Comments and edit suggestions are off.
You can discuss this presentation at official forums.
HTML version of this document is here.
DayZ Russia [RU] thread here
Search for [implemented in DayZ Standalone] to see what’s already in (tag not updated anymore).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Priority 1. Core problems solutions and most important suggestions.
DayZ server modes to choose suitable gameplay experience
Player-driven social simulation
Comfortable gameplay - abuse free
Server hopping abuse and combat log prevention
Priority 2. Advantageous features and concepts vastly improving the game
Taking night time back to survival experience
Advanced Medicine and Injury
Categorized and sorted features
Death
Character abilities, actions, interactions
Character development\skills\attributes
Map\Game world
Graphics
Gameplay, server side, system, db and other mechanics
Player interactions, social, practical
ADDITION TO PERMAIDENTITY - Personal and shared standings, social list.
Social List. Buddy List.
Public Standings
More dramatic player influence on environment (example)
Character customization
Vehicles and transport
Food and consumables
Buildings, houses
Many models, buildings, objects, furniture proportions are inaccurate compared to player model.
Locations and landscape
Traps and security
Weapons and combat
Tactical and dry reload
Clothes
Items and crafting
Backpack extensions
Map authenticity extensions
Trash\Garbage bins and piles extensions
Medicine
Inventory and controls
Fire and light ideas
Zombies
Animals
List of contributors
1. Introduction
Based on this forum.
- The purpose of this presentation (and the above forum) was to create a huge inspiration effect on Rocket, because he is the only one who makes decision in this area.
- This presentation is a result of almost half of year’s work of our suggestion section in DayZ Russia community (contributors list).
- This is in no way a demand even if it sounds like this in the text and every participant understood he can’t be assured about his suggestion to be implemented, he can only hope it makes way to Rocket.
- It was an immense brainstorm work done by RU community on numerous aspects and details of DayZ as a game and as a concept.
- Suggestions and features were being collected throughout the period of Dec 4 2012 till present moment.
- All features and suggestions are tagged, categorized and we tried assigning them to one of the priority\importance levels.
- The structure of the presentation will be as follows: Priority sorted features, category sorted features, rest of the features.
- Priorities explained
- Priority 1 - Considered most fundamental and important (solving major problems, changing or influencing gameplay or concepts)
- Priority 2 - Great and interesting features (improving gameplay or design)
- Priority 3 - All the rest of the good features (very different aspects)
- Many important ideas are colored red.
- Many crucial features address the main issue of all games and DayZ in particular: Game is only taking advantage of practical, material resources and bases everything around it, ignoring abstract resources, such as social resources, time and space resources. More subtle and abstract mechanics can deepen the gameplay and build up uncompared, unique and phenomenal gameplay never seen in history. Some of such features are: Perma-identity, GamePlay Hours resource, Genetic\Evolution memory, Per-server location continuity and others that definitely have something to think about.
- Each significant feature has a blue bookmark ribbon, which represents a direct URL link for certain place in this document for more convenient navigation and linking outside and inside this presentation.
2. Priority 1. Core problems solutions and most important suggestions.
2.1. DayZ server modes to choose suitable gameplay experience
Idea is old and was suggested by developers long time ago. But since then nothing was ever heard about it.
Some players prefer 3rd person view and no night time. Some player adore night and first person view. Many people enjoy hero\bandit skin and KOS. Some people came to DayZ for another more hardcore and deeper simulation. Many people would like to try other gameplay to choose the one they will play most.
Having one global server settings and database for the whole DayZ is not helping anyone of the described player groups. The choice is absent. Development will require global balancing and it will definitely lead to limiting one or another player group.
Solution
- Introduce a couple of preset “difficulty” levels with certain features enabled, with own experience tweaked up\down.
- There must be equal number of character slots for one DayZ account\player to number of difficulty levels.
- Characters created for one difficulty cannot join servers with any other difficulty.
- When launching\registering your server in official DayZ DB you must choose one of the difficulty levels for the server.
It is much better not to think about levels as about scale of difficulty. We suggest thinking about them as game modes. Each mode represents some gameplay style with some distinction in some of the aspects.
For example DayZ Server Modes can be:
- Classic DayZ (DayZ Mod) - hero\bandit skin, simple disease (no extended infections), big variety of military loot, server admin enables or disables 3rd person view. For real connoisseurs who feel nostalgia for the mod.
- DayZ - the basic, original mode with all the features Rocket feels fit in the game, such as advanced medicine, infections etc. This mode is main, and is actually in development now.
- DayZ Hard - As “DayZ” mode but with perma-identity feature enabled, first person view only, + any other survival difficulty\diversity boosts you can imagine.
- DayZ Biorhythm - a special compatible mode, which requires every player to lay down to sleep or he will not be able to run, aim or carry weight and eventually can lose consciousness and finally have a heart attack or any other terminal condition, sudden death if not slept for 4-7 days. Balancing it out is just a matter of time, e.g. 20 min sleep gives additional 1 hours of gameplay, 1 hour sleep = 2 hours active, 6 hours provide 12 active hours and so on. If you sleep without tent\sleeping bag or not inside building - you risk getting ill and you restore less active time. If you sleep inside building or in a tent\sleeping bag near campfire you restore maximum active time. You can choose to log out while sleeping or not. If you do not log out you restore active time twice as quicker, but risk being killed or robbed. Sleeping during night restores active time even quicker. Item “Coffee” or “Energy drinks” can give a temporary boost to active state, but can be applied only limited amount of time then produce no effect (or cause health problems).
- DayZ Seasons - a special mode with different dynamic loot balancing events. This mode can be combined with any other mode.
- DayZ Reality - special mode, where server is bound to it’s real geo location timezone (with ability to initially choose only once, let’s say, +\-3 hour offset for convenience) and ingame time of day and date is reflecting it precisely, the weather is downloaded from real weather forecasts (METAR is “opensource”). So when it’s winter and it’s night at the server location - it’s cold and dark ingame. This mode can be combined with every other compatible mode.
- DayZ Life - As “DayZ Hard” + “DayZ Seasons” but with strict daytime cycle preservation, with extended relog\death cooldown + anything else suitable for such mode
- DayZ Night Only - no daylight. Is not compatible with “Life” and “Reality” modes
- DayZ Day Only - no nighttime. Is not compatible with “Life” and “Reality” modes
- DayZ Hunger Games - special mode for such kind of events, with enabled spectating, with everything needed for such mode.
- DayZ Machinima - special multiplayer mode for DayZ movie production, with special “immortal” player slots - “the camera man”, who can’t shoot or can’t be killed, assigned by server admin and can teleport, “noclip” and disable any UI and toggle their unit visibility at will. Extended amin rights, admin interface to spawn any kind of content or effects, change basic mission settings such as day\night\weather\date etc. and can teleport others. Everything like in MCC or Six Mission Control to be able to set up any scene and shoot a good movie using DayZ setting and engine.
This is just an example list and many other interesting combinations can be found. This approach can fulfil the needs of many player categories and preserve immense variety of experience to choose from without limiting\degrading\overloading the game for everyone.
2.2. Player-driven social simulation
Core problems:
- No one can be 100% sure to identify another person. Clothes and appearance customizations do not guarantee positive identification.
- Usernames can be changed at any time giving the ability to act on others’ behalf and render defamation, misunderstanding.
- Humanity system is using mechanical statistics for tagging some people as bandits, some people neutrals, some people heroes. But humanity is an exceptionally complex social mechanism and should be person-driven, not machine calculated.
Players see realistic environment with many real life experience simulations. They try to act socially realistic and authentic too, but fail, because any social interaction is based on two important facts.
Real life social facts:
- You trust those who you know. Every person has something unique in appearance and physical activity which can give ability to 100% positively identify a person in real life. If a person tries to avoid identification - it raises suspicion.
- You value your life, and know everyone values theirs. Every person wants to live, doesn’t want to die, understands he has one life and cherishes it. If someone is a threat to another persons life - it raises aggression.
None of the two facts are present in the game. Social interaction impossible. All we see is a workaround over workaround, which sometimes looks like social life, but is just an optical fake without any basis. That is because in DayZ the real social facts are non existent.
DayZ social facts:
- Extremely critical ingame anonymity. No one trusts anyone because they can’t know each other, they only guess or organize via other social services. No ingame ability to verify identity. Usernames changed at will. Appearance is chosen at will. Even with custom appearance and clothing you still won’t be sure you see someone you know\met in front of you.
- Absence of character survival motivation. No one values their virtual life\character. The game gives nothing to be afraid to lose upon death. Nothing to lose, nothing to fear, nothing to play. Loosing loot is nothing but a newbie problem - you can come to your body and have everything back, you can ask buddy to take your loot back to you, you can finally spend a bit of your time and loot it all again. Losing time to get back to previous location is too a newbie problem. If you got Cholera - you have no motivation to get treatment. Just ask a buddy to disinfect your items and kill you. Then you come fresh and take your loot back. Nothing social here, just and exploit. It breaks immersion and has nothing to do with authentic thinking.
Solutions:
- Introduce some persistent “anchor” to player identity or character (limit the ability to change identity at will) and a precise method of identification of a player, learning his nickname. As an example comes the perma-identity and social memory feature.
- Introduce virtual life’s growing value over time. A character who survived 1 hour must be definitely of more value than a fresh spawn. 6 hour survivor must sure have more motivation for self-preservation than 1-hour-survivor. 12 hour of survival must have distinct advantages over 6 hour survivor. And so on and so forth. As an example: passive physical development, passive “attribute time” concept, action and social memory.
- Introduce at least a vague effect of “genetic memory” or “evolution” per account. Let your previous life affect your future character. Vague, very subtle, almost unseen influence, which can be obvious only over time with attentive comparison of what was initially and resulted in. The diversity of affects is huge. It can be practical, functional, statistical or decorative. Examples: eat tinned food and drink soda mostly - your next character gets 0.05% less chance to get digestive problems for such food, but have very slightly less overall health level, visually your skin get more pale, character is a bit more skinny. Managed to recover from Cholera with antibiotics and survive a reasonably long time? Your next character receives 0.05% less chance to catch Cholera again. A lot of running makes you faster, but you are more vulnerable to knee damage and leg\feet fractures. If you suffered a lot from fatigue, lost consciousness because you seldom rested - new character will be less vulnerable to fatigue, but the max weight he can carry will be a bit lower. The main condition of the feature - this genetic boost is only given if character survives long time (3 or 6 actual gameplay hours). Possibilites are endless, but this slight effect will make each player develop their own unique genetic species and their character will represent exactly their own gameplay. They will be in some way stronger and in some way weaker than fresh new players with balanced features.
- (optional) Revoke ability to loot your own corpse. E.g. Destroy the corpse when in vicinity of the owner.
2.3. Comfortable gameplay - abuse free
2.3.1. Server hopping abuse and combat log prevention
DayZ allows players to keep their gear and location across every official server. This is definitely a way to gain advantage in combat and strategic situations.
Main problems:
- “Ghosting” - you encounter something (e.g. engaged in combat or encounter danger) on server 1, you exit and “ghost”\change your location at server 2, you enter server 1 back and acquire advantage both not realistic and not authentic, which ruins immersion.
