Rocket
16 DEC 2013

Everything you wanted to know about DayZ's Early Access

So we're finally here, and the Alpha is out on Steam Early Access, I'll try to cover off on some of the key stuff that will help you survive the process. The first most important thing:

Do not buy the game yet!

The release of our Alpha is about getting those who want to be involved from the ground up, up and into the process. What we do encourage you to do, is to read reviews, watch livestreams and lets play videos, and talk to your friends. The alpha is going out into large scale testing for the first time, this means many things (mostly bad) will happen such as nasty bugs, connection issues, lost loot, etc... Our aim right now is to present the bare-bone architecture and check that works, getting some feedback on the direction in the process.

Why not do a free alpha?

Not only does it make the project financially viable, but it means those participating in the alpha are those who have made a financial commitment. It also limits the numbers to those willing to part with their hard earned cash.

How will it be developed and updated from here?

We will be pushing builds to steam on a regular basis, be it monthly, weekly, or even daily as the need allows. Initially after release things will be quite chaotic, yet another reason to wait for a bit before purchasing to ensure the best experience. Updates will include not just bug fixes but also

What is the pricing model?

The game will get more expensive as it moves through its development, starting out fairly cheap and rising in price as its matures and more features get added. When you buy it once, you will have access to the whole DayZ Game. No decision or information exists about DLC or anything like that, but we can confirm that DayZ will not feature in-game purchases.

How can I run my own server?

We want to allow private hosting, which includes passworded servers, but we are finalizing changes to our database that will allow us to run a little data instance just for that server. This gives the best of both having a database and having a private community, without those private communities affecting the main database.

Important bugs and issues

Zombies
* Zombies clipping through floors/walls
* Zombies hitting through upper floors from the ground floor
* Low zombie numbers
* No zombie respawning

Zombies are a work in progress they are a very active area of development, we consider the current implementation a base level to commence further testing. Their AI was completely redeveloped, which means we need to come up with new (more efficient) methods of their interaction with the world, such as collision, as the ArmA way is not designed for thousands of AI to operate at once on this scale. This will be one of our most active areas of development.

Audio issues
* Loud opening of cans of drink
* Ambient animals making zombie noises

Due to the many changes to architecture, we have not been focused on audio. While some changes have been made we just hired a dedicated audio designer who will be teamed up with an audio programmer to completely revamp the way sounds work. We feel sound is very important for DayZ so we are really committed to this.

Map Issues
* Fences and objects clipping through buildings
* Loot sunk into the ground or floating

Pleased bug these up in the feedback tracker with accurate map locations and images. This be difficult without a map but posting images around the forums or other communities might bring others who recognize the location.

Loot Distribution
* Loot not spawning in every building
* Loot not well balanced

Balancing the whole world is very difficult. We also plan to centralize distribution of key items so there will be a global economy. For now, you have the basics and while this is not ideal it is enough for testing. We look forward to our exciting features with this!

Loot/Action Delays
* Loot taking long to take
* Splitting piles of loot not working properly
* Item out of sync in inventory

We heavily optimized the netcode but in some cases, we cut too deep. We will be isolating these as we go, but we already know this can occur (particularly obvious when first spawning in).

Game Exploits
* Combat logging protection not working

Currently many of our features such as queued loading, combat logging timeout, etc... have been disabled as there is the possibility that they will cause additional strain on the central server. Once we know that we can handle the load we will begin implementing these. We do expect this will be a long process, and we'll be working with the community to identify effective ways to deal with this. In the meantime, it is going to be

Matt Lightfoot
12 DEC 2013

How can I buy DayZ

DayZ is on only available via digital distribution via;
- Steam
- Bohemia Interactive Store

Installing and launching
- Install in Steam
- After the game has installed open steam game library
- Select DayZ from the list
- Click the Play button

What if the game doesn't install an update or becomes corrupt?
- restart steam
- verify cache
- restart computer
- reinstall the game

If this doesn't collect dxdiag.txt and dayz log file and submit to bugtracker.

Bug reporting
◾http://feedback.dayzgame.com/
◾Read the overview on required information for reporting issues - here
◾Register or login then report issues.
◾Search before submitting.
◾If you found your issue already submitted - vote up, do not ignore. Comment is less useful than your vote.

How to change game version
◾Open steam
◾Go to games library
◾Right click on DayZ
◾Select "Properties"
◾Select "BETAS" tab in the properties menu
◾Then select the desired version from the drop down box
◾Close the menu and the game should update/backdate to the requested version

Recommended System Specs
◾OS: Windows 7 SP1
◾Processor: Intel Core i5-2300 or AMD Phenom II X4 940 or better
◾Memory: 4 GB RAM
◾Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 or AMD Radeon HD 7750 with 1 GB VRAM or better
◾DirectX: Version 9.0c
◾Hard Drive: 14 GB available space
◾Sound Card: DirectX®-compatible

Is Steam required for DayZ?

