New sound guy will start in December. The animations changed after the sounds were made. Sounds will be remade once we have finalized the animations +actions. This is the reason we stopped doing new sounds, too much of the game is changing to have to redo the sounds each week.
Last edited by jarlian on Wed, 20th Nov 2013 10:39; edited 1 time in total
I saw things like that in here and in other "woman problems" topics so...... Am I the only one that thinks some authorities needs to be alerted about Saner and him possibly being a rapist and/or kidnapper ?
Saner is not being serious. Unless its the subject of Santa!
I saw things like that in here and in other "woman problems" topics so...... Am I the only one that thinks some authorities needs to be alerted about Saner and him possibly being a rapist and/or kidnapper ?
Saner is not being serious. Unless its the subject of Santa!
the funniest thing about this particular signature is that by the time you realise it doesn't say anything it's to late to stop reading it.
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Sorry but so many people are boredo f dayz in general. Delaying dayz even further will not help their brand. Especially when dayz is not the unique game anymore. More and more releases on console/PC will challenge the arma 2 mod.
Release it now, early buyers (alpha testers) everyone else can buy the game full retail when it's done.
Rockets biggest problem is that he's got so many ideas but no thin red line. Using his way of thinking the game would never be released because it's not perfect.
Yup this is dead in the water if its out next year. There are as I have mentioned so many good mods around that no matter what fluff is in this standalone it wont be anything that has not already been done for free by the release time be it beta or full.
Yup this is dead in the water if its out next year. There are as I have mentioned so many good mods around that no matter what fluff is in this standalone it wont be anything that has not already been done for free by the release time be it beta or full.
I agree that it's taking too long. I disagree about the "anything" bit on content. Just a few bits of content that really surprised me:
-The single round in a weapon without a magazine.
-Writing and dropping notes on the ground with different coloured pens.
-Able to drop radio's and use another radio to create a sound distraction.
-Melee system a little comparable to Chivalry.
-Deliberate infect bandages to hurt other players.
Although I agree you could debate if this content would be needed to create a stable standalone base, it says something about the possibilities the standalone will have compared to the mod. Hall stated he didn't want to under-do things and I think that's important for a game to be successful.
Important note: Unless otherwise stated FPS refers to server FPS.
As most will know, we achieved quite a milestone with over 50 players on the server recently. While this is pretty normal for the mod, it's a big deal for the standalone as the architecture is entirely different and so much has been moved onto the server. So what does this mean?
The Situation
DayZ handles a minimum of 15000 dynamic objects. This is a huge amount of things to synchronize, in a MP environment. We implemented an entire rewrite of how objects are managed, linked with the "network bubble". Our chosen system was to implement an R-Tree approach and we have seen some success with this. Our aim was to reduce the massive FPS burden that all these dynamic objects bought, grinding the server to a halt. The main problem appeared to be scaling, in that the more players the worse it got.
Some details about server FPS:
■Not strictly "frames per second" on a client more akin to "simulation cycles"
■Max is 50 FPS
■Max simulation of player is 25 times per second
■Max simulation of zombie is 10 times per second
That means below 10 FPS, zombie behavior could be noticeably affected.
The Good news
We are no longer player number bound. It appears the server loses about 3 FPS per 40 players. We have only tested to 52 players currently. At that time, it was our first efforts with this number and we immediately found some missed areas of optimization, so with our next mass test we expect better results. The more players we threw at the server, its FPS numbers didn't change.
The Not-so-Good news
I was initially quite surprised because we still had a very high starting frame usage. 15000 loot items were using 1 FPS, that's right - just 1! But for some reason, 1000 zombies (despite all but 10 being at rest) were using a whopping 35 FPS. It didn't make sense and we've been going through this, optimizing and looking for the reason.
The Feedback from those involved
Overall, despite the performance concerns, with the server running around 8-12 FPS when under its heaviest load, the server was "reasonably responsive". Some people experienced inventory actions being a little bit slow occasionally, but generally it seemed things went okay.
Progress since the test
Since the test, we isolated two major crashes (resulting in server soak with constant players with no stability issue, no increase in RAM, and no decrease in FPS). We also optimized some areas. We're also busy hiding some areas and functions that are incomplete, as they either break or cause problems that we don't have the time to resolve before the Alpha's release. Perhaps one of the most serious gameplay issues we have at the moment is a very long time the player spends unconscious. It causes a problem for testing, so it's something we will be fixing before the release of the alpha.
