end all be all milestone for DayZ - we have plenty of amazing things beyond it and before leaving Early Access - but this is fundamentally the biggest impact on how you the users interact with the world, and establishes the technology baseline that enables us to do all the things we've talked with you about over the years.

It's been a hell of a journey, but I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

Dev Update/Eugen

Hey guys! I'm going to get into detail in regards to what the Gamescom DEMO is and what is the plan going forward with it. As the Gamescom is getting closer, things are being set in stone.

When we decided to go forward with the idea (which was about three months ago), we were nowhere near the expected result. However, deadlines and these goals make sure you are able to focus on what is actually important and as such help you eliminate the noise that gets in the way of development. Sometimes it's feature creep, other times you just follow an overly complicated solution to a problem that’s much simpler to solve. The renewed target helped us follow through.

Everything starts with how you control a game, it needs to feel just right. When the game is making it hard to do what you actually want to accomplish through arbitrary complexity or inconsistency, it quickly becomes tedious. As this DEMO features the new player controller, animation system, physics and much more, it will feel different at first glance. Interacting with players, AI or environment should feel much smoother. We will have the new controls printed out for players coming in for an easy reference point.

As this is quite a complex rework of the game, and we want people to test specific things, it will have its own "map" built around Staroye. The map includes new roads, rocks, and more reworked old assets as we are gradually improving visual fidelity, and leaving the old stuff behind. Only subset of player usable items will be spawning for the purpose of quick access, as we expect the turnover to be quite large. The density is also much higher to make sure you can try more things in a short span of time. Besides the map, you can also expect new particle effects implemented with Enfusion technology, new character faces and much more.

It will feature the new inventory implementation, which again should feel much smoother and faster as we have invested quite a lot of time to do this properly. And one large change that we expect to have significant impact on how people play: you won't be able to move with inventory open. A lot of the things that people have used inventory to solve, like finding small items or interacting with their weapon to avoid delayed quick bar, will be long gone. Items will show their icons in the world, as well as all action being moved to contextual methods. And quick bar will become a core part of your setup as you explore the world of DayZ. You will get more slots as you get higher tier items, which in translation will increase the amount of stuff you can get done quickly in the world.

There are tons of new animations coming in to show different states of character, exhaustion for example. And many detailed systems trying to avoid using text and use of heavy UI, so that living your life in Chernarus is all about your character. New gestures that will spice up the interaction between player, hopefully causing a laugh or two. Or making sure you can understand each other over a long distance.

Lot of new UI changes that will focus on giving you enough detail if you want, or just immerse into the character in front of you. Tons of new sounds both ambient, character or weapon related.

There is new synchronisation model that is quite different from what we had before, hoping to support the full scale of 100 players and tons of AI. All these things will be stress tested heavily to make sure there are no issues when we go live. Lot of the things are however heavily work in progress, but also for the first time, all of the new tech is in and working with new data. It's exciting as hell.

And last but not least, new melee combat and ranged combat. But I'll let Peter talk about those

There will be issues I'm sure, as something always slips past, or gets broken in the last second. This is a complex game in making, and we can't wait to share our progress with you. We are discussing the possibility of making the DEMO available for a limited time on a separate Steam branch, but we'll yet have to see about that.

Programmers
- Weapons actions
- Vehicle controller refactor
- Melee combat (programming wise)
- Particles (programming wise)
- Physics and optimisation tweaks
- New zombie controller
- CLE (Central Loot Economy) tweaks
- Bug fixing

Animators
- Animals animations
- IK (Inverse Kinematics) poses
- Injured animations
- Weapons animations (loading/unloading)
- Bug fixing

Designers
- Melee combat (script wise)
- Communication
- Horticulture
- Particles (script wise)
- Inventory UI refactor
- Advance placing system
- Gamescom demo preparation (spawning, menu, ...)
- Bug fixing

Audio
- Sounds for weapons interactions
- Footsteps sounds (surface vs footwear)
- Ambient sounds
- Bug fixing

QA
- Internal client stabilisation
- Gamescom demo features testing
- Bug reporting

Art
- Old assets rework
- New assets preparation (NW Airfield )
- Object layout for western region
- Bug fixing

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Peter

As you may know from previous Status Reports, we scratched old firearms and melee implementations and started from the ground up to allow us fulfil our vision of having more control over firearms and melee fights, resulting in much better, authentic user experience. Both ranged and close combat have crucial role in DayZ, may it be in PvE or PvP encounters. Over the last few weeks, there was quite a lot of progress made in both combats, and now as things starts to look well enough, it's a good time to talk about them and showcase them.

