zombie-pathfinding

Latest

  • DayZ switches over to DirectX 11 and reworked controls

    by 
    Justin Olivetti
    Justin Olivetti
    06.30.2014

    The days of DayZ as we knew it are over; all hail the upcoming changes to everyone's favorite gankfest featuring the occasional zombie! In an interview this week, DayZ creator Dean Hall outlined six improvements that the team is working on for the standalone version of the game. Right out of the gate is the decision to add an option to toggle DirectX 11 to make everything look a lot better. "Implementing DirectX 10 or 11 will have a dramatic, instant visual difference and quite a significant performance difference," Hall said. Other changes include new 64-bit server architecture, better hunting mechanics, improved controls, a reworked loot system, and an early game experience fashioned specifically for new players.

  • DayZ gives zombies a hand crossing the street

    by 
    Justin Olivetti
    Justin Olivetti
    05.21.2014

    Poor zombies. All they want to do is eat a little brains and earn your respect, just like anyone else, but that's hard to do when they're walking into walls and clipping badly into a dumpster. Fortunately for our undead brothers and sisters, the devs on DayZ have figured out a good solution to problematic pathfinding. "Our problem was not unique, but our situation was: our world is very big yet it requires the same precision as a small one," the devs wrote in a blog post. "The team devoted to solving this decided to use navigation meshes. The serious problem it presented, though, was how to generate these meshes. With nearly two million objects on the map, doing it by hand would not be an option. So a method was devised to split the world up into grids, and then raycast at a precise interval and generate chunks of navmesh." The result? Zombies that can figure out how to cross a street and go into a building without embarassing themselves. The team also talked about some of the livestock it's creating for the game, including carp to be fished out of ponds by survivors.