Hey Survivors,
Welcome to Dev Blog 6 - Week 79 of the DayZ Badlands expansion.
This dev blog was written by our colleagues from programming team and art team, with visual and editorial support from our marketing team. Today, we’ll be going over two topics:
Dust Particle Effects
The Lee-Enfield Rifle
Please expect the themes of our dev blogs to be less unified over the coming months. The pressure is on our team, with the release window just a few months away. If you’re enjoying these dev blogs, please make sure to wishlist the expansion!
The schedule hasn’t changed despite our heavy workload. We’ll still be doing our best to put out a quality dev blog every three weeks covering more exciting news about DayZ Badlands. Furthermore, we’ll continue to do surprise drops of recapped dev blogs featuring additional materials.
These releases aim to do four things:
Recap our previous dev blogs
Answer some of your questions regarding the main dev blogs
Provide clarity or expand upon certain areas
Cheekily sneak in new information that didn't appear in the main dev blog
Now let’s get into Dev Blog 6!
Disclaimer: The information shared in our development blog reflects a work in progress. The details discussed are subject to change before release. We intend to share these progress updates to provide some insights into the development process and foster community trust. Thank you for joining us on the road to Nasdara!
While driving cars, trucks, and the newly added motorbikes on certain surfaces, you will be able to observe dust particle effects. When you are on "dust-prone" surfaces, these particle effects reinforce the idea of an environment that reacts to vehicle movement. They can be broken down into two types:
A big cloud of dust that follows the trail of the vehicle for a certain amount of time. The size and duration of this cloud is dependent on the vehicle type and its weight, which is introduced artificially so that we can easily modify it according to vehicle type and when certain events occur.
A smaller trail of dust that serves as an ambient effect. This one is attached to each wheel of the vehicle and better enables full immersion while driving in dusty environments.
These effects are not limited to DayZ Badlands and its dusty surfaces and environments. Dust can be applied as a property to any surface with adjustable behavior. A game designer can introduce changes to other already existing surfaces and maps to support immersion if needed or wanted.
In keeping with the theme of sand and dust, footsteps can create clouds of dust as you walk. When stepping inside a building, characters can cause the floor to creak and dust to fall from the ceiling, potentially alerting whoever might be listening below. Find the demonstration video for the dust particles in various situation below!
One of the technical challenges behind making dust feel dynamic without hurting performance was keeping it as efficient as possible. Both dust effects are client-side only, so there's no need for network synchronization, except for the dust that falls from the ceiling when someone is walking overhead. This should already save a lot. For the ground dust, instead of spawning particles across the entire map, we only generate them in a localized area around the player. On top of that, the system predicts the player's direction and speed and shifts this active area accordingly. This way, if a player is driving a vehicle, we're not wasting resources spawning dust in spots they've already left behind. We take a similar approach for airborne dust. Particles are spawned upwind from the player's view so they naturally drift toward and past the camera, making it feel like dust is everywhere without actually simulating it everywhere.
Environmental factors like wind and time of day also influence how dust behaves. Wind plays a key role. For ground-level dust, apart from direction, wind intensity directly drives spawn frequency. Stronger wind means more dust being kicked up. For airborne particles, wind direction determines where the particles originate from as they're spawned upwind and travel toward the player. This keeps everything feeling grounded in the actual weather conditions.
The rifle in the game is based on the most popular version during the Great War, the Model No. 1 Mk. III*, also commonly known as the SMLE (Short, Magazine, Lee-Enfield).
<Rendered footage of our in-game Lee-Enfield model>
The asterisk denotes a design update in the British system. In the case of the Mk. III*, it meant redesigning the bridge and deleting the volley sight, which was intended for long-range shooting but was rendered redundant by real-life fighting distances.
Regarding the build, the wood was significantly thickened after reports of cracking. This created a particular look where the barrel band and shroud are sunken in.
There were smaller changes too. Some were general, like the simplified cocking piece, while others were very particular to specific armories. Our Lee-Enfield betrays its heritage by being made of lighter teak wood, which was more available in India than walnut, which was rare in that climate. It also features the addition of a cross bolt at the rear of the forewood stock, known among collectors as the Ishapore screw.
There is also an extra stud through the wood in front of the receiver to help distribute the force of recoil. These modifications extended the life of the stock. In accordance with these features, the rifle is stamped with “R.F.I.” (Rifle Factory Ishapore).
<A movie prop version of the Lee-Enfield that we bought and used for reference>
The rifle feeds 10 rounds of 7.62×54mmR from a 10-round detachable magazine. This caliber conversion is a practical modification for those who want to shoot the rifle regularly, as .303 British is rare these days. For this modification, the barrel is set back a couple of millimeters, planed down on the chamber end to restore headspace, and a new chamber is cut using a Mosin chamber-cutting reamer. That is all. The magazine fits the cartridge and the bullet diameter is the same. This makes the gun ideal for our economy, as using a shared cartridge is better for gameplay.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.
The last dev blog featured a much more exciting topic but we hope you liked this one all the same. Choosing which features or assets to showcase has been quite a challenge since we don’t want to overshare and would like to keep some details as nice surprises.
Next time around, we’d like to talk more about the public infrastructure and possibly the highway as well. Nothing is set in stone for now. We will update you when we drop the next recap for dev blogs in a week or two. Let us know there what you'd like to see more of.
For now, please make sure you have wishlisted the expansion, that your friends have wishlisted the expansion and, most importantly, that your enemies have wishlisted the expansion. That way your battles will be legendary in Nasdara!
Thank you as always for your patience and support.
Big love,
The DayZ Team
Contributors
Dust particles in buildings: David
Dust particles with vehicles: Radek
Dust particles in the general environment | Technical hurdles: Martin
The Lee-Enfield Rifle: Marcin
Capture Support Screenshots: Lynn
Capture Support Video: Mark, Lynn
Editorial Support: Özgür, Tom, Lynn