Status Report 30th Oct: Weapon Resting and more

[Natje]

Was reading through the status report, when I came across something.

There's so much new stuff coming, including melee with guns, new combat system, and consideration of weapon resting possibilities.

status report:

"Every item can be used as melee weapon, and with redesigned controls comes a fresh breeze to melee fights as there is a difference between one click which performs quick attack and continuously charged heavy attack which is performed by releasing the melee button. This allowed us to finally use firearms as melee weapons - bayonet stabs, buttstock hits or pistol whips. Best of it all is that we removed so called aggressive stance which was mandatory to attack with melee or shoot from firearms and it felt forced as it was too static. Now readying the firearm for shooting is a continuous action so once you release use button your firearm is lowered to waist level. Prone position and bipod can make your life easier as far as keeping your firearm ready, also we would like to examine weapons resting in the future. Items can be dropped, rolled or thrown which is especially useful for grenades."

(Pre-edit the post was aimed towards weapon resting alone, and asking what people thought about it(Yay or Nay), and therefore certain comments might refer to that.)

[Jamie]

I love this. It saves me carrying a baseball bat to use as a torture weapon. I can now pistol whip their ass! +1

[Hassan]

Damn, must've missed that in the Status Report.

I personally don't see an issue with it, it makes sense.

[Defiance]

This sounds awesome. The status report this time around was pretty awesome. .59 is going to be sweet.

[Natje]

Really looking forward to Mosin with bayonet.

It's a bloody spear, and now it'll be actually useable as a spear.

[Jannik]

Yay +1

[Spartan]

I remember when i just bought the game and found a bajonet for my mosin. Curious if it worked I charged a zombie and just ran against it.

Yes, that was disapointing and i am really looking forward to a useable bajonet

[Natje]

(Almost) full status report copy pasta for those who haven't read it yet:

New Animation System: While we've made strong gains on this that has enabled the design team to start working on a complete rewrite of all player actions currently in game (demonstrated in the last SR) we're still working on the last few areas that -must- be completed in order to fully merge the player over to the new player controller. We'll keep you all updated on this.

Infected: As we mentioned in the last Status Report - Infected will be making a return in .59 - but as covered in the PAX presentation there are changes we'd like to look into making to the infected, specifically in the area of spawning and distribution that should go miles towards a more rewarding (and scary!) experience when it comes to crawling through cities looking for gear.

.59 Experimental: As of the time that I boarded my flight to PAX Aus - the last remaining major blocker towards moving this build to the exp branch was sitting specifically on vehicle position sync. It is critical we at the very least provide a more enjoyable experience with vehicles than on previous builds, especially considering the increased quantities. The gameplay programming team has been working hard on doing just this.

Aside from the stuff mentioned above - we do have a few cool things to share with you guys.

As those of you who watched the TwitchCon presentation, you know part of the character progression path we've been working on in addition to soft skills - is the life span of the character. Specifically shown at TwitchCon as beards for male characters. What we didn't share at the time was that we were a bit further along with this than just a few renders of male heads. 

We still need to work on the lifespan impact for female characters - but we do have growth over time functioning on internal builds as seen in the above video. Animations for shaving still need to be completed, but the functionality for choosing to remove said beard as there as well.

In the same vein as character life span - I spoke today about how the initial skill set for soft skills was functioning internally (albeit without UI elements allowing you to track said skills). 

(Video of cutting up corpses)

In the video above, we have accelerated the growth of the skillset that governs the amount of resources you gain from harvesting. (In this grim case - it happens to be a human body) The more a character performs an action that falls under this skillset, the higher yield the resources he gains from the attempt. In the accelerated video we have a character who very often skins and quarters bodies for meat, bone, and so on. As the character goes through each body, we accelerate the skill gain for the purposes of the video - but you see that with each action/attempt - the yield of meat is increased. 

We want to kick off the character soft skills with base skills in the areas of: Medical, Resource Gathering, Repairing. Once we see how these operate, we can expand upon them further.

The little icing on the cake I like about the video is how Peter snuck a little treat in there that you can easily overlook.

As the character skins and quarters the body, his hands and forearms are covered in a bloody mess. The character -can- wash this off should they go to a body of water, or have some on him. Alternatively, he or she could just as easily choose to keep this appearance. 

Oh! Before we move on to Peter's bit this week - Things are looking really good for the 75 player servers, I'm excited to see how it plays out on experimental.

Questions? Suggestions? Make sure to head over to the official DayZ Forums and join the Status Report discussion thread for this week.