Ranged combat with firearms is defined by their handling and aiming models. So far on handling side, we have loading of firearms with either magazine or chambering directly with ammo from inventory, quick slots and even from the ground. Next is the mechanism manipulation itself, were you can feed ammo from a magazine to chamber in case of manual firearms, or eject ammo in automatic ones. It's also used to un-jam the mechanism once it gets jammed by a casing not being ejected properly. We reintroduced zeroing and fire modes, as well as iron sights, though optics are not working now due to some issues we're battling down the line (specifically switching to camera point on optic attachment, to be honest we have ran into some problems with attachments in general lately, as they are not in hierarchical order, so it will require some rewrite).

Aiming model of firearms is where the real fun begins. Currently, we have a new sway mechanic (yay, finally!) - it mimics breathing with constant vertical movement as well as corrections of hands direction with subtle random horizontal movement. It's very effective and robust design solution which allows us to modify output by plenty of factors, like firearm attachments configuration, especially hand-guard and butt-stock, and its weight, character stance and movement, amount of stamina, overall character state with all that unpleasant things like low body temperature or diseases, and of course also the hold breath feature (yes, I'm not kidding).

[img width=480 height=270]https://media.giphy.com/media/l1J3VOMkIWfvXET3q/giphy.gif[/img]

[img width=480 height=270]https://media.giphy.com/media/3o6vY4yDu8dW9tRknm/giphy.gif[/img]

Recoil is another functional part of the aiming model now. While projectile is fired, we've introduced movement to firearms in all three dimensions. We are experimenting with pre-animated recoils, which are procedurally modified to produce nice looking visuals with ability to differentiate between firearms. Similarly to sway, it can be modified, this time it could depend on calibre, barrel length, overall firearm weight and its attachments, especially muzzle devices like brakes or compensators, and we are also considering impact from stamina. What's still missing is some sights misalignment in the aiming model, same goes to lifting firearms next to obstacles, however we will get there as both are a must have for proper aiming model.

[img width=480 height=270]https://media.giphy.com/media/l41JRZS51tPApR94Y/giphy.gif[/img]

[img width=480 height=270]https://media.giphy.com/media/3oEhn8Yt5RK08e5KHC/giphy.gif[/img]

Quick update regarding new melee combat - in current state, it's already way ahead when compared to the old system. Apart from full body attack animations, which can now be chained into combos and opponents reacts to hits with proper strength and directions of impacts, there is also a dashed attack from sprint implemented now. I would like to highlight the current melee targeting implementation which is taking length of a melee weapon into account, as well as distance direction and vertical angle to opponent.

Combined with rotating and dragging character towards selected targets during attack animations, it produces great looking, fluid and addictive melee combat. It's quite hard to miss your opponent now, gone are the days of grotesque melee fights where everybody ran in circles trying to play game of chance to deal some hit.

[img width=480 height=270]https://media.giphy.com/media/l41JXGxC6efLed8eA/giphy.gif[/img]

[img width=480 height=270]https://media.giphy.com/media/3oEhn4cAV0K6FXi6Tm/giphy.gif[/img]

[img width=480 height=270]https://media.giphy.com/media/wKe1eEhzp12Du/giphy.gif[/img]

Last but not least, we also introduced some changes to controls of the new character. What really stands out is changing of stances which is using one key now instead of three previously. With programmers and animators, we are discussing missing moves of new character, like leaning, jumping or climbing, as we would like to push on these and make them more interesting for gameplay.

Apart from Gamescom 2017... see you in Chernarus folks!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

Dev Update/Adam

Much like in the last Status Report, let's begin with a showcase of some additional improvements to the visual fidelity of Chernarus. This time, let's talk about decals.

On Chernarus, decals are primarily used to make specific areas (such as concrete surfaces and roads) look more damaged / abandoned. We cant simply add local damage to the concrete / roads texture itself as it would look too repetitive in the end. And so these decals are a great way to add a local damage exactly where we want.

While decal textures were trying really hard to show that there are holes in the road, they ultimately failed alone because they were missing visual depth in-game. Luckily, this was changed with the recent implementation of parallax mapping for decals. And since we have got new textures for roads for quite some time, we have also decided to re-do textures for all road damage decals so the visuals of decals match together with the new road textures (visual inconsistency between old decals and new roads is one of the reasons we decided to postpone the release of new road textures, originally planned for update 0.62). Here are some examples of how medium and small-sized decals look after these changes:

[img width=700 height=383]http://i.imgur.com/8vYIgHW.jpg[/img]

[img width=700 height=393]http://i.imgur.com/vVyHKMr.jpg[/img]

[img width=700 height=393]http://i.imgur.com/zW9Thhh.jpg[/img]

These changes (along with the new road textures that you can also notice on pictures) will be available with the update 0.63.

