Status Report - 24 Feb 15

Greetings Survivors,

As we move towards the 0.54 stable branch update, I’d like to cover a few points that you all should know. As with all updates during Early Access, this is a development build and thus has its own issues, bugs, and so on. If you encounter any of this, please open a ticket over at feedback.dayzgame.com.

More specifically, for those who may be experiencing issues seeing servers in the server browser – please make your way over to this thread on the Official DayZ forums for instructions from Community Manager SMoss, and BattlEye developer Bastian.

Part of the 0.54 is the tech required to support the redesign of our user interface. This is just the initial work required to support said changes, not the changes itself. Thus everything will –look- different, but not necessarily how we intend it to look by the time we hit 1.0. The user interface is just one part of the evolving technology coming in from the engine and gameplay programming teams, and will be iterated throughout Early Access.

As well, with 0.54 comes the initial implementation of the new animal A.I., this system is still early on so odd behaviour will be encountered. However even with the system in this early state, this is a strong step in the direction of a more robust, lifelike animal behaviour system. I for one look forward to the hermit-hunter lifestyle the next time I log in on my public hive character.

In addition to a large amount of new content to explore, new enterable structures, villages, redesigned areas and more – 0.54 features continued security enhancements, bug fixes and more.

Over the coming weeks SMoss will also be rolling out some new features over on the community side of DayZ.com, including a weekly Community Focus that showcases user created content, streams, art, and so much more. Head over to the Community hub at DayZ.com and take a look.

As always, developers are on hand to take your suggestions and feedback on the Official DayZ forums at forums.dayzgame.com.

Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

“As we are getting closer to the release of the next stable branch update of DayZ with version number 0.54, we are focusing more on tidying up and fixing the most annoying bugs and issues instead of working on new features or expanding existing ones. For example we identified and fixed a long timer related to synchronizing the temperature of objects, which was consuming relatively large chunk of communication between server and client. Fortunately it didn’t happened often or in large scale but it’s really great to have it fixed now with upcoming refactored fireplace which will become more usable with more items thus used by survivors. There was also few issues which was fixed related to the independent liquid types we introduced in last version, one worthy to mention is the issue which completely breaks character stomach, energy and water statuses.

I already mentioned the fireplace which is undergoing a refactoring for some time now and it’s getting seamlessly to the fixing and polishing stage. Now when there is the solid foundation of the system the next step is the cooking process in general. With plenty of the different food available in the game and three distinctive food processing types, to name them - boiling, baking and drying, things can get out of control really quickly. Well at least especially when we want to stretch the possibilities and interactions to the maximum and want to visualize the outcome of the process. What will happen when food is already baked and you start to boiling it? Do you need to pre-process the food before drying? What about moldy food? And plenty of other questions related to that topic which needs to be answered beforehand. After the intended cooking mechanics are in place and the central economy is working as it should, we can finally say good bye to the generous amount of spawned non-perishable food.

Most of you are probably waiting for the enrichment of the vehicles controls - manual transmission. We had some quality time already while trying it on our internal build, but it needs a little bit more time to be tweaked into the state which is safe for public release. Good thing is that with its implementation some of the issues with vehicles behavior were properly addressed so little bit of waiting doesn’t hurt. As far as vehicles parts goes I owe you at least quick update, their functionality is dependent mostly on the new inventory system that is currently being implemented and of course on the support from the extended vehicle simulation itself.

Last but not least we are making steady progress on the new AI for infected which is getting along nicely and I hope you will be able to experience it and its benefits soon on experimental versions before it hits the stable release later on, however animal AI will be released beforehand.

Start preparing your nerves for some intense encounters… see you in Chernarus folks! ”

Peter / Lead Designer