Greetings Survivors,

As the team continues pushing development of DayZ, we have Brian, Chris, and Viktor providing us with a peek at what is on the plate for the team. For this week, Lead Producer Brian Hicks will discuss development going forwards in regards to the DayZ audio module, while Lead Artist Chris Torchia will discuss the decision making behind the firearms design, and Lead Animator Viktor Kostik will discuss the development of transitioning the player character across to the new animation system.

Like always, we have a couple of links to our DayZ Trello board, and towards the end of this weeks' Status Report we showcase a video showing an interesting game session springing forth from a Vybor spawn.

• Development Board Spotlight
  
• Dev Update/Hicks
  
• E3 - DayZ PC Gaming Show 2015
  
• Dev Update/Chris
  
• Dev Update/Viktor
  
• Community Video: "Long Story Short - I Got a Vybor Spawn"

Greetings Survivors,

Its been a hectic few weeks, with 0.57 release and E3 - but I'd like to take some time out this week to discuss pending changes to the Audio side of the Enfusion engine, as well as some critical audio bugs plaguing DayZ Early Access players.

We've talked about replacing the existing Audio system in DayZ with a new Audio module better suited to DayZ's needs, but we haven't really outlined what some of that means. As many players may know, the inherited audio technology from the Real Virtuality (TKOH / Arma 2) side of the family has its strengths, but it also has quite a few weaknesses. As we began looking at the time and resources required to update this portion of our base engine, we looked at several key areas we wanted to improve:

- 3D Positional Ambient Sound: Supporting true 3D Positional Ambient sounds is integral to proper immersion within Chernarus. As well, once we support this - the roar of the coast, and the confusing positional ambient noises should be a thing of the past.

- More complex configuration options for vehicles, weapons, etc: Current technology supports a very basic methodology for potential sounds and triggering events for weapons, vehicles and the likes. Moving to the new Audio module will begin to allow the design and audio teams to implement more complex audio configurations for items and vehicles in game.

As development on this portion of the engine continues, we'll be looking at other features existing internal projects offer (such as Arma 3's tech) to ensure that the support the Enfusion engine offers is as comprehensive as we can allow.

In addition to this, work has continued internally on slaying the ever illusive audio bug beast known as "Ghost sounds" - Potential headway was revealed during a conference between key members of the Arma, and DayZ teams. Potential related causes of the issue, as well as fixes implemented on the Arma side of the company are hopefully going to be implemented. We'll be testing this out on experimental hopefully with 0.59 - I'll be speaking with people about this on the official DayZ forums when we begin testing, and anyone encountering the issue at that point is strongly encouraged to utilize the Feedback Tracker.

See you all in Chernarus!
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Also, we have a little bit of info in regards to modding and the singleplayer part of DayZ in the following video featuring Brian Hicks at this year's E3 convention. Thanks and props go out to the fine people of DayZ Underground for providing the video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zvK0XgcO4s

For the full Status Report, please have a look at our DayZ Devhub

Greetings Survivors,

As the team continues pushing development of DayZ, we have Brian, Chris, and Viktor providing us with a peek at what is on the plate for the team. For this week, Lead Producer Brian Hicks will discuss development going forwards in regards to the DayZ audio module, while Lead Artist Chris Torchia will discuss the decision making behind the firearms design, and Lead Animator Viktor Kostik will discuss the development of transitioning the player character across to the new animation system.

Like always, we have a couple of links to our DayZ Trello board, and towards the end of this weeks' Status Report we showcase a video showing an interesting game session springing forth from a Vybor spawn.

• Development Board Spotlight
  
• Dev Update/Hicks
  
• E3 - DayZ PC Gaming Show 2015
  
• Dev Update/Chris
  
• Dev Update/Viktor
  
• Community Video: "Long Story Short - I Got a Vybor Spawn"

Greetings Survivors,

Its been a hectic few weeks, with 0.57 release and E3 - but I'd like to take some time out this week to discuss pending changes to the Audio side of the Enfusion engine, as well as some critical audio bugs plaguing DayZ Early Access players.

