Greetings Survivors!

The last few months for DayZ has included a lot of review meetings. Both technical and gameplay design related - and now it's come that time where we have some solid information to share with you all on the upcoming 0.63 Experimental and Stable updates. Where we are with it, what we're looking at it being - and in short to offer some clear transparency to you all looking at it forward.

Some of this information might be frustrating to read, and some of it might get your own internal hype train running. The important thing from the information we will be laying out today is that you all understand where we are with the move away from legacy DayZ, and why we've made the decisions we have.

That said, I'll let Eugen take it away and guide you all through what we're looking at.

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director



Hello everyone. Being candid is the core of the relationship we have as a studio with you, our community. That includes openly talking about things that we know will cause a lot of disappointment and negative feelings. I'll start right of the bat with one such thing: unfortunately, there will be no other major release this year (that means we won't be releasing 0.63 on neither Experimental and Stable branches).

PLANS FOR THE REST OF 2017 & 0.63 EXPERIMENTAL GOALS

I'm going to be very straightforward: along with releasing 0.62 Stable, it has been our main internal goal to get 0.63 Experimental out this year (as mentioned in Status Report on April 18) - we have put pretty much all our resources on that task, but as of now, we already know that the scope we will be able to achieve by the end of 2017 does not represent a full DayZ experience, and therefore blocks the 0.63 Experimental release..

Large chunks of the core gameplay loop are just now getting more settled, but there are still core features that are heavily work in progress, or not implemented - for example vaulting, swimming, and vehicles - and unfortunately that means that despite all the progress we've made on the other parts of the game, this is still not enough for a potential Experimental release.

We do understand that all you guys want is to play 0.63 - and while it would be possible to have some Experimental 0.63 release this year that would be relatively stable and enjoyable for a short period of time, just releasing something is not a viable approach this time around. Both 0.63 Experimental and 0.63 Stable (= BETA) are key releases for us, as they are the last steps before we leave Early Access.

And since it's so important, we have a set of so called epic goals that are implemented into everything we're making for the game in the new engine. These goals are:

• Performance
  
• Stability
  
• Control
  
• Balance

We want to avoid any issues from lack of oversight in development or project architecture - for example we just want to make sure that our infected numbers and player numbers per server are as high as possible, and both DayZ client and server apps maintaining good, reliable up-time.

To get a better understanding of what still needs to be done on our end before we can push the first 0.63 Experimental, read through this bullet point overview of our focus areas. All of the listed features are in different stages of development, and a team or person dedicated to its completion. These are the features we want to see finalized before experimental release.

Read more here (we're not posting in Steam directly today due to the formatting):
https://dayz.com/blog/status-report-28th-november

Header picture: MAMAD_NZR

Greetings Survivors!

The last few months for DayZ has included a lot of review meetings. Both technical and gameplay design related - and now it's come that time where we have some solid information to share with you all on the upcoming 0.63 Experimental and Stable updates. Where we are with it, what we're looking at it being - and in short to offer some clear transparency to you all looking at it forward.

Some of this information might be frustrating to read, and some of it might get your own internal hype train running. The important thing from the information we will be laying out today is that you all understand where we are with the move away from legacy DayZ, and why we've made the decisions we have.

That said, I'll let Eugen take it away and guide you all through what we're looking at.

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director



Hello everyone. Being candid is the core of the relationship we have as a studio with you, our community. That includes openly talking about things that we know will cause a lot of disappointment and negative feelings. I'll start right of the bat with one such thing: unfortunately, there will be no other major release this year (that means we won't be releasing 0.63 on neither Experimental and Stable branches).

PLANS FOR THE REST OF 2017 & 0.63 EXPERIMENTAL GOALS

I'm going to be very straightforward: along with releasing 0.62 Stable, it has been our main internal goal to get 0.63 Experimental out this year (as mentioned in Status Report on April 18) - we have put pretty much all our resources on that task, but as of now, we already know that the scope we will be able to achieve by the end of 2017 does not represent a full DayZ experience, and therefore blocks the 0.63 Experimental release..

Large chunks of the core gameplay loop are just now getting more settled, but there are still core features that are heavily work in progress, or not implemented - for example vaulting, swimming, and vehicles - and unfortunately that means that despite all the progress we've made on the other parts of the game, this is still not enough for a potential Experimental release.

We do understand that all you guys want is to play 0.63 - and while it would be possible to have some Experimental 0.63 release this year that would be relatively stable and enjoyable for a short period of time, just releasing something is not a viable approach this time around. Both 0.63 Experimental and 0.63 Stable (= BETA) are key releases for us, as they are the last steps before we leave Early Access.

And since it's so important, we have a set of so called epic goals that are implemented into everything we're making for the game in the new engine. These goals are:

• Performance
  
• Stability
  
• Control
  
• Balance

We want to avoid any issues from lack of oversight in development or project architecture - for example we just want to make sure that our infected numbers and player numbers per server are as high as possible, and both DayZ client and server apps maintaining good, reliable up-time.

To get a better understanding of what still needs to be done on our end before we can push the first 0.63 Experimental, read through this bullet point overview of our focus areas. All of the listed features are in different stages of development, and a team or person dedicated to its completion. These are the features we want to see finalized before experimental release.

Read more here (we're not posting in Steam directly today due to the formatting):
https://dayz.com/blog/status-report-28th-november

Header picture: MAMAD_NZR

This week, we have Brian remembering the struggles he experienced during his modding days - and looking forward to how the DayZ Standalone modding will make things a lot easier. Eugen is providing a thorough recap of our recent progress, we're introducing our scripter Boris Vacula and his work on particle effects, and Baty is announcing the winners of our wee Halloween screenshot contest! Let's dig into it, Survivors!

• Dev Update/Brian
  
• Dev Update/Eugen
  
• Dev Update/Boris
  
• Community Spotlight

 
As we approach the entry into the BETA phase of DayZ's development, I am reminded of how things were back in 2012 as we worked on the original Survivor GameZ. Working with Dean to get us early access to upcoming builds of DayZ Mod, and trying to modify the script codebase to match the projects needs. Much like many mod authors back in the day, it was a frustrating experience, trying to create our experience within a framework (Arma 2 scripting code/commands) that was simply not designed for the type of experience we were trying to create.

It is experiences like this that specifically has me so excited for what we'll be able to offer mod authors with DayZ. The project benefits so much from being developed in house by Bohemia Interactive - doing this on in house technology is such a rare opportunity in the grand scheme of things. For both us as developers, mod authors, and you all as passionate advocates of survival in a post apocalyptic world it means a technology base that is designed nearly from the ground up to provide the tools needed to create the experience we've all had our eyes on from day one.

From a more modern and robust animation system offering true layered animations (being able to move and perform an action at the same time, yay!), to a renderer better designed for the large distances and huge amounts of enterable structures and objects drawn at one time, to a more robust and performance conscious scripting language. Making sure that when DayZ leaves principle development and the Early Access program that it provides people in the tradition of all Bohemia titles with tools to tell their own stories is 100% key.

Another thing I wanted to discuss briefly was DayZ's survival mechanics - both in gameplay systems, and in the economy values. I've often received shouts of dismay from both sides of the fence. Things being too easy, and being too hard. Looking at the mechanics we have on the survival side, something we've struggled with often as developers is providing an immersive (sometimes punishingly so) sandbox that has systems that don't frustrate. Paying attention to feedback has been critical, and I don't quite think we've hit the mark just yet with this. 
Far too often, players are forced to manage survival simulation mechanics while trying to engage in the true draw of DayZ, the player interactions. Rather than the survival mechanics serving as a method to drive, and give agency to the player interaction.

In addition to this, the idea of an economy of scarcity should give said agency to players engaging and interacting with each other, but far too frequently, it ends up being a drive to either completely avoid players - or to just destroy them on sight.

I truly hope that as we move into BETA, and begin to see mechanics that give players more of an option and feel of having an impact on the world, that we see the core game loop expand past loot-shoot-survive. As my most memorable experiences in gaming all come from those types of interactions with DayZ, and DayZ Mod.

To achieve this however, we need more than passionate developers. We need to hear from you all. Constructive, and engaging feedback on the systems and mechanics of DayZ that either drive, or hinder player interaction is key - and I hope you all will engage in this more often as we move into BETA. Utilize our official forums, open tickets in the feedback tracker - hell, even post on Reddit and tag Baty. This is as much your game as it is ours.

In closing, I was asked by my partner once: "If you could only play one game for the rest of your life, what would it be?" - and I'll be honest I thought pretty damn hard on this one, but I am proud to say that my answer was a confident "DayZ" - and I hope to still be playing DayZ years from now. Allowing people to tell their own stories, and paint the world with their own brush will help make this a reality.

Much like how development is far more of an orchestra, than one mans solo performance - a strong community is one that gives a voice to the ideas and vision of its members.

Stay safe out there survivors, and remember: mo mic, no life!

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

 
Dear Players,

I'm going to change things up before we continue on our intentions and goals for release. We want to prepare detailed information in a digestible format as far as content and features go that will be available from the get go in the first 0.63 Experimental and BETA. I'm excited about how we can communicate with you in the future.

Today I will focus on things we are currently dealing with, as far as the internal version goes, and its recent development. I do believe it's important to share the steps we are taking to complete this amazing gameplay experience that is so specific to DayZ as a game. Details are crucial in getting things right. And as I said multiple times already, there is only one way out of this: having a good game.

Before we get into the summary, I'd like to point out we have released a security update on our 0.62 experimental branch. I know it might not seems like that important to test, but on the contrary: it's very much so. To increase the incentive on playing experimental servers, we have been discussing the possibility of making some small changes to how the game behaves, making it more interesting to switch between the branches and find a little bit of relief before the release of BETA. All ideas are welcome and I'll be happy to look into any feedback provided.

From a gameplay standpoint, our focus is still on the player features that you might have seen on the DayZ Player Diagram a couple of Status Reports ago. The main issue we are still very much focused on is the fix for rapid zig-zag movement in PvP combat. We want to have a solution that is both visually appealing and on point when it comes to gameplay. Additional, we are looking into more tweaks regarding how the player camera behaves, and experimentation with its new features.



Besides that, that are two major things coming to internal client that haven't been available in the Gamescom demo, just this month. One being prone ranged combat with proper turning on the back, as you move around with your weapon, and second the expansion on melee combat in the form of evades and blocking mechanics. Be aware that things can always change, but we are happy to start working with these as they get play-tested properly. I'm hopeful we can show some early prototypes soon and share the progress on these specific features as we progress further with their implementation.

From a content standpoint, there has been a couple of sound recordings done and more work on the polish of the data gathered, as well as implementation of specific features that will enable us to fill the game with cues and sounds in right situations. Its an crucial stepping stone for bringing atmosphere and tension into moments and stories you'll experience in the world of Chernarus.

Sound is not the only content we are working heavily on, as our firearms team continues to implement one firearm from our list roughly every two weeks. The list of BETA weapons should be covering various firearms across weapon types, their specific uses, their overall quality and more. We expect some changes to the pace of implementation as we add in more complicated firearm mechanics, but we are very happy with how things are going right now, and we will feel comfortable finalizing and sharing the list with you pretty soon.

In the meantime, artists are looking into all the old assets used in-game, and reworking them into a condition that is fit for year 2017, and also fit for the options that we now have regarding the new renderer. Bringing the visual appeal of Chernarus into this century is the main goal here, as DayZ, while still pretty good-looking overall, is certainly lacking some more up to date finesse in certain places. Speaking of Chernarus, work on tourist trails is ongoing, and I can't be more excited after seeing the first internal results. It adds tons of flavor to an already interesting world. Adam will share more as we get closer to some final-ish state of things.

Last but not least, as always, our concern is performance and stability, and we are going through bugs as they get introduced with new content or features. Its not something we take lightly. As you can see, we are trying to cover a lot of things that this game needs in order to introduce the critical changes all of us want to see.

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer


 
Greetings survivors! This is my first Status Report so let me quickly write something about myself. I've joined the DayZ dev team as a member of the Bratislava studio 3 years ago. Since then, I work as a scripter / designer and I wrote various systems (both on SQF and Enforce tech). Today, I would like to show you what I am currently working on in regards to firearms mechanics.

Thanks to the new Enfusion technology, scripters now have better ways to handle particle effects. One of the features that heavily relies on this system are weapon muzzle flashes. In DayZ 0.63 and onward, all firearms will shoot unique particle effects depending on various parameters, such as ammo type fired, weapon type used, muzzle attachments used (suppressors, compensators, muzzle brakes or flash hiders) and the damage state of any of these components.

In addition to that, particles can now be generated coming from multiple parts of the weapon. So for example, in addition to seeing typical muzzle flash coming from the rifle's muzzle, you will also see a patch of smoke escaping from the ejector. Or, if some specific muzzle brake is present, the flash will form a star-shape.

Internally, we're currently at the beginning of creating particle effects for each weapon type and muzzle attachment configuration. This will be a long-term continuous process that will require a lot of tweaking to get right. However, we already have a few rough prototypes that we can show:





This system will be fully moddable and with a few simple tweaks, content creators will be able to achieve quite wild results:



- Boris Vacula / Scripter


 
Hello everyone in our lovely community!

We are back after two weeks and you have created plenty of awesome community content again!

If you read the latest Status Report, you had two chances to participate in some of our official community activities.