And as usual - a short report on what has happened on western border of Chernarus since the last Status Report. Details were added around the Myshkino dam (including the HV power-line connection to Zelenogorsk), new recreational facility of TES company near the shore of Myshkino dam and probably the biggest lumber mill we currently have on Chernarus has been added north of Myshkino military site. These locations will hopefully make encounters in the Myshkino tents valley a bit more interesting and offer additional looting options for the players who prefer to roam the western region of Chernarus.

[img width=700 height=393]http://i.imgur.com/ktGU7mS.jpg[/img]

[img width=700 height=393]http://i.imgur.com/K5Av4yW.jpg[/img]

[img width=700 height=393]http://i.imgur.com/gvrWRwl.jpg[/img]

As always, please remember that all pictures show work-in-progress content.

- Adam Franců / Senior Map Designer

Dev Update/Martin

As we started outlining our Gamescom DEMO over the last two Status Reports, I've noticed a raising concern in the community about us presenting a build of the game on a gaming convention rather than delivering it directly to the core players on our Experimental and Stable Steam branches. As our community of existing players is what we truly care about the most, I'd like to address these concerns and add further context to Eugen's text above.

First of all, thanks to Brian and his great relationships with guys over at Astro Gaming or Twitch, DayZ's been present at many public events in the past, and I'm sure it's always been fun for everyone to meet and greet while occasionally streaming or presenting some of the upcoming features. Usually, most of the news from these events also made it out to the general public - either by being directly shared by the DayZ team over social media, or organically by someone from the community posting on the forums or Reddit.

This worked quite well, and considering that those activities were not a part of any sophisticated marketing/promotional plan (there hasn't been anything like that for DayZ, and this won't change until BETA drops on Stable), it's also been quite effective.

Gamescom is a little bit of a step up from these events, as we'll be part of a bigger Bohemia Interactive booth. That means that our presence needs to be a bit more official, that we need to present something meaningful, and ideally also playable. That's where the Gamescom DEMO comes in - as a publicly playable content, it also conveniently solves three problems for us:

a) it helps the development team to deliver a package even before the first BETA build is done internally, or ready for public branches - hopefully helping everybody have a feeling of accomplishment (which Brian nicely described in his part)

b) it allows us to do very early focus tests in a controlled environment where we're standing right next to the person playing

c) it helps us make a point to the general public that we are being serious about our intentions to bring DayZ to a stable 1.0 release, and support it for years to come (which some people still refuse to believe in)

As Eugen already pointed out, we may (or may not), at some point, and in one way or another, make this DEMO available to all of you who won't be able to try it at Gamescom. While it's not fully representative of DayZ as the hardcore survival game it should be (and technically only works in a "LAN" mode as well), we understand that everybody just wants to get their hands on the new player controller!

More importantly though, we have plans for extensive online coverage of all the things we're about to show at Gamescom. Just to pick a few that will happen right during the Gamescom week: we'll be live on the Twitch Gamescom stage for about 15 minutes, talking about the DEMO and DayZ BETA in detail, including some gameplay. We'll have a couple of media appointments that will hopefully produce some cool articles, and we'll also be producing our own photos or possibly even some basic video content directly from the show floor.

Now, creating (audio)visual content of any upcoming game changes is always a struggle. With the way our community-driven development works (the moment we have a "legit" build in our hands that we need your feedback on, we drop it to Experimental), it is sometimes literally impossible to even play the internal branch of DayZ for several minutes straight, and prepare content in advance.

This has been the case with the supporting content we're making for Gamescom, and over the last two weeks, it produced some rather hilarious clips:

[img width=480 height=270]https://media.giphy.com/media/FjKA7M6blSaS4/giphy.gif[/img]

[img width=480 height=270]https://media.giphy.com/media/l1J3Dc0eJ2FXlVptK/giphy.gif[/img]

[img width=480 height=270]https://media.giphy.com/media/26n6G4vSK5a6UGoWA/giphy.gif[/img]

[img width=480 height=300]https://media.giphy.com/media/xT39DldHs3S2mUL8cM/giphy.gif[/img]

While those GIFs may look like a lot of fun, the reality is that any bug like that always breaks the gameplay, not to mention the recorded clip or screenshot. Count in some nasty crashes, network issues or general server degradation we still need to resolve, and you have a good reason for our Status Reports rarely including any relevant visual content at all.

It's also why we're still relatively far from dropping any BETA package to the public Steam branches - while our new player character (and other systems) already work well within the limited scope of the Gamescom DEMO, they are not ready for the full-scale DayZ experience just yet.

