Ota Vrťátko informed us about the release of Arma Tactics, a turn-based close-combat strategy game.
Quote : Arma Tactics THD takes the best from the popular strategy genre... and goes mobile. The finest assets used in the critically acclaimed Arma™ series on PC now come to life on the Android mobile platform, in one of the best looking mobile games to date.
Arma Tactics THD is a turn-based close-combat strategy game, where the player takes control of a four-member Special Forces team. There are no given strategies, rails to move on, or paths to follow; it‘s up to the player to decide how he will play through both the story-driven missions and generated missions with randomized objectives. Whether using stealth or a more direct approach, players will need to use their strategic thinking and use both basic and advanced weaponry while facing many different opponents - ranging from unorganized local militia to smart and skilled mercenaries.
Arma Tactics THD is a turn-based close-combat strategy game, where the player takes control of a four-member Special Forces team. There are no given strategies, rails to move on, or paths to follow; it‘s up to the player to decide how he will play through both the story-driven missions and generated missions with randomized objectives. Whether using stealth or a more direct approach, players will need to use their strategic thinking and use both basic and advanced weaponry while facing many different opponents - ranging from unorganized local militia to smart and skilled mercenaries.
Main Features:
Explore highly detailed battlefield environments that come to life with sophisticated particle systems and post-process effects
See your men come to life with realistic animations captured by a powerful motion-capture solution
Lead them through a thrilling single player campaign or improve your skills in generated missions
Gather experience points to level up your characters, upgrade weapons and unlock special equipment
Gather experience points to level up your characters, upgrade weapons and unlock special equipment
Take part in challenging special game modes
Play as you like – by touching your screen or by using gamepad controls
Currently supported Tegra3 devices:
Iconia A110, Iconia A210 or A211, Iconia Tab A510, Iconia Tab A700 or A701, Transformer Infinity, Transformer Prime, Transformer Pad 300, Arrows X F-02E, Arrows V F-04E, Arrows X F-10D, Arrows Z ISW13F, Fujitsu Stylistic M532, Fujitsu Arrows Tab F-05E, Nexus 7, One X+, One X, Idea Tab A2109, Optimus 4X HD, Optimus Vu, Pegatron Chagall, Pegatron Olipad, Xperia Tablet S, Excite 10 SE, Excite 10, Excite 7, Excite 13, V985
Matt Lightfoot released a new video blog on the Official DayZ development blog of the devs visit to the Boston PAX to talk about their DayZ standalone.
Additionally Matt showed some screens of the ship they have been working on.
Quote Matt Lightfoot : The other thing we have to show you are some screenshots from our latest "building" our artists have created. This shipwreck has a vast amount of enter-able space inside and we haven't decided exactly where it is going to be placed on Chernarus yet either so some of the pictures are taken from our test map which is bland/featureless and which we use for testing new buildings.
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Dean Hall released a new devblog of the DayZ standalone on the Official DayZ development blog.
This time it is a special devblog since Dean is writting it up there from Everest Base Camp at 5400 meters thanks to a satellite connection and a tiny laptop.
Quote : So here I am, at Everest Base Camp, 5400 meters, writing what I am sure is the highest ever devblog from the ground! This is largely able to occur because of Matt Lightfoot, the youngish looking chap who is our tireless Production Assistant. Both him and others have continued to send me progress updates and approvals, which I am accessing via a satellite connection.
Ivan is now working a great deal directly on the project, and has been picking up the slack for some of the areas I needed to address which has been a huge help...
Ondrej, our lead programmer, continues his work on moving DayZ into a server-client architecture, turing the entire architecture of DayZ into an MMO. Jirka is working on updating some of our steamworks integration...
Bebul is working on our Radio implementation, allowing players to communicate using a basic radio, similar (but more simple) to the popular ACARS radio mod for Arma 2....
Seven towns have been remade by SenChi, overseen by Ivan, to alter the look and feel better. Bugs are continually being fixed and we have purchased new satellite data to improve the detail of the base map (looks much better in the distance with this new data).
I realize some people are upset at my departure from the project for two months to climb Mt Everest, but hopefully from this you can see the large team Bohemia have assembled behind the development that are continuing to innovate and develop DayZ Standalone in the direction of the game we all want. This is going to take as long as it needs to, we want to release our initial alpha under the architecture it needs to avoid hacking and security issues - this is the only remaining task stopping us from releasing the alpha. But while this task is being completed, we can continue with other activities.