The first thing was an event - The Big Pumpkin Hunt. 50 players split into 4 groups and were tasked to find as many pumpkins as possible in Chernogorsk. The only permitted way to fight was with bare hands and additionally to all that, there were creepy devs running around, scaring and killing the players. The event was quite successful and I am so proud everything was ready in time. I wanted to show you the kill log, but it has more than 5000 lines and I didn't have enough time for it. It should be ready this week though!

The winning PINK team collected 80 pumpkins. Congratulations again!

Fun fact for you - we have placed more than 200 pumpkins around all Chernogorsk in-game, all done by hand. The placement was not scripted at all!

We had several content creators there and they have some screenshots and videos for you.

TRMZ and CamCANTRUN made edits from the event, so you don't need to see the whole thing, just the interesting parts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMWWfN_pZMs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzGFzzUkvtI

But if you want to see everything without any cuts, here is a Twitch VOD by McBaiin.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/186584993

And we need some screenshots of course. These are by Baroness from the Yellow team:



I really enjoyed the event and I am planning another one, so stay tuned and read the Status Reports for more information.

 

DayZ Noob has a community event for you, it will be a fist fight in Kamy and it sounds awesome, so check it out!



If you have an event coming up as well in the future, just let us know via our DayZ Twitter or Twitter and we'll help to spread the word.

The second thing you could have participated in was a Halloween screenshot competition. And you sent us tons of really amazing screenshots! I was sad we can only choose three winners. I collected 63 votes around the team and we made a decision. So…. The winners are: 

1. DrDeSync


2. PrincessRobotB 


3. Tsch0sy


Devs chose DrDeSync's screenshot because of the story behind this picture. Group of survivors are resting peacefully around a fire, but there is a creepy killer hiding behind a tree, waiting for the right time to attack. 

I want to thank you all for your nice screenshots, I love all of them. Thank you! 
I will contact the winners this week

 

Now - time for more videos from you!

This one is really great. TiKTac'tical made an amazing cinematic video. You need to see it. Really. Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwToNK5TvJE

 

Another video is by Axel Hjelmqvist and it will cost you only 1 minute of your time to see it. It is about morning routine of just about every survivor. Wake up, eat some food, drink some water, choose a weapon, kill some zombies and try to survive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u93xIitatOs

 

And here is an experiment!

Rustycaddy made probably the biggest farm in DayZ ever! 10 random people helped him on a public server, which is amazing! Good people still exist.



 

Do you know Boydy? He is a YouTuber from Australia and he makes interviews with DayZ content creators. This time, it was my turn. Maybe you will be interested. And thank you again Boydy! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJf-SZuGzsE

Here comes the riddle time again! 
First, the wall of fame from the last Status Reports riddle, good job: 

• IMT 
• THE MAX BRAND‏  
• Harold Palmer 

 
The next riddle: 
Do you know the name of this camp? 



Answer on our Twitter profile and you can be on the wall of fame next time

 

And that is all from me, I am looking forward to see you in two weeks!

Header image by proxy.

- Baty / Community Manager

This week, we have Brian remembering the struggles he experienced during his modding days - and looking forward to how the DayZ Standalone modding will make things a lot easier. Eugen is providing a thorough recap of our recent progress, we're introducing our scripter Boris Vacula and his work on particle effects, and Baty is announcing the winners of our wee Halloween screenshot contest! Let's dig into it, Survivors!

• Dev Update/Brian
  
• Dev Update/Eugen
  
• Dev Update/Boris
  
• Community Spotlight

 
As we approach the entry into the BETA phase of DayZ's development, I am reminded of how things were back in 2012 as we worked on the original Survivor GameZ. Working with Dean to get us early access to upcoming builds of DayZ Mod, and trying to modify the script codebase to match the projects needs. Much like many mod authors back in the day, it was a frustrating experience, trying to create our experience within a framework (Arma 2 scripting code/commands) that was simply not designed for the type of experience we were trying to create.

It is experiences like this that specifically has me so excited for what we'll be able to offer mod authors with DayZ. The project benefits so much from being developed in house by Bohemia Interactive - doing this on in house technology is such a rare opportunity in the grand scheme of things. For both us as developers, mod authors, and you all as passionate advocates of survival in a post apocalyptic world it means a technology base that is designed nearly from the ground up to provide the tools needed to create the experience we've all had our eyes on from day one.

From a more modern and robust animation system offering true layered animations (being able to move and perform an action at the same time, yay!), to a renderer better designed for the large distances and huge amounts of enterable structures and objects drawn at one time, to a more robust and performance conscious scripting language. Making sure that when DayZ leaves principle development and the Early Access program that it provides people in the tradition of all Bohemia titles with tools to tell their own stories is 100% key.

Another thing I wanted to discuss briefly was DayZ's survival mechanics - both in gameplay systems, and in the economy values. I've often received shouts of dismay from both sides of the fence. Things being too easy, and being too hard. Looking at the mechanics we have on the survival side, something we've struggled with often as developers is providing an immersive (sometimes punishingly so) sandbox that has systems that don't frustrate. Paying attention to feedback has been critical, and I don't quite think we've hit the mark just yet with this. 
Far too often, players are forced to manage survival simulation mechanics while trying to engage in the true draw of DayZ, the player interactions. Rather than the survival mechanics serving as a method to drive, and give agency to the player interaction.

In addition to this, the idea of an economy of scarcity should give said agency to players engaging and interacting with each other, but far too frequently, it ends up being a drive to either completely avoid players - or to just destroy them on sight.

I truly hope that as we move into BETA, and begin to see mechanics that give players more of an option and feel of having an impact on the world, that we see the core game loop expand past loot-shoot-survive. As my most memorable experiences in gaming all come from those types of interactions with DayZ, and DayZ Mod.

To achieve this however, we need more than passionate developers. We need to hear from you all. Constructive, and engaging feedback on the systems and mechanics of DayZ that either drive, or hinder player interaction is key - and I hope you all will engage in this more often as we move into BETA. Utilize our official forums, open tickets in the feedback tracker - hell, even post on Reddit and tag Baty. This is as much your game as it is ours.

In closing, I was asked by my partner once: "If you could only play one game for the rest of your life, what would it be?" - and I'll be honest I thought pretty damn hard on this one, but I am proud to say that my answer was a confident "DayZ" - and I hope to still be playing DayZ years from now. Allowing people to tell their own stories, and paint the world with their own brush will help make this a reality.

Much like how development is far more of an orchestra, than one mans solo performance - a strong community is one that gives a voice to the ideas and vision of its members.

Stay safe out there survivors, and remember: mo mic, no life!

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

 
Dear Players,

I'm going to change things up before we continue on our intentions and goals for release. We want to prepare detailed information in a digestible format as far as content and features go that will be available from the get go in the first 0.63 Experimental and BETA. I'm excited about how we can communicate with you in the future.

Today I will focus on things we are currently dealing with, as far as the internal version goes, and its recent development. I do believe it's important to share the steps we are taking to complete this amazing gameplay experience that is so specific to DayZ as a game. Details are crucial in getting things right. And as I said multiple times already, there is only one way out of this: having a good game.

Before we get into the summary, I'd like to point out we have released a security update on our 0.62 experimental branch. I know it might not seems like that important to test, but on the contrary: it's very much so. To increase the incentive on playing experimental servers, we have been discussing the possibility of making some small changes to how the game behaves, making it more interesting to switch between the branches and find a little bit of relief before the release of BETA. All ideas are welcome and I'll be happy to look into any feedback provided.

From a gameplay standpoint, our focus is still on the player features that you might have seen on the DayZ Player Diagram a couple of Status Reports ago. The main issue we are still very much focused on is the fix for rapid zig-zag movement in PvP combat. We want to have a solution that is both visually appealing and on point when it comes to gameplay. Additional, we are looking into more tweaks regarding how the player camera behaves, and experimentation with its new features.



Besides that, that are two major things coming to internal client that haven't been available in the Gamescom demo, just this month. One being prone ranged combat with proper turning on the back, as you move around with your weapon, and second the expansion on melee combat in the form of evades and blocking mechanics. Be aware that things can always change, but we are happy to start working with these as they get play-tested properly. I'm hopeful we can show some early prototypes soon and share the progress on these specific features as we progress further with their implementation.

From a content standpoint, there has been a couple of sound recordings done and more work on the polish of the data gathered, as well as implementation of specific features that will enable us to fill the game with cues and sounds in right situations. Its an crucial stepping stone for bringing atmosphere and tension into moments and stories you'll experience in the world of Chernarus.

Sound is not the only content we are working heavily on, as our firearms team continues to implement one firearm from our list roughly every two weeks. The list of BETA weapons should be covering various firearms across weapon types, their specific uses, their overall quality and more. We expect some changes to the pace of implementation as we add in more complicated firearm mechanics, but we are very happy with how things are going right now, and we will feel comfortable finalizing and sharing the list with you pretty soon.

In the meantime, artists are looking into all the old assets used in-game, and reworking them into a condition that is fit for year 2017, and also fit for the options that we now have regarding the new renderer. Bringing the visual appeal of Chernarus into this century is the main goal here, as DayZ, while still pretty good-looking overall, is certainly lacking some more up to date finesse in certain places. Speaking of Chernarus, work on tourist trails is ongoing, and I can't be more excited after seeing the first internal results. It adds tons of flavor to an already interesting world. Adam will share more as we get closer to some final-ish state of things.

Last but not least, as always, our concern is performance and stability, and we are going through bugs as they get introduced with new content or features. Its not something we take lightly. As you can see, we are trying to cover a lot of things that this game needs in order to introduce the critical changes all of us want to see.

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer


 
Greetings survivors! This is my first Status Report so let me quickly write something about myself. I've joined the DayZ dev team as a member of the Bratislava studio 3 years ago. Since then, I work as a scripter / designer and I wrote various systems (both on SQF and Enforce tech). Today, I would like to show you what I am currently working on in regards to firearms mechanics.

Thanks to the new Enfusion technology, scripters now have better ways to handle particle effects. One of the features that heavily relies on this system are weapon muzzle flashes. In DayZ 0.63 and onward, all firearms will shoot unique particle effects depending on various parameters, such as ammo type fired, weapon type used, muzzle attachments used (suppressors, compensators, muzzle brakes or flash hiders) and the damage state of any of these components.

In addition to that, particles can now be generated coming from multiple parts of the weapon. So for example, in addition to seeing typical muzzle flash coming from the rifle's muzzle, you will also see a patch of smoke escaping from the ejector. Or, if some specific muzzle brake is present, the flash will form a star-shape.

Internally, we're currently at the beginning of creating particle effects for each weapon type and muzzle attachment configuration. This will be a long-term continuous process that will require a lot of tweaking to get right. However, we already have a few rough prototypes that we can show:





This system will be fully moddable and with a few simple tweaks, content creators will be able to achieve quite wild results:



- Boris Vacula / Scripter


 
Hello everyone in our lovely community!

We are back after two weeks and you have created plenty of awesome community content again!

If you read the latest Status Report, you had two chances to participate in some of our official community activities.

The first thing was an event - The Big Pumpkin Hunt. 50 players split into 4 groups and were tasked to find as many pumpkins as possible in Chernogorsk. The only permitted way to fight was with bare hands and additionally to all that, there were creepy devs running around, scaring and killing the players. The event was quite successful and I am so proud everything was ready in time. I wanted to show you the kill log, but it has more than 5000 lines and I didn't have enough time for it. It should be ready this week though!

The winning PINK team collected 80 pumpkins. Congratulations again!

Fun fact for you - we have placed more than 200 pumpkins around all Chernogorsk in-game, all done by hand. The placement was not scripted at all!

We had several content creators there and they have some screenshots and videos for you.

TRMZ and CamCANTRUN made edits from the event, so you don't need to see the whole thing, just the interesting parts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMWWfN_pZMs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzGFzzUkvtI

But if you want to see everything without any cuts, here is a Twitch VOD by McBaiin.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/186584993

And we need some screenshots of course. These are by Baroness from the Yellow team:



I really enjoyed the event and I am planning another one, so stay tuned and read the Status Reports for more information.

 

DayZ Noob has a community event for you, it will be a fist fight in Kamy and it sounds awesome, so check it out!



If you have an event coming up as well in the future, just let us know via our DayZ Twitter or Twitter and we'll help to spread the word.

The second thing you could have participated in was a Halloween screenshot competition. And you sent us tons of really amazing screenshots! I was sad we can only choose three winners. I collected 63 votes around the team and we made a decision. So…. The winners are: 

1. DrDeSync


2. PrincessRobotB 


3. Tsch0sy


Devs chose DrDeSync's screenshot because of the story behind this picture. Group of survivors are resting peacefully around a fire, but there is a creepy killer hiding behind a tree, waiting for the right time to attack. 

I want to thank you all for your nice screenshots, I love all of them. Thank you! 
I will contact the winners this week

 

Now - time for more videos from you!

This one is really great. TiKTac'tical made an amazing cinematic video. You need to see it. Really. Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwToNK5TvJE

 

Another video is by Axel Hjelmqvist and it will cost you only 1 minute of your time to see it. It is about morning routine of just about every survivor. Wake up, eat some food, drink some water, choose a weapon, kill some zombies and try to survive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u93xIitatOs

 

And here is an experiment!

Rustycaddy made probably the biggest farm in DayZ ever! 10 random people helped him on a public server, which is amazing! Good people still exist.



