Afternoon Survivors,
Another status report tuesday comes around, this time with Brian, Mirek, and Viktor giving us a bit of info on subjects such as the new player controller, new server browser, connection and inventory issues, and an update on blocker/prio issues for 0.60 going live on Stable branch.
Contents This Week
Dev Update/Hicks
Dev Update/Mirek
Dev Update/Viktor
Dev Update/Hicks
Greetings Survivors,
Its that time again - so lets take a look at last weeks blockers on 0.60 experimental, talk about their status - and outline the current priority issues on the road to 0.60 stable branch.
- Characters prevented from logging in once connected: Fixed
- Client stuck on black screen after launching PC in some configurations: Fixed
- Weapon Attachments twitching randomly out of sync with weapon and player hands: Fixed
- Clearing weapon chamber deletes the chambered round: Fixed
- Known issues with "infinite ammo": Fixed
- Known causes of server crashes: Approximately 75% resolved - remaining issues are under investigation
- Server Memory Usage issues: In progress
- Restock values affecting global economy: Fix in testing
The last entry specifically is one part of the ongoing development of DayZ's Central Economy that those who like to dig into those values might enjoy knowing a bit more about. The CLE for DayZ is an interestingly complex tool that manages over 3 million potential spawn points, covers all potential tag and category classifications for items, and structures, is dynamic enough to be adapted to new maps for mod authors in the future, in some cases monitors items not only in the gamespace but also within player camps and player inventories. Each item in DayZ has its own values configured dynamically within this tool covering:
- Minimum Amount: Bottom end point in which the system will begin respawning once quantities drop below
- Nominal Amount: Targeted operating value in which items respawning at the minimum point will respawn to
- Lifetime: Duration the item can be persisting in the world before being cleaned up to free up space for new items
- Restock: Value used for rare/controlled items to ensure that if they fall below the minimum they do not respawn in bulk and allow loot cycling of rare items
- Tiering: Regions of the world in which these items are allowed to respawn
- And quite a bit more
The CLE is an integral component in DayZ gameplay, and has evolved throughout the Early Access period thanks to us being able to observe raw data from the Experimental and Stable branch servers. DayZ Mod had a very basic, rudimentary trigger based spawning controlled via script and having to populate no more than around 10,000 potential points - only spawning within proximity to players. DayZ spawns globally, and has evolved to allow more and more precise and complex control over when/where/how much/etc and we continue to iterate upon it, constantly trying to find that right point in which we offer a struggle to survive, without allowing abuse or making the experience *too* punishing. For .60 we're hoping to have the restock values functioning properly for the first time on controlled high end military gear, and pending testing on experimental branch we'll see if this value will function properly enough to allow us to use it for the entire economy - potentially creating points of shortage / supply & demand rotating throughout the servers life. As always, testing and iteration will tell - but Peter and I both are very excited about the possibility here.
0.60 Build Milestone Goals:
- New Renderer: Implemented
- Randomized Attachments & ItemsRandom: Implemented
- New Reload Mechanics: Implemented / Iteration on jamming mechanics in test
- 60 Player-per-instance: Implemented and pending final call on server performance
- Brian Hicks / Creative Director
Dev Update/Mirek
As you know, we spent more than a week on fixing connection issues. Very big amount of connection requests revealed some issues, which were there from the beginning, so at least it gave us opportunity to find and fix them. Now all the team members assigned to connection issues are back on their long term tasks.
A lot of fixes were made in weapon and inventory system and we've also fixed server memory leaks, which have led to lower server performance after few hours from the server restart (should be released today). Probably last thing, which is blocker on our side for the stable release, is the most common server crash, so we hope we will fix it as soon as possible.
Team members are also still working on features for 0.61 like login queue and the new server browser.
We're preparing a new feature for the main menu, where you will be able to list and select one of your characters which exists on different shards and connect to the server without opening server browser (I hope we will show you prototype soon).
- Miroslav Maněna / Lead Gameplay Programmer
Dev Update/Viktor
Several different animations are in progress at the moment. Quite soon we should have new anims for infected when in idle. This will improve a bit how infected look and move in the world by giving them some variety. They will have four different idle poses with its own set of idles and moves. Also more animations when infected attack doors are being created. They will use different body parts when smashing doors - hands, feets, shoulders and of course head.
New player controller is comming together quite nicely. We are still in process of setting up a proper camera behavior which would reflect different situations and stances the player character can be in. As new features are available for the new player controller we are adjusting animations so they are ready for implementation for instance looking around poses which are related to the camera.
Extended reload animation sets are being finished for last few guns. But just right after that we will start on the new jamming animations for all weapons. At the same time attaching wheels and vehicle doors is being created for hatchback. Since different vehicles have different sizes we will need to find an elegant way how to use this animations without any major clipping issues. Last part of player which is being worked on right now is wounded character. The animations for linmping crouch with rifle in hands is still in progress since it is 16 animations to cover all speeds and directions.
- Viktor Kostik / Lead Animator