Yes, Steam is currently required to run DayZ and to browse for servers.

DayZ is new to me what is it?

DayZ is a gritty, authentic, open-world survival horror hybrid-MMO game, in which players follow a single goal: to survive in the harsh post-apocalyptic landscape as long as they can. Players can experience powerful events and emotions arising from the ever-evolving emergent gameplay. There are no superficial tips, waypoints, built in tutorials or help given to players. Every decision matters, there are no save games, no extra lives, every mistake can be lethal. If you fail, you lose everything and you need to play again from the beginning with nothing but your wits, and your two hands. Fight the hostile environment, where every other player can be friend or foe and nothing can be taken for granted.

I can't see any servers what should I do?

Please click the internet tab at the top and ensure your ping filter is set appropriately.

How do I know if DayZ has received an update?

We will communicate large update via our social media channels and Steam Announcements. All updates will automatically download and be installed via steam.

Rocket
19 DEC 2013

The source of the big delay in getting DayZ out was because of the new architecture that we built. As part of this, we spent a great deal of time making very efficient and new ways of doing things. Many of the problems of ArmA for security were by design, doors used by the application to achieve its needs. In ArmA these could not be closed, in DayZ we no longer need them. We thought we had closed some of them, but we found one and we've fixed it. However because some people will have spawned items, we decided to wipe the database to provide a clean slate.

All existing characters have been killed, if you are currently logged in when you next join your character will be dead.

This is all part of the testing process, we've identified some additional areas of security and enabled some we had left off so we could really see the holes in the architecture without having to rely on the higher tier security measures. Because the vulnerability would allow a player to create items (and they had been) we have decided to wipe the whole database. We could not announce this, as we didn't want to encourage those exploiting to try and figure out a way of leaving items on the ground. We have killed all characters in the database, who existed after all our servers moved to the new version (0.29).

Please Note: It is more than likely that we will, much like other software, be continually identifying and patching these kinds of critical security vulnerabilities.

Important updates like this WILL attract database wipes during the alpha process.

Rocket
19 DEC 2013

Status:
◾Pushed to experimental branch

New:
◾Config: added anim hooks for zombie feeding(should allow for zombie to deal damage to unconscious players)
◾Config: greeting with 2 handed weapon now possible without disarming
◾UI: Inspect option in the inventory screen (shows item in 3D, draft system only)
◾Engine: Servers with incompatible version marked in the server browser
◾Engine: The „Player uses modified data“ message is removed from CHAT
◾Design: you can craft splint and fix broken limbs with it
◾Design: players who disconnect when unconscious will die
◾Design: players who disconnect when restrained will die
◾New weapon: Magnum .357 Revolver + ammo

Fixed:
◾Config: removed a small delay before the animation for un-shouldering a weapon starts playing when changing weapons (kneel and prone)
◾Config: fix a minor issue with one handed items not being correctly placed in right hand for a surrender transition
◾Config: m4 bolt and magazine animation improved
◾Config: adjusted collision shape for armed player(should fix occasional issues going up stairs)
◾Config: fixed an issue where unshouldering/shouldering weapon while moving forward caused the player to stop
◾Animations: Sprint updated (Unarmed) - Unarmed sprint faster now
◾Animations: Mosin Nagant Reload - Hand doesn't clip into scope when opening and closing bolt after each shot, weapon more stable now
◾UI: Early Access warning dialogue
◾Engine: Fix of players being able to talk globally when dead through Direct Chat
◾Design: damage is transferred from closed can to open one
◾Design: licking a battery now displays the battery's state properly
◾Design: wooden sticks model fits inventory slots better now
◾Crash: Occurs when pushing details twice on MP server browser
◾Engine: Updated rain texture with refraction
◾Design: Player blood and health not regenerating naturally

Rocket
20 DEC 2013

Most of the team members are going to take a well-deserved vacation week with their families, so please be patient with us for the much slower pace in the coming two weeks. Thanks to all for the incredible support and interest in the game so far. 2014 is going to be an exciting year for DayZ. Merry Christmas.

There is a great deal of topics dealing with this, so I thought I would confirm what we will definately be doing, and give some background why they are not in yet. List not exhaustive and will be added too as time allows.

More Zombies:
Target delivery: Ongoing

We absolutely plan to have more zombies. To cope with the current total dynamic entity count of over 10,000 we have had to make a great deal of optimizations. If loot is completely removed, we can easily run 4000 zombies in our debug builds. In the new year we will be optimizing the way we handle dynamic objects (such as loot) a great deal more which should give us significant savings - but the change was considered too risky to be done prior to alpha launch. If we had problems, we would have delayed the project further by months.