 

Do you know Boydy? He is a YouTuber from Australia and he makes interviews with DayZ content creators. This time, it was my turn. Maybe you will be interested. And thank you again Boydy! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJf-SZuGzsE

Here comes the riddle time again! 
First, the wall of fame from the last Status Reports riddle, good job: 

• IMT 
• THE MAX BRAND‏  
• Harold Palmer 

 
The next riddle: 
Do you know the name of this camp? 



Answer on our Twitter profile and you can be on the wall of fame next time

 

And that is all from me, I am looking forward to see you in two weeks!

Header image by proxy.

- Baty / Community Manager

This week, Eugen is uncovering some more details about the 0.63 Experimental release, Viktor teases a video with some of the updates to player movement based on Gamescom feedback, Mirek Talks about the future of DayZ modding and our Audio Designer Andrej has some exciting audio updates for you (including a video!). To top it all of, Baty is celebrating Halloween with a screenshot contest and an announcement of an official DayZ Halloween Event! Sit back and enjoy the ride, you're in for a treat this week.

• Dev Update/Eugen
• Dev Update/Mirek
• Dev Update/Viktor
• Dev Update/Andrej
• Community Spotlight

 
Dear players! Since we have dipped into the topic of what BETA is the last time, I wanted to continue exactly in that regard with more information on our intentions.

I have covered the process of how the server files and modding will be handled briefly in the last Status Report, and I want to talk about the process of getting from the Experimental update to Stable update in greater detail.

There are tons of changes coming, since its basically a whole new game. But the core of what DayZ makes so special is never gonna change. The unpredictable human behaviour in large open world environment, where we want to see you go through both the hero moments, bandit life, or just being a Bambi lost in the vast of Chernarus. There are so many friendships I've seen happen in this game unlike anything I have experienced before. Stories that you remember for years, or action that gets your blood pumping like nothing else.

But back to the topic at hand. Our goal with first experimental is to provide a meaningful experience. We will all let you know before it happens, and prepare accordingly with enough resources to handle the possibility of a large amount of people getting in. If need be, we will utilise Stable branch servers to offer the experience to the largest amount of people possible.

The first Experimental build is expected to focus on some of the core systems of the game, which will include most of the gameplay that has been talked about. During this experimental period, we will monitor the player actions, gather feedback and iterate quickly on the state of the game. As said, not all BETA features are expected to hit the first experimental release and most will be introduced gradually before the version hits Stable servers.

We are taking a safer aproach to scale the gameplay, and we will focus heavily on polish during this period. So turning on a feature, gathering feedback, polishing it up, rinse and repeat with the next thing. The features from our main features list that are rather risky for the BETA release include:

• helicopters 
• shooting from vehicles
• bicycle/motorcycle
• barricading
• bow combat

All are quite complex and have lots of trickle down effects on all sorts of systems, from persistence, to performance. We want you to keep that in mind for the first release, as we already know that we will be playing it safe to keep the experience intact. I'll keep you updated if anything changes. However, there is no change as to our intent of bringing these into the game eventually.

Another part of road to BETA is content (that means weapons, for example), and as you might know, we have tons of unused content and things that we planned to add to DayZ over time. There is a selected set of content for BETA and I'll try and talk about the exact details in a Status Report as we have the content lists finalised. Rest assured, any content that we've teased at places like our Trello board will eventually be available in the base game, and it's our intention to release that content gradually utilising larger content packs.

Backing up, we want you to know that we haven't forgotten about our live game (the 0.62 Stable branch), even if it has been sidelined to bring you this amazing new experience. We are still monitoring larger issues, and trying to keep things intact until BETA arrives.

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

 
As I promised the last time, today I would like to write about the background of modding possibilities in 0.63. I don't want to write about tools, which we will release, but more about what can be done with scripting.

If you remember my Q&A video, I was talking about how the game is programmed on three levels - the engine (low level), gameplay systems (middle level) and scripts (high level):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC9myOfZQYA

So ultimately, we can say that modding possibilities depend on what engine and gameplay systems we expose for scripting. And this (exposing systems for modification) is the major part of modding, which we're currently working on.

With the power of Enforce script, which syntax is very similar to C# or Java, we would like to give modders the ability to not only create variations of DayZ, but to create some different game genreswithin the DayZ universe (with the basic premise of it still being an MMO) - that means things like a Fallout style RPG, isometric action game, or even a point & click adventure for ecample.

As an example, we've added the support to create a game mode in which the standard DayZ player instance is not available. You can imagine yourself how this can be usable - to provide one example, we are using this mode in our internal scene editor, which is completely made by scripts.

Of course, that's not quite simple and we have to think twice about exposing any systems due to security reasons. We know that when we release modding support, it's possible that some of the tech features required to accomplish the goal of making a completely new genre will be missing, so we're counting on the option to extend scripting interfaces even after 1.0 release.

So this is it. Our goal is not only to create a moddable game, it's to create a platform where we provide as much as we can for all the creative modders out there.

- Miroslav Maněna / Lead Gameplay Progammer

 
Hi everyone! Today, I would like to show and talk a bit about progress in the animation team. We have put together a very short video showcasing some of the recent changes and new animations. Please happily ignore the sounds - we are working on that and our Audio Designer Andrej shares more on audio later in the Status Report.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJk_MMVr0Po

Let's take a look at the video. In the first part, we can see various animations for weapons. The weapons team is now moving gun by gun, gradually implementing our BETA list of weapons into the 0.63 build. This includes, of course, some work on the animation side of things, since animations and also animation graphs need to be updated to make sure everything is played correctly.

Each individual weapon has many detailed animations for all the situations that can happen. For instance, the FNX now has 28 individual animations. The most recent guns implemented on 0.63 include CR 75, Makarov, and the team is currently finishing the UMP 45.

Another part of the animation team is focused on player locomotion. We are working closely with the programmers and designers to make sure player moves nicely and is fully responsive at the same time. The video can not really show how the controls feel, but compared to the old system, this is already a huge improvement (as some of you could test personally at Gamescom).

We are trying to expand on the positive feedback we have received. We are adding player inertia and also bringing some visual improvements. One thing that is in progress at the moment is how the player character turns. We have come to a working prototype that everyone seems to be happy about and now we will implement it for every stance and item.

Another change to the locomotion is related to how player walks and runs in different directions. We have reworked some parts of the graph and replaced it with different animations when going to the left or right. This allows us to have better control when players switch legs while changing direction. Thanks to that, there will be less or almost no clipping of the legs with each other.

In the last part of the video, you can see some falling animations. These have been updated recently. We have adjusted each of the fall animation so it better blends and is more visible if you fall from big heights. In the next step, we will also update the actual landing on the ground. Landing from small falls will be rather a procedural animation in the hips and spines so that we don't take any control from the player. Landing from higher falls will be an actual full body animation.

That's all from me today. I hope you liked it and I'll show you some more next time. Cheers!

- Viktor Kostik / Lead Animator

 
Hey survivors! It's been awhile since you've had an update form our audio department so here it is! Over the couple of last months, we have mostly been working on an entire new set of player sounds. 

With the introduction of a new player controller in 0.63, we decided to give our player character a massive audio overhaul. One of the things we are working on right now are the foley sounds. Just last week, we've visited our studio in Mnisek and recorded many types of clothing and various materials, which we want to use (after proper editing and processing) for different types of in-game clothes and gear audio.

It will be a fairly complex system with separate sounds for different types of footwear, top and bottom clothing, but also backpacks and weapons. We are sure that more detailed and diversified foley audio willenhance the immersion and overall experience. You can watch a sneak-peak of our day in the studio in the video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOnmGuhV-Pk

A major part of player audio also consists of the vocal sounds. This week, we will be recording a completely new set of voices for our characters, with more than 20 actors scheduled to participate. Together with the recording of character sounds, we're also going to record some new sounds for the infected. We have been planning it for so long, and now it's finally time to do it!

It took us a lot of time to synchronise our ideas with the gameplay design department, and as always, it was quite challenging to get support form the already busy programmers/scripters, so that we can achieve the best possible results. Luckily, we've been successful at that and the recording session can take place in our Mnisek studio, spanning over a couple of days and altogether involving almost 30 different people.

We will surely produce massive amounts of raw audio material, which we will than process, mix and implement into our game. We will do some comparative videos so that you guys can see how we practically transform the voices of our perfectly healthy actors into the bloodlust infected inhabitants of Chernarus.

There have been some questions as to why do we have some 0.61 sounds in our latest Dev Log video. Simply put, it was because our Gamescom build was internally on a separate branch, so ambient sounds were not merged there. The 0.62 changes will not be reverted for the 0.63 version, but they will eventually be improved with new sounds and a completely new overall audio mix - including new player and infected sounds, new combat sounds (ranged and melee) and also with a completely reworked vehicle sound system that is being written now.

We will share more in the upcoming Status Reports - until then, stay tuned and see you in Chernarus!

- Andrej Sinkević / Sound Designer 

 
Hey Survivors! 

It is my favourite season of the year - The Halloween time! In Czech Rep, we don't celebrate Halloween - we celebrate All Souls' day, which is not about costumes and pumpkins, and I am glad that we have Halloween at least in DayZ with the latest update! You can grow Jack-o'-lantern by yourself and it is easy! If you don't have any experience with growing vegetables in DayZ, just check out this video by Gaming Junkie and you will know how to do it: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQmE7ZgCfms

You've sent me so many amazing screenshots of your Jack-o'-lanterns and I need to show some to all of you! 

This one is by our lovely streamer TheRunningManZ. 



MrsTLB is sharing pumpkins with her friend. 



Fozzie made this screenshot. It is spooky! 



And the last one is Halloween at Gvozdno cemetery by ZomboCZ. 



 
Since we are talking about pumpkins and screenshots, we have something special for you this time - a screenshot contest! 

Just follow us on our official Twitter account and send us your Halloween-themed screenshots via Twitter with #dayzhalloween hashtag. You can win some nice prizes. Check all the rules here. 






And there is more in this Halloween time. I am preparing the next event for the 31 October at 17:00 (CEST).  

Are you ready for The Big Pumpkin Hunt? It will be a special mission for four teams on a small location around Staroye village. You don't need to travel anywhere and all your equipment will be provided by us. If you want to participate, just sign up here and if you get selected, I will contact you on your email.

 
Enough of Halloween for now. Let's check out more content from the community.  

Si Holland of a DayZ Facebook community had a birthday a few weeks ago. Check out this awesome cake he got! 




DannyDog68 shared a clip with us of Lada in rain. And it is beautiful. I love rain, it is so relaxing. 

https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/NeglectedPointlessFireant
 

If you have more than 1000+ hours in DayZ you can sometimes think about how to entertain yourself in some other way. Thing_On_Your_Shelf made this little challenge game and it looks like fun! I need to try it too.  


 

Do you know MC Quakes and his Man's Not Hot? Voyager Yt did a DayZ parody of this rap song. And it is golden. You need to see it. I love it! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfToQCAenzY
 

Videogames are art and an exhibition in Slovakia is about this kind of art. Exhibition is called Phases and concepts / Homo Ludio Artifex - art designs in digital games and you can find a concept of Coyote backpack from DayZ designed by Boris Joanovič there. The exhibition ends on 29th October so if you live near city of Košice, you can visit the Alfa gallery. 




At the end, I have a challenge picture for you again! In the last status report it was a deer stand on the Veresnik hill and I had a lot of correct answers from you! Little wall of fame for the fastest ones:  

• SurvivorSnazz 
• Spaggie 
• MuzzyMcVeigh 
• totalxq 
• MrTeamDeer 
• JaredSantas 
• BWAFlive 
• LightAmaze 
• killwithpride 
• D0MMYD 
• Uncuepa32 
• DayzedEmu 
• Hooded2223 

And here is the riddle for today. Send me a picture of the building with this inscription to our official Twitter account and you can be on the next Wall of Fame: 



 

That's all from me Survivors, these two weeks were really juicy in the community, thank you all for your content and see you next time! 

Header image by Gaming Junkie. 

- Baty / Community Manager

This week, Eugen is uncovering some more details about the 0.63 Experimental release, Viktor teases a video with some of the updates to player movement based on Gamescom feedback, Mirek Talks about the future of DayZ modding and our Audio Designer Andrej has some exciting audio updates for you (including a video!). To top it all of, Baty is celebrating Halloween with a screenshot contest and an announcement of an official DayZ Halloween Event! Sit back and enjoy the ride, you're in for a treat this week.

• Dev Update/Eugen
• Dev Update/Mirek
• Dev Update/Viktor
• Dev Update/Andrej
• Community Spotlight

 
Dear players! Since we have dipped into the topic of what BETA is the last time, I wanted to continue exactly in that regard with more information on our intentions.

I have covered the process of how the server files and modding will be handled briefly in the last Status Report, and I want to talk about the process of getting from the Experimental update to Stable update in greater detail.

There are tons of changes coming, since its basically a whole new game. But the core of what DayZ makes so special is never gonna change. The unpredictable human behaviour in large open world environment, where we want to see you go through both the hero moments, bandit life, or just being a Bambi lost in the vast of Chernarus. There are so many friendships I've seen happen in this game unlike anything I have experienced before. Stories that you remember for years, or action that gets your blood pumping like nothing else.

But back to the topic at hand. Our goal with first experimental is to provide a meaningful experience. We will all let you know before it happens, and prepare accordingly with enough resources to handle the possibility of a large amount of people getting in. If need be, we will utilise Stable branch servers to offer the experience to the largest amount of people possible.

