DAYZ

A brief interview with Ivan Buchta the map design consultant...

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:53:57 +0200

A brief interview with Ivan Buchta the map design consultant working on DayZ

On Thursday the 10th May, several of us went on a day trip to...

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:53:00 +0200

On Thursday the 10th May, several of us went on a day trip to Real Chernarus, here is just a small selection of pictures and a couple of comparison shots, showing you real Chernarus and in-game Chernarus (DayZ Standalone).

Hopefully these pictures and the interview will give you an insight into the amount of work that our map designers put in to make Chernarus feel authentic.

Here is a link to the full album - http://goo.gl/Rgi3X

This is the first of our two part video blog, one from from PAX...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 04:35:00 +0200

This is the first of our two part video blog, one from from PAX and the other from GDC. This was lovingly crafted by Bikeman (http://www.youtube.com/BikestMan), who was our camera man for the week.

We have also released some screenshots from our latest “building” - http://goo.gl/sAQoa

Highest Devblog update in the world

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:17:00 +0200

Dean “Rocket” Hall during his Puja ceremony today, proceeded by a local lama. Flour is...

We’ve gone for a reasonably quick and dirty video blog...

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 23:12:31 +0100

We’ve gone for a reasonably quick and dirty video blog this week, mainly because things have been very busy for us.

Inventory System

One of the biggest improvement areas has been the inventory system, now almost ready for a public display. This new inventory system supports crafting, interchangeable clothing, degradation, tracking, weapon customization, and much more. It’s really a revolutionary system for us and we’re extremely proud of the results that Jirka (our programmer assigned to this) has achieved.

Crafting

Not touched on in the video, but what we will be showing soon is the basics of how users can interact with items in the world - this is the next step in development of our inventory system beyond where it is now. This is not a traditional crafting system, but one that encourages layers to explore the ways in which items can be crafted.

Zombie pathfinding

In the video, towards the end, some before and after footage of work on the zombie AI pathfinding. Not only has this changed the role, threat, and speed of the zombies - but it has also yielded performance improvements. The increased accuracy of the zombies movement allows their movement to be slowed down to more sensible values, in line with those of the players themselves. We still have some other avenues to explore in this regard, but we’re very pleased with the results so far.

Mass zombie spawning server side

Now all zombies are spawned directly on the server and their movement is governed directly on the server itself. This has allowed us to provide increased security and hack prevention mechanisms by disabling functionality at the client level. It also means that zombies no longer “pop” in and out of the world, previously used as a mechanism to tell if someone was in the area. It also paves the way for us to allow migrating zombies and zombies traversing open areas in search for their next meal.

We still have some way to go in performance, the initial tests of 4000 zombies spawned reduced the server FPS to 4. After performance optimizations this increased up to 21. We’re now confident we can have the server FPS back up to 30+ with maximum numbers of zombies in the near future.

Expanding health system

Health is extending far beyond just blood, into a system that incorporates health, blood, and consciousness level. How these are all interrelating will be touched on in its own devblog in future. Some of the exciting developments coming include longterm play effects such as poor diet affecting your long term health levels. All this translates into the importance of a longterm plan for survival of your character, and we’re sure the role of medical specialists will become very important - hopefully emphasizing social interaction opportunities.

Chernarus Expansion

This continues at a huge pace. The two new villages in expand Cherno and provide it a true city feeling. Also expanding is the top (north) map area and the continued development of our large-scale features being added to the map. More to follow on this! (we can’t wait to show some more of this!)

Loot spawning

Finding loot now involves scavenging inside of vehicles, looking for items stuck between furniture, prying open car boots, or strewn in the wasteland itself. Consuming your bounty now results in rubbish, such as empty cans after consuming your beans. This is no mere gimick, because your trash can be used to track you.

