Steam DayZ Thread (Standalone)

This is my favourite place actually. A lot of the time the prison and barracks there remain unlooted and there are 3 rows of garages. I LOVE LOOTING GARAGES. It's so much fun, like opening a present when the door swings open. There is also the military base which has 4 barracks and is only a 3 minute run away and again, is relatively safe if you are undergeared.

 

There are areas up north that are being prepped for content. You can see on maps where there are a few buildings, and mostly a lot of roads to nothing. Just follow the road west from Svetlojarsk and you can see how everything's been flattened and cleared for new buildings. Experimental branch notes even say these areas have been given buildings. Even north of the NWAF the map shows a place prepped for some expansion, though I haven't been there on foot. We could see something pretty big fit up here.

 

Wasn't there a town north of the NWAF in the mod? I seem to remember people used to stash their cars there at some point.

 

There was a little bit up there, but it looks like it's getting the same treatment as the Svetlojarsk area.

 

well hopefully we get a warzone/ground zero looking town with walls blown out and fallen buildings.

the same uniform looking buildings that are just a mess are fine, but i wanna see some signs of destruction beyond the hotel in cherno.

 

I want a hedge maze

 

I hope to see more unique structures in general. A water feature only found in Polana, or a cabin only found in Lopatino. Something that says each town isn't just a different assortment of the same buildings. The city remodels seem to be doing a good job of this and I hope they continue it.

 

So someone I was chatting too last night has ported SA in Arma 3. Whilst it doesn't work 100c/o it does actually work. 60fps with zombies, looks better than SA.

Only issue is he can't release the mod because Bohemia blocked usage of Arms 2 assets in Arms 3. Presumably because SA uses them and people can mod SA into A3.

That being said modding community will have a headstart when they can release the mod.

The Mothership

 

SA should of been built off the arma 3 engine anyways.

 

I have to agree tbh. I know when modding SA there where some bugs but they have been ironed out.

When I'm at my PC I will link some videos from the guy who told me. Currently they are creating co op missions with Arma 3 SA.

Trigger points which spawn hundreds of zombies as they go to an objective. Hundreds of zombies with little to no impact on frames.

Hell I want real zombie hordes, like Electro with hundreds of roaming zombies. That react to sound and visuals. So fire a shot have that horde on your ass.

Sit on a roof and have that whole building swamped with zombies, the problem is log from that server and you can be on the same roof safe and sound.

The Mothership

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/02/24/dean-hall-plans-to-step-down-as-lead-designer-of-dayz

Dean Hall to spet down from lead designer.

 

Maybe, although from what I've seen of Arma 3, it doesn't do distance visuals very well and that is something that DayZ SA has got right. From what I've read, the choice of engine was more down to a familiarity with the coding, it seems the team working on DayZ also created the Take on engine branch. The devil you know and all that.

Ultimately though, the DayZ engine isn't an off the shelf unit, it uses elements of many different engines including Arma 3. Things that Arma 3 does well like lighting could be added in the future.

Yup, at least he is staying on until the end of the year. I'll be honest, I saw this coming. He has been saying for a while since his Everest Climb (which seems to have made it crystal clear what he wanted to do) that starting a studio to support young devs is his plan.

 

Are alarm bells ringing for anyone now hes leaving? The game's not even finished..

 

Not really. Depends what the next 10 months bring I guess. He is basically the guy with the vision for the direction of the project. As long that vision is shared by the person who replaces him, then the project should be fine.

 

I see it as good news. they guy is apparently a bit of a dick. Hopefully now real progression can start.

sort out the latency between clients, add zombies that actually work and are a threat, stop wasting time on adding hats!

 

I think the fact that Bohemia have put their name on it means we should expect a good quality end product. Hopefully they've realised by now that the success of SA is largely due to the community relationship with the devs and they'll try hard to maintain that.

Also at this stage of the games development anyway there shouldn't be such a thing as "alarm bells", they're still just adding basic content and fixing bugs so the final direction the game takes could be completely different to what any of us are expecting, for better or worse.

 

Heh, you really think they are focusing on content like hats over fixes for the fundamental issues? That is pretty naive of you.

Content and system testing go hand it hand. Why so many meaningless items like hammers? hats? pliers? clothes? They either have the textures and models on file or they are quick and easy to make. That means they can test things like spawns, item management, item condition without putting too much time into content creation.