The next devblog will feature some screenshots to demonstrate the progress, captured by Matt, but my satellite connection and tiny laptop cant cope with downloading the current build.
So, this is the devblog I write from Everest Base Camp, at 5400 meters! Tomorrow I am off to the Khumbu Icefall for training in fixed lines and ladders, big thanks to the community for their continued patience, and everyone at Bohemia who is pushing hard towards our DayZ standalone initial release!
Dean, all of us here at Armaholic hope you reach the top, fullfilling your dream. Good luck mate!
You can follow Dean climbing Mount Everest on his Tumblr.
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Ota Vrťátko informed us about a new video showing the Android game Arma Tactics, a strategy game for NVIDIA Project SHIELD.
Arma Tactics is scheduled for release Q2 2013.
Potential future platform releases include iOS, Android, PC, MAC, Linux with an expected released date Q3 2013.
Quote : Welcome to Project SHIELD - Android Thursdays. In this series we'll show you examples of how we use the Tegra 4-powered Project SHIELD to play our favorite Android gaming titles.
In this episode, we take you through a demo of Project SHIELD playing the Tegra 4-enhanced version of Arma Tactics. With increased textures, dynamic lighting and shadows, and particle effects, the Tegra enhanced version of Arma Tactics puts you in command of a special forces squad with unrivaled mobile graphics.
Arma Tactics is a turn-based close-combat strategy game, where the player takes control of a four-member Special Forces team. There are no given strategies, rails to move on, or paths to follow; it‘s up to the player to decide how he will play through both the story-driven missions and generated missions with randomized objectives. Whether using stealth or a more direct approach, players will need to use their strategic thinking and use both basic and advanced weaponry while facing many different opponents - ranging from unorganized local militia to smart and skilled mercenaries.
Dean Hall released a new video devblog of the DayZ standalone on the Official DayZ development blog.
This time we can see some ingame footage featuring how they solved the notorious "zombie zig zag" which occurred in the DayZ mod, server-sided mass zombie spawns and loot spawning inside wrecks.
Additionally you can watch some discussions with the forum/reddit mods testing the DayZ Standalone.
Quote : We’ve gone for a reasonably quick and dirty video blog this week, mainly because things have been very busy for us.
Inventory System:
One of the biggest improvement areas has been the inventory system, now almost ready for a public display. This new inventory system supports crafting, interchangeable clothing, degradation, tracking, weapon customization, and much more. It’s really a revolutionary system for us and we’re extremely proud of the results that Jirka (our programmer assigned to this) has achieved.
Crafting:
Not touched on in the video, but what we will be showing soon is the basics of how users can interact with items in the world - this is the next step in development of our inventory system beyond where it is now. This is not a traditional crafting system, but one that encourages layers to explore the ways in which items can be crafted.
Zombie pathfinding:
In the video, towards the end, some before and after footage of work on the zombie AI pathfinding. Not only has this changed the role, threat, and speed of the zombies - but it has also yielded performance improvements. The increased accuracy of the zombies movement allows their movement to be slowed down to more sensible values, in line with those of the players themselves. We still have some other avenues to explore in this regard, but we’re very pleased with the results so far.
Mass zombie spawning server side:
Now all zombies are spawned directly on the server and their movement is governed directly on the server itself. This has allowed us to provide increased security and hack prevention mechanisms by disabling functionality at the client level. It also means that zombies no longer “pop” in and out of the world, previously used as a mechanism to tell if someone was in the area. It also paves the way for us to allow migrating zombies and zombies traversing open areas in search for their next meal.
We still have some way to go in performance, the initial tests of 4000 zombies spawned reduced the server FPS to 4. After performance optimizations this increased up to 21. We’re now confident we can have the server FPS back up to 30+ with maximum numbers of zombies in the near future.
Expanding health system:
Health is extending far beyond just blood, into a system that incorporates health, blood, and consciousness level. How these are all interrelating will be touched on in its own devblog in future. Some of the exciting developments coming include longterm play effects such as poor diet affecting your long term health levels. All this translates into the importance of a longterm plan for survival of your character, and we’re sure the role of medical specialists will become very important - hopefully emphasizing social interaction opportunities.
Chernarus Expansion:
This continues at a huge pace. The two new villages in expand Cherno and provide it a true city feeling. Also expanding is the top (north) map area and the continued development of our large-scale features being added to the map. More to follow on this! (we can’t wait to show some more of this!)