Well, that'll do it for today - I hope this helped some of you to get an insight on what's happening around the DayZ office. Baty should have some more details about our upcoming Gamescom coverage!

P.S. - please do let us know if you're coming to Cologne, and come hang out with us!

- Martin Čulák/ Brand Manager

This week, we're keeping it short and sweet with Eugen, Adam and Baty, as the rest of the team got their hands full with work on major 0.63 tasks. Eugen actually shares more on why we've been quieter than usual the last few Status Reports, and sets some expectations regarding BETA release schedule. Adam is reporting on the ongoing tireless work of the environment team, showcasing some of their recent achievements.

Dev Update/Eugen

In BETA we trust, deliver we must. A catchphrase that I've seen on one of our whiteboards a couple weeks ago perfectly summarizes how we as a team feel right now.

We know things haven't been perfect and that the experience that we wanted to provide has not always been consistent with our vision. Technology debt that we have been fighting held us in fairly firm grip where we quickly realized that providing short term solutions over and over isn't going to cut it.

We had to rethink and go back to the drawing board multiple times to start making a fun game. We knew the solutions needed but the time investment was huge with lot of risks ahead. Which is where a lot of the development kept getting slowed down by the complexity of the engine changes that were needed, as well as unexpected issues that kept changing the landscape before us.

It was a risky move that we hope will keep the game alive going forward and bring back those that might have been turned away by the state of the game. As we truly believe that what you players want and we meant to deliver wasn’t doable with the technology we had.

There are players out there who are patiently waiting, while playing the game in a state that it is in now, others who wait for the full release or some who come back every once in a while to see what changed. Some are more invested than others, they read our channels, think about consequences of what we talk about, and some just want to see it in action. As the BETA is becoming a fleshed out reboot of the game all of us wanted, we plan to have a limited playable build at Gamescom this year. We're doing everything we can to make it available at the Bohemia Interactive booth for the visitors to try it out.

The sole focus of this build is gunplay and player movement on an edited version of Chernarus prepared especially for the purpose of this demo. That is why a lot of our efforts have been looking at the flow of player actions, controls and consistency of their outcome. The team will be there in person to discuss the details with those interested. Feedback is the most important thing and we can't wait to see people play it and smoothen the rough edges.

Now that also means that the next couple of weeks are fully focused on the content of the Gamescom demo, so that there are no major hurdles when fans in Cologne get their hands on it. All departments are trying to iron out the details as much as they can, so that we can have fun with in Germany.

For the first BETA update itself, there is no release date yet. We don't want to let you down unless we're absolutely sure it's coming. The Gamescom demo work itself still counts towards the overall development of course, but we're not ready to put that version of the game on any of the public Steam branches - simply because the feature set of our demo will be limited and does not represent the complete DayZ experience.

To finish things off, let's take a look at a list of things the team is tackling now:

Programmers
Weapon actions
Vehicle controller refactor
Basic state machines and script classes tweaks
Melee combat preparation (programming wise)
Central Loot Economy tweaks
Physics and optimization tweaks
New animation system for zombies
Bug fixing

Animators
MoCap session preparation
Animal animations
Weapon animations

Designers
Melee combat (script wise)
Aiming model
Weapons handling
Inventory UI refactor (crafting, character)
Advanced placing system
New player and item spawn definition

Audio
Sounds for weapon interactions

QA
Playtesting the 0.62 update
Internal client stabilization
New animations/weapons functionality testing

Art
Gamescom map preparation
Old assets rework
Fire mode selector for weapons
Object layout for western region

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Adam

As we mentioned in earlier status reports, our efforts on improving graphical fidelity does not end with the update 00.62. With such massive change for the environment that update 0.62 has brought, one of the most important things for us is to get the environment right color-wise. That means getting lighting config right and having all assets in our environment properly configured (material and texture wise).

We have already released an update for grass color for 0.62 on June 21 and since then our environment designer Mark has been working tirelessly on another iteration, this time focused mainly on changing another important piece of this whole color puzzle - satellite texture. You know this texture very well, because it is the one that you see whenever you look into the distance (and also texture, that is commonly used on community-made maps, that helps you in travels through Chernarus).

Since Chernarus was originally made for Arma 2 and DayZ version has been built on top of it, it also uses satellite texture from this version. The texture was unfortunately nowhere near to being consistent in the beginning (in terms of the way details were made or in used color pallete) and with the additional things added on top of it in DayZ (northern, western expansion, settlement rework,..), this problem was only deepened.