The first Experimental build is expected to focus on some of the core systems of the game, which will include most of the gameplay that has been talked about. During this experimental period, we will monitor the player actions, gather feedback and iterate quickly on the state of the game. As said, not all BETA features are expected to hit the first experimental release and most will be introduced gradually before the version hits Stable servers.

We are taking a safer aproach to scale the gameplay, and we will focus heavily on polish during this period. So turning on a feature, gathering feedback, polishing it up, rinse and repeat with the next thing. The features from our main features list that are rather risky for the BETA release include:

• helicopters 
• shooting from vehicles
• bicycle/motorcycle
• barricading
• bow combat

All are quite complex and have lots of trickle down effects on all sorts of systems, from persistence, to performance. We want you to keep that in mind for the first release, as we already know that we will be playing it safe to keep the experience intact. I'll keep you updated if anything changes. However, there is no change as to our intent of bringing these into the game eventually.

Another part of road to BETA is content (that means weapons, for example), and as you might know, we have tons of unused content and things that we planned to add to DayZ over time. There is a selected set of content for BETA and I'll try and talk about the exact details in a Status Report as we have the content lists finalised. Rest assured, any content that we've teased at places like our Trello board will eventually be available in the base game, and it's our intention to release that content gradually utilising larger content packs.

Backing up, we want you to know that we haven't forgotten about our live game (the 0.62 Stable branch), even if it has been sidelined to bring you this amazing new experience. We are still monitoring larger issues, and trying to keep things intact until BETA arrives.

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

 
As I promised the last time, today I would like to write about the background of modding possibilities in 0.63. I don't want to write about tools, which we will release, but more about what can be done with scripting.

If you remember my Q&A video, I was talking about how the game is programmed on three levels - the engine (low level), gameplay systems (middle level) and scripts (high level):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC9myOfZQYA

So ultimately, we can say that modding possibilities depend on what engine and gameplay systems we expose for scripting. And this (exposing systems for modification) is the major part of modding, which we're currently working on.

With the power of Enforce script, which syntax is very similar to C# or Java, we would like to give modders the ability to not only create variations of DayZ, but to create some different game genreswithin the DayZ universe (with the basic premise of it still being an MMO) - that means things like a Fallout style RPG, isometric action game, or even a point & click adventure for ecample.

As an example, we've added the support to create a game mode in which the standard DayZ player instance is not available. You can imagine yourself how this can be usable - to provide one example, we are using this mode in our internal scene editor, which is completely made by scripts.

Of course, that's not quite simple and we have to think twice about exposing any systems due to security reasons. We know that when we release modding support, it's possible that some of the tech features required to accomplish the goal of making a completely new genre will be missing, so we're counting on the option to extend scripting interfaces even after 1.0 release.

So this is it. Our goal is not only to create a moddable game, it's to create a platform where we provide as much as we can for all the creative modders out there.

- Miroslav Maněna / Lead Gameplay Progammer

 
Hi everyone! Today, I would like to show and talk a bit about progress in the animation team. We have put together a very short video showcasing some of the recent changes and new animations. Please happily ignore the sounds - we are working on that and our Audio Designer Andrej shares more on audio later in the Status Report.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJk_MMVr0Po

Let's take a look at the video. In the first part, we can see various animations for weapons. The weapons team is now moving gun by gun, gradually implementing our BETA list of weapons into the 0.63 build. This includes, of course, some work on the animation side of things, since animations and also animation graphs need to be updated to make sure everything is played correctly.

Each individual weapon has many detailed animations for all the situations that can happen. For instance, the FNX now has 28 individual animations. The most recent guns implemented on 0.63 include CR 75, Makarov, and the team is currently finishing the UMP 45.

Another part of the animation team is focused on player locomotion. We are working closely with the programmers and designers to make sure player moves nicely and is fully responsive at the same time. The video can not really show how the controls feel, but compared to the old system, this is already a huge improvement (as some of you could test personally at Gamescom).

We are trying to expand on the positive feedback we have received. We are adding player inertia and also bringing some visual improvements. One thing that is in progress at the moment is how the player character turns. We have come to a working prototype that everyone seems to be happy about and now we will implement it for every stance and item.

Another change to the locomotion is related to how player walks and runs in different directions. We have reworked some parts of the graph and replaced it with different animations when going to the left or right. This allows us to have better control when players switch legs while changing direction. Thanks to that, there will be less or almost no clipping of the legs with each other.

In the last part of the video, you can see some falling animations. These have been updated recently. We have adjusted each of the fall animation so it better blends and is more visible if you fall from big heights. In the next step, we will also update the actual landing on the ground. Landing from small falls will be rather a procedural animation in the hips and spines so that we don't take any control from the player. Landing from higher falls will be an actual full body animation.

That's all from me today. I hope you liked it and I'll show you some more next time. Cheers!

- Viktor Kostik / Lead Animator

 
Hey survivors! It's been awhile since you've had an update form our audio department so here it is! Over the couple of last months, we have mostly been working on an entire new set of player sounds. 

With the introduction of a new player controller in 0.63, we decided to give our player character a massive audio overhaul. One of the things we are working on right now are the foley sounds. Just last week, we've visited our studio in Mnisek and recorded many types of clothing and various materials, which we want to use (after proper editing and processing) for different types of in-game clothes and gear audio.

It will be a fairly complex system with separate sounds for different types of footwear, top and bottom clothing, but also backpacks and weapons. We are sure that more detailed and diversified foley audio willenhance the immersion and overall experience. You can watch a sneak-peak of our day in the studio in the video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOnmGuhV-Pk

A major part of player audio also consists of the vocal sounds. This week, we will be recording a completely new set of voices for our characters, with more than 20 actors scheduled to participate. Together with the recording of character sounds, we're also going to record some new sounds for the infected. We have been planning it for so long, and now it's finally time to do it!

It took us a lot of time to synchronise our ideas with the gameplay design department, and as always, it was quite challenging to get support form the already busy programmers/scripters, so that we can achieve the best possible results. Luckily, we've been successful at that and the recording session can take place in our Mnisek studio, spanning over a couple of days and altogether involving almost 30 different people.

We will surely produce massive amounts of raw audio material, which we will than process, mix and implement into our game. We will do some comparative videos so that you guys can see how we practically transform the voices of our perfectly healthy actors into the bloodlust infected inhabitants of Chernarus.

There have been some questions as to why do we have some 0.61 sounds in our latest Dev Log video. Simply put, it was because our Gamescom build was internally on a separate branch, so ambient sounds were not merged there. The 0.62 changes will not be reverted for the 0.63 version, but they will eventually be improved with new sounds and a completely new overall audio mix - including new player and infected sounds, new combat sounds (ranged and melee) and also with a completely reworked vehicle sound system that is being written now.

We will share more in the upcoming Status Reports - until then, stay tuned and see you in Chernarus!

- Andrej Sinkević / Sound Designer 

 
Hey Survivors! 

It is my favourite season of the year - The Halloween time! In Czech Rep, we don't celebrate Halloween - we celebrate All Souls' day, which is not about costumes and pumpkins, and I am glad that we have Halloween at least in DayZ with the latest update! You can grow Jack-o'-lantern by yourself and it is easy! If you don't have any experience with growing vegetables in DayZ, just check out this video by Gaming Junkie and you will know how to do it: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQmE7ZgCfms

You've sent me so many amazing screenshots of your Jack-o'-lanterns and I need to show some to all of you! 

This one is by our lovely streamer TheRunningManZ. 



MrsTLB is sharing pumpkins with her friend. 



Fozzie made this screenshot. It is spooky! 



And the last one is Halloween at Gvozdno cemetery by ZomboCZ. 



 
Since we are talking about pumpkins and screenshots, we have something special for you this time - a screenshot contest! 

Just follow us on our official Twitter account and send us your Halloween-themed screenshots via Twitter with #dayzhalloween hashtag. You can win some nice prizes. Check all the rules here. 






And there is more in this Halloween time. I am preparing the next event for the 31 October at 17:00 (CEST).  

Are you ready for The Big Pumpkin Hunt? It will be a special mission for four teams on a small location around Staroye village. You don't need to travel anywhere and all your equipment will be provided by us. If you want to participate, just sign up here and if you get selected, I will contact you on your email.

 
Enough of Halloween for now. Let's check out more content from the community.  

Si Holland of a DayZ Facebook community had a birthday a few weeks ago. Check out this awesome cake he got! 




DannyDog68 shared a clip with us of Lada in rain. And it is beautiful. I love rain, it is so relaxing. 

https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/NeglectedPointlessFireant
 

If you have more than 1000+ hours in DayZ you can sometimes think about how to entertain yourself in some other way. Thing_On_Your_Shelf made this little challenge game and it looks like fun! I need to try it too.  


 

Do you know MC Quakes and his Man's Not Hot? Voyager Yt did a DayZ parody of this rap song. And it is golden. You need to see it. I love it! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfToQCAenzY
 

Videogames are art and an exhibition in Slovakia is about this kind of art. Exhibition is called Phases and concepts / Homo Ludio Artifex - art designs in digital games and you can find a concept of Coyote backpack from DayZ designed by Boris Joanovič there. The exhibition ends on 29th October so if you live near city of Košice, you can visit the Alfa gallery. 




At the end, I have a challenge picture for you again! In the last status report it was a deer stand on the Veresnik hill and I had a lot of correct answers from you! Little wall of fame for the fastest ones:  

• SurvivorSnazz 
• Spaggie 
• MuzzyMcVeigh 
• totalxq 
• MrTeamDeer 
• JaredSantas 
• BWAFlive 
• LightAmaze 
• killwithpride 
• D0MMYD 
• Uncuepa32 
• DayzedEmu 
• Hooded2223 

And here is the riddle for today. Send me a picture of the building with this inscription to our official Twitter account and you can be on the next Wall of Fame: 



 

That's all from me Survivors, these two weeks were really juicy in the community, thank you all for your content and see you next time! 

Header image by Gaming Junkie. 

- Baty / Community Manager

This week, Brian is back with some of his early development memories, and a look at the future of DayZ with modding. Eugen is following up doing his best to explain our basic goals for 0.63 Experimental and 0.63 Stable (BETA). We're also welcoming back our Lead Gameplay Programmer Mirek - after months of non-stop hardcore programming, we made him share some of the behind the scenes science happening under his watch. To close things off, as usual, we have Baty taking a look at your awesome community content, and in his short update, we have our Brand Manager Martin offering what could possibly be a dream job for many of you content creators out there! Let's get to it.

• Dev Update/Brian
• Dev Update/Eugen
• Dev Update/Peter
• Dev Update/Mirek
• Dev Update/Martin
• Community Spotlight

 
Greetings Survivors! Apologies on missing the last Status Report - cards on the table, I knew the rest of the team had strong detailed info for you all and I didn't want to keep rehashing my sentiments on public development, or how big the move into BETA is for DayZ as a product. In the case of the last Status Report, I think the video said a lot more than anything I could type. Most of what you end up reading from me at this point in the project is related to postulation, concepts, and struggles and I'm honestly not certain that most of you are interested in that. 

We're at a stage where I feel like so many people out there are just holding their breath, waiting to get their hands on the first BETA builds and see for themselves how big the change is. Hell, I think I'm right there with you all on that.

Back in the summer of 2013 when Dean, Matt, and I were stuck in a tiny room above a laundry room out in Mnisek, we were whiteboarding key elements we thought DayZ should improve on the gameplay of the mod (beyond the obvious). A good deal of what was prototyped over 2014, and 2015 came from those whiteboard meetings.

I remember very clearly sitting down with Dean thinking on how we could improve the fresh spawned players chances to survive without basic weapons, as the desire was to make DayZ an experience similar to the novel "The Road" - which is where "punching" came in to play. (I distinctly remember Dean asking me if I thought it would make fresh spawns even more of a threat, and thus have a higher mortality rate when encountering skittish geared players - clearly I was wrong in dismissing this).

I'm rambling, but the point I'm trying to make is there is so much that the team, myself, Peter, have worked on throughout the years that just couldn't be done within the limitations that RV offered us - and it killed me to know time and time again that after documenting, and prototyping portions of the key design of what DayZ is to be that we were time and time again limited by the technology that DayZ originally steam with.

I can't emphasize enough to you all how insanely fortunate DayZ, and the DayZ dev team have been to have a company behind us that believes in the vision we set forth at the start of development to reach. So many titles I've worked on, or along side the development of have just had core mechanics, and feature sets lopped off with a hatchet in order to reach a set shelf date - never to reach their original full vision. It might be irritating to some out there in the user base, but the fact that we haven't had to sacrifice any of the core gameplay features yet is massive.

That said, one of the things Dean and I used to stress early on was that DayZ was not just a platform for people to create their own stories - but that like so many Bohemia titles before it, it is a platform for people to create their own vision of the apocalypse (or anything else that strikes their fancy).

This specific pillar of DayZ is one of many that will benefit massively from all the work that the engineering team has worked so hard on over the last few years. Ditching SQF alone is a massive step for any of you that have dabbled in modding the Arma titles, and the new animation system, as well as all the work the design team has done to new user actions takes the modding opportunities from what (to me) would feel like more of the same, modding Arma 2 or Arma 3 to a completely new level.