We've talked about replacing the existing Audio system in DayZ with a new Audio module better suited to DayZ's needs, but we haven't really outlined what some of that means. As many players may know, the inherited audio technology from the Real Virtuality (TKOH / Arma 2) side of the family has its strengths, but it also has quite a few weaknesses. As we began looking at the time and resources required to update this portion of our base engine, we looked at several key areas we wanted to improve:

- 3D Positional Ambient Sound: Supporting true 3D Positional Ambient sounds is integral to proper immersion within Chernarus. As well, once we support this - the roar of the coast, and the confusing positional ambient noises should be a thing of the past.

- More complex configuration options for vehicles, weapons, etc: Current technology supports a very basic methodology for potential sounds and triggering events for weapons, vehicles and the likes. Moving to the new Audio module will begin to allow the design and audio teams to implement more complex audio configurations for items and vehicles in game.

As development on this portion of the engine continues, we'll be looking at other features existing internal projects offer (such as Arma 3's tech) to ensure that the support the Enfusion engine offers is as comprehensive as we can allow.

In addition to this, work has continued internally on slaying the ever illusive audio bug beast known as "Ghost sounds" - Potential headway was revealed during a conference between key members of the Arma, and DayZ teams. Potential related causes of the issue, as well as fixes implemented on the Arma side of the company are hopefully going to be implemented. We'll be testing this out on experimental hopefully with 0.59 - I'll be speaking with people about this on the official DayZ forums when we begin testing, and anyone encountering the issue at that point is strongly encouraged to utilize the Feedback Tracker.

See you all in Chernarus!
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Also, we have a little bit of info in regards to modding and the singleplayer part of DayZ in the following video featuring Brian Hicks at this year's E3 convention. Thanks and props go out to the fine people of DayZ Underground for providing the video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zvK0XgcO4s

For the full Status Report, please have a look at our DayZ Devhub

Greetings Survivors,

Work continues on experimental branch as the team keeps hammering away at the next Stable build candidate. It's been a tough wait, we understand, but major issues encountered during development required fixing before the push to Stable branch. This week, Lead Producer Brian Hicks will be dishing out some handy information regarding the Central Loot Economy - what it is, how it's supposed to work, as well as the thought process behind the design choices for the CLE. Also, Lead Designer Peter Nespesny will be telling us about future updates to the vehicles found throughout Chernarus. Peter will go over subjects such as operation, maintenance, as well as the design choices behind these upcoming updates.

Lastly, we have a couple of links to the DayZ Trello board and DayZ forums discussion thread related to the new bus animations, and at the end of our Status Report, we have a small feature on one of DayZ's content creators - Barely Infected.

• Development Board Spotlight
  
• Dev Update/Hicks
  
• Dev Update/Peter
  
• Community Spotlight: Barely Infected

With 0.57 on the horizon, this week I'd like to take time to talk a bit about player progression across Chernarus, the Central Loot Economy (and its impact on this), and the challenges DayZ faces compared to the Arma 2 Mod experience.

First lets go over exactly what the Central Loot Economy is, and what it offers DayZ.

- Migration of control over what items spawn from legacy method (script) into a more easily and rapidly updated system
- This means the dev team can rapidly (and without requiring an update to the game) completely change / update the amount of items that spawn
- This is done on both a global, and a per server level - in the future allowing custom server operators fine control over their server and its item spawn quantities without requiring any base modification to the game
- Control over item lifetimes (speed of decay / time to item cleanup)
- Control over how many of each item time is supposed to be present in the world (Min / Max / Nominal)
- Control over item cost (rarity vs spawning methods)

Why is the Central Loot Economy critical to DayZ's design - versus the original prototype placeholder loot spawning script? Simply put - the original method was a very rough prototype, designed to start populating the initial memory points for each structure. In order for the design and environment teams to be fully free to create a comprehensive, living breathing world - we first needed to begin to have fine and robust control that can be rapidly pushed to all servers. The original prototype method was very time resource heavy for updating, limited our options to traditional DayZ Mod style building definitions only, and in short pidgeon-holed the team into very limited control.