With the update 0.62, we felt that it is the time we finally look at this problem and make sure satellite texture for the new Chernarus uses somewhat consistent color pallete and looks good both in old and new areas. This change was also particularly important for us with update 0.62 since satellite texture affects colors of grass and ground textures. Now, do not expect that suddenly, a texture that has 15360x15360 pixels will be great in every detail, but the work that has been done so far is a huge step forward and will be good starting point for any additions and improvements.

Vorher:
[img width=700 height=393]https://dayz.com/files/images/2017-07-25-before1.jpg[/img]

Nachher:
[img width=700 height=393]https://dayz.com/files/images/2017-07-25-after1.jpg[/img]

With satellite texture changes of such scale, another pass on colors of grass and bushes/trees was inevitable (to basically bring close and far LOD visuals in-line with colors on new satellite texture plus several issues with material configuration were also fixed). And since all that was purely a data change, we felt that it would be shame not to include it for update 0.62, too. And so all of the changes are now available on Experimental Branch for you to check out.

And I do have also some bonus pictures for you this time - work has progressed on western border of Chernarus. Currently, detailed object layout is being worked on in areas west of Zelonogorsk. First two pictures show new settlement, called Zvir. Third shows Orlye ozero with mountain Velikyj Kotel rising behind. Now please keep in mind that content on these pictures is work-in-progress. If you want to read more about the planned changes on western border, check out the last status report.

[img width=700 height=392]http://i.imgur.com/eDufCvD.jpg[/img]

[img width=700 height=392]http://i.imgur.com/1e0TVUM.jpg[/img]

[img width=700 height=392]http://i.imgur.com/PIrroHp.jpg[/img]

- Adam Franců / Senior map designer

Good afternoon Survivors,

This week, the summer holiday is in full swing in Prague and Bratislava, which means that some of our developers are enjoying a well deserved vacation, while the others are super busy keeping the development process going. This unfortunately means that our Status Report will be rather brief and dry this time, but as always, we managed to come up with some interesting bits and pieces on what's happening behind the scenes. The main topic this week is the much discussed introduction of server browser tabs. Adam and the environment team is looking at all the settlements across Chernarus, and meanwhile, our friends over at the Bohemia mobile team released Mini DAYZ on mobile devices. It was quite the success to say the least! Let's get to it now, shall we?

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors!

This Status Report, I had something short and sweet for you. I wanted to take the opportunity to address adaptation to changes, and changes coming forward in general.

I know some of you were confused about the changes to the server browser we mentioned in previous Status Reports, and it raised a small concern for me when it comes to larger changes in the future. The changes to the server browser organization are absolutely vital for the final product of DayZ. I know it might seem confusing now but we, as developers need to look at the bigger picture.

Presenting the new user with the intended, vanilla experience of DayZ is absolutely critical. If a new user hits the play button, they should be paired with the best candidate official server. If a user looks at the server browser, they absolutely should be presented with Official Bohemia Interactive servers. Servers that present the experience we have laid out, and that we know won't be resetting storage, and will all be on the same central infrastructure.

I fully realize that now it might seem confusing to some, and now it might not seem to make sense based off of the current state of the build - but I promise you, it makes sense in the long run. I'm also aware of concerns with regards to some official servers going offline and people losing their camps, and I promise you - this is something that will be looked at, to ensure user progress and protection from unintended player progression loss.

As far as other changes moving forward, the sheer nature of how you interact with the world and the gameplay systems involved in it will inherently change. Simply put, things just flat out operate differently. Not only do all of these extensive changes coming in 0.63 and beyond allow us to bring DayZ to be the experience we want it to be, it also allows us to get rid of nasty pesky issues related to the previous system limitations. Be it addressing the nasty "apple spam" or the frustrating deaths at short heights, or even duplication through abuse of animation system glitches. I'm not saying this will resolve every issue present, but it puts us in a position to be able to more easily, and more stabily resolve these issues.

That's really all I had for you guys for this Status Report, but keep in mind - no one is looking forward to playing 0.63 on Steam more then us, the developers.

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

Dev Update/Eugen

DayZ has always been a bit of a hybrid MMO - a combination of character and world persistence where instances act like shards themselves, and the official set of servers focusing on the "vanilla experience" - with the future expectation of additional variety with customizable modded servers.

By being that open, we closed some doors for us to go full on on that notion of a never-ending progression in an online world - one that games like Destiny or The Division utilize. On the other hand, we still want to keep the idea that allows one player to spend a life of multiple characters across these shards, and have the variety of these different experiences that are consistent with our vision.