Solution 1
Spawn delay and required server cooldown.
Your character and every server have a spawn cooldown timer. The fact of joining the server is considered to be the moment the character spawned in the world and takes control over his character. The fact of leaving the server is considered to be the moment the player leaves the game world and cannot control his character (including ALT+F4, Manual or emergency network shutdown, kick, electricity failure or “graceful” exit via menu).
- Personal cooldown. Every time a character exits a server or dies he cannot join any server for some reasonable amount of time (3-5 min?).
- Server cooldown. Every time a character exits a server he cannot join this server for a reasonable amount of time (5-10min?), but can join any other server.
- Hopping cooldown. Every server requires to spend reasonable time (3-5min) playing on it after joining. If character exits earlier his personal join cooldown is extended with the remaining hopping cooldown time.
Common non-hopping player sees no difference in his gameplay. Such players usually play decent amount of time on one server and won’t suffer from hopping cooldown. After leaving some server for some reason they won’t suffer from server cooldown, because they won’t return there soon. The only delay they will experience is the required personal cooldown to join other server.
Solution 2
Semi-private location database mode (local spawn, per-server location continuity).
What is the best you can think about private servers (apart from modding)? The persistence and local state of database for one server. Unshared database. Server hopping for private server is never an issue. But your gear is not shared to other servers. You risk ending up without a player slot and ability to play on your favourite private server. Now we need this concepts to evolve and combine into a local spawn servers with global character database.
- Store location for each character per server, not one location for all servers. Store gear and other data, globally per character.
- If character dies - locations are erased as usual.
Many many devoted and thinking players come to this idea and feel that player’s position must be remembered individually per server. That having a global position among all servers is an unfair, immersion breaking advantage which gives nothing to such specisific gameplay as DayZ has. Each server is simply a clone, alternative reality layer, instead of being a unique new world, territory, a continued space, a part of endless seamless universe.
Advantages:
- You can not abuse serverhopping or ghosting in any possible way. Each time you join server you spawn at the place where you previously exited this server. Prevents combat log.
- Geographical continuum - Each server is a certain unique space and your character is a part of it. You start and continue your story for every server. Improves experience. Saves time for group play. Seamless and continuous game universe.
- “Let’s meet at UK1 where we finished last night?” - “No problem, I played at another server to keep my char nearby at UK1”.
- “Everyone, gather for tomorrow assault at UK1 west Mogilevka”. Everyone joins UK1 at any time, changes location and can go play at other server. Tomorrow, when assault time is on - they join UK1 and already rallied up for a group play.
Solution 3
Introduction of Radios with ability to interfere audibly into other people’s gameplay space.
- Any radio must be very very fragile and can be destroyed very easily with any weapon.
- This gives ability to at least somehow stop the abuse of music radios, when players set up many receivers and play music loudly making it uncomfortable to play. Other players can easily “snipe out” a radio or destroy the source of discomfort. Later abusers will get tired of wasting radios and cease violent abuse.
- Another point is to limit the amount of “played back” radios by one player. Music receiver is turned on by one player. If player turns on another music receiver - the former gets silent.
3. Priority 2. Advantageous features and concepts vastly improving the game
3.1. Taking night time back to survival experience
No need to explain the emotional and immersive advantages of surviving in the night time. Real life balances this out: each person is basically prepares and plans his activities so, that by night time he is in a shelter and sleeping to continue activities in the morning. Night time sometimes useful for certain activities. When you don’t want to be spotted, when you can’t do something by daylight. Life and game differ mostly because players can choose the server timezone and play by daylight when they please and can evade night time. The problem is, that in game you can’t get caught by night time, you always have an option to switch to another server.
Many people have different life styles so they can’t be forced to experience night time in their gameplay.
Solution
- Needs DayZ Modes implemented as a requirement and is only possible with “DayZ Biorhythm” mode enabled.
- Apart from night time advantages from the Biorhythm mode there are reasonable penalties for switching between servers:
- If per-server location continuity implemented, this can improve immersion by giving players and ability to find safe place at some server and come there at night time to rest, while playing actively on other servers. Some server really can become HOME for players, where they come to cook food, store gear, sleep. Then they get ready and exit HOME server to explore other servers in unique locations.
3.2. Advanced Medicine and Injury
Grobman, practicing doctor, developed a medicine concept for DayZ. It is very consolidated, continuous and logical. It can seem complex, but in fact it is a great work on simplification of core principles to contribute DayZ specific needs.
It is based on the fact, that body has critically important organs and resources, and less critical ones.
- Main organ is the brain.
- Brain needs oxygen and glucose to operate properly. Minerals and proteins are less critical.
- No sugar - coma. No oxygen - death.
- Next important organ is heart and blood.
- Delivers the resources to the brain and other organs.
- Next come lungs - damaged lung, less oxygen for the brain.
- Sugar comes from digestion and liver is a toxine filter.
The concept is that our organism is a fragile glass sphere at the top of a structure, that prevents its damage:
BRAIN
^
( SUGAR, NO TOXINES, OXYGEN )
^
lungs --> BLOOD <-- heart
v
digestion -----------> EXCRETION <-- kidney, liver etc.
Only this structure determines the living and functional organism. Just add arms and legs and you have a survivor :)
All aspects can be represented as a circled diagram. This diagram can be used as ingame indicator for player or internally to determine the avatar health state without showing abundant info to the player.

Each sector or circle is reduced and colored\dimmed\faded respectively when player is injured, malnutritioned or intoxicated.
For example BRAIN circle:
- is green or yellow when all is OK
- after blood pump failure, sugar or oxygen dificiency or intoxication brain is flashing red for 30 seconds (agony) then turns black - dies permanently.
BLOOD circle
- is red when everything is ok
- it flashes representing the pulse: If there is not enough water it turns darker (drink more)
- if severe bloodloss - turns pink to white (needs blood transfusion, eat more, drink less).
- Pulse is quicker after minor heart\blood system injury
- heavy heart injury causes pulse loss and requires reanimation.
Nutritional substances we will call as generic SUGAR, meaning all the nutrition:
- it is either raising or falling (sector indicator full or shortens).
- Basically it is hunger. This resource is consumed constantly by the organism: more when running\hysical load.
- Consumed extremely fast during bloodloss - regenerates the blood circle slowly.
- When this sector gets 30% - you feel dizzy
- 10% - you fain often
- 3% - loss of consciousness and you unable to help yourself, only others can save you (transfuse glukase, give sweet water).
OXYGEN in fact represents stamina.
- It is full and blue in normal state.
- Is consumed when running and sprinting - represents panting.
- If you swim underwater, stand in smoke or choked is consumed quicker.
- Lung injury reduces oxygen to 50%.
- If you run or physically active it is dropped lower to 40% and avatar is slowing down.
- If you continue intense activity it is dropped to 30% and causes panting.
- Bloodloss consumes oxygen too.
- The other lung injury limits oxygen to 5-10% and is almost deadly.
TOXINES
- are produced constantly during normal functioning.
- EXCRETION drives toxines out of the body.
- Normal state of toxicity is 1\3 of the TOXINES sector indicator.
- TOXINES comprised by acids produced by physical activities (running),by digestion products (food and drink) and by direct toxines (smoke, poison).
- If toxicity reaches 60%, avatar cannot run or be physically active, slows down and has visual glitches (faded colours, degraded vision).
- If you EXCRETE regularly it wont reach 50%.
- If it reaches 100% - brain intoxication, 30 sec. agony, death.
- INFECTIONS cause a slight toxine increase with time.
BREATHING
- is pulsing 18 times a minute, representing inhale\exhale process.
- Quickens gradually when running or physical load.
- Quicker pulsing regenerates oxygen faster (second breathing).
- Length of the indicator sector represents the lung damage and overall oxygen capacity.
DIGESTION.
- Length of the sector represents the amount of food inside.
- Grows with time after eating food.
- Regenerates SUGAR and slowly turns another color - black, representing it’s inability to regenerate SUGAR and it starts generating TOXINES.
- When depleted or black - the SUGAR starts decreasing.
- When full and pulsating - you need to go take a dump. Slowly depleted over time as a result of regenerating sugar etc.
EXCRETION.
- Length represents the amount of urine.
- 50% full - you can go to WC.
- 65% - you need to piss badly.
- 75% - toxicity stops decreasing.
- 80-90% - chance to have uncontrolled urination.
- Long holding of urine can cause disease.
- If you drink a lot, toxines removed faster - helps when treating infections or intoxications. That’s why they advise to drink a lot when ill.
Now we have all important indicators, their interaction, balance and all the advantages of deep health simulation. No exaggeration, no abundancy - only basics and functional mechanics.
It can be either visual or hidden, but it will sure contribute to the authenticity of the game.
4. Categorized and sorted features
4.1. Death
Ability to drag corpses and ALIVE\unconscious\injured players
Zombies, rats, dogs, predators etc. can transmit infections after eating\attacking a player with infection.
- rats are attracted by food leftovers and corpses of both humans and zombies
- rats can sometimes bite prone players
Ability to burn corpses with no risk of being infected.
- Needs fuel and matches\lighter. Wood or car fuel.
Rare chance of being killed by lightning.
- Players must be under a single tree on a hill during a lightning storm
Poisons
- injected with syringe or injecting darts
- found in medical facilities
- heparin lyophilizate - dry freezed heparine, heavy anticoagulant.
- only found in medical facilities, such as hospitals
- add water, greaze arrowhead, knife etc.
- after getting into a wound bloodloss is unstoppable for a long time, effect starts in a minute
- poisonous mushrooms, plants
- [implemented in DayZ Standalone] All this can be generalized into some “chemical poison” item that can be crafted into food or melee\piercing weapons
Flies on the corpse should appear much later. At least 5-10 minutes for gameplay sake.
Flies are appearing not only on corpses but on garbage piles and left unpacked food.
Would be cool to actually see flies (black dots) above a corpse or faeces.
Fake death. Ability to fall as if dead and lie not moving.
- Others can be fooled or come closer and see no damage and know you’re faking
- Will authentically give chance of survival in an amateur combat or force more experienced players to doublecheck enemy casualties.
- “Examine” function reveals you’re not dead giving a status: “He is warm and breathing”.
Fake zombie. Ability to play animations like zombies do to fool enemies.
More blood effects. Injured with heavy bleeding must leave traces on items, ground\floor etc.
- blood trails is a part of a bigger “Leave your trail” concept
- e.g. if lying for 20 sec. you leave small pool, 2 min - bigger pool
- if your hands are injured, all you take gets a bloody texture
- if you’re having a bloodloss your corresponding clothes item get bloody texture
Ability to put unconscious or dead player, or hide yourself in a vehicle cargo\trunk, inside big boxes, caches, cupboards, freight containers, garbage containers etc.
Ability to climb a tree to escape zombies or pursuit.
Sometimes crows surround corpses. Scared off into the sky if someone walks nearby or shoots.
Bury corpse. Needs a shovel and soil under it. No burying inside buildings.
- You can’t bury corpses in asphalt or inside buildings.
- Corpse must be laying on the soil and you must have a spade to bury it.