Loot spawning:
Finding loot now involves scavenging inside of vehicles, looking for items stuck between furniture, prying open car boots, or strewn in the wasteland itself. Consuming your bounty now results in rubbish, such as empty cans after consuming your beans. This is no mere gimick, because your trash can be used to track you.
Conclusion:
There is a great deal more that can be covered, but we’re really deeply in the thick of development at the moment and we just wanted to get something quick and dirty to all those waiting for standalone. We know that you want it released, and we know you want to know when this will be - but we’re 100% committed to making this a great game, and that means we are making sure to do things properly. We’re happy and confident about the progress, so it’s one foot after another and soon we’ll be at the finish line.
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Dean Hall released a new devblog of the DayZ standalone on the Official DayZ development blog.
This time Rocket and Matt give a look behind the scenes while they work on the new zombie animations for the DayZ Standalone in the Mocap studio at Bohemia Interactive, .
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Quote : The last two weeks have gone extremely fast for us. As many will have noticed, we didn’t do a devblog last week. While the aim is produce an update every week (scheduled for Friday), the reality is that development will always have priority over our devblogs - and there has been a huge amount of real work to do on the project!
To celebrate Ivan returning to assist with the team Ivan, Matt, and myself held a design meeting in a rather unusual setting - we went from a hike around a lake area in the Czech Republic. We got some excellent idea’s - and we’re all thrilled with the great concepts Ivan has been bringing. We look forward to including Ivan on our next video blog.
Project Team Expansion:
One of the biggest changes in the last week has been the expansion of the project, both in scale and scope as well as with personnel. We’ve been getting more and more people involved, both locally and externally. Many of these people are from within the community. We hope that these people will be able to assist us in really pushing the game to its limits.
Multiplayer Testing:
Our internal closed testing has been continuing, and then pausing, as we identify and fix crashes and other issues. The vast amount of changes we have made require meticulous testing. We’re hoping to begin our first large-scale capacity testing next week (assuming we have a stable enough build). This will involve us working the server over with around 50 people initially, then working up to 150 and beyond to obtain metrics as to what limitations we will have.
Architecture Developments:
Our lead programmer has been continuing the revision of the entire engine multiplayer to operate under the server-client MMO model. The results have been outstanding, and it is going to radically change the product. As these changes are made we are filter them onto the approach taken at other levels, ensuring everything is moved from being done at a client level to being done at a server level.
We have been experimenting with some novel approaches such as not having loot spawned at the server level, but having it spawned at the database level - therefore negating the ease with which loot tables could be produced and allowing us to conduct a form of economic regulation to item spawns dynamically. I think the end result, however, will be a mixture of the two approaches due to performance requirements.
Character Development:
This is the absolute core of our current design efforts. As such, you can see some new screen shots of the new ethnic heads available for female characters. We want to allow characters to be fully customized and reflect the players story as they are going along. This has included some fantastic ideas inspired by the community. Until initial release, the vast majority of our efforts will be with expanding options for developing and customizing your character.
Inventory system:
Based on feedback and development, changes continue with this area. It’s starting to operate really well. Our programmer here, Jirka, will eventually move onto the crafting system. He has been wanting to move onto this for some time, as it is a personal area of interest for him.
As part of the inventory system, we have started detailed work on the attachment system. Like the customization of characters, we want to allow maximum ability for the customization and development of a players weapons. As part of this, all weapons being introduced into DayZ are being redeveloped from scratch at extremely high detail. The work being produced so far is outstanding! This means that, on release, there will be less weapons in the standalone - but it allows us the ability to continue each week to release content updates with new weapons and items.
World development:
Massive areas are changing here. Ivan Buchta having returned from his time in the Greek Prison has been a huge asset to the team, working with our world designer SenChi (designer of the Ironfront worlds) to redevelop Chernarus. I have included some low-detail screenshots taken by SenChi showing some of his developments.
Art development:
New clothing, items, weapons, buildings, “special areas” are all the foci of art development. We are greatly expanding our team of artists, as we have hundreds of new items we want to include in the world.
This week’s blog is pretty light on detail and excitement, but the pace is such that pausing to write about it is taking too much time! Overall, each week is proving to be more exciting for us than the last.
#AskDayZ:
Part of a regular feature we will be doing is to take peoples questions on twitter (hastag: #AskDayZ) and facebook and Matt will select a few and we will answer them. You can read all questions and their answers on the Official DayZ development blog.
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Dean Hall and Matt Lightfoot released a new video about the current status of the DayZ standalone on the Official DayZ development blog.