One of the images that has been circulating the DayZ Community over the last week is a map covering player progression across Arma 2's original Chernarus map. The layout of the original Chernarus, as well as the very limited amount of enterable structures, and thus very limited amount of potential spawn points for items meant an inherent flow of player movement across the map. It required very little work on the design side - High end military loot spawned mostly entirely at Barracks structures, Basic Supplies / Weapons at Firestations, Grocery Stores, Barns, and so on, and Medical supplies at Hospitals. The structure of *how* items spawned within the original Chernarus just -fit- the limited scope of that map perfectly.
Moving into DayZ as a standalone project, one of the first tasks undertaken was the decentralization of core resource (points of interest) buildings - and the expansion of Chernarus into a more robust and living world. Nearly every structure was made enter-able, and thus nearly every single building on the map was a potential (or group of potential) points for items to spawn. At first this might not seem like it should have a major impact on the design, and flow of player progression across the map - but when you look at the statistics, it is rather telling.

- In DayZ Mod, with vanilla Chernarus - Potential item spawn points number in the thousands (Sub 10k)
- In DayZ Chernarus + the potential locations for items to spawn exceeds 1 Million.

For a look at the full Status Report, please feel free to have a look at the DayZ Devhub

Greetings Survivors,

Work continues on experimental branch as the team keeps hammering away at the next Stable build candidate. It's been a tough wait, we understand, but major issues encountered during development required fixing before the push to Stable branch. This week, Lead Producer Brian Hicks will be dishing out some handy information regarding the Central Loot Economy - what it is, how it's supposed to work, as well as the thought process behind the design choices for the CLE. Also, Lead Designer Peter Nespesny will be telling us about future updates to the vehicles found throughout Chernarus. Peter will go over subjects such as operation, maintenance, as well as the design choices behind these upcoming updates.

Lastly, we have a couple of links to the DayZ Trello board and DayZ forums discussion thread related to the new bus animations, and at the end of our Status Report, we have a small feature on one of DayZ's content creators - Barely Infected.

• Development Board Spotlight
  
• Dev Update/Hicks
  
• Dev Update/Peter
  
• Community Spotlight: Barely Infected

With 0.57 on the horizon, this week I'd like to take time to talk a bit about player progression across Chernarus, the Central Loot Economy (and its impact on this), and the challenges DayZ faces compared to the Arma 2 Mod experience.

First lets go over exactly what the Central Loot Economy is, and what it offers DayZ.

- Migration of control over what items spawn from legacy method (script) into a more easily and rapidly updated system
- This means the dev team can rapidly (and without requiring an update to the game) completely change / update the amount of items that spawn
- This is done on both a global, and a per server level - in the future allowing custom server operators fine control over their server and its item spawn quantities without requiring any base modification to the game
- Control over item lifetimes (speed of decay / time to item cleanup)
- Control over how many of each item time is supposed to be present in the world (Min / Max / Nominal)
- Control over item cost (rarity vs spawning methods)

Why is the Central Loot Economy critical to DayZ's design - versus the original prototype placeholder loot spawning script? Simply put - the original method was a very rough prototype, designed to start populating the initial memory points for each structure. In order for the design and environment teams to be fully free to create a comprehensive, living breathing world - we first needed to begin to have fine and robust control that can be rapidly pushed to all servers. The original prototype method was very time resource heavy for updating, limited our options to traditional DayZ Mod style building definitions only, and in short pidgeon-holed the team into very limited control.



One of the images that has been circulating the DayZ Community over the last week is a map covering player progression across Arma 2's original Chernarus map. The layout of the original Chernarus, as well as the very limited amount of enterable structures, and thus very limited amount of potential spawn points for items meant an inherent flow of player movement across the map. It required very little work on the design side - High end military loot spawned mostly entirely at Barracks structures, Basic Supplies / Weapons at Firestations, Grocery Stores, Barns, and so on, and Medical supplies at Hospitals. The structure of *how* items spawned within the original Chernarus just -fit- the limited scope of that map perfectly.
Moving into DayZ as a standalone project, one of the first tasks undertaken was the decentralization of core resource (points of interest) buildings - and the expansion of Chernarus into a more robust and living world. Nearly every structure was made enter-able, and thus nearly every single building on the map was a potential (or group of potential) points for items to spawn. At first this might not seem like it should have a major impact on the design, and flow of player progression across the map - but when you look at the statistics, it is rather telling.

- In DayZ Mod, with vanilla Chernarus - Potential item spawn points number in the thousands (Sub 10k)
- In DayZ Chernarus + the potential locations for items to spawn exceeds 1 Million.