Conclusion

There is a great deal more that can be covered, but we’re really deeply in the thick of development at the moment and we just wanted to get something quick and dirty to all those waiting for standalone. We know that you want it released, and we know you want to know when this will be - but we’re 100% committed to making this a great game, and that means we are making sure to do things properly. We’re happy and confident about the progress, so it’s one foot after another and soon we’ll be at the finish line.

This week the format is a bit different, we got behind the...

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 06:45:18 +0100

This week the format is a bit different, we got behind the scenes and follow Rocket and Matt as they visit the Mocap studio at Bohemia Interactive, and work with the team to develop the new zombie animations for DayZ Standalone.

Ivan is back! The last two weeks have gone extremely fast for...

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:11:09 +0100

Dean "Rocket" Hall and Ivan Buchta pause in the middle of a design meeting held during a trek in the Czech wilderness

Comparison shot of female heads

One of the new female character heads

Another of the new female character heads

A view of one of the entirely new areas being created in the world

A view of one of the entirely new areas being created in the world

A view of one of the entirely new areas being created in the world

A view of one of the entirely new areas being created in the world

A view of one of the entirely new areas being created in the world

A view of one of the entirely new areas being created in the world

Ivan is back!

The last two weeks have gone extremely fast for us. As many will have noticed, we didn’t do a devblog last week. While the aim is produce an update every week (scheduled for Friday), the reality is that development will always have priority over our devblogs - and there has been a huge amount of real work to do on the project!

To celebrate Ivan returning to assist with the tean; Ivan, Matt, and myself held a design meeting in a rather unusual setting - we went from a hike around a lake area in the Czech Republic. We got some excellent idea’s - and we’re all thrilled with the great concepts Ivan has been bringing. We look forward to including Ivan on our next video blog.

Project Team Expansion

One of the biggest changes in the last week has been the expansion of the project, both in scale and scope as well as with personnel. We’ve been getting more and more people involved, both locally and externally. Many of these people are from within the community. We hope that these people will be able to assist us in really pushing the game to its limits.

Multiplayer Testing

Our internal closed testing has been continuing, and then pausing, as we identify and fix crashes and other issues. The vast amount of changes we have made require meticulous testing. We’re hoping to begin our first large-scale capacity testing next week (assuming we have a stable enough build). This will involve us working the server over with around 50 people initially, then working up to 150 and beyond to obtain metrics as to what limitations we will have.

Architecture Developments

Our lead programmer has been continuing the revision of the entire engine multiplayer to operate under the server-client MMO model. The results have been outstanding, and it is going to radically change the product. As these changes are made we are filter them onto the approach taken at other levels, ensuring everything is moved from being done at a client level to being done at a server level.

We have been experimenting with some novel approaches such as not having loot spawned at the server level, but having it spawned at the database level - therefore negating the ease with which loot tables could be produced and allowing us to conduct a form of economic regulation to item spawns dynamically. I think the end result, however, will be a mixture of the two approaches due to performance requirements.

Character Development

This is the absolute core of our current design efforts. As such, you can see some new screen shots of the new ethnic heads available for female characters. We want to allow characters to be fully customized and reflect the players story as they are going along. This has included some fantastic ideas inspired by the community. Until initial release, the vast majority of our efforts will be with expanding options for developing and customizing your character.

Inventory system

Based on feedback and development, changes continue with this area. It’s starting to operate really well. Our programmer here, Jirka, will eventually move onto the crafting system. He has been wanting to move onto this for some time, as it is a personal area of interest for him.

As part of the inventory system, we have started detailed work on the attachment system. Like the customization of characters, we want to allow maximum ability for the customization and development of a players weapons. As part of this, all weapons being introduced into DayZ are being redeveloped from scratch at extremely high detail. The work being produced so far is outstanding! This means that, on release, there will be less weapons in the standalone - but it allows us the ability to continue each week to release content updates with new weapons and items.