- Burial place is marked with a simple decal or ground bump for some time.
- Additionally a cross can be crafted of wood over the grave.
Different corpse states. Shot, stabbed, eaten by zombies with clothes damaged, rotting, skeleton.
- If a player is eaten by zombies his corpse is looking much more terrible with patches of skin bit off, with flesh removed, bones visible (or just more bloody and ugly as a variant), inventory, clothes and items (not backpack) get a lot of damage.
- If any corpse is lying for 20 minutes, he turns into a rotting corpse with flies. Clothes are almost not wearable.
- After 40 minutes a corpse turns into a dry state or into a very simplified skeleton model with unusable rags of clothes.
- If skeleton could stay in the world for many hours - the most dangerous places will be scary and disgusting adding visual immersion, telling a newcomer “Look, dead people everywhere. Not good.”.
- Of course, corpse in any state must have an option to be buried or burnt.
- Totally dry skeletons can be lootable for bones and skull. Skulls can be put on poles or crafted into ashtrays\lanterns. Bones can be crafted for jewelry and tribal accessories or other items.
- Corpses\skeletons must be persistent and erased only on restart. Make it a very lowpoly generic deadbody\skeleton model with a list of loot inside and make server “forget about it” as it forgets about 100 000 loot objects...
Killer swamps
- if you carry a lot of weight and walk over some parts of the swamps you get sucked in and your movement is heavily slowed down
- If you stay too long in this position you eventually can’t move anymore and after some time you lowered into the swap and die
- You can drop backpack and heavy items to recover movement
- Another player can drag you out
4.2. Character abilities, actions, interactions
Character has separate hand\wrist slots for left and right hands and each slot contents are visualized on model.
- Apart from inventory items and clothes he can place any object in his hand and carry it. One can see that player model is carrying an item in his hand. Example: two jerrycans in both hands, two buckets of water, two bags with loot with a backpack on the back too.
[implemented in DayZ Standalone] Player cannot carry heavy items (car engine, heli rotor, wheels etc) in backpack.
- Needs other player, additional equipment or both hands occupied.
4.3. Character development\skills\attributes
Initial character creation class with future life penalty variant
- We assume we can choose some types of physical state for future character before he spawns
- Weak - can carry less, less immune to diseases, can’t run a lot, only pale skin customisation
- Normal - basic player abilities
- Strong - can carry more, a bit more immune to diseases, can run longer, additional skin\tattoo customization
- If you die often you can’t choose Strong. If you still die a lot you can’t choose Normal. (Karma concept)
- Survive one full day and your character is upgraded to Normal or two days to get Strong.
- Adds value for surviving longer and adds value to virtual life.
Sleep. The concept of expendable gameplay hours (GPH).
*numbers and times are subject to balance
You can think of GPH as a global character stamina resource, you can visualize it as a bar of 8* sections, representing 8 hours of gameplay. The bar is draining each 5* minutes and the same amount of time is drained. The bar is restoring while character is resting or asleep. The better the conditions for rest - the quicker the bar is restored.
- Gameplay hours (GPH) types:
- Power hour - all player physical abilities are up and boosted for this hour
- can run and sprint longer
- more stable aim
- can carry slightly more and longer
- suffers from shock less
- less likely to fall unconscious or be knocked out
- body temperature is reducing more slowly and restored quicker
- Active hour - all player physical abilities are normal for this hour
- all abilities normal as usual
- Last hour - all player physical abilities reduced and limited for this hour
- cannot sprint
- runs for a very little time, mostly walks
- cannot carry a lot
- very easily get’s shocked upon injury
- can fall unconscious for a short period of time, easily knocked out
- body temperature falls quicker and restores longer
- Every player initially has 2* power GPH, 4* active GPH, 1* last GPH
- Every GPH is an actual hour spent online in the game with this character and is independent of the hour type
- When you log in, you play your first 2* power hours, then you character switches to spending active 4 hours. After spending 4 active hours your character gets sleepy and tired and has only 2 last hours before he falls unconscious\asleep.
- Power GPH is very valuable for risky adventures or combat.
- Well rested players can endure more and are more effective, but to acquire power GPH player must work hard to find shelter and have a healthy sleep.
!Sleep restores GPH!
Getting to a rested state requires at least 1* minute. After activating “SLEEP” function character lies or sits down and is snoozing for 1 minute and only then his state is changed to “resting\sleeping”.
- PAIN and other side effects produce DISTURBED SLEEP and require more time to get to sleep, e.g. 3 minutes.
- Painkillers or sleeping pills remove this penalty.
- Hunger and thirst progress much slower in sleep.
- If you eat and drink good before sleep, getting to sleep is faster, e.g. 20 sec.
- If you’re extremely hungry or thirsty you too get to sleep very slowly, e.g. 2 mins.
- You can’t die while sleeping from thirst or hunger.
Player deprived of sleep for a long time can suffer from:
- Yawning
- Degraded vision - dark spots, too bright lights, picture “sway” imitating eye muscle weariness
- Degraded hearing - noise in ears caused by higher blood pressure
- Shivering - lowering temperature
- Weakness
- Infection immunity decrease
- Uncontrolled falling asleep if not moving (can be simulated by slow black out if you do not move - move your mouse to recover)
- More inertia in actions - stops running later than you pressed stop, aim sway, actions take longer.
- More chance to be knocked down and stumble.
There are following types of sleep (carefully balanced for more convenient gameplay)
- Online sleep (your character is present in the world, connected and spawned)
- You can be killed, but you rest quicker
- 10* min sleep restores 1 hour
- 20* minutes sleep restores 2 hours
- 40* min sleep restores all active hours
- 2* hour sleep refills all power hours (healthy sleep only).
- Offline sleep (х3 longer restoration if you put your character to sleep or got unconscious and logged off)
- Safer sleep, but takes longer
- 30* min sleep restores 1hour
- 1* hour sleep restores 2 hours
- 2* hour sleep restores all active hours
- 6* hour sleep refills all power hours (healthy sleep only).
- Healthy sleep (you sleep in shelter, building, house, tent in a sleeping bag or on the bed, or in a vehicle, at night)
- this mode is activated if you meet all THREE requirements:
- you sleep in shelter (house, car, building, tent)
- you sleep comfortably (in a sleeping bag, on a bed or sofa)
- you sleep in dark, at night
- GPH restored x1,5 quicker (effect is stacking with Online sleep boost)
- (online\offline) = restored GPH
- 6min\20min = 1 last GPH
- 13min\40min = all last GPH
- 26min\1h20m = all active GPH
- 40min\4h = all power GPH
- this mode is activated if you don’t meet the requirements
- GPH restored 1,5 slower
- (online\offline) = restored GPH
- 15min\45min = 1 last GPH
- 30min\1h30m = all last GPH
- 1h\3h = 3 active GPH
- If not in shelter - Risk of getting ill if it rained
- No power GPH restoring
Other uses of GPH: Penalty or GPH resource drain for travelling between servers
4.4. Map\Game world
Each type of surface affects movements speed both humans\zombies and vehicles.
- Slower: sand, dense vegetation, swamps, wet dirt, snow, garbage, stone etc.
- Faster: asphalt, grass, roads, pavements etc.
Players can collect wood, foliage and plant to make concealment for vehicles, tents or other objects
Markers on a map are tagged with server prefix and bound to a map item. NO GLOBAL MARKERS INGAME.
- If you place a marker on the map, it is stored with server prefix, e.g. [EU1] Base, [UK1] My corpse
- Optionally, only relevant markers can be shown. You can’t see EU1 markers while playing on UK1 server.
GPS satellites get out of order pretty soon without proper services so GPS will be gone in DayZ scenario.
- They require orbit corrections and maintenance which is impossible without proper infrastructure.
Night is TOO dark. Moon and stars, clear skies - you can’t see nearby house.
Cases it is realistically pitch dark
- Overcast skies and no moon
- Heavy storm with clouds (occasional sparks of lightning can lighten up the surroundings)
- Clear skies with stars but you’re in a dense wood
- Your’re inside a building - it is almost always pitch dark in any building without street illumination.
It gets colder and more windy the higher you climb and in shadows.
- It is much more cold and windy on top of mountains and cliffs than at the foot of it.
- Temperature is higher in open spaces during day
- It is a bit colder in shadow in the forests and near ponds\sea
- It is definitely obviously cold in basements and caves
4.5. Graphics
[implemented in DayZ Standalone] Less blinding\fading effects at night. ArmA simulates it very poorly. You have to look down to restore vision.
- You can’t go blind after looking indirectly at a lit object in distance.
- Looking from dark room window into sunlit street - blinds.
- Looking vice versa makes dark interiors poorly visible.
- But walking at night and seeing moon (not looking directly) causes you go blind in darkness.
4.6. Gameplay, server side, system, db and other mechanics
Ability to add any server to favourites list without leaving the game.
Serverbrowser with filters: difficulty, modded, wrong version etc.
Use Steam “Join server” for your ingame buddy\clan players. Not Steam friends because streamers can get abused. Ability to disable it on your client side.
Off-server technology to supply rare items when using metal detector (possible advanced semi-clientside simulation)
- No items are actually present on the server
- List of possible items to find is in the central DB with finding probability (e.g. old WW2 metal helmet 0.05%, metal junk 20%, old military knife 0.08%, civil knife 0.1, rusty junk 15% etc.)
- When a person turns on a metal detector it is reported as “searchin ground” to the central server (CS). Now the “lottery” begins...
- When he spends certain amount of time with metal detector the CS triggers the find-probability mechanics and either gives 0% find or sends a beep to player’s metal detector, spawning the item in his vicinity in the ground.
- When player finds the exact spot where item is, he gets a context menu of “extract a metal item”.
- No impact on fps, database or anything. Once in a while the CS just pings the item probability depending on the player distance covered, time spent and find probability.
- Mostly players gonna find just unusable junk, some metal tubes, rusty car parts etc.
- Only the dedicated ones can find something unique.
GPH penalty for travelling between servers
- GPH is the concept of GamePlay Hour described here.
- The idea of the penalty is that each server represents a different territory, different location and you can’t travel to any distant location without spending resources, such as food, drink and stamina. For the sake of the gameplay we omit resources drain for this travel and leave only stamina, or more suitable GPH drain in our case.
- GPH are removed starting from power GPH, through active GPH and finally to last GPH.
- Every time you disconnect from the gameplay NOT SLEEPING (at the moment character disappears from game world) you lose 2 GPH.
- Every time you change server and spawn on a new server NOT SLEEPING you lose 3 GPH (changed server = last disconnected is not matching new connected server after you spawn on a new server, lobby and connect is not counting, only spawn fact)
- If you put yourself to sleep and disconnect or change servers GPH is not removed and your character rests while you’re offline and your GPH is restoring.
- If you disconnect without putting your character to sleep (emergency disconnect, combat log, power failure etc.) your character will lose 2 GPH, will not rest and will not restore any GPH while you’re offline.
- LAST 1 GPH IS NEVER REMOVED ON DISCONNECT OR SERVER CHANGE to prevent “spawn unconscious” when searching for a suitable server.
