DayZ

The gameplay programming team has been experimenting with several possible options in improving our server side performance, which you as survivors will directly see as improved infected responsivity and speed, faster user actions, and general overall improved responsivity to your interactions with the world. While we've made some strong improvements in regards to stability, we're not quite where we'd like to be with server performance.

critical issues we have on 0.61 Exp/Unstable.

VOIP Icon missing when using VOIP
Server Performance can dip below acceptable line
Character deformation when entering structure under high ping
Character model twitching when standing on bodies
Client side crashes (Several)
VOIP Volume balancing
Character sounds balancing
Characters hands stuck raised in some situations
Server side crashes tied to specific item
Character roll backs during some server crashes
Reconnecting / Manipulating weapon magazine can prevent magazine use

lets take a look at what our plans internally are for development beyond .61 hitting Stable branch on Steam. Once this occurs, the primary bulk of the DayZ development team will be switching their focus to the "Beta" milestone for DayZ. Beta for us is a major point in our development, and it goes without saying that it has its own challenge and hurdles. This milestone is focused on the following areas:

New Animation System
New Player Controller
New User Actions
Improved Vehicle Physical Simulation
And that big ol' feature/content backlog (that is dependant on these technologies)

Base Building Improvements
Electrical System items
Character Lifespan
New Vehicles
New Items & Weapons

So lets recap what we've covered in this:

0.61 hits Stable branch
Principle DayZ team starts work on our Beta milestone
This is a massive overhaul of our core gameplay
Focus on New Animation Sys, Player Controller, Enforce Script transition, New User Actions
We start hitting that content/feature backlog we have
This is a massive task for us, both technically and gameplay wise
While this is ongoing, a splinter team of 5 developers approx will start work on an interim 0.62 Visual Overhaul of Chernarus

We found and fixed that ugly crash, which was related to shooting and damaging world entities, disabled infected's loot was a side effect of commit related to networking optimizations - we have a fix for this, so infected's loot will be back today or tomorrow. Also, the new server browser has gotten some fixes (there was a client crash related to server browser) and improvements (you can see slot counts and also server browser will show you how many player's are waiting in login queue).

Now we have to deal with other client/server crashes (there are still too much of them), some synchronization issues (we have reports that client side correction doesn't work well sometimes) and we also prepared some server side performance optimizations, which are not merged to experimental branch yet.

A lot of people were also complaining about low FPS/movement jittering. This issue is not connected to renderer, it's a game side issue and it's related to new player's synchronization logic. Player is now simulated by fixed time step, before it was every render frame. That means player is simulated by the same number of steps on every computer, no one has an advantage with better hardware and every computer is sending the same amount of input messages to the server. The issue there is that interpolation between these simulation steps isn't done, currently we're working on fixing this.

Another big issue, character saving when server performance is low. This fix is ready for release.

And another improvement is ready for release, as we disabled AI freezing when the nearest player is farther than 500 meters. But first, we have to test this on experimental servers to see if it negatively affects server performance.

We're not still sure if we will merge something into 0.61 or if it will be available in later version, but here is a short list of what has been done so far.

infected AI - improved target selection
vehicled physics - improved wheels friction
vehicles physics - collisions with small items (bow arrows too )
infected spawning together with dynamic events (like helicrash)

Over the last few builds, we've been focused on both improving server performance and trying to tackle issues that were caused as a byproduct of work on optimizing client network traffic. While that may be frustrating for those of you excited to try out 0.61, it is absolutely critical for the development process that we are able to iterate, and test these changes under a larger load than internal QA resources allow.

Additionally, a good deal of the critical issues we've been seeing on the Exp/Unstable branch servers simply do not reproduce internally. Thus, us being able to test through the Unstable branch, and provide the team with the critical crashdumps, debug logs, and profiler data is is absolutely required for 0.61 to get to Stable branch on Steam as soon as possible.

For Stable blocking issues, we're currently tracking:

Characters twitching/stuttering when crossing rubble/bodies
Client Crash(es)
Some structures not having proper shadows
Items stuck in hands
Server crash(es)
VOIP Too Loud
Infected Vocalizations too loud
Naked Characters / Silent Gunshots

I fully expect the large portion of the Early Access playerbase that might not keep up to date on development to be surprised, and even push back on these changes once they hit stable branch. (Talking about coming difficulty increases in general.)