For a look at the full Status Report, please feel free to have a look at the DayZ Devhub

Greetings Survivors,

As the team continues iterating and testing on experimental while moving towards the upcoming stable update, We'll hear Lead Producer Brian Hicks discuss a bit of the methodology behind dynamic events and vehicle positions versus player spawn locations. As well, Lead Designer Peter Nespesny discusses ongoing testing work over on the experimental branch related to player data updates, and scheduling.

As well, we've tossed in some links to the Development Board entry for Hermit Playstyle enhancements, and their accompanying discussion thread on the Developer forums. Check the end of the Status Report for some heart pounding Player Vs Vehicle action outside the Veresnik Military Base.

• Development Board Spotlight
• Dev Update/Hicks
• Dev Update/Peter
• Community Video: The battle of the V3S's

I'm frequently asked about player spawns, vehicle spawns, and the mentality behind where and why they are placed. I thought I would take the opportunity this week to discuss exactly that.



For those aware of how DayZ Mod's gameplay flow operated - it was fairly simple. Players started along the coast - from Kamenka to as far as Berezino. Players progressed (for the most part) from the South - to the North. (For the most part, the North West) This gameplay required very little design side control to influence it. Natively the original Chernarus had very few buildings, and thus very few potential item spawn points (compared to say - Chernarus +). One of the initial goals of DayZ was to decentralize the flow of high value or required resources. Think medical centers, military installations, and so on.

When approaching player spawns - early on my approach was to try and replicate the familiarity of player spawns in the earlier versions of DayZ Mod. (DayZ Mod circa Summer 2012 was used as a touch stone) We quickly learned that this approach did not work with the massively altered layout of Chernarus. Not to mention some of the changes to key coastal areas. The next experiment we ran with player spawns was to flip the map of Chernarus, and look at the player progression as East > West. From a design perspective this approach seemed the most logical in how we wanted to layout the world, and seemed on paper like it should find strong success.

Never let it be said that nostalgia and familiarity has no merit.

Players were very vocal in their longing for the familiar DayZ spawn points, Chernogorsk and Elektrozavodsk especially. Internally we were very reluctant to change this up as the early loot spawning system did not allow us any region control, and the design of Chernarus was heavily leaning towards letting us use any building model we wanted, where it made sense. (Think Military Police buildings in Chernogorsk, Balota Barracks, etc) However, as early prototyping on a more robust control over where region-wise certain items spawned, the idea of spawning in some of those core DayZ Mod areas was revisited. Obviously some small changes would need to occur to the layout of the world, as the system would take a good deal of time to develop - so Balota and the Northeast Airfield both got a redesign - and spawns from Kamyshovo to West Chernogorsk were reintroduced.



As Dynamic Events, and Vehicles entered the equation their spawn placements were heavily influenced by where the existing player spawns lay, and how we wanted the flow of players across the map to operate. Obviously Dynamic Event types used to prototype the system were also used as a control point for "Very Rare" items - with the desired intent to ensure that in the final product, players could not farm one location across many servers to quickly gain an item the design team intended to be incredibly hard to find. (See: SVD)



Vehicles themselves followed a similar principle, as the prototype vehicle was a heavy vehicle designed to carry large amounts of both gear and players - the spawn positions for this were placed at the highest concentration in West / Northwest. As smaller, more civilian vehicles begin to be implemented we'll see more spawn types for them a bit closer to where player spawns are located.

I hope this brief look into the thought process behind these areas helps you to understand how they evolve a bit better.

See you all in Chernarus!
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Read the full Status Report on the DayZ Devhub

Greetings Survivors,

As the team continues iterating and testing on experimental while moving towards the upcoming stable update, We'll hear Lead Producer Brian Hicks discuss a bit of the methodology behind dynamic events and vehicle positions versus player spawn locations. As well, Lead Designer Peter Nespesny discusses ongoing testing work over on the experimental branch related to player data updates, and scheduling.

As well, we've tossed in some links to the Development Board entry for Hermit Playstyle enhancements, and their accompanying discussion thread on the Developer forums. Check the end of the Status Report for some heart pounding Player Vs Vehicle action outside the Veresnik Military Base.