I could go on for hours about all the possibilities I see there, and all the fantastic mod authors I hope to see get their hands on it, and bring their own vision to DayZ. Namalsk, DayZ 2017, Taviana, Panthera, DayZero, and so much more. Part of some of the most exciting times as a fan of the DayZ Mod was when we began to see people create mods of the mod itself, and I genuinely feel that what DayZ will offer to the talent of those individuals is so far beyond what was possible before.

No, I don't have a set date for you for modding - but as it has been said in many status reports before - it will happen during our BETA phase of development. Obviously, for those that missed the announcement this will have to mean the release of the server tool package.

I just hope I get enough notice to stock up on snack food for when the first mods start hitting DayZ, because you can bet your ass I'm going to be losing countless hours of sleep exploring these new takes on DayZ as a player and not a developer.

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

 
Dear survivors, since there is no concise information on what BETA is and what exactly will happen near its release, I would like to focus on recapping what our current plans regarding these things are.

You might have seen our Gamescom video, but there is more to come and lot more things to work on. Because the 0.63 update is bringing all the new technology to you, the players, there will be a very tight feedback loop following its release to Experimental. There will be numerous changes coming in over the course of 0.63 Experimental, and some features might not be available on the first Experimental release, as we slowly ramp up to keep the performance and bug fixing focused.

There will be tons of players trying to get in, and we will try and accommodate as many players as possible, because I do strongly believe it will be very hard to go back to 0.62 after this huge change happens.

Now once that goes through all of the parts that need proper testing, and you are happy with the stability of the experience, we will start preparing for the Stable launch of 0.63 - the DayZ BETA. At that point in time, it is our intention to make DayZ server files available to anyone for free on Steam, meaning that you will be able to host your own servers. As far as platforms go, we aim to have these for both Linux and Windows.

Following that, I know a lot of people will start digging into the data itself and have fun modifying it. It's going to be interesting to see what you guys come up with. However, you might be a bit limited during the initial release, as the current state of things suggests that the modding toolset might be behind schedule, and will be released shortly after BETA comes online. The toolset will be running the new Enfusion tools that you might have seen on different pictures from the office, and will again be available to all our players.

But since lot of the data is compatible in some way, I think a lot of models will find their way into the game quickly, and people will start researching the new script as they test it out. Since almost everything you see in game will be written in script, you will have some amazing opportunities to change and bend the game in any way you want.

Together with the DayZ server release, we want to provide our back-end technology that we internally call the Srvlet. This is basically our hive implementation in its entirety. With this strong tool, you will be able to set up your own hive, and do anything you might have ever imagined with your servers. Because this is actually quite complex, our intention is to provide decent documentation for the technologies recommended to run this platform.

After the toolset gets out, we will look into opening the workshop on Steam, so that you guys can start sharing your creations freely. It's something we are especially excited about!

There is more to it of course, like having a DayZ Launcher as a central piece to access all that, and I will try and space out this information and go into more detail as we get closer. With what features we exactly have in mind, what content you should expect and how these things will be handled.

Hopefully this has helped you to understand how serious we are about this important milestone in DayZ development.

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

 
Alongside crucial improvements which affect core parts of DayZ such as movement, ranged or melee combat we often mentioned, there is also other parts which are very important for delivering the best overall experience.

You could already see the dynamic target selection in one of the previous Status Reports, and some of you could try it out in action with showcase of DEMO build at Gamescom. For me, together with whole HUD and new user actions, it’s an important part of the game which underlines all these great changes which separate old (0.62 and previous versions) and new DayZ (upcoming 0.63 AKA Beta).

From our internal playtests and feedback from players at Gamescom, we decided to improve the HUD part of dynamic target selection and user actions a bit further. Now there is more options related to user actions, usually performed on some kind of target in world, shown directly in the floating widget of dynamic target selection, which makes it more readable for the player. These were previously located in bottom left corner, and they were quite easily overlooked when they became possible to perform (remember new user actions are contextual). In bottom left corner, there are nowonly actions which are applied directly to your character for now.



Another improvement to the bottom left corner of HUD that we've currently made is the addition of item in hands. Its name, actual condition and its quantity or stack is now shown in the bottom left too, above actions. This offers constantly consistent overview of information related to equipped item and items around the character without the need to over-use inventory screen to find out such basic info.



While shuffling parts of HUD around, we ended with dynamic cross hair, also. It changes form contextually when needed, to indicate some possibilities or states. Good example is a time progression of currently performed continuous action. Of course, HUD visuals are nowhere near final by any means. For those players who want to be immersed as much as possible in the world of DayZ, there is an option to turn off HUD completely on demand (of course independently from quick-bar).



To mention melee combat as well, its state is very rough and basically still in a state of prototype. We wanted to proof the concept out with new system of targeting and full body attack animations which are locking character movement, alongside with hit impacts which can take controls of character completely. Now when we've laid the basics and seen the potential it has, it is the way to go for us, unless something unexpected happens.

As we definitely want to add some player skill to melee combat, we need to extend it with possibilities. Currently we are prototyping blocks, which reduce received damaged and influence hit impacts from attack, as well as evades, which helps to get out from line of attack. Next up is adding melee attacks with ranged weapons, like stabbing with bayonets, hitting with butt stock or pistol whips, as there is no worse feeling of helplessness when you are armed and someone successfully locks you into series of impacts and you need to throw gun down to be able to fight. 

Planned next are advanced moves such as knock-downs, finishing attacks on opponent on the ground or kicks/pushes. Anyway it’s really important for us to make solid foundation first because without it, melee combat won’t work as a whole, and it won’t matter how much depth and added layers will be there.

As far as new camera implementation I mentioned in last Status Report goes, it’s from great part done. We just need to promote some functionality to the script, so we can set specific FOV in iron sights and optics. Also we will be able to start toying with naked eye zoom again. Apart from that we are dealing with 3PP camera position in space in different modes like raised, melee combat or sprint.

With form following function... see you in Chernarus folks!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

 
Some time has passed since I last wrote my Status Report. One of the reasons is that we're now working on longer term tasks and it's quite hard to write a Status Report without repeating myself. Another reason is that we're mostly working on things which aren't immediately visible. Today, I will summarise what we have done over the last two months.

During August, major part of the team worked on delivering features that ended up being part of the DEMO version for Gamescom. It was quite stressful, because time was passing very fast and we had to stabilise the DEMO build and fix the most visible issues. Anyway, I believe that we were successful and we could return to our unfinished work with a good feeling of accomplishment.

Now, we are mostly focused on improving character's movement and combat mechanics, because the entire development team is still not very satisfied with what we have presented at Gamescom. This is a very important part of the DayZ experience and we want to have the best possible implementation before we hit BETA. It's also important for fighting against the infected, because it's almost impossible to tweak and polish AI behaviour without having the player movement finalised - and so this is the reason why work on AI is also a bit on hold for now.

One of the major things which were in progress before Gamescom is the game entity hierarchy (which is how the scene is represented for the game - so it is a system you won't be able to see). DayZ has been using an Arma legacy "proxy object hierarchy" - and this technology was limiting us to do some of the more exciting stuff from the DayZ feature list.

We decided to switch this scene representation technology to the new one provided by our in-house Enfusion Engine. This will allow us to do things better and in a more optimised manner, allowing us to add more visual effects easily and for example create much better animations for weapons handling.

Another thing we're now working on is the re-implementation of vehicles using the new systems. I have to admit that we're still working mostly on the physics part, and the character part is still not ready - but we hope that we will start working on character representation in vehicles soon (probably right after movement and combat mechanics).

The entire system around vehicles has changed a lot. They are now composed of several configurable components, we're supporting generic number of axes (not only two like in 0.62 and before), handling is much more responsive and vehicles have a new suspension model, which will help players driver over smaller obstacles. Things which still are not finished are better tires friction model and simulation of some gearbox extreme limits.

I wasn't sure if I should show you the following teaser (like I said, the character representation in vehicles isn't ready yet), but here it is. This is how we're testing vehicle physics for now - please welcome Fred Flintstone as a DayZ survivor, testing the new suspension system:



(Please note: these are not final values for suspension and current values are serving for demonstration of new suspension model)

Also, there are things which I would like to write about the topic of modding and what we are doing for supporting this feature, but it would be a lot of text for now, so I will write about it in next status reports (at least I'll have some ammunition for next time!).

- Miroslav Maněna / Lead Gameplay Progammer

 
Hello survivors! As I shared in the last Status Report, creating videos of a game in development is not always an easy task for us. It takes a lot of time from our regular schedules, and the closer we are to major releases of DayZ, the less time we have for recording gameplay. After experiencing the production of the 0.63 Dev Log, evaluating our options, and looking at the upcoming BETA/1.0 releases, we've made the decision that now is the right time to invest into our video production some more.

Just yesterday, we've put up a job opening for what we at Bohemia call a Game Capture Artist. Ultimately, we're looking for a content creator that will work alongside me, Baty and Eugen, and spend most of his/her time capturing DayZ gameplay, as well as coming up with concepts of DayZ videos (and, eventually, trailers).

It's a job that provides a perfect opportunity for making the hire directly from our community of players and content creators, and we'd be the happiest people on Earth to actually hire a DayZ fan, so please do apply if the job ad sounds like something you'd like to do for a living! 

I'll just add a personal warning: don't be misguided into thinking that this job is just playing 0.63 all day! It's also a lot of planning and documentation, and you really need to understand the technical aspects of video production as well.

That said, we don't need years of professional experience, but a creative, organised and communicative person who's going to drive our video production to a very high standard. We also need you to work directly with us in Prague or Bratislava, but Bohemia Interactive will help you relocate should you feel a bit on the edge about that!

Send them CVs in - and come live closer to the real Chernarus!

- Martin Čulák / Brand Manager

 
Hey Survivors! 

These two weeks have passed really quickly! So, let's see what's happening in the community. 

I need to start with a letter sent to our forum. It is from our big supporter to the Dev Team. Her name is Baroness, she is an amazing content creator and her message made me cry. She met her husband in DayZ! What an amazing story! Thank you, Baroness, we love you!


Hello. You don’t really know me. Well, maybe Baty does, a bit, in a way. I’m just a regular player.

When the standalone came out, I was coerced by my brother into buying this game and play with him. I had never gamed on PC ever, had only ever slightly gamed on console when I was 12-13 (I am 34 now). Everything was very new to me. He told me it looked promising, explained what alpha was, and off we went on adventures as I spawned in Kamyshovo for the first time.

Being on the creative side I have always enjoyed documenting my travels inside Chernarus. When I had gathered enough friends, we made clans, we built communities, alliances and harbored hate with other groups, as these things usually go. Some are still ongoing friendships that are on a deeper level, and this is amazing to me.

About 2 years ago, some friends and I disbanded our group and decided to join a roleplaying community. It was fairly small at the time, and being the creative and helpful person I am, both of the leaders decided to include me on staff, where I developed some community management skills, learned to deal with all the kinds of hate that you guys are getting right now. I mean, I’ve been called Cersei more times than I can count on 2 hands.

I’ve sowed many seeds of rapport, friendship, kindness and warmth, and I’ve been able to reap affinities, loyal friends, loving bonds, and even love.

I met my husband in this last community, it was called ChernarusRP. My now husband (then-gamer-friend) and I joined forces and nurtured this incredible fellowship of like-minded survivalists with a penchant for roleplaying. All 700 of them. Us working together, entertaining complimentary notions of unity, respect and healthy dialogue,  got us thinking; we very quickly found out that, through working so closely together for a long period of time, we just ‘clicked’, and it just ‘worked’.

Within the year, our relationship grew steadily towards a goal that we felt was right for the both of us; he moved from Texas to be with me in Québec (Canada).

We have been together ever since. It was because of your game and everything that is has to offer, that I was able to meet the man of my dreams, the love of my life, my missing puzzle piece. My everything, really.

Why am I writing this to you? Because I’ve noticed lately all the hate that you are getting. Spaggie and I had a long and interesting conversation about everything that you guys do behind the scenes that go completely unnoticed.  He told me that he sometimes writes little thank you notes and encouragement in the bug tracker, just for you guys to see that all that you do is greatly appreciated. In my opinion, more people should do this, every day.

And had I not installed this game and kept at it, I would not be with this incredible man who I am with today.

And I have you guys to thank for that.

So thank you. For everything. BETA will be a blast I’m sure. I am following closely. We all are. And screw the haters. You got such a loving fan base and we’re all behind you and cheering you on. We might not tell you every day, but trust me, we all root for you and this wonderful game.

Thank you for reading.
Baroness <3

 

And thank you all for all your support, like in this thread. It means a world to us. Thank you! 


Let's see a new chapter of the Humans of Chernarus series. If you don't know it, it is a collection of thoughts of fictional people living across Chernarus. A people who are facing this post-apocalyptic world and try to survive to the next day. You can find the whole collection here. 



"Good luck is a funny thing. It always seems like it belongs to someone else. Bad luck, on the other hand, we all have it. We harbour it to convince ourselves that our problems and misdoings are not our own... However, there in truth I’ve learned one thing during my stay on this shitty Earth. There is no such thing as luck, good or bad. There are only those who are prepared, and those who are not.”