Last week, we were mostly focused on server performance improvements. We rewrote the updating strategy of network objects and the results are pretty good. This part is now about five times faster. On the other hand, it reintroduced the "naked characters" bug.

server performance is one of the major blockers of stable release

Another bug we found is that Central Economy (CE) limits for infected count didn't work properly, so too many infected were spawned over the entire map. This slows down server performance too much and it's the source of incorrectly updated character modifiers, or the "persistent unconsciousness".

We also decreased the simulation rate of distant AI units, so this should help the server performance a lot, and it should also lead to a general decrease in network traffic. All of these fixes are scheduled for merge into Experimental branch this week (it's possible that some of them are already merged by the time you're reading this).

In the last status report, I wrote about two blocking issues. The broken simulation of more players in a vehicle is now resolved, but because the server is now authoritative over player's position and movement, new small issue appeared. You won't be able to see some animations (like head movement) of remote players sitting in the vehicle. We're not planning to fix this this in 0.61 - we will be taking another look at this issue when the new player controller is merged in, because we want to avoid doing things twice.

Client side correction still doesn't work well and I'm not sure how long it will take to fix this.

Also, because we would like to release Stable build before Christmas, we will release it without vehicles. We will, however, continue releasing Experimental builds with vehicles included, when they get ready.

We've also made other vehicle simulation improvements, which will hit Experimental. Here's the short list of changes:

dashboards now reacts to switching vehicle lights
player can use zoom when sitting in the passenger seat
engine animation now correctly reacts to all user actions, damage etc.
cars can be drown in any water, not only in the sea
working particles from wheels
updated suspension physics and collisions
cars can now drive over small obstacles based on wheel's radius
suspension along with wheels now correctly reacts to land surface


improving infected movement and attacking. Pushing won't be solved, as there is still the issue with AI units having a new physical controller built on bullet physics, while players use the legacy Arma collision detection.

For those that weren't aware - we pushed 0.61.136770 to Steam stable branch yesterday. While there are still some issues we want to address (VOIP Volume, Supersonic cracks, Container contents desync, Infected footsteps volume, status modifiers stuck, and more) ... and pending build health potentially push these [fixes] over to Stable on our regularly scheduled Wednesday maintenance.


Fix for issues with container contents desync
Fix to address supersonic cracks
Adjustments of animal SFX levels
Adjustments of infected footsteps levels
Adjustment to Infected swing SFX


Status Modifier Updates
Adjustments to Dynamic Lights
VOIP Volume too quiet
Issues with Hand Slots on corpses
Some clients experiencing FPS drops

future 0.61 Exp/Unstable builds will also be pushed (more than likely after the holiday break) with changes to test network sync on vehicles in DayZ. These builds likely will have vehicles set up to spawn ready to drive, but don't expect that change to follow through to Stable branch!

growing beards, scars, bloody hands and others ... upcoming stamina system ... new animation system, new controller and state machine, new physics, new damage system, new user actions and others [always a wip].

Skills leveling system based on gained experience as we know it from traditional RPG games doesn't fit DayZ very well. ... Such system leads to mindless grinding of actions without any meaningful gameplay context .... Dedicated characters will be able to profit from current state of their specialty in terms of performing given specialty actions with shorter times, less materials used, wearing out tools less and more outcome gained as current specialty is multiplier for all of these. Not dedicated characters who don't care about specialty or those who feels like jack of all trades are not punished in this system as their specialty will be moving around the middle neutral position which means no penalty as both precise and rough actions will take default time, use default amount of material, worn out tools for default value and gain default outcome. [and other vague talk like that]

we're still working on fixing some major issues, like broken modifiers and statuses for some players. We might have a fix today on experimental branch. Looks like it's happening only when one player is connecting at the same time when another is disconnecting, which can happen very often for waiting players in the login queue.

About vehicles, we made some progress with synchronization. It's still not perfect and you will experience some micro-teleportation during driving when it hits experimental branch, so please keep in mind that it won't be in its final state. Currently there is just one known blocking issue and it's related to passengers not being able to get out of vehicle sometimes.

I don't want to give any promises, but it's still our target to release vehicles on experimental branch before Christmas and if we don't make it, it's priority No.1 at the beginning of next year.

- Adjustments to Infected Aggro
- Adjustment to preload of objects
- Infected now attack prone players

We're still working on improving server performance, which when poor can cause the following issues:

- Infected reaction speed may be reduced
- Character modifiers/status can become stuck or not update properly
- Infected can push characters through/into model geometry causing movement issues (unable to move in a given direction)
- Collision/Navigation in some complex structures can push your character around
- Issues with door states can occur
- Damage being delayed

We've all experienced a lot of server crashes over the last two weeks, so Peter and Mirek are providing an update on how we want to handle them.