As Brian has explained today, and in previous Status Reports, I just want to say that the main idea behind the recent tab separation is to maintain two separate worlds for our players. The "vanilla" one where you can expect a consistent experience, and the community one, where (when the BETA hits) you'll see a large variety of different gameplay and tweaks, with as much information as we can provide on the types of changes you'll experience there.

Our goal is not to hide these community experiences, but only to show and highlight the difference. I understand that majority of people play on private servers nowadays, as there is more of that curation as to what happens there, and the dangers of vanilla where anything can happen might not be suitable for everybody. But we do believe that giving a choice and information about these differences will be crucial going forward when server files are released.

You'll get a large variety of gameplay and setups, and less of a curated community vanilla experience that we at Bohemia will focus on. We expect that community will supply different maps, PvP modes, roleplay, and more. DayZ mod is a good experience to look back on as it has spawned multiple mods and changes, while vanilla experience attracted less and less of the player focus over time - which is understandable. As you spend hundreds of hours there, and want to try new things in this never ending world. We want to see the same thing with less hassle around doing so. You want to play a mod, we want you to see what that mod is, make the flow of playing without any obstruction, and we want to highlight these different experiences for players seeking them.

I also want to touch upon the subject of 0.62 development, as it's slowly closing up with a last couple of critical fixes getting merged in, such as crash fixes. When we move on, we want to be sure that your experience is as stable as it can be, within the limits of knowing that everything is going to change when BETA hits. All these small things will help us with this huge transition.

As I have said multiple times, we believe that we have something great ahead of us that will realize the vision all of us had for what sometimes feels as forever. So yes, we are now focusing on combat first and foremost in our internal version - and we want to share that with you as soon as possible. There are multiple build reviews every week, as we march towards this long awaited goal.

To give a glance at the currently open development items in our teams:

Programmers

Vehicle controller refactor
New animation system for infected
Animation events for player
Communication systems optimization
Mosin 1930 basic state machine and script class
MP 133 basic state machine and script class
MP5 basic state machine and script class
CLE (Central Loot Economy) tweaks
Physics and optimization tweaks
Bug fixing

Animators

M4A1 animations
Player turns for pistols
Unarmed & one hit reactions
Player graph fixes
IK (Inverse Kinematics) poses

Designers

New player and item spawn definition
Player action targeting and floating cursor
User actions in multiplayer
Advanced placing system
Inventory UI refactor (crafting, character)
Aiming model
Melee combat targeting
Traps with grenades
Weapons handling

Audio

Bug fixing
Sounds for animals

QA

Playtesting the 0.62 update
0.62 feature testing
Internal client stabilization
CLE testing

Art

Old assets rework
Detailed object layout for western border (locations west of Lopatino)
NWAF overhaul
Location names revision

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Adam

With .62 update being on stable branch for over a month now, we have pretty much transitioned strictly to goals for the update 0.63 and onward. Primary focus being the overhaul of the North West Airfield, finalisation of tourist trails and additional locations on the western border of Chernarus (along with overall tweaks to the area).

In this status report, I would like touch a bit on the topic of the plans on western border - where we are going with the changes and additions that we work on now. Our aim is to preserve its wilderness look. We wont be populating this part of the map with lots of settlements like we did on north. Instead of that, we are focusing on adding more lonely locations such as lodges, tourist destinations (tourist trails will be extended to western border) and industrial/farm locations.

That being said, western border is quite a huge area by itself, and so it would be a shame to not to include anything that would resemble a settlement. There are currently three tiny settlements in the works, most of them composed of few houses scattered around without some structures like you are used to in the mainland of South Zagoria. Following pictures show one particular settlement located just south of the new castle that has been added in update 0.62 (and already received more details and polish now!).

Please keep in mind that these pictures show work-in-progress content:

[img width=700 height=393]http://i.imgur.com/xL1yVkA.jpg[/img]

[img width=700 height=393]http://i.imgur.com/aeDr51U.jpg[/img]

And just to give you an idea, how we imagine some lonely locations, here is a screenshot of lonely lodge somewhere on the western border:

[img width=700 height=393]http://i.imgur.com/9IqaEjQ.jpg[/img]

Now I would like to give you some names instead of using "new castle" or "new settlement", but the truth is that we have to yet figure out some proper names. This is particularly important for the finalization of tourist trails task, and so in addition to mentioned map tasks, we are also in the process of revisiting all location names that are currently used on Chernarus, along with figuring out names for new locations or locations that are worth naming and were not yet named.

Goal of this revision is to also make sure names are somewhat consistent between each other and fit the overall theme of Chernarus. There are over 230 entries (names for settlements, terrain features,..) that we currently work with, but luckily, we've got help from Ivan Buchta - one of the key members of the team behind the Chernarus for Arma 2, to make sure we do not deviate from the original naming rules and that you all will be able to call parts of the map with proper local names :).