• Development Board Spotlight
• Dev Update/Hicks
• Dev Update/Peter
• Community Video: The battle of the V3S's

I'm frequently asked about player spawns, vehicle spawns, and the mentality behind where and why they are placed. I thought I would take the opportunity this week to discuss exactly that.



For those aware of how DayZ Mod's gameplay flow operated - it was fairly simple. Players started along the coast - from Kamenka to as far as Berezino. Players progressed (for the most part) from the South - to the North. (For the most part, the North West) This gameplay required very little design side control to influence it. Natively the original Chernarus had very few buildings, and thus very few potential item spawn points (compared to say - Chernarus +). One of the initial goals of DayZ was to decentralize the flow of high value or required resources. Think medical centers, military installations, and so on.

When approaching player spawns - early on my approach was to try and replicate the familiarity of player spawns in the earlier versions of DayZ Mod. (DayZ Mod circa Summer 2012 was used as a touch stone) We quickly learned that this approach did not work with the massively altered layout of Chernarus. Not to mention some of the changes to key coastal areas. The next experiment we ran with player spawns was to flip the map of Chernarus, and look at the player progression as East > West. From a design perspective this approach seemed the most logical in how we wanted to layout the world, and seemed on paper like it should find strong success.

Never let it be said that nostalgia and familiarity has no merit.

Players were very vocal in their longing for the familiar DayZ spawn points, Chernogorsk and Elektrozavodsk especially. Internally we were very reluctant to change this up as the early loot spawning system did not allow us any region control, and the design of Chernarus was heavily leaning towards letting us use any building model we wanted, where it made sense. (Think Military Police buildings in Chernogorsk, Balota Barracks, etc) However, as early prototyping on a more robust control over where region-wise certain items spawned, the idea of spawning in some of those core DayZ Mod areas was revisited. Obviously some small changes would need to occur to the layout of the world, as the system would take a good deal of time to develop - so Balota and the Northeast Airfield both got a redesign - and spawns from Kamyshovo to West Chernogorsk were reintroduced.



As Dynamic Events, and Vehicles entered the equation their spawn placements were heavily influenced by where the existing player spawns lay, and how we wanted the flow of players across the map to operate. Obviously Dynamic Event types used to prototype the system were also used as a control point for "Very Rare" items - with the desired intent to ensure that in the final product, players could not farm one location across many servers to quickly gain an item the design team intended to be incredibly hard to find. (See: SVD)



Vehicles themselves followed a similar principle, as the prototype vehicle was a heavy vehicle designed to carry large amounts of both gear and players - the spawn positions for this were placed at the highest concentration in West / Northwest. As smaller, more civilian vehicles begin to be implemented we'll see more spawn types for them a bit closer to where player spawns are located.

I hope this brief look into the thought process behind these areas helps you to understand how they evolve a bit better.

See you all in Chernarus!
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Read the full Status Report on the DayZ Devhub

Greetings Survivors,

This week we're switching over to a new Status Report format, and merging in some of the community focused features from the dev hub into a single weekly report. We'll need to work a few kinks out over the coming weeks, so bear with us as we get this new format to the structure we want. 0.56/0.57 Development continues over on the experimental branch - the team is rapidly approaching a candidate ready for a stable branch update.

This weeks Status Report features info on E3, goals for the 0.56/0.57 stable update, and some outstanding charity efforts by DayZ community members.

And remember - the latest news and info on DayZ development is always available via the Dev Hub.

• Development Board Spotlight
• Dev Update
• DayZ @ E3
• Community Video: Always Burning

Back to Contents


Those watching the experimental branch over the last few weeks have seen a high frequency of updates, configuration changes, and restarts as the development team ramped up volume and stress testing in preperation for the stable branch update. Strong gains in server side performance were made, and thanks to player stress testing on experimental branch - critical issues were identified in the performance of infected AI. With the gains in over all performance (server side) with player and simulation handling, we were able to isolate and identify the AI related issues - and the gameplay programming team is hard at work on resolving those issues.