- “What if my connection is poor and I have to change servers to find a suitable one?” - Searching a good place to live and survive is always tiresome in real life. Find it, have a rest and go further. And you can always have a sleep before changing servers and spawn rested on a new one.
GLOBAL VIRTUAL DAYZ GEOVERSE based on real server locations by IP address.
If each server could have a geolocation at least by ip then we could count a distance from server to server and use the distance ot calculate amount of GPH or other resources that must be spent to travel there.
- Servers will have not custom GMT offset but a realistic GMT offset for their locations. With a slight customization ability to +\-3-4 hours for convenience.
- Servers can have seasons, temperature and weather effects pulled from realtime weather forecasts for this location. Immersion if immense when having reain or snow in real life does it on the servers.
- It can add immersion when you try to travel from Japan to Germany and spend a lot of resources realistically.
- The space of DayZ universe will get more continued and seamless globally.
- People will usually stick to their real life geo location at first.
- Then collect resources and travel abroad.
- Better server regions with better conditions will attract more players.
- Basis for global socialization.
- Better disease spread simulation. Infected not just jump randomly over the globe, but most likely to travel to nearby servers. So infections can have immersive spread point with radius. One day you can announce that according to database stats “Brazil is totally ruined by cholera” or “Germany finally recovered from dysenteria”.
- You can later simulate an event based on that and “inject” some more bandages, vaccine and food to emergency regions - play God role :) Or humanitarian aid initiator :)
- Another aspect - regions that suffer from PVP can be cut out of ammo or weapons balancing the situation.
- Google maps can be used to map the population of DayZ universe in virtual globe space, rather than realtime stats of how many players from USA play DayZ... It will represent how many players play ON RUSSIAN CLUSTER. So numerous German servers can some day become the most populated ones.
What do we have in total effect on the gameplay with this features implemented?
- Finally offline is useful! Remember EVE Online training?
- Such experience is fully compatible with “home server” concept from per-server location continuity feature.
- Authentic thinking about having a rest and seek shelter at night or to have a sleep.
- Authentic planning of your activities, “Plan your survival”™
- Authentic choice of either pushing yourself to the limits without rest to achieve your goal, or have a rest and gain advantage of being more powerful.
- Serverhopping is solved and not punishing, but authentically explained and left for players to punish themselves. Each player has a choice to spend his precious GPH to hop to other server instantly or spend 1* minute delay and preserve the GPH.
- So you can hop whenever you want, but be sure you worked hard to have enough GPH to do it. If you’re hopping carelessly you finally get to last hour state and endanger your character and he becomes vulnerable and weak. What is the advantage of combat log or ghosting if you can’t run and suffer all the woes of being deadly tired. You won’t gain advantage over your enemies, you just become easier target, so why not just accept the challenge.
- A group of players preparing for an assault on enemy camp will authentically think about getting enough healthy sleep to get maximum advantage during a fight over unprepared or tired enemies. They can always create a base camp on one server in one single “continuous location” and have rest collectively, share supply.
- You would think twice before combat logging as a fully rested character, which will lose his precious power hours for this action. Choose wisely: combat log and lose valuable energy resource or accept challenge with your advantage of being rested and strong.
- Technically there is no need to somehow preserve player model\unit ingame after he disconnects, because it’s his choice whether to loose GPH or disconnect properly, “gracefully” in rested state spending just a minute or two online.
- Proper disconnect will reward player in many ways. Next time he logs his GPH restored. If he is prepared “for the night” and finds shelter and bed\sleeping bag he is rewarded even more, by receiving power GPH next time he logs in.
Loot balancing ideas
- Wasteland mode: Overall loot spawn is decreased in relation to death ratio between player count and deaths. The more players kill other players - the less loot spawned. Creates atmosphere of bad or good server.
- Prospering society mode: Overall loot spawn increases with player count. Few players - scarce loot. Many players - abundant loot. Prevents overlooting empty servers for farming.
- Seasonal loot balancing
- Always hungry mode. The food spawn is always slightly less than is enough for all amount of players present on the server.
Ability to queue up for joining a full server without connecting to it.
Chat messages are more transparent with distance to the source.
4.7. Player interactions, social, practical
Perma-identity, PID (feature was widely discussed and voted on forums and reddit)
“Anonymous MMO is impossible, because MMO is always social
and society without identity is nothing but a KOS DayZ Mod”
Albert Einstein :)
- Every player has unique unchangeable username, perma-identity (PID) throughout all his characters.
- Other player’s PID is only shown to you if you come reasonably close to player and his face is visible and not looking other direction (video concept demo).
- PID is completely invisible if:
- Player is more than 20m away (distance is a subject to balance)
- You can’t see his face, because he looks away from you
- His face is disguised by a “full-face” mask, balaclava, gas mask, Guy Fawkes mask, clown mask, scary movie face mask, zombie mask, scull mask, face scarf with glasses etc.
- If player’s face is partially hidden, his PID is shown at a shorter distance, for example if you wear a motorbike helmet, dark glasses, scarf hiding face up to the nose, NVG etc.
- After a player dies or is immobile\unconscious his face mask can be removed to learn his PID.
- Optionally a melee attack, blade cuts or shot in the face can permanently damage face and remove the ability to get PID and identify the body (Ninja style anonymity)
- Advantages:
- Social aspects boosted at last. DayZ social problems solved.
- Trust is introduced in game. Presently its totally absent unless you use out-of-the-game forums and communication software for identity verification.
- You choose who you are at any moment. More dramatic actions can be done. More intense atmosphere.
- Gain trust or make people suspicious by revealing or covering your face accordingly.
- You risk your name get infamous in DayZ.
- You have chance your name to become legend in DayZ.
- People may fear your name and don’t mess with you.
- People can know they’re safe with you around.
- You gain reputation to your nickname.
- Immense roleplay potential! You can be hero with face revealed and act villain and bandit with your face covered right after a hero deed.
- You can finally make pun for “This is your story.” because your story will be imprinted in DayZ forever via your unique nickname and actions. Presently its erased or easily doubted because of risk somebody cloning your nickname in game profile. This can cause somebody jeopardize your personality by acting on your behalf with your name.
- No controversy, no judgment, no authenticity damage - everything is in place and working to the core concepts.
- And finally, no system\machine judgment - players build authentic social relations.
- None present
- All cons that were found during discussions are “hotfixed” in the forum thread (scroll to green HOTFIXES section of the post)
4.7.1. ADDITION TO PERMAIDENTITY - Personal and shared standings, social list.
4.7.1.1. Social List. Buddy List.
- Every player has an editable list (e.g. in his journal or a separate interface, item whatever).
- The list contains PIDs of other players.
- PID can be added in this list ONLY is you’re seeing person’s face\nickname\PID
- e.g. you see “John Doe” - his PID is shown “white”, neutral, colorless to you.
- You can add prefix or suffix and choose color for any username on this list.
- E.g. You have this neutral “John Doe” - you can make it “John Doe (helped a lot)” or “(kill on sight! traitor) John Doe”
- Next time you see John Doe’s PID ingame again you will see it not neutral, but with your prefix\suffix and color.
- Other players don’t see your prefixes and colours until you share your list with them.
- So you encounter a player, see his PID and you see it’s red - you just know it’s an enemy without reading his PID and thinking.
- If you encounter a player named “John Doo” which can be similar to John Doe, you will see it neutral and won’t shoot\trust a player with similar username.
- You can add description to any username on your list. It’s only visible when you open list. Not shown on player ingame like prefixe\suffix and color.
- Having an empty paper sheet you can craft an ITEM of your social list and leave it in the world or give to other players
- Your social list can be shared with anyone you like.
- Come close to any player
- Open your list
- Press “Share in proximity”
- Anyone standing near can copy your social list with all the prefixes, colors and descriptions.
- While acquiring other shared social list or taking an “social list” item in inventory players can choose to
- “MERGE” lists - new PIDs added, changed PIDs are updated IF changes are recent
- “REPLACE” - erases your list and adds shared instead
- “MAKE COPY” - a copy of the list in inventory, and item
- You can always open a copy of the list, the item in inventory and do the above actions.
- You can always edit the list item in your inventory.
- Current social list is destryed and erased after you die. You always respawn after death with empty social list.
- Yes, you can find the previously crafted copy of you list and restore your social list or ask a buddy to share it with you.
Example usage.
- You, let’s say you’re Herbert, a groupleader, lived long life and encountered many good and bad players. You collected many of them in your social list. You perfixed them and colored to reflect your standings towards the players in list.
- Your list is titled “Herbert’s social list”, cannot be changed, bound to your PID. When you craft item out of it - it is called the same. Item title can be changed to anything.
- As a groupleader you’re interested in sharing your social list to everyone in your group, so that you have common friends and enemies, or neutrals.
- You can gather up with your clan and shre the new list for them to update the clan external policy :) Let’s say a new enemy was added to list. You can always just inform them “Hey, guys, find “John Doe” and mark him red and kill on sight, because he robbed our camp. Inform others too.” So your clan members don’t wait for you to share it online and edit their own social lists IF they have John Doe in the list. If they have no John Doe on the list and never met him - they, of course, won’t be able to add him manually.
- If a new member comes to the clan anyone can simply share his list to a newcomer, so he has an updated “external policy” instructions, list of clan’s enemies and friends.
- If somebody kills you, and you have an item of social list, he can see it in your loot and use it, merge, copy or replace for his own social list.
- that awkward moment you see your name on some dead body’s social list painted red with prefix “(stupid camper) Harry (kill the sob)”
- or that pleasant moment you find a social list where you’re tagged green “(awesome guy! help him always) Harry”
4.7.1.2. Public Standings
Not recommended feature, breaks immersion a bit. Taken from EVE online.
- Each player has a systematic ingame standing profile.
- (optional and doubtful) Each clan has separate clan standing.
- Players can assign standing to certain player exclusively or to all clan.
- If player leaves clan - clan standings don’t apply to him anymore.
- Joining a clan makes you share it’s standings with your personal.
- Clan standing prevail in username coloring over personal standings. If you’re +500 to John Doe, but he joined a clan you’re -1000, then John Doe will be -1000 to you.
- Everybody can see other player’s profile at any time when seeing PID or looting corpse.
- You can see your standings profile at any time.
- Looking at a person and seeing his PID you can assign standings to him.
- standings can vary from, e.g., -1000 to +1000. Changing color from red (-), through grey (0), to lime (+) in relation to set value.
- No comments given, just sanding.
- E.g. You hate “John Doe” and assign -1000
- From the moment you assigned standing - it will be always shown in BOTH your and the other player’s profile as “Herbert: -1000” or if you like him “Herbert: +1000”
- Player’s username, PID is shown in the colour that corresponds to YOUR standing towards him.
- No standing - grey\white = neutral
- Maximum standing - lime = friend
- Minimum negative - red = enemy
- So assignin -500 to John Doe will make his username shown to you as “John Doe”, orange, close to red. Assign +500 and have him as “John Doe”, blue.
- If a player had a standing assigned to him, he can assign his own standing to the initiator of the standing
- John Doe assigned you -1000. You see it in your profile
- You click it and assign your standing towards him, may be you still like him and you place +500.
