Status Report - Week of 03 Nov 14

As 0.50 is pushed to stable branch today, it is important that survivors understand a few key points about this latest update in the DayZ development cycle. 0.50 and features specific to this update, as are as always - very early prototypes. While we do iterate weekly on experimental branch servers for both functional, and gameplay reasons many systems behave very differently when exposed to the much larger audiences on stable branch. Additionally, as we blaze ahead towards our end of year goals we will see performance server side bounce back and forth. We here on the DayZ development team endeavor to finish off the year with not only the additional features mentioned in last weeks status report, but with a healthy and steady server performance rate. As always, please use the feedback tracker when reporting issues and make sure to work with your game server provider's support if you are a DayZ server operator. That said, lets revisit last weeks comments regarding changes to how project updates and development info on DayZ is communicated to the Early Access survivors. As mentioned last week, we will be rolling out some changes to the DayZ.com website: Project Calendar Experimental & Stable branch updates Dev Streams Maintenance Status Reports Events Dev Hub will be moved to the landing page of DayZ.com to allow easier access to the latest news and updates about the development of DayZ Server Status widget/block - (This displays the current status of Stable and Experimental branches eg: Online / Offline) In addition to the changes to DayZ.com - we will be reapproaching how we handle the dev streams. We will continue with the dev team play sessions - however we will replace the alternating week play session / Q&A frequency with a dev blog / commentary style video that covers the teams commentary on the previous play session as well as discusses and shows things upcoming to experimental branch. As we roll these changes to DayZ.com and our dev streams / blogs out we will as always engage the community for feedback at the official DayZ.com forums. Lastly, as many may be aware - our game server partners recently started rolling out support for the renting of private shard servers on stable branch. To celebrate this, and coincide with the upcoming Christmas holiday we are looking for the best / strongest / most epic / generally most awesome communities. Do you have a DayZ squad, clan, server community, or otherwise group of rag tag survivors? We want to hear about it, and you. Tell us your tale at support@dayzgame.com and the top three entries by December 1st will win free server hosting for their group for a year from Multiplay Game Servers, as well as the option of private shards (also free) to go with it. (Subject: DayZ: Private Shard contest) Winners will be announced December 3rd in that weeks status report. - Brian Hicks / Lead Producer Peter / Lead Game Designer "With the delay of releasing stable version caused by crashes last week we entered a data freeze mode thus not many new things went into the experimental - mostly safe fixes or tweaks from our side. However work didn't stopped for the team. Currently we are working on enhancement of horticulture with fertilisers and protection against pests. Cooking is being prepared for refactoring and at the end gas cooker and fireplace will offer similar possibilities. Apart from that there are ongoing discussions about construction (base building), zombies AI,