 

meh, still think there wasting time making pointless useless items its time/money/effort wasted.
Really dont care if its part of the testing or not. There are game breaking issues that should take absolute priority that have been a problem from day one and have had no attention at all.

The client lag is awful, making fire fights a total gamble rather a test of skill and opportunity .
You can walk to up behind someone and unload an entire clip into there skull and your target can still turn around and one shot you.

You can fall through floors, this is meant to be a zombie survival, there are hardly any zombies, they can still walk through walls and still have many issues they had in the mod despite be "reworked".

There was all this talk about making everything server side to avoid this problem, but all they have done is make loot and the piss poor zombies server side. The combat needs to be as well.

this is why i'm happy to see Dean go, he has the vision but lacks the skill to implement it.
Now the ball is rolling he can leave it to more experienced dev's that could maybe get some real progress done.

 

I pretty much agree with OtisReaper1337YOLOSWAG10'4-69er on how things are being developed. There are lots of basic functions that are so far from near to right (yes I know it's an Alpha), that it makes you wonder wtf they are up to sometimes. Rocket had a great idea but he is not a great game designer let alone programmer. The worst one for me is zombie collision detection - it's as bad as the mod despite being overhauled.

We were saying a week ago or something on TS, imagine what kind of game DayZ would be in the hands of a proper dev studio like Bethesda or something?

It feels like there are some very, very flawed methodologies in how this game has been built, we all know the engine choice was nothing short of totally stupid. Rocket almost went as far as admitting that in a quote in his article:

That is HUGELY damning, and I'm gutted for every single person who bought this game to see that he doesn't actually think the game can be all it is supposed to be?!

I get his reasons for leaving, but there is an air of thinly veiled excuse to bail rather than legitimate reason. Put a proper project leader at the head then, to make sure resources are managed effectively, and sit him as a senior producer or something?!

 

Quite the opposite, the time put into these items is limited and very necessary. Putting the testing aside which even though you want the bugs sorted you don't think the in game elements are needed to do said testing; this is an early access game. Without the items, no one would pay for it, no one would play it and they needed that money to progress the project. This isn't a AAA title with publishers queuing up to fund it. It is a game based on a mod for another game that in the grand scheme of things vs AAA titles is still fairly obscure. Maybe if this game wasn't early access then they wouldn't be as numerous, but you still need to test the core systems of the game even with untextured placeholders.

I agree that this game has some serious fundamental issues, but to use that 'old chestnut again, this game is at pre-alpha stage of development. Look at Battlefield 4, it is a AAA title released to the public an utter state, it had and still has to some degree issues with things that every FPS game should have nailed down. Hit reg, game breaking bugs, glitches all over the place. As we all know, its a AAA title with a massive budget. Now just imagine playing BF4 in a pre-alpha or even alpha! BF4 isn't even alone, look at COD Ghosts.

Now look at DayZ, if this wasn't an early access game, they'd still be testing it internally. You wouldn't see the issues it has at the moment. I think people are being unfairly negative, grabbing onto sensationalist news headlines. Anyone who has been following Dean knows what his plans were, he is one of the more open and honest devs and with the gaming news being what it is, often that isn't a good thing. However I wouldn't have it any other way.

Maybe Dean Hall isn't the best dev in the world, but I'm not in a position to judge. I've haven't played games of this scale at this stage of development before. However looking at some of the recent releases, BF4, COD Ghosts, Skyrim etc etc etc, I'm sure they would be equally as broken at this point.

Have you not played Bethesda's games at launch then? They are one of my favorite publishers of all time, but they are slow development wise and the games almost always come out broken or buggy regardless. So yes, we might end up with a good game in 5 years, but then again it could be broken, buggy or worse.

Without the full unedited interview I wouldn't read too much into it. We all know how journo's like to cut and paste things to come up with headlines that grab peoples attention. People are too used to the sensationalist journalism that sadly passes for the norm these days. I suspect his vision for the game may currently not be technically possible, which is what he was getting at, but like you, I'm just guessing.

I don't know about you, but I've got my money's worth out of the game. I've had some great times with it, if it doesn't become what I hope it will eventually be then I'm going to be disappointed, but I'm not going to be crying about it.