- Next time you meet, you will see your standing colors - you see him “John Doe” and he sees you “Herbert”
- You can change the standings you assigned previously at any time to any value. Declare wars and unions at any time - standings are updated in other person’s profile too.
More cooperative actions when more force required
- Ability to help other player to get to higher obstacles (over fences, balcony etc.)
- Carry heavy objects together
- Tow heavy vehicles
Burying corpses adds humanity
4.7.2. More dramatic player influence on environment (example)
4.8. Character customization
Healed wound leaves a scar on the corresponding body part
- just a few more scarry textures for each bodypart
- the more wounds healed - the more scarry is the body part
Ability to shave your beard, head and brows :) Need adding sharp blades, razors and soap.
Ability to shave others (when they are unconscious too).
Ability to dye beard and hair.
Ability to create exotic beard and hair shapes and patterns.
4.9. Vehicles and transport
Vehicles do not explode often after damage (especially having NO fuel in tanks)! Explosions happen in very rare cases, mostly after being hit with big calibers or HE or if set on fire with ammunition and explosives in cargo.
- Mostly vehicles get only inoperable after severe damage.
- If no damage to fuel systems or fuel tank - it can’t even start burning!
- Spilled fuel is very very seldom ignites after being shot at, because the bullet hit spark is not enough to start fire. It is all hollywood propaganda.
- Vehicle starts burning only if fuel system is damaged and if shot at with incendiary ammunition or HE. Or set on fire manually by molotov cocktail, matches or zippo lighter.
- For this purpose vehicles must have a condition “fuel leak” when fire is possible.
- Fuel leaks must be indicated by status - “You smell fuel”.
- Weak explosion or rather just ignition can happen if vehicle is smashed at once against an obstacle (but it is very rare case) - at this moment fuel tanks get damaged and produce a lot of fuel set on fire at once. That is the exploding effect but it differs a lot from military explosives.
- More to the point - fuel tank is not exploding actually - all we see is a big flame and an audible pop at most. More often fuel tanks just hiss and leak fuel causing more intense fire. Big industrial fuel tanks with think metal walls can cause big explosion when heated extremely, but not weak car fuel tanks.
- Another variant - the vehicle explodes when hit by anti-vehicle ammunition, such as RPG, artillery or HE mine.
Deeper mechanics for parts of a vehicle.
- Very important - radiator. It’s damage by front collision or shot at can render a car useless.
- Oil filters, batteries, suspension, transmission etc.
- Newly found batteries must be recharged manually or by vehicle generator while moving.
- Flat tires require pumps to restore pressure, pierced tires require advanced patching.
- Correct representation of manual and automatic transmissions, at least simple gear shifting required.
- The core idea is - vehicle parts degrade and require some knowledge and understanding. In real life most of the people die and kill others in attempts to repair even simple fuel operated vehicles. In DayZ - everyone is a top-pro mechanic and driver, which is absurd compared to the depth of other survival simulations.
- A full and deeper vehicle parts and their combinations can be added on demand from this elaborated topic.
Ability to duck while in vehicle to evade being shot.
- Press C and you see only the steering wheel and the sky through windshield, you can steer and throttle\brake while ducked.
Ability to lock vehicle doors from inside.
- Ability to drag out some player through unlocked door of a vehicle
- Ability to punch while being dragged out of unlocked door.
Gazelle car - a most widespread car for ER, passenger transportation and other services in Russia and CIS. (photo)
Steerable parachutes
Hang gliders
PAZ - most widespread general purpose medium bus in Russia (photo)
Row boats that do not require fuel. Slower but commonly found and effective.
- requires oars
- oars can be crafted
Roller skates to have fun on asphalt roads.
Shopping cart for transportation over hard surfaces and having fun riding down the hills.
Wheelchair
Planes that can land on water
Ability to ride in cargo space of vehicles
- E.g. The pickup truck has a vast cargo but has only 2 seats. At least 5 more people can sit there.
Dead players’ bodies not falling out of vehicles
Take control of a vehicle is driver\pilot is killed. Without exiting a vehicle - just swap seats when possible or kick out dead body.
Towing cords\ropes. Ability to tow vehicles.
- Requires weight corresponding limitations.
Fully loaded car (full cargo + people inside) is visually lower in suspension clearance and has chance to blow tire or other authentic malfunctioning
Rail car on the railroad. Freight and transport opportunity on the coast.
Extinguish fire on vehicle
Use binoculars inside vehicles.
Glasses on vehicles get dirty with time. Action to clean it or break and remove.
Ability to push\propel vehicles manually by one or more players
- Absolutely real and authentic. Most civil cars can be pushed by 5 men for long distances.
- Slow, but at least moving. it’s not a useless rock finally.
- Motorcycles and quads can be pushed by one man without a problem.
Player or players can flip a vehicle to side or top. Not only when it is upside down, but at will.
- Most civil cars can be flipped to side and roof by a pack of men.
- Helps to recover vehicles after turning upside down
- Helps in revenging somebody
- Helps to prevent vehicle being stolen by one or two random guys.
Introduce freight assisting vehicles
Functional fire trucks: ladder and water systems.
Random fuel amount at gas stations
Introduce sports aerobatic planes (e.g. Su-29). They are easy in operation, lightweight, easy to repair, more common and cheaper than jets and military planes.
Fuel can be found at fuel tanks at railroads, fuel tank trucks, in shipwrecks.
Craft an improvised wooden raft with paddles.
Fuel pumps for faster fuel transmission. Simple hose for slower fuel transmission.
- No pump or hose - YOU CAN’T GET FUEL OUT OF CAR TANK
Three fuel types:
- jet fuel (found only at military bases and airfields)
- diesel oil fuel (at docks, farms, factories, industrial sites)
- Bus,
- Tractor,
- Fishing Boat,
- Small Boat,
- Ural Civilian
- gasoline (found at generic gas stations)
Spray paint - for rough vehicle parts paint (as well as painting some walls or doors in buildings)
Searchlight for vehicles - controlled by players
Headlights can be crushed by front hit into obstacle or zombie
Headlights can be crafted to have protective bars
Headlights can be crafted at weapon turrets
Ability to attach bags\backpacks to bicycle or motorcycle sides. Two bags\backpacks.
Bicycles and motorcycles can be attached\stored on some vehicles on the roof ot at trunk\hood.
Chained wheels for better offroad performance
Seatbelts - no injury after collisions. Manual (un)fastening. Can be crafted on or off each seat.
Tire jack - can’t replace wheel without it.
Car pump and flat tires. If tire is flat but undamaged - can be recovered. If pierced - needs fixing.
Add a caravan car or a separate movable caravan.
Ability to eat, drink, bandage yourself and do everything that can be done inside a car. You can’t bandage in car in mod and do many other things that are obviously doable inside a car.
More immersive and common post-soviet motorbikes (Ural, Dnepr)
4.10. Food and consumables
Having spoon, knife and fork increases the speed of eating.
- Can cause infection if not washed after being found or looted from corpse.
Ability to smoke cigarettes. Just for roleplay and atmosphere.
[implemented in DayZ Standalone] Vodka as a weak dysinfectant and consumable, causing slight camera sway and brighter colours.
Energy drinks, coffee with related effects on physical state.
[implemented in DayZ Standalone] Ability to drink half\desired amount of liquid from bottle\container with lesser effect.
- You and a buddy die from thirst. I’d share the bottle of course instead of gulping the whole 0,5 or 1.0 litres of water myself.
- Alternatively any bottle\container with fluids can have a progress bar. You drink and it decreases. You can stop at any moment, sparing some of it for a rainy day or a buddy.
Craft “slices” and “parts” of solid food using knife. Cut bigger sausage or bread into separate pieces for convenient sharing and storage.
[implemented in DayZ Standalone] Drink from water sources directly.
More home made traditional russian canned food in loot in homes.
Ability to craft rainwater gathering devices from plastic bag\wrap and a bottle, jerrycan
- On desert maps or maps without much water
Meat and other cooked food degrades over time causing health problem if eaten. Canned food has random expiry date and can be spoiled\rotten when you open it.
- Can be stored with salt much longer.
Raspberry in drink can lower high temperature a bit
Licorice root is effective against diarrhea
You can eat some food while moving (not running)
- Apple
- Bread
- Banana
- Sausage etc.
- Effect\Nutrition is reasonably lower compared to eating in peaceful conditions
4.11. Buildings, houses
4.11.1. Many models, buildings, objects, furniture proportions are inaccurate compared to player model.
- Many buildings are too small compared to player model
- Furniture is very scaled down, looks almost kindergarten when player stands nearby
- Very obvious when standing next to cooking oven and wooden chairs.
This requires precise “in the field” measurements and standardization.
Ability to sit on a chair or lie on a sofa to restore stamina or health.
Player can exit\enter any building through unbarred window.
- You can always break through a window at any storey with some possible injury from being cut by glass or wooden\plastic window construction details.
- You can’t break through barred or barricaded window with slight health\stamina penalty.
Ability to burn chairs and fences for campfires (or craft wood planks out of them for fire)
[implemented in DayZ Standalone] Add street titles and house numbers for better immersion and location finding.
Zombies can break through a closed wooden door after a while. Can’t pass metal doors or enforced doors.
If player is not washing himself and stinks you can get a status message inside a building “you smell awful sweat”. Happens if some dirty player looted building not a while ago.
4.12. Locations and landscape
Historic bunkers, vaults or fortifications
[implemented in DayZ Standalone] Police stations
Huge supermarkets
Big parking lots
Car repair stations
Center for Disease Control and Prevention - good location to be the historical source of spreading Z-virus.
Ability to destroy light bulbs if there will be any power system implemented
More fallen wood, more dense bushes.
Dense vegetation slows down movement
Ability to drag fallen trees. Disguise, roadblocks etc.
Enterable sewers
Mansion, formerly inhabited rich castle. Rare antique loot, security systems.
Offshore oil drilling platforms.
Remove irrelevant ambient sounds of non-existent objects, animals and phenomena.
- Bird wings flapping without any birds around
- Branch breaking without anyone around
- Gate or metal fence squeaking without even any gates or fences in location
Leave marks\cuts\ribbons on trees to mark location. Place sticks or little banners on the ground.
Use dirt and mud to cover your face and bright clothes for disguise (or full disguise)
One of the suggestions was to make collision animation for cases when player avatar hit a tree when sprinting\running.
Footwear and trousers get dirty when running a lot in mud and dirt during rain.
4.13. Traps and security
Compensate for unrealistically being offline :)
- Introduce some ability to make such tripwire\detector or other sensor device that sends email to your registered user email telling you “security triggered”
- give ability to label your device with text, e.g. “main entrance”, “cache in Berezino” and you receive email: “Security breach: main entrance”
- While it looks unrealistic it helps to deal with unrealistic offline. In real life we can’t go offline and not hear our security tripwire or detector go on. It kinda breaks immersion so we shall compensate it.
Ability to craft UNDETECTABLE tripwires for signalling.
- A tripwire with long cord, which makes noise in a distant place, or some electric circuit is closed making light effects.
- The victim is not knowing about it’s activation.
Ability to wire corpses\any object\loot to explosives or signal flares\security devices
Ability to craft sharp poles and make spiked floor, which can be created in a pit and cause death or injury if fell on.
