Interviews

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www.pcgamer.com/2012/06/22/day-z-arma-3-interview-on-left-4-dead-skyrim-player-emotion-and-in-game-disease/

www.pcgamer.com/2012/06/23/day-z-arma-3-interview-optimization-map-design-radios-porting-day-z-into-arma-3/

Rocket the mod development lead
Posted 14 May 2012

The only reason the mod works, is because of what I ripped and hacked out of the engine to make it work. In my opinion, this is where many mods have come a bit unstuck. They keep adding to an already overworked engine. I started from the ground up and optimized everything until I was happy with it. The use of even single array was carefully considered due to its performance impact.

While things will be added through this alpha, the philosophy of keeping true to the core focus will remain. All new features are tested against these pillars of game design. During pre-alpha I ripped many features out, as they were somewhat inconsequential to the core experience.

I believe a good game experience is just as much about what you don't put in, as what you do. I have a strict rule of not porting anything across - everything must be rewritten from the ground up (but can use the structure and approach of something else) to ensure it is custom built for its purpose. The only exception is the dynamic weather system, which is currently pending a new system that is custom built.

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FPSgeneral
Dean 'Rocket' Hall Pledges to Fight Hacking in DayZ
22 AUG 2012
by NateRios

DayZ creator, Dean 'Rocket' Hall, has pledged to fight hacking in his massively popular ArmA 2 mod, DayZ. Hacking has been a plague in DayZ ever since the game starting getting so popular, and something that clearly pains Hall. There isn't a whole lot that you can do to combat hackers, outside of trying to stay one step ahead of them.

Rocket said, "It's something that you never completely solve, you just have to keep on at it. Arma, as you know, is a very trusting engine, because that's what it was designed to do. It was designed for a team of like-minded individuals to play. So that's the first thing that we'll be able to push forward with. I don't like to say that we'll lock it down, but we'll get the experience polished for PvP. We'll be able to start dealing with the hacking issues properly, and also lock down some of the key bugs."

Rocket continued, saying that "the only way to deal with it is to go back to basics. So we'll go back there and then hopefully claw our way back."

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DayZ Development Team
by Rocket
15 OCT 2012

...Our artists have been very busy, methodically going through all buildings in Chernarus and adding interiors... The village I used to take the screenshot in now has all its buildings enterable, including the sheds. ..., I’ll try to put forward some more screenshots of our artists work in the next few weeks.







DayZ Development Team
by Rocket
15 SEP 2012

The integration begins

... Most of the planning has to be done as it goes, with much of the project simply reacting to things that have happened. This is not a good way to start a development project.

Much of the effort has been spent establishing the project, getting the right people setup, a new build process, art pipeline working, contracts and agreements made, legal stuff sorted - all the stuff that is necessary to enable the project to work. During this time I completed a very heavy and protracted public relations tour - I could almost make a fulltime job simply out of doing interviews.

What has happened

We have setup all the required pipelines to best push the project forward. The standalone engine we are using is a branch of Take on Helicopters, which itself is a branch of ArmA 2 Operation Arrowhead. We chose this because of its stability, ease of development, very achievable optimization, and the fact that our programmers are the architects of the engine - the very people who built it from the ground up over ten years...

What is happening now

...Our programmers have been reviewing the way forward on the critical issues, such as bugfixing, hacking, and security...

Art is continuing with reviewing all the buildings, ... to make them look nicer... We are now commencing work on the redevelopment of the infected people (zombie) models themselves. This will be an exciting area of work for our artist who is dedicated to this task...

What is blocking us

Probably the biggest stumbling block, is me (rocket). I need to stop doing interviews and focus on making the game... We have great support from the community, developers, and the industry as a whole - it is up to us to deliver for that promise...

DayZ Development Team
by Rocket
15 AUG 2012

That’s right, this is actually happening - DayZ will be developed as a standalone game, with me as project lead, by Bohemia Interactive. This is the fairy-tale outcome for a mod that many would have said impossible four months ago... The project will follow the Minecraft development model; fast iterations with the community alpha available for a heavily discounted price...