Stable Issues:

Known server crash methods
Known duplication methods
Investigation into current security exploits (Player Gear, etc)
Server Performance degradation (This one impacts things such as player position sync, infected speed, and more)
Server Side Economy cleanup (And potential impact on server performance)

some behaviors that don't fit with the development teams intended design. Specifically, the distribution of firearms, and their attachments across Chernarus after a decent amount of uptime on a servers local storage.

we witnessed how the abuse of an exploit often used for duping results in server crashes in some cases, which became very common lately and essentially ruined the user experience.

Because of that, we were forced to make some actions to prevent it. First one is locking the hands slot while character is performing some action - thus, you are unable to remove an item or swap it with another until the action is finished. Second one prevents initiation of user actions on items directly from inventory slots.

These changes can be unpleasant as the old user action system and its quirks are now deeply rooted. However, I would like to remind you that new user actions are built on usage of hands slot exclusively, so it's not a bad idea to get used to it in advance.

0.61 goals

We (the gameplay programming team) are dealing with server performance and stability issues, and also with vehicle synchronization bugs.

0.62 goals

As this update will be mostly visual, there won't be any major changes coming the our team. We will mostly try merging in some of the critical fixes or performance/networking improvements.

0.63 goals

Internally, we have managed to deactivate the legacy damage system completely and now we're focused on fixing issues with our new damage system. We are also getting ready to hit the switch on all of the legacy SQF scripting, which is being replaced by Enforce Script, and we're removing some other parts of the legacy code, which is related to features we won't use anymore - such as the Arma AI, for example.

About the new player controller - we are finishing network synchronization of our new animation system. The next step will be the ability to control vehicles using the new character. This will be another big change, because now you are controlling the vehicle directly and character inside vehicle is controlled by vehicle simulation. This change will simplify vehicle synchronization and can also introduce some more options for modding.

As I mentioned in earlier Status Reports, we plan to change the entire western border of Chernarus. ... In fact, if you venture towards western border on .61, you can already see results of this task - two military roadblocks with traffic jams.

An important part of the whole western expansion task are changes and additions to the Chernarus railway network. Railway is a very important man-made feature that always helps survivors when they get lost.

The biggest change within the railway network is the addition of railway through the whole western border of Chernarus. That means you can follow railway track from Kamenka through Zelenogorsk, Myshkino, Vavilovo and finally to Novaya Petrovka. But that is definitely not all.

To make sure railway network is not forming some sort of a circle (that sort of looks like a model railway), two new railway exits were added. One from Novaya Petrovka to the western border, leaving Chernarus close to where military roadblock with fuel station is located. Second railway exit starts in Svetloyarsk and goes through Turovo and Dobroe, leaving the lands of South Zagoria in northern rocky valleys.

massive changes within Zelenogorsk. This town now hosts a big railway station that is split into three parts - civilian, military and industrial. Military base in Zelenogorsk went through a major face-lift and now offers more loot than ever before.

Heading further north, you may find that the huge railway and bus station in the middle of nothing near Vavilovo are missing - this is our intention as we did not really find it to be useful at that spot (and we have something better planned there). Instead, we have added a completely new railway station to Novaya Petrovka. This town is currently quite thr hot spot and with newly added railway station just north of Bashnya, it offers quite the view on the entire Novaya Petrovka valley.

If you head east of Novaya Petrovka, you may notice that railway here is much flatter than ever before. That is no coincidence, as we have found the old roller-coaster-like railway track here too immersion breaking, and so the whole northern railway track was redone from scratch, along with necessary terrain and object changes. And now that Novaya Petrovka has a railway station, the biggest northern town - Novodmitrovsk - could not be missed.

The appropriate spot was found and a new railway station was built south of Novodmitrovsk (just near the road that heads to Cernaya Polana). This railway station offers a spectacular view on Novodmitrovsk - the industrial railway station that was located outside of the Novodimitrovsk industrial complex has been moved into a much better place inside the complex itself, and now has a direct railway connection to Svetloyarsk.

And just when you continue along the tracks towards Svetloyarsk, you will, sooner or later, encounter the northern railway exit that crosses Svetloyarsk - Novodmitrovsk valley on a brand new stone railway bridge. Unfortunately, I cannot just yet share the pictures of it, as our graphics artists are still at hard work on it