Ability to block a door from inside\outside by pressing your shoulder to it.
- Additional action to “slam\kick” the door to temporary knock away the blocker player.
- Use butane torch to seal a metal door from inside for maximum protection. Run out of butane and get yourself locked forever :) Use “Suicide” and make an awesome immersive tomb for others - they unseal the door and find your body with good loot inside.
Ability to barricade a door by crafting wood plank with nails and hammer.
- Knock\lsam door hit breaks the barricade.
- Enforce barricade by one more plank - requires two slams and so on.
4.14. Weapons and combat
HEADSHOT ARE INSTANT KILL WITHOUT PROPER HELMET
- Makarov or AK... Headshots are lethal in 99% cases.. but for some reason not in Arma...
- We hope it will be in DayZ.
- Motorbike helmet have very poor bullt proof attributes. Almost zero. Plastic and thin aluminium is not stopping any bullets.
4.14.1. Tactical and dry reload
- Tactical reload is when you have a bullet in chamber, so you change mags and continue firing without pulling bolt.
- Dry reload means no bullets left and you have to pull bolt after loading new weapon or it won’t fire.
- Freshly loaded weapon is not shooting if you don’t pull bolt \ send bullet to chamber
Remove “R” key as a cheaty unrealistic\unimmersive quick reloading feature. Hotbar reload replaces “R” key reload
- empty magazines after reload in this case go to to clothes\vest pockets never to backpack
- if no clothes slots for empty magazines - thye are dropped to the ground.
- hotbar reload is impossible is magazine is in the backpack
Chance for weapon to be knocked out of hands
- 50% Bullet hit into weapon
- 40% Severe melee attack in torso
- 40% Arms fractures
- 10% Extreme fatigue and running
- 50% Falling down
- 35% When zombie pushes you
- 80% chance when being knocked down
- A special attack action for players “Disarm” while in proximity.
A MUST HAVE - hit direction\bodypart detection.
- Any person can precisely feel and tell that he is hit in left arm, middle finger, right shoulder. Not having HUD is cool, but there is no nervous system simulation, so we need some feedback from our body at least in case of pain.
- Most of the times a person can approximately feel the direction where the hit came from
- Suggesting a Call of Duty simple hud - hit from right\left\back\front correspond to the direction of the hit came from.
- A better suggestion is to flash shortly a small body outline picture in a corner of the screen with corresponding hit box painted red\yellow\orange depending on pain level. So no need to go codlike, more informative, more realisitc and authentic, but can be judged as non-immersive. But we must decide what is more UNimmersive - no nervous system and numb body or this small interface.
Non lethal weapons and tranquilizers\restrainers
- Shockers ([implemented in DayZ Standalone] Defibrillator shocking)
- Chlorophorm
- [implemented in DayZ Standalone] Hand cuffs
- Tranquilizing injections
- Sleeping medicines
- Gas
- Flashbangs
Three melee attack types
- (default) Fast swing - less damage, very quick
- Power hit - huge damage, longer perfoming (hold melee button, wait for progress bar)
- Backstab - power hit from behind - instant kill.
- Disarm - no damage, but a chance to fail and be knocked down instead.
Expand melee controls e.g. like in Penubra.
- Hold LMB and swing mouse left - right to left attack
- Swing up - upward hit
- Swing down - head hit etc.
[implemented in DayZ Standalone] Knock-outs
- Melee attack to the back of the head result in a knockout
- In the front of the head - 50% knock-out.
- 3 knockouts during 30 hours result in death from brain damage.
- After 30 hours temporary small injuries recover and player can survive more knockdowns.
- Prevents knockdown abuse or “friendly” knockdown abuse.
Add melee pitchfork.
Smash bottle to get improvised bottleneck cutting weapon
Smash any glass on the ground - makes noise when stepped over, reveals sneaking players.
Optic scopes are not fullscreen, but render2texture objects with peripherals visibility.
If you aiming your gun for a long time you get more tired or your aim is more shaky after 2-3 minutes. Give it a rest by holstering it for a while (5-10 sec) to remove debuff.
[implemented in DayZ Standalone] Craft a sawed off shotgun or other suitable weapon with shortened barrel. Requires a metal cutting tool and less slots in inventory.
[implemented in DayZ Standalone] Entrenching tool and other instruments as melee weapon.
Optic attachments can be used as standalone monocular magnifying devices or NVG.
[implemented in DayZ Standalone] Knife as a melee weapon.
Introduce magazine clip as a separate way to quickly load bullets.
Sign weapon butt with custom text (requires knife for wooden butt or permanent marker for other surfaces)
Knife can be used to cut down small trees and plants for firewood.
[implemented in DayZ Standalone] Knife can be used to open up cans.
Melee hit with weapon butt
Bullet model for better death investigation
- If can be extracted and player can learn caliber after examination.
- Medics will be more valuable to remove bullet from a wound.
- If bullet is not removed, pain is worse and infection starts faster.
- Deeper immersion.
Different ammo types: hollow point, tracers, incendiary etc
Ability not only to punch, but kick or push. Mainly to be able to push away a zombie to break through when surrounded not for ninja martial arts showcases.
[implemented in DayZ Standalone] Chainsaw as clumsy and weak close combat weapon and a very effective wood cutting item
Flaregun
Attachable Mini chainsaw. Highly ineffective but kinda badass.
Hand grenades improved simulation
- Each grenade has the “initiation shot” sound of delay element, which precedes the explosion. The sound is very clearly audible. This very important feature is not represented in any of the modern shooter games. The initiation shot is fired on 0.3 second after safety lever is released. Then after approx. 3 seconds (depends on grenade) the explosion occurs. The initiation shot is a primary method for revealing thrower position and taking measures to take cover.
- The safety pin is not very easily removed if the ends of the pin are bent around for safety purposes. Player can “prepare” a grenade by unbending the pin ends which makes it’s throw faster. Activating a grenade with unprepared pin, requires more time.
- Grenade is cooked once the pin is removed by separate key. Can explode in hands or if thrower is killed and grenade fell down.
Lasers can temporarily blind as well as flashlights
Weapon optics and binoculars can reveal shooter’s position by reflecting in the sun. Lasers can too.
Ability to craft a shutter for optics to reduce reflecting in the sun and revealing your position
Civil laser pointers to be used separately or as clumsy crafted weapon attachment.
Introduce cutting weapon sharpening tools
- Most civil knives, axes etc. are not sharpened enough for effective combat injury.
- Sharpened weapons cause much more damage
- Effect is reduced linearly, each hit reduces sharpened state until blunt.
4.15. Clothes
Hoodies’ hoods can be put on head or put out to the back
[implemented in DayZ Standalone] Rain or swimming makes clothes wet
- Must be changed or dried over fire or sun to avoid getting cold.
- Dried faster in the sun even when worn
- Don’t dry at night. Causes severe body temperature drop.
- Naked players without backpacks swim faster
Safety and protective clothes
Clothes can be hanged on different objects - on poles, on mannequins, scarecrows, in wardrobes etc. (at least as a loot spot alternative for interiors)
Capes, ghillies and coats CAN be worn over jackets and other tops. Needs separate slot. As well as shirts can be worn over tshirts, and above those two you can wear a jacket. Authenticity and combined effects.
Extend special wearable gear items attributes
- Examples here
- Discharge vests having more specific slots for magazines and small tools.
- Underarm holsters
- Multiple weapon holsters can be worn giving ability to carry more weapons. (How to wear three pistols? - Two pistols on belt, third is in underarm holster)
- Knife and arrow holsters
- Improvised craftable holsters and sidebags for weapons (e.g. leather)
- Optionally items can be visible in pockets for other players.
Rain drops sometimes get into eyes causing minor blurred vision. Requires protective stuff to remove effect.
- Umbrella
- Glasses
- Hood
- Cap
- Gasmask and other glassed headgear gets wet and visibility lowers
- Ability to wipe it with hand (like in METRO2)
Magazine Dump Pouch for easy collecting used mags
Headgear which covers ears decreases the ambient sounds and increases player physical sounds like breathing.
- Adds subtle but audible humming in ears, known as “seashell noise”
- Applied for
- Motorhelmets
- Ushankas
- Pilot helmets
- etc.
Introduce holiday, roleplay and traditional clothes, masks and items
WARNING: Abuse probability and immersion breaking behaviour is bound to follow follow. These items must be extremely rare and be looted only on proper holidays (santa outfit only in Christmas etc.). It must not be very common and easy to find.
- Authentic ANYONE IN CHERNO \ WHO’S SHOOTIN IN CHERNO - tshirt and a hoodie!!!
- Santa Claus beard, staff and robe + warm woolen mittens
- American presidents
- Uncle Sam’s stripes’n’stars hat
- Captain America mask (spiderman etc. not copy to avoid lawsuits from marvel and DC)
- Smiley or superman sign tshirt
- Troll
- Witch
- Pumpkin
- Vampire
- Saint Patrick’s hat
- etc.
Please, don’t ignore the extremely common Russian rural and uniform clothing.
Very rare chance to find knight armor and helmet - useless in combat, heavy and inconvenient, but badass and spooky (with proper clinging sounds) for roleplay and fun
4.16. Items and crafting
Introduce quick crafting and quality crafting. Add QUALITY attribute to items.
- Quick craft results in a default quality item
- Quality craft takes much longer time but results in a very reliable item.
- Quality items are more reliable, less chance to break, give slightly stronger effects, degrade slower
- Quality crafting requires good health, no severe arm\hand\finger injuries and fractures.
Expand the starting player gear with sometimes useless but immersive and authentic personal items like suggested for zombies.
- Troll on. Newbies will sure keep this useless rubbish fearing it might get useful one day.
- Troll on moar. When everyone is sure it is useless and always throw them away - later on add it to crafting something cool to regain it’s usefullness :)
Ability to cook in an empty can without mess tin. Add more cooking pots and less mess tins.
- The most commonly lootable and easy to find thing will be a pot, a simple kitchen cooking pot, but not a military\tourist mess tin. Pots are abundant in every kitchen and commonly found in garbage.
- I can’t imagine you won’t use empty can to cook or boil water if you have no mess tin. It’s a bit absurd. I don’t think tourist\military mess tins will be very common in such scenarios.
- It’s pretty common practice when you’re out of mess tin or cauldron. I boiled water one and even cooked small portion of fish soup in a simple empty can. Enough for one person and pretty useful thing.
Wood can be gathered not only from forest or trees, but from furniture, fences etc.
Swiss multitool knife
4.16.1. Backpack extensions
Backpacks have two states: compact (empty\folded) and unfolded.
- Folded backpacks can be put INSIDE OTHER BACKPACKS. E.g. requiring 1-2 slots.
- Folded pack have 0 slots and must be unpacked to be used.
Backpacks have straps on them and a backpack can be hung on a tree or other suitable object (fence, pole, wardrobe in the houses)
Backpacks degrade too. Require repair with some cloth\leather patches, needle and threads.
Backpacks can be identified visually as empty, half full and packed full. Just two additional models, but in terms of gameplay it is priceless. You can easily tell how much loot someone carries. May be it can prevent bandins from sniping the “empty backpacks”.