In this video you can view some elements of the DayZ Standalone project including:
the new clothing functions
a peek at the new UI
some new areas on the map
Quote : Let’s see some DayZ video! A quiet start for us with a video blog, we’re only detailing a few areas of progress in this weeks update. We show a peek at the new UI, some detail on the new clothing functions available in the engine, and take a tour round a few of the many new areas inside the updated Chernarus map.
We’ve edited out our use of the Inventory system, which we’re keeping under wraps for the moment (covered out with hilarious images photoshopped by forum members on the official DayZ forums at dayzmod.com!)
So where are we at?
Development is continuing to progress in extremely positive ways for us. The architectural decisions we have taken are providing continued dividends with the development of our disease mechanics, and in the ability to create notes in the world.
Inventory is fully synchronizing with the central database, including inventory inside clothing items. Essentially your clothing is like many little backpacks.
We’re getting plenty of bugs coming in from our closed internal testing, and we haven’t moved to our closed external testing just yet. There is still no timeframe for when this will happen, but we’re committed to continuing with these development updates and blog posts.
What is next?
We’re working very hard on the inventory system even more, and it looks like the crafting system is close in next in our development. It would be fair to say that inventory and crafting are the key development objective currently, second only to the client/server architecture (makes DayZ more like an MMO), and new zombie AI mechanics (an ongoing task).
We look forward to giving even more information, new exciting areas, features, functions, and updates in the coming blogs! We’re all confident it won’t be too long before you’ll be able to join in the development yourself.
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Ota Vrťátko sent us the official announcement for Arma Tactics, a strategy game for NVIDIA Project SHIELD.
Arma Tactics is scheduled for release Q2 2013.
Potential future platform releases include iOS, Android, PC, MAC, Linux with an expected released date Q3 2013.
Quote : Prague, Czech Republic January 30, 2013
Bohemia Interactive, the award-winning independent Czech development studio, proudly announces the development of a turn-based close-combat strategy game entitled Arma Tactics; planned for a Q2 2013 release for NVIDIA Tegra devices.
Arma Tactics is a turn-based close-combat strategy game, where the player takes control of a four-member Special Forces team. There are no given strategies, rails to move on, or paths to follow; it‘s up to the player to decide how he will play through both the story-driven missions and generated missions with randomized objectives. Whether using stealth or a more direct approach, players will need to use their strategic thinking and use both basic and advanced weaponry while facing many different opponents - ranging from unorganized local militia to smart and skilled mercenaries.
Arma Tactics is coming to mobile, taking the best from games like Jagged Alliance™ and X-COM™. The finest assets used in the critically acclaimed Arma™ series on PC now come to life on Tegra devices in one of the best looking mobile games to date.
Arma Tactics takes full advantage of Project SHIELD’s console-grade controller, and when connected to a television, the game utilizes Project SHIELD’s unique multi-screen gaming, allowing the audience to experience entertaining vantage points that differ from the player’s. Optimizations for NVIDIA Tegra 4, the world’s fastest mobile processor, include enhanced physics simulation, bloom post-processing effects and increased objects and geometry.
With highly replayable missions, achievements, weapons to unlock and whole campaigns to be regularly added, Arma Tactics offers many hours of intense ever-changing action.
Arma Tactics Key Features:
Exclusive launch title for the upcoming NVIDIA Tegra 4, Project SHIELD
Developed in close cooperation with NVIDIA
Explore highly detailed environments that come to life with sophisticated particle systems and post-process effects
See your men come to life with animations captured by a powerful motion-capture solution
Lead them through a single player campaign or improve your skills in generated missions
Gather experience points to level up your characters, upgrade weapons and unlock special equipment
Choose your difficulty – we make sure the game is fun to play for both casual players and hardcore gamers
Play as you like – by touching your screen or by using gamepad controls
Potential future platform iOS, Android, PC, MAC, Linux expecting released date Q3 2013
Dean "Rocket" Hall, Lead developer of the standalone version of DayZ, released an update about the current status of the DayZ standalone on the Official DayZ development blog
Quote Dean Hall: This is the first update when I have sat down and thought “where do I start?”. There has been so much going on with the development this month that it is hard to fit it all in a post here. Through the month we have steadily moved from working on our architectural changes, through to preparing for our first public test. The risks and gambles we took last year, are now beginning to pay serious dividends for us.