- Adam Franců / Senior map designer

Dev Update/Martin

While we're still very much on hold with pushing any release buttons for DayZ on PC and consoles (as the development is breezing towards BETA), I'm more than happy to share some of the excitment that's currently flowing through the veins of everyone at the Bohemia mobile team. On July 3rd, after some time of soft launch testing, they finally launched the iOS and Android versions of Mini DAYZ worldwide!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrRWNlha6MI#ws

Being 100% free to play (there's no catch, no in-app purchases or hidden transactions - it's just free, plain and simple!), Mini DAYZ stays true to the survival heritage of DayZ standalone (and the mod) by being incredibly unforgiving. It's something that I personally find very refreshing, especially on the mobile games market, which somehow always leans towards very casual and clichéd genres.

The good thing is, I am probably not alone, as Mini DAYZ has been occupying top positions in appstore charts across the worold ever since it launched on July 3 - which is well, well deserved, even more so when you realize that Mini DAYZ was originally just a fan made project! Hats off to our mobile team, and especially to Mike Azovskikh, the original creator of Mini DAYZ for web browsers who spearheded the development of mobile versions here at Bohemia!

I encourage you to download Mini DAYZ on AppStore or Google Play - for now, it's single player only, but still offers a very entertaining balance of healthy frustration and fun :).

Well, that's it from me today - the next time I'm doing a Status Report, it will actually be related to that one DayZ that you all really care about. Gamescom is getting very close... but for now, let's see what Baty has for you this week!

- Martin Čulák / Brand Manager

This week, everyone's super busy with actual development work on 0.63, but Brian, Eugen, Viktor and Martin still managed to share some exciting bits and pieces - we're addressing our old development roadmaps, share some of our intended design on game economy, tease a couple of new gesture animations, and also discuss some of our communication related news (including an Instagram account!). Let's get to it.

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors.

This week, I don't have too much for you, as a great deal of everything I've been so excited to work with Peter on over the last few years is entirely dependant upon the successful implementation of DayZ's new spine („DayZ 2.0“ as Peter lovingly referred to it in our 0.62 Developer Live Stream). This Status Report, I wanted to talk the opportunity during the wait for BETA to clarify a few points about our in game economy, and the continuing work that Peter, our programmer Frantisek, myself, and others are putting into it.

Everyone on the dev team sees the same issues as everyone else. Buildings with repeated spawns of the same item in some situations, some items ending up clustering in one region of the map, helicopter crashes not spawning firearms (psuedo-intentional currently), and of course the availability of early game supplies.

BETA isn't just about the new animation system, and related components. The programmers responsible for the central economy have reached the end of what they can do on 0.62, and a lot of work to address some of these issues has actually been done, but is on the 0.63 branch.

Obviously this will need some testing and iteration to get it to where we want it - but I wanted everyone that follows developement of DayZ to be aware of the fact that we do know, and that we want it to improve as much as you all do. Heli crashes should spawn firearms, hell some of the stuff we have coming in the pipe has been discussed as clearly being dynamic event spawns only - so that people have to hunt these items down and can't just go to a static location to find them.

There are many small details to DayZ that have a ripple impact on all connected points of gameplay, and the economy is a perfect example of this. Without it functioning properly, all the fancy improvements, fluid character movement, enhanced visuals and so on won't matter because the new player to DayZ won't be able to feel like they can learn, and master the world. They won't feel empowered early on to take on the challenges of surviving in Chernarus, if they can't understand how to find basic supplies.

I could ramble on about this for hours, but I'll save you all that wall of text - Eugen, Peter, and Viktor will take it from here. I look forward to seeing you all in Chernarus, be it on 0.62 or beyond!

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

Dev Update/Eugen

Hi everyone! Since this week, everybody is really swamped with actual development work, I'll try to fill in for the lack of cool visuals or exciting new feature documentation and reflect upon some of our past decisions on the technology side of things.

With the mindset of developing technology first to enable our vision for DayZ platform, we have gone through number of changes internally. Things were cut, changed, deprecated and sometimes reintroduced to get a good and fun anti-game first and foremost. However, all the work that was necessary to achieve this vision has shown us how large our technological debt was at the time. All that lead to plans that were clashing heavily with how fast we were able to remove the debt, and we ended up prototyping a lot of our vision in old technology to see what works, and what does not.

We have shown a number of roadmaps that have proved to be a failure on our part. Anticipating, or predicting the effect that the technology debt can have on development speed is a very hard endeavor - and we have learned the hard way. It has always been a good plan longterm for both the game and the company. But we all do believe that what DayZ is supposed to be has not been achieved yet, and we plan to deliver on that notion.