World development

Massive areas are changing here. Ivan Buchta having returned from his time in the Greek Prison has been a huge asset to the team, working with our world designer SenChi (designer of the Ironfront worlds) to redevelop Chernarus. I have included some low-detail screenshots taken by SenChi showing some of his developments.

Art development

New clothing, items, weapons, buildings, “special areas” are all the foci of art development. We are greatly expanding our team of artists, as we have hundreds of new items we want to include in the world.

This week’s blog is pretty light on detail and excitement, but the pace is such that pausing to write about it is taking too much time! Overall, each week is proving to be more exciting for us than the last.

#AskDayZ

Part of a regular feature we will be doing is to take peoples questions on twitter (hastag: #AskDayZ) and facebook - Matt will select a few and we will answer them.

Will we be able to host private (hive) servers? (Christian Haschek)

Private servers will be supported. The issue of private hives (central servers) is still an open question. Initially the answer is definitely no, as we need to concentrate the database centrally so we can continue development and change it regularly. There is a wider issue of regulating both the economy of DayZ, in terms of controlling item spawn, and ensuring a balanced approach. I think it comes down to a question of timing, much like with the mod.

There be any new features in the first version of the standalone or it will be the classic DayZ (Martin Rangelovwill)

The experience will be entirely new. There is virtually nothing that has been directly ported from the mod, everything has been redone. This wasn’t our original intention (hence the December deadline) - but it has evolved this way. We’re all glad it has!

End Game content - Other than the mad max mods to cars, what other endgame solution is there other than everyone becoming bandits, the forums have made mentions and suggestions of random events like raiding a c130 crash site or setting ambush to NPC convoys, What do the dev’s have in store for us? (Rhys Fiander )

Endgame is an open question, and is something we will look at later once we have got the basics where we want them (player customization, controls, animations, zombies, loot spawn, attachments, disease, hacking, etc…). I’m personally not a fan of NPC’s but we have been keeping this available as an option for development. I kind of think using NPC’s is cheating in this context. I am sure we can come up with a more creative way of doing these kinds of events, working directly with the community.

Dean: will you being adding other food and drink types (Ross J MacGregor)

The list of planned items is huge. A reasonably small functional set will be available initially, then new items and weapons during weekly updates.

Are you working on other ways to indicate hunger, thirst, temperature to achieve a more minimalistic HUD or getting rid of it completely and instead use sounds and such ? (Jesper von Hundhufvud)

The current situation is “no HUD” and we hope to keep it this way, demonstrating through the use of sounds and animations. We do need to add options for those with hearing impairments and we will look at those options too.

Did Dean get a date in the end or was it a romantic evening for one? WHY DID HE NOT TELL HER HOW MANY LAMBORGHINIS HE WILL HAVE?! (Regan Bamfield)

It was a very romantic evening for me cleaning my sneaker collection (I’m a total sneakerhead), so no - I did not get my date in the end! No matter how many Lamborghini’s I promised!

What will be the pricing on standalone? (Dylan Panda Belisle)

It is still to-be-confirmed. However, to put it in perspective, I want a higher price than nearly everyone else in the company. So we’re not talking an expensive product. Released now, I am confident people are getting more than required value from the product.

Will you continue pursuing/developing the humanity system? have you made/felt the need to make any changes? (Daniel Yacoubian)

I think this will continue to be developed throughout the life of the product, it will be a very subtle art to get it right.

Will the number of zombies be increased, or should we expect a similar amount? (Kyle O’Dowd)

Yes, expect the numbers to increase as they are controlled directly on the server independent of player locations.

@Lirik - Will there be character slots or will it be limited to one survivor?

Initially, just one live character for each player account. We store a huge amount of data for each character, so we need to limit it.

@Biddaman - From what we know about next gen consoles so far, would Dayz be possible to run on those machines?

Personally, yes I believe it would be technically possible. Some of the consoles will be easier than others. There are some issues with requirements for publishers which are really annoying, and I have been frustrated in the past with some of the rules required that force some weird design changes in games (I don’t like tutorials!).