Lighting and material improvements
One of our Lead Artists, Mario Kurty, has been working with some of the ArmA3 artists to ensure that DayZ Standalone has the best visuals possible. The result is pretty striking when combined with some of the other improvements we have made in the engine. These improvements make the world really come to life, improving the visuals overall. A comparison screenshot is included and demonstrates the effect of this.
Volumetric Cloud system
This has now been fully configured for use within DayZ, used to great effect in Bohemia’s previous product Take on Helicopters (and coming in ArmA3 also). There are several pictures of this included in the screenshots for this blog update. Running around the world taking pictures, it was hard to resist really. It adds a real sense of realism when compared with the previous result.
New Server Architecture
Our lead programmer, Ondřej Španěl, continues his work on redeveloping our server architecture. Contrary to some who say DayZ will be releasing with no anti-hack mechanisms, one of the key things we are doing with development is entirely redeveloping how the engine works. I can’t stress enough just how fundamental this change is. DayZ’s game servers will function like servers in other MMO style games, that is the server will control the behavior and the sending of updates. No longer will your machine receive all the updates allowing their analysis by various cheats.
We are exploring spawning all zombies and loot at the start of server initialization, again a huge departure from the previous mechanism. This solves many design and technical issues with the spawning and respawning of equipment, such as being able to metagame by telling whether players are in a village by seeing zombie’s have spawned.
Clothing/Inventory status
This has now been completed to a basic level, you can put on and drop various items of clothing. These items can have diseases on them, and they have durability and other attributes. We need to make some models that represent the clothes when they are on the ground (currently they look as they are when on the ground!) Once this is done, we will be releasing some video outlining what it looks like to change your clothes.
Closed Test Status
We have begun our internal closed testing (yes!) and have been working with Valve to ensure our new server browser system is working (we utilize Steam for this purpose rather than Gamespy as for ArmA2). The Server/Client architecture needs to be fully implemented before we will begin our public testing.
We have not initiated our closed test that includes external people yet (such as streamers).
Art/World updates
A huge quantity of changes are flowing into the world. New areas, a mass of new objects (such as wrecked vehicles, buses, etc…) that are all designed with DayZ in mind - such as having good areas for loot to spawn. It is really impossible to list all the changes here, from bug fixing to redesigning of buildings such as the general store, and onto entirely new buildings and areas. One of our texture artists has been going through existing work and making them look more damaged and used.
Customizing your Character
The design has now really ramped up. This is really the entire focus of our efforts for the next few months, prior to starting on vehicle customization and finally on base building at the end of the year. The obvious starting point for us is to allow players to select the gender and race of their character. Beyond this, allowing ways for your character to become your own are key for us; from getting tattoo’s to finding unique clothing items, trying to deal with your own health aliments, etc…
This is an area of very active development, we’re exploring all sorts of ways to make your character change in the world as you play. When you first create your character, the options will be simple. As you go along in the world, your character will change as a result of their interactions with the environment and the decisions you make, through items such as clothing choices.
Social aspects are extremely important to us, and we’ve taken a number of idea’s and participated in the discussions on reddit and the forums about what we can do in this area. Expect more on these area’s in the next tumblr update. We want to support the organic development and operation of groups within the game, through the development of their own symbology in game (tattoo’s, markings on the world, on weapons, etc…). We feel that these redeveloped social experiences told through the game will be a compelling part of the standalone.
Customizing your weapon
Weapon attachments are a great bi-product of our entire redesign of every aspect of the inventory system. Nothing is available to show on this yet, currently the only attachment we have fully configured in the game is the magazine. You must load the magazine with ammunition and then it is considered an attachment to the weapon. The quantity and condition of your magazines will be particularly important in the standalone. Look after them!
When is it releasing?
We don’t know. We’re going to take our time. I feel fantastic about the situation, more than ever I feel like we’re doing something really interesting with this development. Now is not the time to rush things, but we do need to ensure our pace is kept up. Our development blog and getting players in and testing as soon as possible will be key in ensuring we succeed in making this a great game.
Concluding words
At no point in development, have I been as excited as I am right now. The risks we took with the direction have paid off. The engine and approach of the game is now entirely DayZ’s own, it is striking out into it’s own territory as a project. This is very exciting for all the team.
I do need to caution though, it is a bad idea to overhype the project. We know that there are many challenges that we will face from deciding to effectively write a new engine tailored to DayZ. But we are now entirely confident, that this decision will prove to have been the best decision we could make. Now we will be able to make the game that we’ve all always wanted.
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