Long weapons in backpack must be visible sticking out of backpack top
More interesting trap constructions (example)
Add guitar and other simple music instruments (harmonica, banjo, flute) with AT LEAST predefined tunes.
- In future it can be extended to such systems as in other MMO (LOTR: Online)
Add a simple ability to knock\tap\drum on any surface and produce sounds.
- Take a stick. Tap on a tree. Everyone hears. You can morse code or signal your own beat.
- Can allow tribal dance parties. Drum on a mess tin or helmet. AWESOME!
Craft coloured banner - ability to wave it or attach to vehicle or carry in hands. Place on buildings. Requires cloth and pole\stick.
- Immersive Surrender and Conquer scenarios
Flashlight extension - ability to “tap” switch to be able to morze code.
Backpacks have a few (3-5?) red overload slots. Backpacks degrade more faster if overloaded + random critical chance to fall apart instantly dropping yer lewt all over :)
- You can push a couple of items over maximum load, but you risk all backpack breaks and items fall out.
Portable metal detectors.
Chernarus is probably a country which in some way suffered WW2. Thus it can have old battlefields, that are buried under the layer of modern life. There are cases when people just go with metal detectors and find historical artefacts, like old medals, gear, helmets and weapons.
In any way there are a lot of metal items buried and lost in the ground. Mostly metal junk, but sometimes useful.
Plastic bags, manually crafted thread\wool\leather bags, containers for food, medicine, boxes and wraps for better systematizing your items in inventory.
- [implemented in DayZ Standalone] First aid box - any box, with only important medicine. Would be cool to easily find a box with red cross in any medical facility and fill it manually.
- [implemented in DayZ Standalone] Ammo pack - only important ammunition for current weapons.
- Food plastic bag - separate plastic bag with only food.
- Adds more immersion, convenience, ability to keep inventory in order.
- Ease of exchange and trade. Pack items for trade in advance without the need to search them later.
- Fast access to any category of items. You know your meds are in that bag, and you food in this bag.
- Ability to unstack required items amount and keep the rest as an emergency supply.
- Will protect items from being damaged by falling or moisture. Especially if stored in a simple pit (basic storage cache in the ground).
- Plastic bags or bags with handles can be carried one in each hand instead of weapons
- gives ability to carry much more loot, but makes you vulnerable and unable to run fast
Big and small barrels for liquids storage. (example)
- Get to a pond
- Collect a barrel of water
- Dysinfect it
- Transport on car to clan camp site
- Provides good temporary water source for a group.
Over the neck\shoulder bags that can be carried with backpack at expense of fatigue
Simple whistle on the neck. With ability to audibly whistle.
Ability to quickly (one key press or combination) drop your current backpack while moving to gain speed in critical situation.
- Sometimes can effectively stop the pursuit by other players if they only wanted to loot you.
Anyone can access your inventory, backpack (only from behind), pockets
- Only from the closest proximity, not 3 metres as in the mod.
- Player receives a very clear signal\message and sound that someone wants to access his gear.
- Accessing gear takes reasonable 5 seconds.
- Any player movement interrupts the access.
- Looter is vulnerable because is playing gear animation.
- Backpacks can be “locked”\tied up thus increasing the access time by 3 seconds.
- Such mechanics can help playing as a supporter role in big squad and steal from idle or unaware players.
4.16.2. Map authenticity extensions
- Map can be shared for those around to see it’s markers - so that you can show your marks live without giving your map to anyone.
- Ability to see map NOT fullscreen to be aware of the surroundings.
- You can draw your compass, watch and GPS on th hud and run around, but if you open map - youre blind until you close the map.
- Closing map takes time because of engine loading game world after exiting the fullscreen map. Very unauthentic and inconvenient.
- Suggestion is to open map in a draggable window or panel and it’s scale and position is stored for player.
- When he clicks map it opens up not obstruction the whole screen.
- Looking on map must be performed with corresponding animation and must occupy one hand
- Maps can get wet if you swim and be totally damaged. Players must use protective materials.
- Maps and any other paper can be used to start fire quicker than without it.
- Maps can be burnt partially - black spots appear on map (you can use circle\oval black markers or cool decals\overlays) - or fully burnt - destroyed.
- If map is in the clothes pocket and you get injured - map receives bloodspots and is randomly damages.
- If you seldom wash your hands the maps gets dirty and less readable unless it is covered in protective materials. Wash hands often - useful to keep infections off too.
- Map cannot be seen at night without a light source nearby or without your switching on a flashlight (two hands occupied:holding map and flashlight) or headtorch, or a match, lighter etc.
Accessing map or inventory makes subtle noise that can reveal you to the nearby players.
[implemented in DayZ Standalone] Money. NOT AN INGAME MMO CURRENCY! Just useless trash loot found in bodies and vehicles, safes, houses, banks. Roubles, dollars, euro.
- Come in a couple of note varieties.
- Simple coins.
- Paper notes go well for wiping after defecation and for campfire starting.
Craft shotgun ammo. Not very difficult. 25% chance of misfire.
- pellets (can be crafted\smelted out from any plumbum plate from car battery)
- powder
- thick paper
- glue
- tools
Common wearable golden\silver items: wedding rings, earrings, bracelets, necklaces, piercing items for character customization and roleplay
Spike strip (found in police stations and military outposts)
Parachute as a separate item: steerable and simple parachutes.
[implemented in DayZ Standalone] Car medkits and paramedic medkits with appropriate contents in them. Just a container with authentic items. Can be used to store other items or create traps.
Cards, chess, checkers etc. mini game items to play around at campfire with buddies.
Chest flashlight and pocket flashlight with clip and with separate slot.
Manually chargable flashlights (hand charged)
Ability to acquire campfire wood at wood piles near rural houses around Chernarus
You can wear headtorch over any suitable hat (beanie, ushanka, builder helmet etc.)
Thermos flask!
- Hot and cold liquids can be stored longer without changing it’s temperature.
- Immersive and authentic
- Has a cool top cup :)
4.16.3. Trash\Garbage bins and piles extensions
- Make garbage piles lootable
- Trash bins and containers lootable and let it contain 70% useless thrash with some chance to find valuable items (lighter, matches, pen, food, paper, plastic bag and bottles, wire, trings etc.)
- If too many waste items (empty tins, bottles, apple cores, wrappings) dropped in one place - adding another one converts these object into one generic garbage pile.
- Garbage piles can be cleaned off or burnt by players to give ability to clean areas.
- Make rats very common around these places.
- Increase the chance of getting infection when looting garbage without protective clothes.
- Awesome authentic immersion! Most of people in DayZ scenario will get hobo-style. Basically DayZ is a hobo simulator, but why we ignore the main sources for hobos - the grabage.
Ability to physically destroy or break any destructible item.
- For example smash a can of beans, GPS, torch, music receiver, radio etc.
- Burn items in fire (itemBurnable attribute may be)
- Ability to throw a magazine or grenade in a campfire to distract enemies with a little fire show.
Ability to craft additional slots on clothes\backpacks - additional pockets are crafted if you have a piece of suitable cloth, needle and threads.
Portable ladders. Wooden craftable ladders. Craftable and factory rope ladders
- Access high windows, rooftops etc., heli SWAT ops.
Factory weapon bags\dust covers as well as improvised craftable ones (simple cloth wrap) to protect your weapon from degrading.
Sunglasses and tactical glasses prevent blinding by flashbangs and headlights but degrade color
More tents (color varieties) and their functioning.
- Crafteв between trees with a few ropes and some cloth\plastic. Simple rain cover.
Every clothes item can be DEcrafted into raw materials like colored cloths used for imrpovised bandaging, crafting pockets or other suitable items
Amplified megaphones to shout at longer ranges
Mess tin\cauldron can be used by group as a shared source for food.
- Has an action “take a portion of meal” and player can fill in his plate\cup\bottle or canteen with suitable food.
Craft wooden boxes and containers to collect categorized sets of items for transportation and easier storage.
Introduce static human shape targets and paper circle targets for ingame accuracy and shooting training.
- Like the targets in ArmA3, that show bullet hits.
- Will help mastering weapons.
Firewood can be gathered from the ground fallen branches without hatchet and knife. Takes more time to gather.
Rope
- You can tie it to a heavy object and drag faster.
- Gives ability to store items on trees
- Climb\descend building walls, high fences with a hook attached
- Craft torniquet, simple bow, “indian violin” for making fire by rotating a pole.
Fake dummy, portable scarecrow, crafted hat\helmet on a stick
- Feeling unsafe when leaving cover? Put your helmet on some stick or gun, raise it above the cover and if it gets shot - don’t go out today :)
- Place a manequin, dressed like survivor and put a dummy gun or broken unloaded gun. Place it in the woods or near your base and scare the hell out of bypassers.
Ability to craft a mirror on a knife or stick to be able to look safely round the obstacles.
- Simple RederToTexture thingie.
- Ability to take a photo round the corner.
Portable mp3 player
- requires batteries and optionally headphones
- ability to attach inside a vehicle to work from car battery
- Player can create a folder on his hard drive, copy any mp3 files and
- play them back ingame
- broadcast them to surrounding game world, either by built in speaker with distorted weak volume or using sound amplifiers with speakers
- broadcast it through radio on certain frequency
- broadcast it globally using the huge tower on Green Mountain.
Earplugs and industrial protective headphones for hearing protection when shooting big caliber or machineguns
Rare or antique items - weapons, clocks, coins, jewelry, armor etc. e.g. found in museums; golden zippo or parker pens, cigarette cases, Vertu phones :)
Ability to fill any bottle\canteen with any liquid.
- Make a canteen of cola, milk, soup
- Pour two cola cans into single 1litre plastic bottle.
- Store gasoline in a plastic bottle. Why not?
Craft “indian candle”.
- Burns longer with enough temperature to boil 2,5 litres of water for 30 minutes.
Other light sources
- Lighters (must be abundant in urban locations)
- Zippo
- Old lantern with gasoline or oil
- Candle (abundant in houses)
- A glass jar\can with candle - improvised lantern
Digital photo camera
- Requires batteries
- Has flash for night shot.
- Used to make screenshots from the point of lens direction
- Can be placed in any place with timer or other activation.
- Images are stored either on the server or on client. Cannot be accessed (binarized or cyphered) if you do not have the camera in your inventory.
- Ability to make remote screenshots, e.g. security systems. Tripwire makes a photo of intruder.
- Has no HUD, only date and time on image.
Simple fireworks for fun, ambushes and signalling tripwires. Zombies troubled by them too and investigate.
GPS should not be a cheating device. No HUD\overlay markers from ArmA2 shall exist. Only markers on the GPS device display.
4.17. Medicine
Blood types [implemented in DayZ Standalone]:
- random blood type (assigned after respawn to prevent abuse)
- blood bags have blood types too
- blood type is stated in your ID (found on respawn in the inventory)
- simulate blood type based blood transfusions - incompatibility causes acute hemolytic reaction and kills the receiver if not stopped timely.
- rare -O Rh D type (universal donor) and +AB Rh D type (universal receiver)
Bandages ARE VISIBLE on body. You can always see injured players.