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” - Winston Churchill

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DayZ Development Team
by Rocket
19 OCT 2012

The interiors do look very clean. Adding gore or deterioration can quickly be overdone, so we feel our first task is to create the interiors and ensure we are happy with the gameplay and quality of the basic texture work - then we will go through to add elements more authentic to the situation. Overall, we believe the experience should have a style more akin to “The Road” rather than gore for gore’s sake. When you find gore in DayZ, it will mean something and have impact. In fact, it will be most likely due to tragedy or betrayal involving a human player. This way, we believe what happens in the world matters, instead of simply adding some crashed buses and blood everywhere.

In these screenshots the greater range of buildings that now have interiors is displayed, from the large office buildings, to the hospitals, metalwork factories, through to small cottages. Certainly, we think there will be some compelling events occurring the stairwells of the Hospital’s and office buildings!

The first shot is a sneak peak at an entirely new area created on the map by Ivan and Martin, the two developers at Bohemia who are currently being held in Greece. They conducted a revamping of the map to add some new areas, tidy up bugs, and rebalance the placement of ponds, fountains, and such. Ivan was a big fan of DayZ, and the key architect behind the original Chernarus map - so we’re excited to get the map back out into everyone’s use. The usable area of the map is actually extended by their work.

Next week we start the final phase of our data migration, which will then result in some new screenshots demonstrating some Take on Helicopter vehicles ported over, giving DayZ access to many types of vehicles from military helicopters, to fire engines, police cars, and all the military and civilian vehicles you are used too from ArmA2.

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DayZ Development Team
by Rocket
28 NOV 2012

This means we have been very bold with our architectural changes.

We are moving to the server-client MMO architecture model. We are making weapons and items ‘entities”, meaning we can support customization and variables assigned against items. As discussed previously, this is a massive departure from the previous engine. In many ways, once this phase is completed - one could effectively say that DayZ is running on a new version of the engine. While the graphics may look the same (for now), under the hood so much is being completely rewritten.

Let me make this very clear, our foundation release (targeted for this year), is simply the beginning. We are committed to a period of development of at least 12 months beyond that. Our aim is to make this foundation strong, and use that time to improve the mechanics not through hacks, but through sound and quality development. Our initial build will test that this base architecture works.

I want to confirm the following:
• Most settings will be forced server-side, such as gameplay and graphical settings (view distance, shadow distance, etc…). The exact nature of this and specific settings is very much subject to change, but this will be a significant departure from how it is currently with the mod.

• Release will be on steam, using many of steams key features such as delta patching, VAC, server browsing technology. Patches to steam can be deployed by the click of a button in our build pipeline thanks to new technology developed by Steam, that is making our process extremely easy and exciting. We are very pleased that Steam is working with us so actively to make DayZ a great game and supporting us with quality features. I met many at the team at Valve at PAX, and really want to get them playing the game and getting their feedback to help in development. In using Steam for authentication, distribution, server browsing, etc… we are able to tap into their awesome resources in terms of scalability. The only hardware we then need to manage is the central database, which we already have some experience managing thanks to the DayZ mod. This means we can work towards avoiding the usual launch problems, by relying on the experience of Steam.

• I’m incredibly thankful to people like Chet Faliszek (creator of L4D) who has been very supportive and helpful to me.

• • The UI has been completely reworked, focusing on simplicity. We have studied games that we believe are leaders in this area, such as Minecraft, and are focusing on providing functionality without fancy complexity in this regard. This will make the player more engaged with their environment

• Animations are being cleaned up to feel more responsive. This means trimming some transitions, so that you get quicker feedback from pressing the key to action (removing he “clunkiness” or “sluggishness”)

• Player clothing is being implemented including: headwear, jackets, trousers, footwear, etc..

• Weapons and items are now “entities”. This means they are more object oriented in structure, allowing weapon customization, degradation - the possibilities become endless. This is a major, huge, shift in engine architecture.

• The Server controls character actions, a player’s client sends its requests and the server decides if this is possible. Our lead programmer in the company, Ondrej Spanel, is working on this currently. I believe this is one of the most radical changes ever implemented in the engine since Operation Flashpoint was released, and turns DayZ from an FPS into a true MMO.