      In the mean time, as development continues - a firm red line on server side performance for stable branch has been established. This is to ensure an enjoyable experience, as well as reduce the amount of noise to signal ratio on the feedback tracker, and greatly improve the quality of repro steps, and critical identified issues coming in from that branch.
      Over all, we expect that the experience will be significantly more enjoyable than 0.55 (but not where we want it to be for the release from Early Access)
      
      In the interest of getting an update to stable branch as soon as possible, work on the programming side will continue internally on several key issues identified by players on that branch in 0.55 / 0.56 experimental.

    - Intelligent spawning per building / Item per building capacity limits
    - AI Performance costs (Infected - Animal)

  As these systems are actively being worked on by the gameplay programming team - the stable branch update will have the spawning of infected, and the persistence disabled on stable branch servers. This is only a temporary measure while these two issues continue to be worked on, and we'll see both base building, and infected return with a vengeance as soon as possible.

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Back to Contents


DayZ Lead Producer Brian Hicks will be speaking about modding, and DayZ server hosting at the AMD PC Gaming Conference Tuesday June 16th. 

Hosted by Sean 'Day[9]' Plott, the PC Gaming Show will take place at the Belasco Theater in Los Angeles on Tuesday, June 16, 2015. In partnership with Twitch, the PC Gaming Show will be streamed live, and feature new game reveals, updates on beloved series, and perspectives from key PC developers.

Make sure to keep an eye on the AMD PC Gaming Conference website and the DayZ Dev Twitter account for more information.
 

Back to Contents

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEUdU8Moyvg

Youtuber The Running ManZ encounters Twitch streamer Always_OnTour in this short but exciting Solnichniy encounter. If you haven't checked out either of them - now is the time!

TheRunningManZ
Always_OnTour

Back to Contents

Greetings Survivors,

This week we're switching over to a new Status Report format, and merging in some of the community focused features from the dev hub into a single weekly report. We'll need to work a few kinks out over the coming weeks, so bear with us as we get this new format to the structure we want. 0.56/0.57 Development continues over on the experimental branch - the team is rapidly approaching a candidate ready for a stable branch update.

This weeks Status Report features info on E3, goals for the 0.56/0.57 stable update, and some outstanding charity efforts by DayZ community members.

And remember - the latest news and info on DayZ development is always available via the Dev Hub.

• Development Board Spotlight
• Dev Update
• DayZ @ E3
• Community Video: Always Burning

Back to Contents


Those watching the experimental branch over the last few weeks have seen a high frequency of updates, configuration changes, and restarts as the development team ramped up volume and stress testing in preperation for the stable branch update. Strong gains in server side performance were made, and thanks to player stress testing on experimental branch - critical issues were identified in the performance of infected AI. With the gains in over all performance (server side) with player and simulation handling, we were able to isolate and identify the AI related issues - and the gameplay programming team is hard at work on resolving those issues.

      In the mean time, as development continues - a firm red line on server side performance for stable branch has been established. This is to ensure an enjoyable experience, as well as reduce the amount of noise to signal ratio on the feedback tracker, and greatly improve the quality of repro steps, and critical identified issues coming in from that branch.
      Over all, we expect that the experience will be significantly more enjoyable than 0.55 (but not where we want it to be for the release from Early Access)
      
      In the interest of getting an update to stable branch as soon as possible, work on the programming side will continue internally on several key issues identified by players on that branch in 0.55 / 0.56 experimental.

    - Intelligent spawning per building / Item per building capacity limits
    - AI Performance costs (Infected - Animal)

  As these systems are actively being worked on by the gameplay programming team - the stable branch update will have the spawning of infected, and the persistence disabled on stable branch servers. This is only a temporary measure while these two issues continue to be worked on, and we'll see both base building, and infected return with a vengeance as soon as possible.

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Back to Contents


DayZ Lead Producer Brian Hicks will be speaking about modding, and DayZ server hosting at the AMD PC Gaming Conference Tuesday June 16th. 

Hosted by Sean 'Day[9]' Plott, the PC Gaming Show will take place at the Belasco Theater in Los Angeles on Tuesday, June 16, 2015. In partnership with Twitch, the PC Gaming Show will be streamed live, and feature new game reveals, updates on beloved series, and perspectives from key PC developers.

Make sure to keep an eye on the AMD PC Gaming Conference website and the DayZ Dev Twitter account for more information.
 

Back to Contents

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEUdU8Moyvg

Youtuber The Running ManZ encounters Twitch streamer Always_OnTour in this short but exciting Solnichniy encounter. If you haven't checked out either of them - now is the time!