-Symon, of the Gomorrah Casino 


I love weddings! And I hope you do as well, because this one happened in DayZ. It may not have been the most romantic one, but it surely was entertaining.  Dr. Von Hauer married his wife in Novodmitrovsk church. They said their vows and lived happily until their deaths. Which could not have been too long, as it is DayZ after all. I myself almost got married in DayZ, so I envy the bride for making it all the way. The highlight of the video for me is the flower boy, who throws pieces of ghillie on the ground.

https://youtu.be/egYiPcVLGY0

 

Let's check out some art now. 

Valdark2 posted his newest picture to Reddit and it is pretty cool, what do you think? 




If you need some large wallpapers, just tell NeuroticEUROtic, he is a specialist. It is sometimes hard to find a really good wallpaper for three monitors but this guy can sort you out.  

Here is Skalisty Panorama 5760 x 1080 by him and it is beautiful. I have it on my background already :) 

 

The last thing that I was looking forward to showing you today is a riddle again! 

In the last Status Report, it was West Lopatino Evacuation Camp. You sent me a lot of correct answers last time and you said it was toooooo easy. Okey! Here is a challenge for you. Where can you find this deer stand? Send me your answers to our official Twitter account. And thank you for all your answers!




That is all from me today guys. Have a nice day and play DayZ! 

Header picture: WilliamFilms

- Baty / Community Manager

This week, Brian is back with some of his early development memories, and a look at the future of DayZ with modding. Eugen is following up doing his best to explain our basic goals for 0.63 Experimental and 0.63 Stable (BETA). We're also welcoming back our Lead Gameplay Programmer Mirek - after months of non-stop hardcore programming, we made him share some of the behind the scenes science happening under his watch. To close things off, as usual, we have Baty taking a look at your awesome community content, and in his short update, we have our Brand Manager Martin offering what could possibly be a dream job for many of you content creators out there! Let's get to it.

• Dev Update/Brian
• Dev Update/Eugen
• Dev Update/Peter
• Dev Update/Mirek
• Dev Update/Martin
• Community Spotlight

 
Greetings Survivors! Apologies on missing the last Status Report - cards on the table, I knew the rest of the team had strong detailed info for you all and I didn't want to keep rehashing my sentiments on public development, or how big the move into BETA is for DayZ as a product. In the case of the last Status Report, I think the video said a lot more than anything I could type. Most of what you end up reading from me at this point in the project is related to postulation, concepts, and struggles and I'm honestly not certain that most of you are interested in that. 

We're at a stage where I feel like so many people out there are just holding their breath, waiting to get their hands on the first BETA builds and see for themselves how big the change is. Hell, I think I'm right there with you all on that.

Back in the summer of 2013 when Dean, Matt, and I were stuck in a tiny room above a laundry room out in Mnisek, we were whiteboarding key elements we thought DayZ should improve on the gameplay of the mod (beyond the obvious). A good deal of what was prototyped over 2014, and 2015 came from those whiteboard meetings.

I remember very clearly sitting down with Dean thinking on how we could improve the fresh spawned players chances to survive without basic weapons, as the desire was to make DayZ an experience similar to the novel "The Road" - which is where "punching" came in to play. (I distinctly remember Dean asking me if I thought it would make fresh spawns even more of a threat, and thus have a higher mortality rate when encountering skittish geared players - clearly I was wrong in dismissing this).

I'm rambling, but the point I'm trying to make is there is so much that the team, myself, Peter, have worked on throughout the years that just couldn't be done within the limitations that RV offered us - and it killed me to know time and time again that after documenting, and prototyping portions of the key design of what DayZ is to be that we were time and time again limited by the technology that DayZ originally steam with.

I can't emphasize enough to you all how insanely fortunate DayZ, and the DayZ dev team have been to have a company behind us that believes in the vision we set forth at the start of development to reach. So many titles I've worked on, or along side the development of have just had core mechanics, and feature sets lopped off with a hatchet in order to reach a set shelf date - never to reach their original full vision. It might be irritating to some out there in the user base, but the fact that we haven't had to sacrifice any of the core gameplay features yet is massive.

That said, one of the things Dean and I used to stress early on was that DayZ was not just a platform for people to create their own stories - but that like so many Bohemia titles before it, it is a platform for people to create their own vision of the apocalypse (or anything else that strikes their fancy).

This specific pillar of DayZ is one of many that will benefit massively from all the work that the engineering team has worked so hard on over the last few years. Ditching SQF alone is a massive step for any of you that have dabbled in modding the Arma titles, and the new animation system, as well as all the work the design team has done to new user actions takes the modding opportunities from what (to me) would feel like more of the same, modding Arma 2 or Arma 3 to a completely new level.

I could go on for hours about all the possibilities I see there, and all the fantastic mod authors I hope to see get their hands on it, and bring their own vision to DayZ. Namalsk, DayZ 2017, Taviana, Panthera, DayZero, and so much more. Part of some of the most exciting times as a fan of the DayZ Mod was when we began to see people create mods of the mod itself, and I genuinely feel that what DayZ will offer to the talent of those individuals is so far beyond what was possible before.

No, I don't have a set date for you for modding - but as it has been said in many status reports before - it will happen during our BETA phase of development. Obviously, for those that missed the announcement this will have to mean the release of the server tool package.

I just hope I get enough notice to stock up on snack food for when the first mods start hitting DayZ, because you can bet your ass I'm going to be losing countless hours of sleep exploring these new takes on DayZ as a player and not a developer.

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

 
Dear survivors, since there is no concise information on what BETA is and what exactly will happen near its release, I would like to focus on recapping what our current plans regarding these things are.

You might have seen our Gamescom video, but there is more to come and lot more things to work on. Because the 0.63 update is bringing all the new technology to you, the players, there will be a very tight feedback loop following its release to Experimental. There will be numerous changes coming in over the course of 0.63 Experimental, and some features might not be available on the first Experimental release, as we slowly ramp up to keep the performance and bug fixing focused.

There will be tons of players trying to get in, and we will try and accommodate as many players as possible, because I do strongly believe it will be very hard to go back to 0.62 after this huge change happens.

Now once that goes through all of the parts that need proper testing, and you are happy with the stability of the experience, we will start preparing for the Stable launch of 0.63 - the DayZ BETA. At that point in time, it is our intention to make DayZ server files available to anyone for free on Steam, meaning that you will be able to host your own servers. As far as platforms go, we aim to have these for both Linux and Windows.

Following that, I know a lot of people will start digging into the data itself and have fun modifying it. It's going to be interesting to see what you guys come up with. However, you might be a bit limited during the initial release, as the current state of things suggests that the modding toolset might be behind schedule, and will be released shortly after BETA comes online. The toolset will be running the new Enfusion tools that you might have seen on different pictures from the office, and will again be available to all our players.

But since lot of the data is compatible in some way, I think a lot of models will find their way into the game quickly, and people will start researching the new script as they test it out. Since almost everything you see in game will be written in script, you will have some amazing opportunities to change and bend the game in any way you want.

Together with the DayZ server release, we want to provide our back-end technology that we internally call the Srvlet. This is basically our hive implementation in its entirety. With this strong tool, you will be able to set up your own hive, and do anything you might have ever imagined with your servers. Because this is actually quite complex, our intention is to provide decent documentation for the technologies recommended to run this platform.

After the toolset gets out, we will look into opening the workshop on Steam, so that you guys can start sharing your creations freely. It's something we are especially excited about!

There is more to it of course, like having a DayZ Launcher as a central piece to access all that, and I will try and space out this information and go into more detail as we get closer. With what features we exactly have in mind, what content you should expect and how these things will be handled.

Hopefully this has helped you to understand how serious we are about this important milestone in DayZ development.

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

 
Alongside crucial improvements which affect core parts of DayZ such as movement, ranged or melee combat we often mentioned, there is also other parts which are very important for delivering the best overall experience.

You could already see the dynamic target selection in one of the previous Status Reports, and some of you could try it out in action with showcase of DEMO build at Gamescom. For me, together with whole HUD and new user actions, it’s an important part of the game which underlines all these great changes which separate old (0.62 and previous versions) and new DayZ (upcoming 0.63 AKA Beta).

From our internal playtests and feedback from players at Gamescom, we decided to improve the HUD part of dynamic target selection and user actions a bit further. Now there is more options related to user actions, usually performed on some kind of target in world, shown directly in the floating widget of dynamic target selection, which makes it more readable for the player. These were previously located in bottom left corner, and they were quite easily overlooked when they became possible to perform (remember new user actions are contextual). In bottom left corner, there are nowonly actions which are applied directly to your character for now.



Another improvement to the bottom left corner of HUD that we've currently made is the addition of item in hands. Its name, actual condition and its quantity or stack is now shown in the bottom left too, above actions. This offers constantly consistent overview of information related to equipped item and items around the character without the need to over-use inventory screen to find out such basic info.



While shuffling parts of HUD around, we ended with dynamic cross hair, also. It changes form contextually when needed, to indicate some possibilities or states. Good example is a time progression of currently performed continuous action. Of course, HUD visuals are nowhere near final by any means. For those players who want to be immersed as much as possible in the world of DayZ, there is an option to turn off HUD completely on demand (of course independently from quick-bar).



To mention melee combat as well, its state is very rough and basically still in a state of prototype. We wanted to proof the concept out with new system of targeting and full body attack animations which are locking character movement, alongside with hit impacts which can take controls of character completely. Now when we've laid the basics and seen the potential it has, it is the way to go for us, unless something unexpected happens.

As we definitely want to add some player skill to melee combat, we need to extend it with possibilities. Currently we are prototyping blocks, which reduce received damaged and influence hit impacts from attack, as well as evades, which helps to get out from line of attack. Next up is adding melee attacks with ranged weapons, like stabbing with bayonets, hitting with butt stock or pistol whips, as there is no worse feeling of helplessness when you are armed and someone successfully locks you into series of impacts and you need to throw gun down to be able to fight. 

Planned next are advanced moves such as knock-downs, finishing attacks on opponent on the ground or kicks/pushes. Anyway it’s really important for us to make solid foundation first because without it, melee combat won’t work as a whole, and it won’t matter how much depth and added layers will be there.

As far as new camera implementation I mentioned in last Status Report goes, it’s from great part done. We just need to promote some functionality to the script, so we can set specific FOV in iron sights and optics. Also we will be able to start toying with naked eye zoom again. Apart from that we are dealing with 3PP camera position in space in different modes like raised, melee combat or sprint.

With form following function... see you in Chernarus folks!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

 
Some time has passed since I last wrote my Status Report. One of the reasons is that we're now working on longer term tasks and it's quite hard to write a Status Report without repeating myself. Another reason is that we're mostly working on things which aren't immediately visible. Today, I will summarise what we have done over the last two months.

During August, major part of the team worked on delivering features that ended up being part of the DEMO version for Gamescom. It was quite stressful, because time was passing very fast and we had to stabilise the DEMO build and fix the most visible issues. Anyway, I believe that we were successful and we could return to our unfinished work with a good feeling of accomplishment.

Now, we are mostly focused on improving character's movement and combat mechanics, because the entire development team is still not very satisfied with what we have presented at Gamescom. This is a very important part of the DayZ experience and we want to have the best possible implementation before we hit BETA. It's also important for fighting against the infected, because it's almost impossible to tweak and polish AI behaviour without having the player movement finalised - and so this is the reason why work on AI is also a bit on hold for now.

One of the major things which were in progress before Gamescom is the game entity hierarchy (which is how the scene is represented for the game - so it is a system you won't be able to see). DayZ has been using an Arma legacy "proxy object hierarchy" - and this technology was limiting us to do some of the more exciting stuff from the DayZ feature list.

We decided to switch this scene representation technology to the new one provided by our in-house Enfusion Engine. This will allow us to do things better and in a more optimised manner, allowing us to add more visual effects easily and for example create much better animations for weapons handling.

Another thing we're now working on is the re-implementation of vehicles using the new systems. I have to admit that we're still working mostly on the physics part, and the character part is still not ready - but we hope that we will start working on character representation in vehicles soon (probably right after movement and combat mechanics).

The entire system around vehicles has changed a lot. They are now composed of several configurable components, we're supporting generic number of axes (not only two like in 0.62 and before), handling is much more responsive and vehicles have a new suspension model, which will help players driver over smaller obstacles. Things which still are not finished are better tires friction model and simulation of some gearbox extreme limits.

I wasn't sure if I should show you the following teaser (like I said, the character representation in vehicles isn't ready yet), but here it is. This is how we're testing vehicle physics for now - please welcome Fred Flintstone as a DayZ survivor, testing the new suspension system:



(Please note: these are not final values for suspension and current values are serving for demonstration of new suspension model)

Also, there are things which I would like to write about the topic of modding and what we are doing for supporting this feature, but it would be a lot of text for now, so I will write about it in next status reports (at least I'll have some ammunition for next time!).

- Miroslav Maněna / Lead Gameplay Progammer

 
Hello survivors! As I shared in the last Status Report, creating videos of a game in development is not always an easy task for us. It takes a lot of time from our regular schedules, and the closer we are to major releases of DayZ, the less time we have for recording gameplay. After experiencing the production of the 0.63 Dev Log, evaluating our options, and looking at the upcoming BETA/1.0 releases, we've made the decision that now is the right time to invest into our video production some more.

Just yesterday, we've put up a job opening for what we at Bohemia call a Game Capture Artist. Ultimately, we're looking for a content creator that will work alongside me, Baty and Eugen, and spend most of his/her time capturing DayZ gameplay, as well as coming up with concepts of DayZ videos (and, eventually, trailers).