• A full-time map designer has also started work on ChernarusPlus now, redeveloping the world, placing new assets and buildings, fixing bugs, and creating new areas. This is in addition to the work done by Ivan and Maxell and will continue for the remainder of DayZ development.

• We have some outstanding former community members working on the project as paid members of the team. I hope to showcase their work and interview them on here for you, in the coming weeks and months. We are actively searching for more to bring them onto the team.

The future:

We are still working towards a target for an initial foundation before the end of the year. But we will slip this date if needed, we will not compromise the project for the short-term gain of meeting this date. The reasons for any slippage would be publicly discussed, and would most likely represent a failure personally on my part to plan correctly. We will be assessing the results of our major architectural changes at the end of next week, and reporting the results to everyone when we have assessed that.

Screenshots, videos, etc… will unfortunately have to wait. As they say, loose lips sink ships.

[swfwebmaster]

Radio Silence Broken
Rocket
4 JAN 2013

Why so quiet, Rocket?

Kju (ArmA legend and DayZ team member) made a good point that I should really say something, linking me to the points made in dayzmod.com/f...-under-the-tree - So here I'm going to just sort of give a literal off the cuff not-announcement.

I'd taken a deliberate step away from the spotlight, particularly given the scandals that have gone on with things with the WarZ. I won't dwell on this issue, only to say that while gamers can tell the difference between the two products - many people can't and it became quite unpleasant for me when I became approached both in real-life and through the internet associating me with the War Z.

Meanwhile, development continued at an even greater pace with the entire project beginning to gel even more than before. I won't give any specifics here, I think the specifics should come with something that you can actually see/play and that will make much more sense. I'm currently in an airport lounge in Sydney, on the long journey back to the Czech Republic.

The year 2012

I can't really even begin to summarize what that year has been for Bohemia, the project, or for me - so I won't try. What I will do is thank everyone for being involved, for making something really amazing out of the idea I started with. There are thousands of people who have and are now directly involved in developing the mod, and it's really amazing for us all to see the wonderful user created content etc coming out. So thank you, to everyone. Because of everyone's support we're now "living the dream" and turning this basic idea into its own game. In fact, we've gone even further than I could ever have hoped... we're not only making the game, we're redoing the engine specifically for the game

Where is the game? Where is the Tumblr post?

Obviously they aren't there yet and I promised that. I also promised more contact, and then I disappeared off the face of the Earth. Now isn't really the time to get into all that, so all I am going to do is say that on all those account I failed and I'll deal to those in good time.

I'm really sorry that on those three counts I've failed, hopefully in time the reasons will all make some sense and the end product will justify all the madness of this year. Now is not the time for me to rush out a tumblr update, nor rush out a build. Both of those will, for the moment, need to wait - and both mean I didn't do what I said I would.

So... 2013?

Let me just say this:

Every progressive day during December, I have gotten more and more excited about the Standalone and it's potential. Each day the whole team is seeing the strength of the development and we're very pleased with how it has been progressing.

Thank you everyone for your support, and particularly, for your patience. Also a big thank you and shout out to the forum mods for their hard work.

[backtothefight64]

For the DayZ fans,

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Rocket
7 JAN 2013

Where is the Standalone Release?
I suppose I should start with the question everyone wants to know… where is DayZ Standalone? Obviously, it’s not here. At Eurogamer I said that DayZ had to be out before the end of the year and that’s come and gone. I still stand by that comment, to achieve what we had originally wanted, we did have to be out by the end of the year - and we’ve failed to achieve that.

Put simply, DayZ Standalone isn’t here because we had the chance to go from making a game that was just the mod improved slightly, packaged simply, and sold - to actually redeveloping the engine and making the game the way we all dreamed it could be. This blew any initial plans we had dictated to pieces.

The plan going forward
The plan from here is straightforward. We will be releasing a closed test imminently, during which approximately 500-1000 people will assist in ensuring our architecture is correctly functioning. This closed test will be focused purely on architecture, not the game design. Once we have confirmed fixes for issues arising from the closed test, we will then reschedule an internal date for our public release.

