Dev Update/Hicks
Greetings Survivors,
As mentioned as a high possibility, we ended up passing our internal goal for putting 0.60 in consumers hands. However, this was expected as a high chance. We are of course working hard on getting it ready, and on to experimental branch as soon as possible. Our work currently is focused on optimization of the performance inside major cities in Chernarus. New Chernogorsk has caused us some performance hickups we want to resolve to an acceptable playable frame rate. The engine team has a daunting task ahead of them, focusing on the last few hurdles to unlock the capabilities of the renderer while still combating and improving legacy engine scene management. With trouble areas in the DirectX 9 area dipping as low as the mid teens in some situations, we consider it critical to isolate those areas and ensure we can hold a stable 30fps (In Direct X 11) in them. Globally, frame rates on average can be in the 40 to 60 range on average - so obviously our focus right now is in those major cities. It is key to keep in mind as said many times before - this is just the first iteration. In addition to continuing bugfixes on into beta and the 1.0 release, the new renderer technology will open up many new particle effects to the design team, and we'll be working with GPU manufacturers for cross testing to isolate areas in which hardware specific optimizations can be made.
Tasks Completed:
- Implementation of all base renderer features
- Simulweather/True Sky Implementation
Current Focus:
- Optimization of major cities
- Dynamic Lights
- Finalization of New Renderer Settings UI/Options
- Implementation of New UI
- Bug Fix, Bug Fix, Bug Fix
I'm confident that a global increase in frame rate playability, as well as a huge upgrade in the visuals in DayZ are going to be well worth the work that has gone into the part of the Enfusion engine, and I can't wait to share it with you all. While .60 obviously focuses most heavily on implementing the engine's new renderer - .60 also has continued iteration on the Central Economy (something I think many people don't realize is VERY critical to the DayZ experience) with the audit mentioned in previous Status Reports complete, as well as changes to the tagging for weapons. Changes to vehicle spawn points, initial attachments, and finally - weapons are both spawning with random attachments AND a chance to spawn with magazines that have a random amount of ammo inside them.
Beyond .60 - the teams next major updates focus is primarily on the new animation system and player controller. For the end user, it is important to understand these large engine changes have been holding back fixes on a lot of legacy issues with the title, as well as much larger over all changes to how DayZ plays - including, but not limited to DayZ's new user actions - something that I feel paired with the renderer, and new UI complete a 3 part massive change to how DayZ *plays*. In addition, the gameplay programming team's work on the new damage system - which will be explained in a bit more detail below by Lead Gameplay Programmer Mirek. The members of the programming team focusing on the Central Economy also continue to work on the deployable version of the CLE & Database structure for use by both mod authors and private server operators alike - as well as functionality for DayZ's local offline mode.
On the Early Access / Community side - our forum transition is complete, and DayZ.com forums are back online. As some of you may know the feedback tracker is offline while we transition to a new software option for it. This shouldn't be down too much longer, as it is critical to providing an outlet to those testing DayZ's development builds to communicate the issues they encounter while doing so.
We know that members of the community have wanted to see an increase or change in the format of our outbound communication, and that too has received some love this month. We've done some restructuring in the processes behind these, as well as the structure of responsibilities. We're hoping that over the coming month you'll all enjoy the changes in this area - and we'll be keeping an eye on your reactions.
- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer
Dev Update/Peter
New user actions framework in Enforce Script has been completed and while all actions are being rewritten into it they rely on a connection to the new player and new animation system, we have also looked at crafting processes currently used in game and usage of activities available in DayZ such as preparing fireplace and cooking, creating electricity system, construction of non portable structures, vehicle maintenance, growing crops, placement of objects, weapons handling, interacting with objects in world, doors barricading and others.
With such wide spectrum of different activities which were continuously implemented through the development and honestly most of them ended in prototype, unfinished or experimental state is easy that their usage can become inconsistent especially when we were trying different approaches to it over time. Now during general rewrite of scripted game systems and mechanics to Enforce script and overall heading towards Beta release it's a great time to overhaul everything which makes sense to overhaul and can be reasonable achieved in tight timeframe. Our aim is to bring as much consistency as we can into very different behaviors to unify and simplify them thus they become much more clear and understandable to players. I'm very proud that vision of physicality, tangibility and strong visual feedback through the whole game and it's actions and activities is becoming the reality which is, to be honest, quite unique in games nowadays. For example you can look forward to reinforcing the rule of hands even in crafting which become really close to user actions, or stretching the functionality of quick slots beyond their usual behavior seen in games.
For greatest experiences it's immersion that matters... See you in Chernarus folks!
- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer
Dev Update/Mirek
The legacy Arma damage system was designed only for ranged weapons, which means that every hit was an explosion. But when we've added close range weapons, we've found that this system isn't suitable and it's difficult to balance properly.
It was hard to set up how much damage will be applied to different parts of character's body, and how this damage will be modified when characters has different types of armor and so on. We’ve decided the best solution is to write a completely new system for this, which will allow us to have several different types of hits and wounds, which will allow us to add more game features and easily balance them.
Together with this, we're changing the process of damage synchronization between client and server, so this new damage system will be more efficient for server performance and network traffic, and be secure against the possibility of cheating.
The new damage system is now pushed to our designers, who are creating the initial setup, at which point we will begin testing internally. The team is also working on performance and network optimizations and bug-fixing some major inventory issues.
- Miroslav Maněna / Lead Gameplay Programmer