Nov + Dec 2019 Status Update

After a short pause, I am back. If this somehow got unnoticed, yes, I have had a bit of down time in terms of Namalsk development, mainly because I was busy making sure the terrain of official DLC for DayZ – Livonia – is in the best possible shape it can be for its upcoming release. But since that is coming very soon, I have more time to focus on Namalsk again. So, what is happening and is it going to be out by the end of 2019 like showed in the trailer?

Simple answer is: no, it wont be. I know that at the end of last year, I have announced Namalsk coming this year, but I have unfortunately have not been able to meet this deadline. Mainly because I did not have a full idea about the state of game play features in DayZ. While a lot of good work has been done this year in DayZ in the platform (6 major updates released), some areas (closely tied to the cold survival) are still in dire need of critical improvements. I have underestimated the situation and for that, I am sorry.

Now to give you an idea what went wrong exactly and how do I plan to fix it. First and foremost, I have been always a deep advocate of the vanilla. Though the reality is that after everything has been started from scratch again (update 0.63), large portion of survival features were unfortunately not yet finished or balanced. As a developer of DayZ, I do not want to release a mod that is attempting to patch these things and make them somewhat working with Namalsk. I do like to play vanilla too and I want things to work better no matter if you play Namalsk or not. I want to help DayZ as a platform and I do believe Namalsk has a lot to offer to it.

You may have seen bits and pieces of my feedback (or code) actually getting into the vanilla itself this year, however critical changes to core systems such as environment exposure and related disease game play require a deeper look to make sure it works on both official and unofficial terrains. It was not feasible to implement such major changes in the middle of this year as it would break apart update planning. But I have learned a lot about the inner workings of systems around player character and have a list of concrete things to either merge (from Namalsk) or to implement (based on my experience) into the platform.

To give you an idea how the package of improvements made for Namalsk and to be merged to platform could(*) look like:

• Re-balance of environment phenomena affecting player character heat comfort (addition of windchill,..).
• Real world-like base environment temperature curve (cold mornings, warm afternoons,..).
• Implementation of “heat buffer” allowing you to warm yourself by staying near fire or eating warm food and thus have an overtime bonus to heat comfort.
• Re-balance of common cold and influenza at light blue heat comfort stage (chance to trigger and impact on player character).
• Implementation of hyperthermia and hypothermia (triggered after spending certain time in critical red or blue heat comfort stages, dealing health damage).
• Slow death utilising unconscious state to avoid instantaneous deaths from low blood, water, energy or selected diseases.
• Solution for the entity heat dissipation (items not loosing temperature from cooking).
• Re-balance of heat isolation parameters across all vanilla clothing.
• UI visualisation of heat isolation stat on gear (so player has an idea what is better at isolating body heat).
• Fireplace burning time (lower fuel consumption) and total economy lifetime (triggered by tripod and/or stones).

(*) could = list not final, things may get added or removed

I will try my best to find a way how to make sure these improvements and fixes could be included in a platform update of DayZ next year to support eventual release of Namalsk. If my attempts fail, you are still going to see Namalsk out (and perhaps even sooner than you may think), but the whole thing will not work the way I originally wanted / imagined. Mainly because modding certain parts is way too complicated and most importantly, hard to manage over time.

With this status update, I would like to also officially address questions of all of you folks on consoles. I know that a lot of you would really want to play Namalsk on consoles (and I would really love to see that too), but unfortunately, given the fact that Namalsk is an un-official mod (and there is no modding support on consoles), I have absolutely no idea how we could get there.

I know this status update is not a good news and trust me when I say it is not easy for me to postpone the whole thing either. But I am not yet prepared to give up on the vision that I have for Namalsk and will do everything I can do to make it right.

I will be back with an update at the end of January, where I will hopefully be able to tell you what is going to happen. I wish everyone merry Christmas and happy new year 2020!