It's a job that provides a perfect opportunity for making the hire directly from our community of players and content creators, and we'd be the happiest people on Earth to actually hire a DayZ fan, so please do apply if the job ad sounds like something you'd like to do for a living! 

I'll just add a personal warning: don't be misguided into thinking that this job is just playing 0.63 all day! It's also a lot of planning and documentation, and you really need to understand the technical aspects of video production as well.

That said, we don't need years of professional experience, but a creative, organised and communicative person who's going to drive our video production to a very high standard. We also need you to work directly with us in Prague or Bratislava, but Bohemia Interactive will help you relocate should you feel a bit on the edge about that!

Send them CVs in - and come live closer to the real Chernarus!

- Martin Čulák / Brand Manager

 
Hey Survivors! 

These two weeks have passed really quickly! So, let's see what's happening in the community. 

I need to start with a letter sent to our forum. It is from our big supporter to the Dev Team. Her name is Baroness, she is an amazing content creator and her message made me cry. She met her husband in DayZ! What an amazing story! Thank you, Baroness, we love you!


Hello. You don’t really know me. Well, maybe Baty does, a bit, in a way. I’m just a regular player.

When the standalone came out, I was coerced by my brother into buying this game and play with him. I had never gamed on PC ever, had only ever slightly gamed on console when I was 12-13 (I am 34 now). Everything was very new to me. He told me it looked promising, explained what alpha was, and off we went on adventures as I spawned in Kamyshovo for the first time.

Being on the creative side I have always enjoyed documenting my travels inside Chernarus. When I had gathered enough friends, we made clans, we built communities, alliances and harbored hate with other groups, as these things usually go. Some are still ongoing friendships that are on a deeper level, and this is amazing to me.

About 2 years ago, some friends and I disbanded our group and decided to join a roleplaying community. It was fairly small at the time, and being the creative and helpful person I am, both of the leaders decided to include me on staff, where I developed some community management skills, learned to deal with all the kinds of hate that you guys are getting right now. I mean, I’ve been called Cersei more times than I can count on 2 hands.

I’ve sowed many seeds of rapport, friendship, kindness and warmth, and I’ve been able to reap affinities, loyal friends, loving bonds, and even love.

I met my husband in this last community, it was called ChernarusRP. My now husband (then-gamer-friend) and I joined forces and nurtured this incredible fellowship of like-minded survivalists with a penchant for roleplaying. All 700 of them. Us working together, entertaining complimentary notions of unity, respect and healthy dialogue,  got us thinking; we very quickly found out that, through working so closely together for a long period of time, we just ‘clicked’, and it just ‘worked’.

Within the year, our relationship grew steadily towards a goal that we felt was right for the both of us; he moved from Texas to be with me in Québec (Canada).

We have been together ever since. It was because of your game and everything that is has to offer, that I was able to meet the man of my dreams, the love of my life, my missing puzzle piece. My everything, really.

Why am I writing this to you? Because I’ve noticed lately all the hate that you are getting. Spaggie and I had a long and interesting conversation about everything that you guys do behind the scenes that go completely unnoticed.  He told me that he sometimes writes little thank you notes and encouragement in the bug tracker, just for you guys to see that all that you do is greatly appreciated. In my opinion, more people should do this, every day.

And had I not installed this game and kept at it, I would not be with this incredible man who I am with today.

And I have you guys to thank for that.

So thank you. For everything. BETA will be a blast I’m sure. I am following closely. We all are. And screw the haters. You got such a loving fan base and we’re all behind you and cheering you on. We might not tell you every day, but trust me, we all root for you and this wonderful game.

Thank you for reading.
Baroness <3

 

And thank you all for all your support, like in this thread. It means a world to us. Thank you! 


Let's see a new chapter of the Humans of Chernarus series. If you don't know it, it is a collection of thoughts of fictional people living across Chernarus. A people who are facing this post-apocalyptic world and try to survive to the next day. You can find the whole collection here. 



"Good luck is a funny thing. It always seems like it belongs to someone else. Bad luck, on the other hand, we all have it. We harbour it to convince ourselves that our problems and misdoings are not our own... However, there in truth I’ve learned one thing during my stay on this shitty Earth. There is no such thing as luck, good or bad. There are only those who are prepared, and those who are not.”

-Symon, of the Gomorrah Casino 


I love weddings! And I hope you do as well, because this one happened in DayZ. It may not have been the most romantic one, but it surely was entertaining.  Dr. Von Hauer married his wife in Novodmitrovsk church. They said their vows and lived happily until their deaths. Which could not have been too long, as it is DayZ after all. I myself almost got married in DayZ, so I envy the bride for making it all the way. The highlight of the video for me is the flower boy, who throws pieces of ghillie on the ground.

https://youtu.be/egYiPcVLGY0

 

Let's check out some art now. 

Valdark2 posted his newest picture to Reddit and it is pretty cool, what do you think? 




If you need some large wallpapers, just tell NeuroticEUROtic, he is a specialist. It is sometimes hard to find a really good wallpaper for three monitors but this guy can sort you out.  

Here is Skalisty Panorama 5760 x 1080 by him and it is beautiful. I have it on my background already :) 

 

The last thing that I was looking forward to showing you today is a riddle again! 

In the last Status Report, it was West Lopatino Evacuation Camp. You sent me a lot of correct answers last time and you said it was toooooo easy. Okey! Here is a challenge for you. Where can you find this deer stand? Send me your answers to our official Twitter account. And thank you for all your answers!




That is all from me today guys. Have a nice day and play DayZ! 

Header picture: WilliamFilms

- Baty / Community Manager

With Brian missing this week (no worries, he will be back at full force next time!), Eugen and Peter reflect upon the new features and content presented at Gamescom. Eugen is finally sharing our full 0.63 Dev Log video with 16 minutes of Gamescom DEMO gameplay in Full HD, Peter is reacting to some of the community feedback regarding the missing naked eye zoom and new key binds for firearms, and Martin and Baty share some of the good vibes from our community (both the one at EGX, where they travelled last week, and online!). Let's do some reading and watching folks, it's a juicy Status Report once again!

• Dev Update/Eugen
• Dev Update/Peter
• Dev Update/Martin
• Community Spotlight

 
The last two weeks had us focused on different issues in the base and core features of DayZ. As previously mentioned, these are tackled through smaller scrum teams that are dedicated to these topics. Currently, we are running ranged combat team with focus on weapons and another one focused on melee combat. More are expected to be set up from vehicles to Central Economy or the infected. These should enable much faster iteration that can deliver on their goals as the technology requires less changes under the hood.

This means that we are no longer tied to larger technology changes and can focus on the stuff that’s important to us and players alike: things that tackle immediate concerns that have troubled the game for a very long time. The approach we chose is based around priorities that carry through to other features, so we spend less time going back and redoing stuff over and over.

Current priorities started with base movement of the character, which defines a lot of the work that is going to happen in both melee and ranged combat. Once we nail down the details, we can quickly implement and iterate things like player speed changing with rotation or rotation limits in order to cut on the erratic movement that is usually described as "zig-zagging".

There are tons of things like these that community cares very deeply about. We take this feedback very seriously. Lot of these things have driven community interaction over these years. Bugs that we didn’t fix, features that didn’t have consistency or detail or were missing entirely. There is a reason behind everything. We spend a lot of time on figuring these out and once we are happy with our solutions we are going to get the discussion going. The process, however, requires you to test them in-game and that is where we go from prototype to full fledged feature.

The thing is you try, and go for functionality first before the visuals get polished. It usually does not matter if it looks good if you’re developing the game. But it’s also the reason we don’t show many of these things that are in their early implementation. because they are just functional enough for us to iterate, but not polished enough to present ourselves with. That brings me to the next important thing.

Imagine all these great things created with placeholders or skeletons of functionality that we look into and keep iterating on.

Ideas are just ideas and they usually change for the better as development moves forward. What seems fun and good on paper though sometimes does not translate well in-game. If the technology used is layered enough to let designers test their ideas, we know we can differentiate the bad from the good. I don’t believe that we always come up with best solutions on the first iteration, and so that's why we listen to your feedback.

Even when I look at our 0.63 Dev Log video below, I know (and see) tons of issues that just irritate me. But I’m not alone and this team is the best I had the chance to work with, and I have no doubt we can solve the issues. BETA can not come soon enough!

That said, we would like to focus on covering these hot topics and how we solved them in the current iteration, because we bleed passion for what DayZ should be.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7FyfXZHFyY
- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

 
After DEMO showcase at Gamescom, many of you expressed concerns about missing zoom with naked eye as well as toggling to aim down the sights.

First off all, I want to underline that absence of naked eye zoom was intentional as we run into technical problems due interference with switching to iron sights, witch was key-binded to middle mouse button. Time was running out and instead of fixing the old camera behaviour, we decided to cut it completely, so that we can start implementing a new camera from scratch to allow us to have more control over it (which is being worked on right now).

Anyway, now when that dynamic zoom is currently missing, we can start asking questions: is it really needed? How does it contribute to gameplay? What are the pros and cons? Eye zoom is kind of a long-term trademark of Bohemia Interactive games, the same way as the free look being independent on character movement. Simulation of mid to long range engagement wouldn’t be possible without such feature, as fluid, on demand changing of field of view from wide to correct perspective is needed there, typically for observing your surroundings and during gunfights. Without it, characters are just small group of pixels in distance, and probably no-one enjoys pixel hunting.

On the other hand, we know that in the case we gave the player character some supernatural abilities, we would lower the importance of items which should be used in such situations, like binoculars or scopes (which can be used even while not mounted on a weapon). Currently, these have very limited use among players, as naked eye zoom (or focus if you want to call it like that) is enough for them to observe environment.

Also, there is a bit of a problem with continuous switching of object LODs and textures, which puts additional pressure on the CPU/GPU. While this would still be the case with binos and scopes as well, these changes to FOV are instant and not continuous. Missing eye zoom will lead to bringing player engagements to much closer distances - and that’s the most important thing in DayZ - player interactions.

Final decision hasn't been made yet - personally, I’m inclined to keeping this feature in the game, but even in the worse case scenario, aiming down sights will maintain correct perspective (with a bit of added zoom while holding breath to simulate focus), to avoid aforementioned pixel hunting during gunfights.

I mentioned aiming down sights and we are aware that current keybind (middle mouse button click while raised) is far from ideal as it feels clunky - exactly opposite to real life, where aiming down sights is as simple as just moving your head and aligning the eye with sights. What is really important to me is the fact that there shouldn’t be any toggle into the aimed stance (raised nor iron sights/scopes). Which means character should go ideally to an idle pose when all controls are released. Toggle-able aggressive stance can unintentionally fiddle with character’s body language, which disrupts gameplay and the experience players have during their interactions.

Currently, we are experimenting with different approaches of switching to iron sights while raised. Key-bind on keyboard can work, but I’m not a fan of it as it destroys the basic firearm controls between mouse and keyboard.

On standard mouse, there is only two buttons which come as possible candidates to use - middle mouse button, and right mouse button. Scrolling up with the mouse wheel to aim down sights is much better than precisely clicking the wheel, also it’s meant for switching between iron sights and scope in case the given firearm allows it (think AKs and other guns from the eastern block, or additional sights mounted on RIS from the side of a weapon) and for cycling through scope zoom levels (for example hunting scope).

Personally, I prefer a simple double click and holding right mouse button (basically double click without releasing the button after the second click of button) as a shortcut to switch directly from lowered arms to iron sights. To switch back from aiming down sights (ADS), just release the right button, click and hold it again (same for toggling from raise to ADS). These two methods are far better and we will most likely keep both.

Last but not least, we've recently implemented turns to the movement itself (until now in 0.63, turns was only in idle) which is a game changer. It simply prevents zigzagging (which is used for dodging bullets) by limiting character rotation speed and adding rotation radius to turns while the player is moving. It’s scaled with character speed - the faster the movement, the bigger the radius is. There are still some issues that we are know need to be ironed out (in reality, nobody can see their back while doing 180 degree turns) and there is a bunch of missing features which will make it better and more visually pleasing (like tilting the character while making turns).









This solution differs from full-fledged inertia system, which can lead to players feeling like they are driving a tank with all that acceleration, deceleration and stopping after sharp turns. We want to thoroughly test it now, to feel how it plays and if it’s capable enough to achieve our goal of having smooth navigation through environment - as we definitely would like to maintain the hardly earned responsiveness and smoothness of the new character.

Without zigzagging... see you in Chernarus folks!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

 
Survivors! After a vicious editing battle that took waaaay longer than we all had planned, we were finally able to deliver the 0.63 Dev Log today. It's taking a quick (well, relatively quick, it's some 16 minutes of gameplay!) look at the key things that we presented at Gamescom last month.

Let me just quickly give credits to Baty and our QA Engineer Dan Fialka for their tireless work on the actual gameplay capture - as I have said in the previous Status Report, it's not always an easy work tinkering with the internal build. I hope you'll all appreciate the early look at 0.63 at least in this format - it's certainly not the same as experiencing the new animation system and player controller first hand, but it's the best we can do now. 

Suffice to say, this Dev Log was a good learning experience and it made us rethink the way we produce video content for DayZ. Going forward, we want to streamline the creative process behind making development videos, and hopefully find a good, effective workflow for gameplay capture in 0.63.