What has been done?
One of the most profound and major architectural changes has had its initial implementation completed, this is the overhaul of the inventory system. In fact, the inventory and item management system was completely removed and rewritten from the ground by Jirka, one of the original engine programmers. The work that has been completed on this groundbreaking, and it going to fundamentally change the DayZ experience.

You scavenge for items now, as individual parts, picking up pieces rather than piles, looking for cans on shelves or under beds. The new system opens the door for durability of items, disease tracking (cholera lingering on clothes a player wears…), batteries, addon components, and much more. If you shoot a player in the head to take his night vision, you will damage the night vision. The changes to this inventory system are huge.

An additional area of change has been to make the inventory system more intuitive along with a key focus on providing visceral feedback on your progress through what inventory you have. The use of drag-and-drop, 3D models rather than 2D pictures, and being able to add items/clothing to your character in 3D in the inventory screen - have all come out of months of design work and research. I’m extremely pleased with the results of Jirka and Hladas, two of the programmers who have been working on implementing the design ideas. I believe the changes to this inventory system will fundamentally change the nature of the DayZ experience.

We are not at the point where we can release meaningful videos or screenshots of the system, but we have now confirmed the base architecture is working in game. Likely, the first that will come out about the inventory system will be during the closed test when people are actually using it.

UI Changes
ArmA community legend kju has been part of the DayZ development for some time, and is now one of your key development members. He has been working with our CEO (Marek) and me to develop the DayZ UI. We have been greatly inspired by Minecraft to make the UI simple and effective, rather than flashy and complex. All our art and code efforts are going into the game, the UI is being designed to be straightforward and functional just like in Minecraft.

Art Progress
A huge amount of work is being completed on art. I’m including some more additional pictures taken from around Chernarus. We have some massive plans now that all interiors have been completed, as rather than moving them on to other projects we are now giving them exciting new things to create.

One of the new artists on the team is a texture artist, and has been working on revising the textures for our new building interiors so they look more post-apocalyptic. Some of these changes can be seen in the work-in-progress pictures I have included.

Map Progress
The lead architect of the revised (and original) Chernarus map, Ivan Buchta, is still imprisoned in Greece on charges of espionage - and is a great loss to the team. Luckily, through letters, Ivan is able to provide some input and insight into the development of the map. Regardless, the continued imprisonment of him and Martin Pezlar has a significant impact on our ability to redevelop Chernarus.

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Audio Only

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From the forums and Rocket's responses:

Q: Do we actually spawn in our underwear?
A: No, but you can drop your clothes, or I guess someone might order you to drop them.

Q: How do we get to be one of the testers?
A: Those who are testing will get the game for free, and never have to pay for future versions. Their job will be tough. We're starting by rewarding the forum moderators, reddit moderators, dayz mod development and community support team, etc...

Rocket also did a quick Q&A on liriks livestream, these are the (paraphrased) answers:
- Some twitch streamers will be in the test
- There will be an NDA in the closed test, but streaming will be allowed.
- Release (test) could be any day now

- Clothing is unisex
- Weapons will have durability and there will be weapon cleaning.
- They want to allow modding later on, once the game is stable/secure.
- Cars/vehicles will be phase two priority, Rocket wants to redo them completely so you can change parts, engines, build, mix and match Mad Max style.
- Rocket hopes to be able to "Mad Max style" build cars, interchanging parts and engines etc.

- More blood gore, not cheesy though
- Individual bone fractures will exist in a few months, it's not complete but the engine architecture is done.
- DayZ will likely be ported to xbox if sales are over 1 million.

- The game is heavily optmized, our three programmers are the people who made the engine, there WILL be some problems, at least for the first three months but most of that will be server oriented, most fps improvements at client end will probably be soaked up by graphic improvements.
- Night and lighting? The artist and programmer who revised the lighting for ArmA3 will be helping with DayZ, closer to release.
- The new skin shader is from the ARMA III engine
- Adding children to the game has been considered.