Advanced Role-Play Systems 

  • [DayZ Expansion] Status Report September 2019

  • Colony announcements and information
Colony announcements and information
 #7034  by Weyland
 
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

Hello Survivors,

We apologize for this months SR being a little bit late, we have been very busy, but let's start off a bit negative, unfortunately there have been rumors going around that we are delaying for more donations which is simply false. Any donations that have been made do not go towards the development team, this is due to the cost of outsourced assets. We would like to remind you all that donating does not give you access to the private tests of this mod. All you get for donating is an acknowledgement in the credits for this mod.

Another rumor that has been going around is that “this mod is vaporware” which whilst by the definition of the word this is true, the mod is not a concept and is still being written. This can be proven by many of the streams and also including some of the testers that would stand to benefit from “exposing” us.

We will release this mod sometime in October/Early-November 2019

We would like to remind you all that the development of this mod is not our full-time job so anything could happen which may cause a setback.

Base Building & Snapping Systems
We have finalized most of the basebuilding code, just working on fixing the assets and making the correct recipes. The snapping system is complete and functional, awaiting the next private test so we can see any and all the issues.



User Interfaces & Menus
We have re-designed a lot of menus, as well as many of the user-interfaces, for instance, we have completely redone the trader UI. You can see the updated UI for it below. We have opted for this UI because it allows us to limit the amount of data that is sent from the server to the client as unfortunately there is a hardcoded limit in the game which could potentially be exceeded.

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Another change made is that a new tab has been placed in the server browser which will show servers that host the DayZ Expansion mod.

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We also added some new Hud elements for the main interface that will allow you to track for example your current character position or the weight of your inventory.

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All these new elements can be toggled to be shown or hidden with a Keybinding that you can set in the game control settings (for the GPS) or in a new setting menu that we added to the expansion book so you can control some client settings by yourself:

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Helicopters
The private tests has given us a lot of information for the helicopters but the general consensus is that it was better than what anyone was expecting and for that we thank you all a lot. Since then we have taken the feedback and have decided to make some pretty big adjustments to the simulation to make it as close to ArmA physics as we possibly can. Currently though, it is broken so can’t share any gif for you all.

There were other improvements made to the helicopters and these include fixing the sounds while inside the helicopter and removing the ability for the helicopter to explode on impact with the water. Instead the helicopter will float and the longer it floats or the deeper it goes under the more damage will tick over with the helicopter until it stops working.

Vehicles
Regarding the vehicles; we have fully fixed and implemented the car-key system. When you buy a vehicle from the trader, you will be given a key for that specific vehicle. You need to hold that key in your hand and interact with the door of the vehicle (by pressing F whilst looking at it) in order to unlock it. The same can be done to lock it. Additionally, you can also lock and unlock the vehicles whilst you’re inside.

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Currently, to remove the lock of the vehicles, you will have to shoot the doors off (this will also give you access to the inventory), but this carries the risk of setting off an alarm. There will be more ways to do it in the future, this is just the first iteration. We would love to hear your feedback on it!

Weapons
We are very excited to say that we will have a very wide roster of custom weapons implemented. We have purchased over $300 worth of weapon assets from various artists. Not all of these may end up usable, and several won’t be able to be properly implemented until we get animation support, and a few will be implemented in a less than optimal manner (Until custom animations are supported, then we will adjust them), but that said, there’s a *lot*. In total we have about ~60 different weapons models currently. Here’s a look at just a few we have implemented already, and a few external renders for some not currently finished (Keep in mind the textures/materials on these are not final and some are not looking as good as we’d like *yet*):

Beretta M9/92FS

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MP5A2

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M16A4

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PP-91 KEDR

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Benelli M4/M1014

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MPX

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G36C

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Overhauled Lighting
Some of you may have seen this already, but we recently redid some of the screenshots as previously our sun position was off from vanilla. This results in a much more “honest” comparison between our edits and vanilla DayZ.Here is a gallery of 12 comparison sliders showcasing some of our lighting, and some of our custom mapping. Sometimes they some will fail to load, so if you do not see 12, refresh.

https://thurston.pw/expansion/index.html

Chickens & Chicken Breeder
Who wants to be a chicken farmer in DayZ? If it ever was your dream to throw some freshly laid eggs on your enemy’s then we might have some good news for you as we have something in the works:

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Once again, we’d like to thank you all for your overwhelming support. We wouldn’t be this far into the project without both the community, and the developers involvement. As mentioned above, we are hoping for a release some-time in October/Early-November 2019, but of course, there may be setbacks due to various reasons. We are completely open to any and all suggestions. We thank you all for your patience.