Multithreaded Server
Target delivery: Early 2014 & Ongoing

To assist with increasing player and zombie numbers, we will be parallelizing the server architecture. Currently RV does offload some extra threads off to other cores, but this is for rendering and file handling - neither of which are issues for the dedicated server which uses no rendering and has a greatly reduced file footprint. This should provide some very, very dramatic improvement in performance where additional cores are available. Note, however, that this will increase the complexity of hosting DayZ - it may mean that we see a greater dispersion in the capacities of DayZ servers.

Respawning Zombies & Loot
Target Delivery: Early 2014

Currently to have the server check if something needs respawning can cause an issue with performance. We did not want to go with a "scripted" solution for respawning, and it is expensive on server performance. Player spawning on the coast is conducted by the engine, and we are going to employ a similar process for managing zombie and loot spawn (possibly parallelized). This is a high priority task and zombie respawn at least is very close to being implemented.

Server Management Options
Target Delivery: Ongoing

Additional options for those hosting servers will be rolled out as soon as we can. We want to encourage a "hardcore" mode that will operate on a separate database, featuring things like first person only, no hide body, etc... In addition, we also want to provide passworded servers that will operate on their own shard of the database. This shard could be grouped, so that a group of passworded servers could operate on their own database. Eventually, we would like to see these different communities on their own db running their own variations of DayZ to meet specific communities needs.

Animals & Hunting
Target Delivery: Early 2014

The AI for animals is based on the new AI for zombies (some will notice the old local ambient animals making zombie noises and acting aggressively!). We have a cutdown version of this we will be using for hosting animals, including those from ArmA2 as well as new animals such as a deer. We already have the meat models made, and we have the basics of cooking. So this functionality is quite close. It does have an impact on the server, and at the moment we could only run about 300 animals per server without seriously impacting performance (until we have started additional server optimization).

Additional Anti-hack and Security
Target Delivery: Late 2013

We are working on additional anti-hack to supplement the implementation of VAC. We have been working closely with Valve for VAC as well as our other anti-hack partner. Details of this will be released shortly. The most important thing to remember is that anti-hack is really the secondary defense - the primary defense should be good architecture. We have already identified (and fixed) several key vulnerabilities in the three days since launch. There are more we know about and I am sure more we don't. The purpose of this early phase of alpha is to identify and fix those. As our architecture now relies on the server controlling and adjudicating everything, we can close off locally controlled functions and back doors - which is what we have been doing.

Cooking & Gathering Resources
Target Delivery: Early 2014

This is a system that was not completed prior to the alpha launch so is half-done. Additional work will be done and pushed when we can. This will include gas cookers (already ingame) and the creation of fireplaces. We will be allowing players to gather resources from the world, such as firewood, stones, etc... This will then be utilized by the existing crafting system

DayZ Developers
31 DEC 2013

New:

Design: Balancing of player spawns (ongoing)

Server: Enhanced Server-side security & customization options

Design: .357 Magnum Speedloader should now spawn

Server: First Person only servers are now supported (Seperate Hive coming later on)


Fixed:

Design: Player corpses should no longer despawn upon disconnect

Server: Respawning should now function properly - in some cases you may have to wait a few seconds. (during high death/respawn times)

Design: 357 Magnum spawning fixed

DayZ Developers
2 JAN 2014

New:

Design: Balancing of player spawns (ongoing)

Server: Dead player cleanup (time based)

Design: M9130 Bayonet can now open cans

Fixed:

Server: Dedicated Server crash related to player skeleton

Server: Player location rubberbanding

Server: Large delay in item manipulation and "inventory tetris"

DayZ Developers
8 JAN 2014

Please keep in mind that we do not expect to reach Beta status sooner than the end of 2014.

The initial weeks of the DayZ Alpha were really busy despite the holiday season. We’ve received incredible support from you, DayZ users, with over 875 thousand copies of the game sold in just three weeks and thousands of useful posts and reports that already led to some notable game improvements during the holiday period with much more to come in 2014. The level of support and confidence we have received from the DayZ community makes us even more dedicated to the game than we were in the past 16 months of DayZ standalone development.

We’re already seeing unbelievable player stories happening every day in the game even in its very limited Alpha and we’re focused to make huge progress in 2014 on many areas of the game. In the short term, we’re going to focus on the most critical problems you’re experiencing atm and at the same time we’re going to work on the road to the DayZ Beta. We’re going to re-evaluate the roadmap plans in the second half of January but here is a list of the existing top priorities on our to-do list to make DayZ really meet or hopefully exceed your expectations:

•Animals & hunting
•Cooking & gathering resources
•Playable user customizable vehicles
•Player created constructions in the environment
•More complex interactions with the environment and crafting options
•Streamlined user actions and interface
•Control and animations expanded and improved for fluidity
•Support of user mods and more flexibility for user hosted servers and game types
•Server performance, stability and security
•Upgraded graphics and physics engine (including ragdoll, etc.)