@zSc0pe - Will there be changes with the chat? I would like to be able to type or talk to friends in game without the whole server knowing

We’ve started development of a basic radio system. If you’ve played Space Station 13, you’ll recognize this system. More to follow on that. And love the songs by the way!

@jerry_hopper - Will the squadXML be overhauled,2 achieve more interaction ‘outside’ the gameserver? or will there be some API which taps in dayz?

API is something we, longterm, want to look at for nearly everything - considering the outstanding creativity within the community. In particular I think it is best to allow the community to develop its own player profile statistic sites. But this is something that will come much later in the year.

@Ray23estRay - If there will be any further map releases for DayZ in the future,will they be released as DLC content for money?

We are starting our planning process for this, but we don’t have any idea how we would monetize it. There are issues with the DLC model we would want to avoid. We’re hoping we will be so successful in sales, that we can just release as a free content update.

@TheBeehawk - What kind of vehicle customisation [sic] is planned?

I have only basic ideas on this currently, essentially functioning similar to the weapon attachment system we have designed. If your car has a missing or damaged door, take the door off another car. But of course, if they are different colors, you’ll see that. Each part also has various damage states, so we end up with GTA-esque damage visuals.

@Chernoeb Will there be different servers with different weapons. Example: One server has DMR’s while another server has no DMR’s

Not initially. Either loot will be entirely controlled centrally by the central server, or it will spawn based on loot probability tables, or (most likely) a combination of the two.

@poopthought - Do you have any malls, hotels, prisons or bigger hospitals planned for the standalone?

Yes!

@EvanLutes1999 - Will there be the old weapons from the mod, new weapons, or a mix of both?

New weapons, based on the old weapons.

IAsh - How many clothing varieties should we expect?

Once released, expect new content every week. We are planning hundreds and hundreds of clothing varieties.

Let’s see some DayZ video! A quiet start for us with a...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 05:11:00 +0100

Let’s see some DayZ video! A quiet start for us with a video blog, we’re only detailing a few areas of progress in this weeks update. We show a peek at the new UI, some detail on the new clothing functions available in the engine, and take a tour round a few of the many new areas inside the updated Chernarus map.

We’ve edited out our use of the Inventory system, which we’re keeping under wraps for the moment (covered out with hilarious images photoshopped by forum members on the official DayZ forums at dayzmod.com!)

So where are we at?

Development is continuing to progress in extremely positive ways for us. The architectural decisions we have taken are providing continued dividends with the development of our disease mechanics, and in the ability to create notes in the world.

Inventory is fully synchronizing with the central database, including inventory inside clothing items. Essentially your clothing is like many little backpacks.

We’re getting plenty of bugs coming in from our closed internal testing, and we haven’t moved to our closed external testing just yet. There is still no timeframe for when this will happen, but we’re committed to continuing with these development updates and blog posts.

What is next?

We’re working very hard on the inventory system even more, and it looks like the crafting system is close in next in our development. It would be fair to say that inventory and crafting are the key development objective currently, second only to the client/server architecture (makes DayZ more like an MMO), and new zombie AI mechanics (an ongoing task).

We look forward to giving even more information, new exciting areas, features, functions, and updates in the coming blogs! We’re all confident it won’t be too long before you’ll be able to join in the development yourself.

This is the first update when I have sat down and thought...

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 17:14:00 +0100

Comparison Screenshot between ArmA2 and DayZ using the same graphics settings

Player character wearing a hoodie, jeans, and baseball cap

The three current playable races (both male and female available)

Chernarus ain't what it used to be!

Sample of the volumetric clouds and lighting changes

Sample of the volumetric clouds and lighting changes

New wrecks better designed to enable loot finding

Female zombie

One of the many new areas on the map

Hiking boots, probably one of the most important clothing items

This is the first update when I have sat down and thought “where do I start?” There has been so much going on with the development this month that it is hard to fit it all in a post here. Through the month we have steadily moved from working on our architectural changes, through to preparing for our first public test. The risks and gambles we took last year, are now beginning to pay serious dividends for us.