Last week, me and Baty also visited EGX in Birmingham, and boy: did we meet a lot of awesome people! Originally, our visit was really planned as a last-minute trip, as we just wanted to meet a couple of DayZ content creators at EGX - there was no booth involved like at Gamescom, and we only packed a bunch of DayZ lanyards just in case.

Somehow, we ended up meeting with some 30 fellow survivors at once, occupying half of the EGX business lounge and demoing 0.63 to everybody (thanks to Matthew and the rest of the EGX organisers for not kicking us out!). 

Blue and Queenie, M1ndr, SepticFalcon and Dzoana all had their mods and friends there, we've also finally met the Twitter super-spammer Spaggie (and his friend @EssexRockerz!)... well I would like to name everybody we met, but it would make for a really long list. Thanks everyone for coming and chatting with us (and thanks Baty for talking me into the trip!), you all make the best, most dedicated community out there.

We'll definitely be back to EGX next year, hopefully with a more official presence and a proper booth! Here's a couple of photos (credits to N-Reid!) and Tweets from the event:





- Martin Čulák/ Brand Manager

 
Hey Survivors!

I hope you had amazing two weeks. As Martin mentioned, we were at EXG and it was epic, thanks everyone for coming. It was nice to meet you all!

Let's start with the Real Chernarus by BrenUno, who‘s been there and took some amazing pictures for the community. Can you recognize all these places?  







Streamer DeadlySlob did an amazing and very funny role-play video, where he acts as a drug addicted person. Other players were really surprised by his behaviour. We love it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0Nxz66VcRk

Let's check out some art. I chose three guys from community today, who are amazing artists and did nice job on their artworks. They have really similar style and we really like this.
 

The first one is Will. He did two artworks inspired by Chernarus.





 

And the second one is by Squad_Crow, who did his view of Novodmitrovsk and Lopatino Castle.




 

AFX was on Rose City Comic Con in Portland as a survivor from DayZ. She had everything that the true survivor needs - duck tape, military boots and a long stick with an apple! I don't know if she killed any infected on her trip but she is definitely ready for it!





 

French server Team Onu is preparing an event again. It is called Manhunt - Dark Walk and it will be tomorrow and you can see more info after you log in to their web pages. Here is a little teaser for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGWgPf4MMxg&feature=youtu.be



If you prepare any event for your community, just let me know on my Twitter and someone from our team can be there too.


And I have a riddle for you today. Can you recognize this place? Tweet it to the official DayZ Twitter, I want to know how many players we have, who know the map very well!

I know it is easy for hardcore players, but I will do a harder one next time.



 
I am so happy to see all your content guys, no kidding. I try to watch all your videos, pictures and everything you post to our social networks or Reddit. Thank you for that and for your support, because we need it. We really appreciate to know that YOU CARE about DayZ. Because DayZ is love, DayZ is life for us.

Header image by Sahindi.
 
- Baty / Community Manager

 

With Brian missing this week (no worries, he will be back at full force next time!), Eugen and Peter reflect upon the new features and content presented at Gamescom. Eugen is finally sharing our full 0.63 Dev Log video with 16 minutes of Gamescom DEMO gameplay in Full HD, Peter is reacting to some of the community feedback regarding the missing naked eye zoom and new key binds for firearms, and Martin and Baty share some of the good vibes from our community (both the one at EGX, where they travelled last week, and online!). Let's do some reading and watching folks, it's a juicy Status Report once again!

• Dev Update/Eugen
• Dev Update/Peter
• Dev Update/Martin
• Community Spotlight

 
The last two weeks had us focused on different issues in the base and core features of DayZ. As previously mentioned, these are tackled through smaller scrum teams that are dedicated to these topics. Currently, we are running ranged combat team with focus on weapons and another one focused on melee combat. More are expected to be set up from vehicles to Central Economy or the infected. These should enable much faster iteration that can deliver on their goals as the technology requires less changes under the hood.

This means that we are no longer tied to larger technology changes and can focus on the stuff that’s important to us and players alike: things that tackle immediate concerns that have troubled the game for a very long time. The approach we chose is based around priorities that carry through to other features, so we spend less time going back and redoing stuff over and over.

Current priorities started with base movement of the character, which defines a lot of the work that is going to happen in both melee and ranged combat. Once we nail down the details, we can quickly implement and iterate things like player speed changing with rotation or rotation limits in order to cut on the erratic movement that is usually described as "zig-zagging".

There are tons of things like these that community cares very deeply about. We take this feedback very seriously. Lot of these things have driven community interaction over these years. Bugs that we didn’t fix, features that didn’t have consistency or detail or were missing entirely. There is a reason behind everything. We spend a lot of time on figuring these out and once we are happy with our solutions we are going to get the discussion going. The process, however, requires you to test them in-game and that is where we go from prototype to full fledged feature.

The thing is you try, and go for functionality first before the visuals get polished. It usually does not matter if it looks good if you’re developing the game. But it’s also the reason we don’t show many of these things that are in their early implementation. because they are just functional enough for us to iterate, but not polished enough to present ourselves with. That brings me to the next important thing.

Imagine all these great things created with placeholders or skeletons of functionality that we look into and keep iterating on.

Ideas are just ideas and they usually change for the better as development moves forward. What seems fun and good on paper though sometimes does not translate well in-game. If the technology used is layered enough to let designers test their ideas, we know we can differentiate the bad from the good. I don’t believe that we always come up with best solutions on the first iteration, and so that's why we listen to your feedback.

Even when I look at our 0.63 Dev Log video below, I know (and see) tons of issues that just irritate me. But I’m not alone and this team is the best I had the chance to work with, and I have no doubt we can solve the issues. BETA can not come soon enough!

That said, we would like to focus on covering these hot topics and how we solved them in the current iteration, because we bleed passion for what DayZ should be.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7FyfXZHFyY
- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

 
After DEMO showcase at Gamescom, many of you expressed concerns about missing zoom with naked eye as well as toggling to aim down the sights.

First off all, I want to underline that absence of naked eye zoom was intentional as we run into technical problems due interference with switching to iron sights, witch was key-binded to middle mouse button. Time was running out and instead of fixing the old camera behaviour, we decided to cut it completely, so that we can start implementing a new camera from scratch to allow us to have more control over it (which is being worked on right now).

Anyway, now when that dynamic zoom is currently missing, we can start asking questions: is it really needed? How does it contribute to gameplay? What are the pros and cons? Eye zoom is kind of a long-term trademark of Bohemia Interactive games, the same way as the free look being independent on character movement. Simulation of mid to long range engagement wouldn’t be possible without such feature, as fluid, on demand changing of field of view from wide to correct perspective is needed there, typically for observing your surroundings and during gunfights. Without it, characters are just small group of pixels in distance, and probably no-one enjoys pixel hunting.

On the other hand, we know that in the case we gave the player character some supernatural abilities, we would lower the importance of items which should be used in such situations, like binoculars or scopes (which can be used even while not mounted on a weapon). Currently, these have very limited use among players, as naked eye zoom (or focus if you want to call it like that) is enough for them to observe environment.

Also, there is a bit of a problem with continuous switching of object LODs and textures, which puts additional pressure on the CPU/GPU. While this would still be the case with binos and scopes as well, these changes to FOV are instant and not continuous. Missing eye zoom will lead to bringing player engagements to much closer distances - and that’s the most important thing in DayZ - player interactions.

Final decision hasn't been made yet - personally, I’m inclined to keeping this feature in the game, but even in the worse case scenario, aiming down sights will maintain correct perspective (with a bit of added zoom while holding breath to simulate focus), to avoid aforementioned pixel hunting during gunfights.

I mentioned aiming down sights and we are aware that current keybind (middle mouse button click while raised) is far from ideal as it feels clunky - exactly opposite to real life, where aiming down sights is as simple as just moving your head and aligning the eye with sights. What is really important to me is the fact that there shouldn’t be any toggle into the aimed stance (raised nor iron sights/scopes). Which means character should go ideally to an idle pose when all controls are released. Toggle-able aggressive stance can unintentionally fiddle with character’s body language, which disrupts gameplay and the experience players have during their interactions.

Currently, we are experimenting with different approaches of switching to iron sights while raised. Key-bind on keyboard can work, but I’m not a fan of it as it destroys the basic firearm controls between mouse and keyboard.

On standard mouse, there is only two buttons which come as possible candidates to use - middle mouse button, and right mouse button. Scrolling up with the mouse wheel to aim down sights is much better than precisely clicking the wheel, also it’s meant for switching between iron sights and scope in case the given firearm allows it (think AKs and other guns from the eastern block, or additional sights mounted on RIS from the side of a weapon) and for cycling through scope zoom levels (for example hunting scope).

Personally, I prefer a simple double click and holding right mouse button (basically double click without releasing the button after the second click of button) as a shortcut to switch directly from lowered arms to iron sights. To switch back from aiming down sights (ADS), just release the right button, click and hold it again (same for toggling from raise to ADS). These two methods are far better and we will most likely keep both.

Last but not least, we've recently implemented turns to the movement itself (until now in 0.63, turns was only in idle) which is a game changer. It simply prevents zigzagging (which is used for dodging bullets) by limiting character rotation speed and adding rotation radius to turns while the player is moving. It’s scaled with character speed - the faster the movement, the bigger the radius is. There are still some issues that we are know need to be ironed out (in reality, nobody can see their back while doing 180 degree turns) and there is a bunch of missing features which will make it better and more visually pleasing (like tilting the character while making turns).









This solution differs from full-fledged inertia system, which can lead to players feeling like they are driving a tank with all that acceleration, deceleration and stopping after sharp turns. We want to thoroughly test it now, to feel how it plays and if it’s capable enough to achieve our goal of having smooth navigation through environment - as we definitely would like to maintain the hardly earned responsiveness and smoothness of the new character.

Without zigzagging... see you in Chernarus folks!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

 
Survivors! After a vicious editing battle that took waaaay longer than we all had planned, we were finally able to deliver the 0.63 Dev Log today. It's taking a quick (well, relatively quick, it's some 16 minutes of gameplay!) look at the key things that we presented at Gamescom last month.

Let me just quickly give credits to Baty and our QA Engineer Dan Fialka for their tireless work on the actual gameplay capture - as I have said in the previous Status Report, it's not always an easy work tinkering with the internal build. I hope you'll all appreciate the early look at 0.63 at least in this format - it's certainly not the same as experiencing the new animation system and player controller first hand, but it's the best we can do now. 

Suffice to say, this Dev Log was a good learning experience and it made us rethink the way we produce video content for DayZ. Going forward, we want to streamline the creative process behind making development videos, and hopefully find a good, effective workflow for gameplay capture in 0.63.

Last week, me and Baty also visited EGX in Birmingham, and boy: did we meet a lot of awesome people! Originally, our visit was really planned as a last-minute trip, as we just wanted to meet a couple of DayZ content creators at EGX - there was no booth involved like at Gamescom, and we only packed a bunch of DayZ lanyards just in case.

Somehow, we ended up meeting with some 30 fellow survivors at once, occupying half of the EGX business lounge and demoing 0.63 to everybody (thanks to Matthew and the rest of the EGX organisers for not kicking us out!). 

Blue and Queenie, M1ndr, SepticFalcon and Dzoana all had their mods and friends there, we've also finally met the Twitter super-spammer Spaggie (and his friend @EssexRockerz!)... well I would like to name everybody we met, but it would make for a really long list. Thanks everyone for coming and chatting with us (and thanks Baty for talking me into the trip!), you all make the best, most dedicated community out there.

We'll definitely be back to EGX next year, hopefully with a more official presence and a proper booth! Here's a couple of photos (credits to N-Reid!) and Tweets from the event:





- Martin Čulák/ Brand Manager

 
Hey Survivors!

I hope you had amazing two weeks. As Martin mentioned, we were at EXG and it was epic, thanks everyone for coming. It was nice to meet you all!

Let's start with the Real Chernarus by BrenUno, who‘s been there and took some amazing pictures for the community. Can you recognize all these places?  







Streamer DeadlySlob did an amazing and very funny role-play video, where he acts as a drug addicted person. Other players were really surprised by his behaviour. We love it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0Nxz66VcRk

Let's check out some art. I chose three guys from community today, who are amazing artists and did nice job on their artworks. They have really similar style and we really like this.
 

The first one is Will. He did two artworks inspired by Chernarus.





 

And the second one is by Squad_Crow, who did his view of Novodmitrovsk and Lopatino Castle.




 

AFX was on Rose City Comic Con in Portland as a survivor from DayZ. She had everything that the true survivor needs - duck tape, military boots and a long stick with an apple! I don't know if she killed any infected on her trip but she is definitely ready for it!





 

French server Team Onu is preparing an event again. It is called Manhunt - Dark Walk and it will be tomorrow and you can see more info after you log in to their web pages. Here is a little teaser for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGWgPf4MMxg&feature=youtu.be



If you prepare any event for your community, just let me know on my Twitter and someone from our team can be there too.


And I have a riddle for you today. Can you recognize this place? Tweet it to the official DayZ Twitter, I want to know how many players we have, who know the map very well!

I know it is easy for hardcore players, but I will do a harder one next time.



 
I am so happy to see all your content guys, no kidding. I try to watch all your videos, pictures and everything you post to our social networks or Reddit. Thank you for that and for your support, because we need it. We really appreciate to know that YOU CARE about DayZ. Because DayZ is love, DayZ is life for us.

Header image by Sahindi.
 
- Baty / Community Manager