Overall, the mood on development is quite upbeat. We're all pretty tired, as it has been very late and long working days. We had a new programmer and new designer start this week, and some assistance from the ArmA3 team to prepare the creation of our own audio team. We're looking forward to getting the Alpha out into Early-Access. I think that while some might be disappointed that this is not some feature-packed, graphically focused, masterpiece - we've been focused on addressing the major architectural issues and it's represented a massive body of work over the last 12 months.
We need a little more out of the server in terms of framerate. Just a little bit more, to ensure the inventory stays reasonably responsive. The remaining time will be spent tidying up remaining issues to try and give a more solid experience when we kick into the early access.
It really is an Alpha
I really can't emphasize enough - this is going to be an early access project on steam. It's a true-blue alpha. Massive areas of the engine were entirely reworked, involving a large team of people over the last 12 months. Much of what these achievements will enable won't be seen for many months - so I really plead for anyone who is on the fence to take a skeptical approach - watch streams, read reviews, watch some let's play and form your opinion. You could always come back to the game in three, six months time and buy it then.
Buying early will be a recipe for disappointment, it's a chance for those who want to be part of that whole process. For them, the process is as much as part of the game as the whole experience. For many, this is the opposite of what they want. To enable a smooth launch, we really are targeting it at a core audience who want to get deeply involved in a very barebones experience that is a platform for future development.
Hall is sending out alot of messages... I wouldn't be surprised if they release the alpha before christmas. They seem to be working long days to achieve this. I am gonna take his advice on watching streams and reviews first...
Quote:
So a bit of a progress report on the day that was.
We finished yesterday hopeful but cautious, as the server FPS was just not where we needed it to be realistically. Today was a day of highs and lows. I'll try and explain the difficulty we experience right now in the optimization.
The Challenge
The system was never designed or conceived to run such a huge amount of dynamic entities, over 11000 currently (in addition to the 2 or 3 million static map objects). So each system we refactor, redevelop or fix we bump into the next bottleneck. I think perhaps it is not unlike fixing traffic congestion, you fix it in one area only to find you have moved it somewhere else. This is what we are doing, trying to adapt and redevelop a system designed to handle perhaps 100 dynamic objects in a local area to one that handles tens of thousands distributed over tens of kilometers.
The Progress
We achieved some real success. We broke some things in the process, but nothing unworkable. As an example, we were refactoring how the "bot client" (a system that acts as a handling pot for messages sent to connected computers) handles error calculation (figuring out the difference between current and past, to see if it needs to notify clients of updates). Previously it was not only checking everything, all the time, but the engine was also checking with the bot client to see if it had received its messages. This is redundant as they are part of the same application; messages will always be received by the bot client.
However in optimizing this system (which involves the calculation of hundreds if not thousands of potentially different state management scenarios) we missed a few things, and this results in weird out of sync errors in inventory between the client and the server. Nothing that stopped many people playing, but an example of the pitfalls and challenges faced with optimizing.
Zombie pathing, collision, and tracking is "on par" with the mod for now, and in order to achieve what we want we need to redo the internal engine targeting methods to be more in line with the scripted targeting methods per the mod. This will take some time, so it's been timeboxed to be completed after the release of the alpha.
Our new programmer was straight into work, creating a sound system change that allows different footstep sounds to be played for different shoes worn. Awesome! Now if only we had the sounds to fill them in! Our big brother A3 has been loaning us people, including the A3 sound lead, to help set this function up. Some audio changes are already creeping in which is great to see and will be much appreciated for those joining into the alpha.
The Result
This puts us pretty much in the situation we need to be for server performance, assuming the remaining state calculation errors can be resolved quickly. Our new architecture can support much more, so the future will involve us tearing down the remaining bottlenecks but for now; they seem to offer a good enough structure to push forward on. This is good news. We'll be doing a full review of server performance tomorrow based on tonights metrics and make a decision regarding the server performance.
The Status
As I said yesterday, there is going to be quite a few bugs and problems - but our aim is to mainly turn off the unfinished features so that the bare-bones system largely just works. I think this gives people a good impression, rather than a bunch of unfinished stuff that simply doesn't work.
The real challenge for us now is to figure out what must be fixed versus what can be left until after alpha and redone from scratch properly.
not yet
and just a few guns
they need to get the basics right first
hope they get vehicles in quick though
it doesn't make much sense if there's no endgame at all - no rare equipment
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