I’ll be covering the following in this update:

Lighting and material improvements
Volumetric Cloud system
New Server Architecture
Clothing/Inventory status
Closed Test Status
Art/World updates
Customizing your character
Customizing your weapon

Lighting and material improvements

One of our Lead Artists, Mario Kurty, has been working with some of the ArmA3 artists to ensure that DayZ Standalone has the best visuals possible. The result is pretty striking when combined with some of the other improvements we have made in the engine. These improvements make the world really come to life, improving the visuals overall. A comparison screenshot is included and demonstrates the effect of this.

Volumetric Cloud system

This has now been fully configured for use within DayZ, used to great effect in Bohemia’s previous product Take on Helicopters (and coming in ArmA3 also). There are several pictures of this included in the screenshots for this blog update. Running around the world taking pictures, it was hard to resist really. It adds a real sense of realism when compared with the previous result.

New Server Architecture

Our lead programmer, Ondřej Španěl, continues his work on redeveloping our server architecture. Contrary to some who say DayZ will be releasing with no anti-hack mechanisms, one of the key things we are doing with development is entirely redeveloping how the engine works. I can’t stress enough just how fundamental this change is. DayZ’s game servers will function like servers in other MMO style games, that is the server will control the behavior and the sending of updates. No longer will your machine receive all the updates allowing their analysis by various cheats.

We are exploring spawning all zombies and loot at the start of server initialization, again a huge departure from the previous mechanism. This solves many design and technical issues with the spawning and respawning of equipment, such as being able to metagame by telling whether players are in a village by seeing zombie’s have spawned.

Clothing/Inventory status

This has now been completed to a basic level, you can put on and drop various items of clothing. These items can have diseases on them, and they have durability and other attributes. We need to make some models that represent the clothes when they are on the ground (currently they look as they are when on the ground!) Once this is done, we will be releasing some video outlining what it looks like to change your clothes.

Closed Test Status

We have begun our internal closed testing (yes!) and have been working with Valve to ensure our new server browser system is working (we utilize Steam for this purpose rather than Gamespy as for ArmA2). The Server/Client architecture needs to be fully implemented before we will begin our public testing.

We have not initiated our closed test that includes external people yet (such as streamers).

Art/World updates

A huge quantity of changes are flowing into the world. New areas, a mass of new objects (such as wrecked vehicles, buses, etc…) that are all designed with DayZ in mind - such as having good areas for loot to spawn. It is really impossible to list all the changes here, from bug fixing to redesigning of buildings such as the general store, and onto entirely new buildings and areas. One of our texture artists has been going through existing work and making them look more damaged and used.

Customizing your Character

The design has now really ramped up. This is really the entire focus of our efforts for the next few months, prior to starting on vehicle customization and finally on base building at the end of the year. The obvious starting point for us is to allow players to select the gender and race of their character. Beyond this, allowing ways for your character to become your own are key for us; from getting tattoo’s to finding unique clothing items, trying to deal with your own health aliments, etc…

This is an area of very active development, we’re exploring all sorts of ways to make your character change in the world as you play. When you first create your character, the options will be simple. As you go along in the world, your character will change as a result of their interactions with the environment and the decisions you make, through items such as clothing choices.

Social aspects are extremely important to us, and we’ve taken a number of idea’s and participated in the discussions on reddit and the forums about what we can do in this area. Expect more on these area’s in the next tumblr update. We want to support the organic development and operation of groups within the game, through the development of their own symbology in game (tattoo’s, markings on the world, on weapons, etc…). We feel that these redeveloped social experiences told through the game will be a compelling part of the standalone.