Bandages get bloody when applied to big wounds.
Bandages get visually dirty and degrade over time. If not replaced before wound heals - can cause infection or restart bloodloss.
Thermometer - for precise temperature measurements.
- Without this item player can only “guess” by reading status messages like “you feel cold\ok\warm\hot\sweating”
Simple surgical\doctor gloves
- Protects from any kinds of infections while looting or dysinfecting\using items
Surgical mask
- Wearing it can disguise you a bit and prevent from catching infections from air or infect others.
Untreated minor wounds soon become infected
Craft simple bandages out of any appropriate clothing or window sheet.
- Having knife or scissors speeds up crafting
- Clothing item destroyed after crafting
- Such bandage is less reliable than medical bandage and has chance of infecting the wound.
Craft simple tourniquet from rope, weapon sling etc.
Other parasites
- louses
- Helminths
- Mosquitoes
Syringes that can be filled with
- Vaccine
- Poison
- Sedative
- Tranquilizer
- Any suitable liquid
Crutch and improvized crutch, that allow walking with severe fractures.
4.18. Inventory and controls
Ability to do any reasonable items manipulations and weapon actions while moving.
- you can throw away\drop any weapon and backpack while running
- you can take any grenade and throw it back\drop at your feet while running (smoke grenade would be very useful in many cases)
- you can access backpack while walking
- you can switch weapons while running
- you can reload while running
- you can drink and eat while running (not when sprinting)
- ... all that takes appropriately longer time compared to when stopped
Introduce “VIEW item” action in inventory. Only using it you can read the label of the item (attributes etc.) and it opens up a bigger window with big model that can be rotated and examined. In inventory slot you dont have item labels.
Quick access bar (hotbar) is very bright at night. there must be some way to tweak it more transparent or react to surrounding light sources.
Ability to open doors slowly\carefully, silently and partially.
- Why a survivor would storm in and swing any door fully and violently (like a soldier in ArmA2 or a SWAT officer during assault) - Being in Cherno, where every step can be your last, I’d rather open the door carefully and only a bit to peek in through a tiny gap.
- As a suggestion - make doors be interactively controlled - hold LMB and drag sideways. The more youdrag - the more it opens.
- Quick opening results in door squeak, can reveal you to enemies.
- Careful opening is silent and stealthy.
Extend Q\E rolls while prone.
- First press you half-roll and lie on your back facing up with ability to shoot above your legs, second roll completes your roll and you’re lying on belly.
- Gives ability to quickly shoot back while prone without the need to rotate mouse backwards and awkward movements. You don’t shuffle sideways to look or shoot back, you just roll and face it.
More emotes, more social animations.
- Fake death
- Fake pain (roll on the floor screaming)
- Fake zombie
- Dance
- Applaud
- Lie down (on sofa too)
- Lie down on your side with head propped by you hand
- Lie on your back with hands behind your head
- Sit down on a chair, sofa etc. suitable items.
- Facepalm
- Push ups
- International common signs:
- Thumb up
- Thumb down
- Nod YES
- Shake head NO
- Shake hands
- Shrug
- Point finger
- Cut throat by your finger
- Middle finger FU
- Taunting “Come on” with one hand (like Morpheus or Bruce lee does here)
- Whistle
- Ability to throw out current weapon in hands to demonstrate surrender intentions.
- Ability to bind macro text to quick key combinations: Friendly, Yes, No etc.
4.18.1. Fire and light ideas
- Flashlights can be attached to any object by duct tape. Improvised interior lighting or security detectors etc.
- You can strike and light a match and hold it in your hand, creating a slight source of light around you. Burns for 15 seconds. 100 matches in a box.
- You can carry a lighter\zippo as a torch. Plastic lighters burn for 2 minutes then melt and get irreparably damaged.
- You can use car fuel and medical alcohol to refill zippo lighters.
- Using paper for campfire makes it faster to craft a campfire.
- You can leave burning zippo on the ground
- Campfire produces no huge smoke when burning.
- Campfire produces plenty of smoke after ignited or extinguished.
- Players can examine campfire and detect it is warm or not. Campfires detectable temperature cooldowns realistically. No need for visuals. When player examines the time it was extinguished is converted to temperature. Campfires beyond 1 hour are considered cold.
- Players in 100m proximity can randomly and often in a bad weather smell smoke and detect direction roughly receiving a status message “you smell smoke, comes from right” and “smell fuel” for damaged vehicles. (example for hud icons with colorcode for smell intensity)
- Campfire is taken out very quickly using water or non-alcohol drinks. Taking it out without water takes longer and produces more smoke.
- Campfire consumes more wood when it rains. Starting campfire in rain takes more time.
- Campfire and burning objects cause burn injuries and even lethal when exposed close to source.
Other fuel for fire
- Fence wooden planks
- Paper, books (burn faster)
- Rubber tyres (toxic, more smoke, cooking disabled)
- Gasoline (burns faster)
- Furniture
Very interesting idea of being able to throw almost any reasonably small object as we do throw bottles and trash in the mod, to distract zombies or players.
- Awesome possibility to help buddy trapped without ammo in a distance - just throw him mags or loaded pistol! Yay!
- You can set up lure-traps for survivors from the distance - throw a valuable item out of the window and snipe’em down when they come.
- Throw a receiver with music playing on Absolute 60’s to puzzle your enemies and disorient them.
- Throw a backpack at your enemy! He’ll be shocked and can even stop pursuing you :)
Limit the ability to use 3rd person view to “cheat peek” above the obstacles or corner them.
- Camera cannot go above the line of sight (eye level).
- If player looks down - the more he looks down, the more camera goes forward to the back of the head. Thus it gives no chance to peek above your head.
- Camera goes closer to the head if player is close to any obstacle\cover. E.g. if any object is nearer than 3 meters you can see only you back and cannot raise view higher to see above obstacles.
- Let’s have a sincere dialogue? Can players answer WHY do they need 3pv for?
- See their players appearance? - You have your dummy\doll in the new inventory
- ... Wait, was there any other reason? All other cases are just cheaty. Of course everyone is dreaming seeing through walls and above obstacles. 3pv has just legalized this cheat in singleplayer. Why having it at all in MP?
Complex or precise actions can have “mini-game” style implementation
- Examples: Drag and drop needle into a precise location during transfusion. Failure can injure player or render action unsuccessful.
- Rotate a wrench at 6 points to remove or put on a wheel to a car.
- Another example at IAS mod for ArmA2.
- The speed of the action depends on players physical speed of performing subactions.
- Newbies do it logically slower until get used to or trained.
- Gives opportunity to become a professional at doing something and gain value in the team.
Map cannot be seen in the dark without nearby light sources or without activating a flashlight.
- In dark can reveal your position.
- Players can use matches and flashlights to see map in the dark.
All backpack items not stored in plastic bag are damaged by water.
- Introduce rare special waterproof backpacks
Player can carry more than maximum weight, but have chance to stumble and fall when running, need more water and develop fractures\fatigue more often.
Most binoculars\rangefinders have straps to be worn on neck. Introduce NECK slot for wearable items. Gives quick access to item on neck.
- Why no ties? We need striped and checked ones, red and dotted! :)
- Ability to wear a tie\necklace and a binocular.
At least some basic obstacle passing controls and animations (example)
4.19. Zombies
Ability\chance to knock out a weapon from players hands.
Ability\chance to knock a player down.
Some zombies grab player without damage when very close and reduce their movement - unable to run. Rare chance.
- Player has an action key to quickly react and free himself from the grab.
- If grab is too long - zombie causes critical damage (e.g. a deadly neck bite or arm artery bite)
Some stronger hungry zombies can perform a leap to catch you. Quick approach and fast attack.
You can find filthy, bloody clothes in zombies gear.
- Just an inventory item without any visual effect as for the players model (do not visualize the model with closes).
- Clothes can be worn.
- Can cause infections if not cleaned.
- Can increase chance to be undetected by zombies.
Zombies investigate dead bodies and eat them.
Zombies attracted by bloody clothes or deliberately bloodied items, e.g. with a blood bag.
At night zombies less active andagressive can get blinded for a few seconds (accompanied by violent screams of agony and suitable animations) by a flashlight or headlights but then get very mad and berserk.
More versatile loot in zombies and among player’s starting gear.
- They’re all former people. They are likely to always have on them:
- Lighters and cigarettes
- ID, passports with blood type
- Receipts, handkerchiefs
- Keys, car keys, watches, mobile phones.
- Money and jewelry.
- Chewing gums, tictac
- Bus tickets.
- Handkerchiefs
- This loot is mainly trash and useless for basic crafting, except for the phones and lighters.
4.20. Animals
“Hunter skill”. When you run around the forests the wildlife is hearing you from very far away and you can’t hunt anything without being stealthy.
- Sprinting and running around without paying attention should scare away animals so it would be hard to just "run into" unaware deer in the middle of the forest.
Ability to milk cow etc.
Random bee hives in forests. Produce honey. Sometimes you get stung.
- honey is edible and a good medicine
Mosquitoes that transfer Malaria.
- Repellent sprays to defend yourself.
- More of them in the woods and at night.
Huntable birds in the woods
Domestic geese
Birds randomly flock in the trees and are scared off when players approach or shooting nearby
Cockroaches in dirty garbaged areas
5. List of contributors
- Алексей
- Анатолий
- Илья
- Кент
- Руслан
- Сергей Игоревич
- -=KILLER=-
- a1expit
- AfterLife
- AksakaL
- aleks-co
- Allenatore
- ANIX
- Arkados
- Avangard602
- Bad Wolf
- BlackMarket
- Black_plan
- blag
- Blind
- boxxy*
- butcher
- Che
- comak
- Corpse
- Crendel
- Croaton
- death220
- Denis
- Diseyr
- Deonor
- Derpy
- Dmitro_S
- Doctor Fikus
- Dolfik
- enemy
- Fant0m
- FastFaend
- foggyfox
- Footballer
- FreeMoney
- GhostPal
- Gnumoder
- Gralded
- grey
- Grobman
- heaven66
- HopDukc
- huzik
- lightsinmyhead
- IIPU3PAK
- Image
- Just_Alexus
- Lukin
- llslavonchikll
- maddogsw
- MaF
- maksim_vsn
- Maryus
- MaX1221
- MEDya
- Mephisto
- Mongoose
- Morgenium
- mouse
- mrforger
- MrTazzzik
- Nebaka
- NEON_BOT
- NEXT_warrior
- Nazgool
- NikSAV
- nopoison
- noTan
- OloloSHA
- PanNICKA
- PiFon
- Plus1q
- Raicon
- Rattlehead
- ReJIax0
- Retriever
- SaaVarro
- sanek4950
- SARGAN
- Sereban
- SgtRollins
- Shad0w
- SHMIT
- Shon
- skipper
- Skvid
- Slimus07
- Smertoks
- svetilo
- Tepesh
- THE_FABEL
- Toweleie
- Trojan
- uptime
- Vemaster
- Viweu
- Volodiakom
- Warjag
- Wasd
- wolferrr
- Xeiom
- Yamigami
- Yarchi
- Zed-kan
- zert457
- zlx