For years, we have worked with the best intentions on a good technology base for all features that this sandbox would largely benefit from. Going forward, we want to start sharing some of the internal documents to show what that means to us, how it fits within BETA and full release. We anticipate a lot of features will make it to the first BETA release of DayZ on this new technology base, meaning that the things that we haven't been possible to fix, change, improve, or make at all will get the much needed spark and detail.

It's perhaps not going to be one big swoop for every single part of the game, but it certainly feels like playing a new DayZ. We hope that this will show the possibilities of our new technology and inspire modders alike to be far more ambitious with their goals.

If you look at the gameplay of DayZ, one of the main and core pillars of it is the player itself. We have created mindmaps on design side that help us with the longterm vision of how (and where) the player interacts with the enviroment, or with the game. The graph you see below shows the base of what new player should be able to do by 1.0, with most features being available during BETA.

[img width=700 height=403]http://i.imgur.com/z0EMPYK.png[/img]
DayZ Player Features Diagram (PDF, 1MB)

And that’s only the overview of the player character interactions, not mentioning other features (say, base building) or the infected. DayZ is truly vast in scope, and there is a lot to go through, but starting here is important.

I think you (the players) and we (the developers) want the same thing. There will be differences here and there, don't get me wrong. But we share the idea of having a multiplayer sandbox with apocalyptic background that’s unforgiving, immersive and gets your heart beating when these scenarios you have been imagining in your head become possible. We want this technology to allow just that. To serve as platform for a game where you get into these intense situations, or maybe just sit down at a fire with a friend. Where it feels almost real.

We know what the game should be, we didn’t want to be held down by constraints of past, and have chosen to do our best and get the limits out of the way. I don't want to sound like a broken record, I just really want to play this thing with you guys and get lost in Chernarus again.

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Viktor

Hi everyone!

I'll be very short this time as we're still working hard on player character and firearms animations. What I can tease today is a couple of GIFs with some upcoming new gestures that I was talking about in my recent Status Reports. These new animations include military gestures, as well as new taunts. Here is the preview of some of them:

[img width=300 height=464]https://media.giphy.com/media/xUOrw2aa2x1JBXuqnC/giphy.gif[/img]
Move

[img width=300 height=464]https://media.giphy.com/media/xUOrwnFsXPkB5k7PPO/giphy.gif[/img]
Kiss

[img width=300 height=464]https://media.giphy.com/media/xUOrw6O5YlLwhGgIo0/giphy.gif[/img]
Think

[img width=300 height=464]https://media.giphy.com/media/3ohryntr3CSFWYzfcQ/giphy.gif[/img]
Come

[img width=300 height=464]https://media.giphy.com/media/l1K9EIY9MddPUaLQs/giphy.gif[/img]
Elbow

- Viktor Kostik/ Lead Designer

Dev Update/Martin

Survivors, I have a brief update for you from our small marketing/community department within the DayZ Dev Team and Bohemia Interactive. As some of you may know, we set ourselves a goal to improve the DayZ website and make it (much like DayZ itself) more modern, functional, and fun to use in general. It's the single most important communication channel that we have to engage with our community, and it deserves our attention for sure.

On the related forums thread, we've been collecting your feedback on our website, and the Bohemia Interactive online services team has succesfuly implemented some of your ideas (like having a proper search function, or tags to quickly sort through content). While there is still a lot of work to do on the actual content of the website, you can already check out a preview of the general design direction the DayZ.com website will be taking: our friends over at the Bohemia Interactive Mobile Team have announced the release of Mini DAYZ on mobile devices (3rd of July, save the date!) and their new website at http://www.minidayz.com shares some of the basic design elements that we will be using at DayZ.com as well.

Other than that, we are getting ready to keep everyone well informed while our developers are doing all the hard work on the first BETA build. What lies ahead of us is probably one of the greatest challanges that we have faced in terms of communication - we need to do our best to keep your interest in DayZ high with no other major updates scheduled for release before BETA, and at the same time, we need to make sure that the world knows that DayZ is still alive, and very much kicking when BETA happens. As Eugen mentioned, some of our past estimates were not quite right, and it's always the bad news that stays in everyone's minds.

In general, do expect more of what we did for the 0.62 release (video content like the 0.62 Update Overview, and the 0.62 Developer Live Stream), and be ready to play a huge role in all that - our community is one of the three pillars that support everything we do at Bohemia after all.

That's all from me, let's see what Baty has for you this week! I think she mentioned something about us having an Instagram account...

- Martin Čulák / Brand Manager