Customizing your weapon

Weapon attachments are a great bi-product of our entire redesign of every aspect of the inventory system. Nothing is available to show on this yet, currently the only attachment we have fully configured in the game is the magazine. You must load the magazine with ammunition and then it is considered an attachment to the weapon. The quantity and condition of your magazines will be particularly important in the standalone. Look after them!

When is it releasing?

We don’t know. We’re going to take our time. I feel fantastic about the situation, more than ever I feel like we’re doing something really interesting with this development. Now is not the time to rush things, but we do need to ensure our pace is kept up. Our development blog and getting players in and testing as soon as possible will be key in ensuring we succeed in making this a great game.

Concluding words

At no point in development, have I been as excited as I am right now. The risks we took with the direction have paid off. The engine and approach of the game is now entirely DayZ’s own, it is striking out into it’s own territory as a project. This is very exciting for all the team.

I do need to caution though, it is a bad idea to overhype the project. We know that there are many challenges that we will face from deciding to effectively write a new engine tailored to DayZ. But we are now entirely confident, that this decision will prove to have been the best decision we could make. Now we will be able to make the game that we’ve all always wanted.

Where is the Standalone Release? I suppose I should start with...

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:03:00 +0100

New interior demonstrates some of the additional texture work for that post-apoc feel

More new texture work

Another interior

The "bloom-cloth" has been edited

New city building interior demo

Female version for the hoodie and jeans - all clothing is unisex

Male model (WIP) featuring the basic underwear (colors WIP)

Demonstration of the unrestricted view-distance ability. This screenshot was taken on my work laptop, demonstrating the awe-inspiring scale of the world

Early WIP of the hoodie and jeans, when on a male character

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.

Dev Report: November 2012

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 01:16:00 +0100

The current phase: Our development focus is 100% on core technology, the key architecture, and not...

Whatever you say it is, it isn't

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 20:50:00 +0200

tl;dr DayZ standalone will be based on a client-server architecture (more like an MMO), not the...

Work-in-progress interiors continued I was a little reluctant to...

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 21:25:29 +0200

A sample of one of the new map areas, "like Green Mountain but scarier with more buildings!"

An interior shot of one of the cottages

Hospital lobby for bloodbags? not any more...

Upstairs in the hospital

Another hospital interior shot

Inside one of the metalwork factories

Work-in-progress interiors continued

I was a little reluctant to post another screenshot update, as I hadn’t expected such a huge response to what was really just a quick drop of a few basic screenshots! But I figured sitting on these screenshots was rather pointless, so here they are.

One caveat I forgot last time, 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.

Over the coming weeks, we expect this tumblr to get even more busy.

Interior work in progress screenshots taken from inside DayZ...

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 15:53:59 +0200

Interior work in progress screenshots taken from inside DayZ standalone.

Please note these are work-in-progress shots, with only basic texture work and initial lighting passes. I picked a random town in the game and took screenshots of a few of the houses. The screenshots are taken on “Normal” graphic settings (medium texture resolution) and are unaltered and uncropped.

Our artists have been very busy, methodically going through all buildings in Chernarus and adding interiors. The task can be pretty difficult, when the buildings where made interiors were not considered so it an be a challenge for the artists to make the interiors both look correct and work properly.

The village I used to take the screenshot in now has all its buildings enterable, including the sheds. Most focus has so far been on the buildings that are situated outside of the center, but focus now is turning to doing interiors for the city buildings. This is complicated by our desire to dramatically increase performance, and given the scene complexity inside cities we need to balance this with the desire to increase building scavenging opportunities inside the cities.

This was really just a very quick drop of a few screenshots, I’ll try to put forward some more screenshots of our artists work in the next few weeks.

The integration begins

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 21:10:36 +0200

It has been a long time since we announced the standalone project, and much has happened. In many...

The end of the beginning

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 14:13:00 +0200

That’s right, this is actually happening - DayZ will be developed as a standalone game, with...