Dev Update/Peter

In the last status report, there was a nice showcase of new implementations of user actions which are currently work in progress. There was an idea back in the day (and I mean it was a really long time ago, more then year and a half) about simplifying of how user actions operate and streamlining controls in general.

User actions as we know them are great as they are very robust and allow usage of anything in any way you like, which leads for such a great ArmA 2 mod as DayZ to happen. Imagine if there were only shooting and door opening - such a situation would leave you with a very limited possibility for application of your creativity as designer. On the other hand user actions are also known for their not so friendly behavior like scrolling menu, issues with precision and our underlying implementation of actions on own character and others in SQF paired with old and limited animation system led to many problematic situations, to mention some, no elegant way to cancel action, spamming actions or serious ones like duping.

New user actions and controls are designed to be modern, user friendly and of course to address all issues which we run into with the old system. Actions will be contextual, for example performing same eat action will feed yourself, or your friend when you are looking at him. They can behave as single event or can be performed continuously, think of flipping the switch by clicking the use button or drinking from a water bottle while holding it. You can perform them during other animations, so you will be able to eat while traversing countryside. Canceling continuous action can be simply done by releasing the use button. All this and more means that scrolling menu will become redundant in the end as all possible situations are covered through different usage, based on context and duration of action.

Every item can be used as melee weapon, and with redesigned controls comes a fresh breeze to melee fights as there is a difference between one click which performs quick attack and continuously charged heavy attack which is performed by releasing the melee button. This allowed us to finally use firearms as melee weapons - bayonet stabs, buttstock hits or pistol whips. Best of it all is that we removed so called aggressive stance which was mandatory to attack with melee or shoot from firearms and it felt forced as it was too static. Now readying the firearm for shooting is a continuous action so once you release use button your firearm is lowered to waist level. Prone position and bipod can make your life easier as far as keeping your firearm ready, also we would like to examine weapons resting in the future. Items can be dropped, rolled or thrown which is especially useful for grenades.

I'm convinced that with new user actions and controls coupled with new animation system and physically based character, DayZ will become a fluid, modern and pleasant experience. I'm looking forward to this day, as with these changes it will feel more like DayZ 2.0 than with any others.

See you in Chernarus folks!

---

Edited the post to be more ambiguous, instead of only referring to weapon resting, as it's silly to glare at that alone when there's so much so slobber over.

[Ellie]

Im so looking forward to it !

[Ramon]

Im so looking forward to it !

+1 HYPED for the zombies and the 75 player servers.

[Nightngale]

Nice, they are making it so you will be able to shave the beard! Everyone is going to be running around with them, so it might become rare to see a clean shaven guy.

[StriderV]

Lots of good things coming up, can't wait!

[mazerunner9]

I have never even found a bayonet in this game. Does anyone have an idea where they can be found?

[Nolan]

Hopefully they keep the aggressive stance in as an option, would fuckin suck if you couldn't have your gun raised, lol.

[Clare]

I have never even found a bayonet in this game. Does anyone have an idea where they can be found?

They currently don't seem to be spawning in this patch (0.58). In previous patches you could rarely find them in military tents and were purely cosmetic when attached to a gun. You could take the bayonet off and use it as a regular knife though.

[Basko]

#hype

Can't wait to hit something with my crossbow buckstock

[Domi1991]

i cant wait to see zombie hords, 1shot and you can run for your life

oh and ofc some major fixes in the loot system because i think some/most loot doesnt even spawn atm

[Guest]

pistol whips

[Parahybana]

.59 will be great, I can't wait to see all the new animations and items.

[Foxi]

I've been hoping they would add this for quite some time now. It looks like they have put a lot of thought into it as well. Cant wait to see how it looks.

[Ronan]

I am really looking forward to this!

[Oliv]

I have never even found a bayonet in this game. Does anyone have an idea where they can be found?

They currently don't seem to be spawning in this patch (0.58). In previous patches you could rarely find them in military tents and were purely cosmetic when attached to a gun. You could take the bayonet off and use it as a regular knife though.

Was one of the best can openers if you were carrying a mosin, because it saved space being mounted on your gun barrel too.

Side note, I wonder if you pistol whip some one with a not so good condition weapon if there will be a chance for misfire...?

[Storm]

With recent status reports, the DayZ devs have been bringing back alot of the hype I used to have. In the next few months, I can see DayZ becoming fun again. I'm hyped.

[Guest]

pistol whipping? OHHH.... *orgasms*

[BigRig]

so if someone doesnt have a bayonet for the m4.. and they try to hit someone with the but-stock.. will the gun fall apart or at least take damage?