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In this devblog we announce the massive changes that are coming for one of our biggest issues: Zombie Pathfinding. We have reworked the entire pathfinding system to operate on an auto-generated navmesh, the results can be seen in the devblog.

Also included are screenshots of new artwork, such as a large new municiple building that is enterable with multiple floors. Fishing, hunting, and the reasons for delaying fireplaces are also discussed.

Plans are outlined for other big changes coming, such as replacing the mouse-wheel action system, multi-threading/multi-core for servers, and a new renderign system allowing us to consider DX10 / DX11.

The Challenge and Saga of Zombie Pathfinding:
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On another note, we originally we planned to release the 0.45, currently on experimental branch, to stable today. However feedback from experimental identified a flaw in a newly designed system to handle player movement. This causes the server to, when faced with complex geometry, come up with a different acceptable pathing result than a client. When the server and client have differing states, the server "wins". Therefore the place your client lets you go gets "reset" and you warp back to your position.

This is very frustrating as I am sure those testing on experimental will know. We know exactly the problem that causes this, it's not a bug in a traditional sense but a problem with the approach we used. Currently that approach is being rewritten.

What we did do was merge in some changes to 0.44 that enhance security. There are some loopholes in the game that have not been utilizing our client-server architecture and we will continue to work on these to reduce the impact of hacking and exploiting in the game.

Please report any issues with the game to our feedback tracker at Feedback.dayzgame.com