TheRunningManZ
Always_OnTour

Back to Contents

Greetings Survivors,

This status report came a bit later than usual as we wanted to include some of the results and findings from this weeks experimental releases, as well as shed a bit of light on the intent of said releases. As we tread on into May, we'll be rolling 0.56 into 0.57 development with the intent of a regularly scheduled end of month release. Ramping up to this, you'll see frequent experimental branch updates and experiments ongoing on that branches servers.

As internally we spent time investigating server side performance, as well as the effect of various systems on production server performance we discovered abnormally high performance cost related to infected AI. As said performance should be lateral at a certain point, we've been fluctuating configurations and builds on the experimental branch to properly replicate the production environment and profile the exact location and behaviour of the source of the performance drop.



On the player side, we've made strong gains performance wise. We're seeing a gain of 4x higher performance per average player count, and this is instantly visible in gameplay. As the programming team moves ahead on investigating infected costs on server side performance, we'll be disabling infected spawning on stable branch servers (post-stable update)to ensure the highest quality of gameplay on that branch. Experimental will proceed with infected performance tests so we can as soon as possible return the infected to Chernarus en masse. 
If you're curious how this work is going, once the end of the month stable update (0.57) releases - keep an eye on experimental branch.



I'm personally excited to see the gains on the player and gameplay side - we've still got a long way to go until feature complete, but I'm excited to chase you all across Chernarus.

Really not a bandit,
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

 
(Note: Standup notes are not a change log - they are a quick high level look at tasks the teams worked on throughout this week)

• GAZ Volga
• Civilian Bus
• VZ61 Scorpion
• New Zombie Models
• Civilian Hiking Jacket

• Transfer of skinning to EnScript
• Transfer of traps to EnScript
• Tripwire Traps
• Design of damaged barrel usage
• Bugfixing
• Profiling server performance for existing scripts

• Inventory refactorization bugfixing
• Dynamic Events spawning bugfixing
• Loot Distro bugfixing
• AI Performance Analysis & Bugfixing
• Character Controller
• Login Que Design
• New Damage Sys.
• Server & Client Crash Fixes

 

 

Greetings Survivors,

This status report came a bit later than usual as we wanted to include some of the results and findings from this weeks experimental releases, as well as shed a bit of light on the intent of said releases. As we tread on into May, we'll be rolling 0.56 into 0.57 development with the intent of a regularly scheduled end of month release. Ramping up to this, you'll see frequent experimental branch updates and experiments ongoing on that branches servers.

As internally we spent time investigating server side performance, as well as the effect of various systems on production server performance we discovered abnormally high performance cost related to infected AI. As said performance should be lateral at a certain point, we've been fluctuating configurations and builds on the experimental branch to properly replicate the production environment and profile the exact location and behaviour of the source of the performance drop.



On the player side, we've made strong gains performance wise. We're seeing a gain of 4x higher performance per average player count, and this is instantly visible in gameplay. As the programming team moves ahead on investigating infected costs on server side performance, we'll be disabling infected spawning on stable branch servers (post-stable update)to ensure the highest quality of gameplay on that branch. Experimental will proceed with infected performance tests so we can as soon as possible return the infected to Chernarus en masse. 
If you're curious how this work is going, once the end of the month stable update (0.57) releases - keep an eye on experimental branch.



I'm personally excited to see the gains on the player and gameplay side - we've still got a long way to go until feature complete, but I'm excited to chase you all across Chernarus.

Really not a bandit,
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

 
(Note: Standup notes are not a change log - they are a quick high level look at tasks the teams worked on throughout this week)

• GAZ Volga
• Civilian Bus
• VZ61 Scorpion
• New Zombie Models
• Civilian Hiking Jacket

• Transfer of skinning to EnScript
• Transfer of traps to EnScript
• Tripwire Traps
• Design of damaged barrel usage
• Bugfixing
• Profiling server performance for existing scripts

• Inventory refactorization bugfixing
• Dynamic Events spawning bugfixing
• Loot Distro bugfixing
• AI Performance Analysis & Bugfixing
• Character Controller
• Login Que Design
• New Damage Sys.
• Server & Client Crash Fixes