Critical Unplanned Update of 0.34 to Stable 7 February 2014 // Pending Changelog

http://steamcommunity.com/app/221100/discussions/0/558747287423844900/

Critical Unplanned Update of 0.34 to Stable 7 February 2014 // Pending Changelog
Earlier this week we identified the source of a "respawn" bug that would cause players to become stuck in the "you are dead" screen. Because of the extent of the problem, and the difficulty it causes players, we have decided to push the 0.34 update to stable very early.

What was the bug?

This was caused when two small bugs with existing systems combined together when another bug was fixed. When a player clicked "respawn" for an unconscious character, the game server immediately sends an urgent message to the database asking it to kill the players current character. The the server sets the players game character's damage to full, and proceeds to save the characters current inventory/position one last time to the database. Normally, by the time it has finished that the damage has been set for the character and, again, a message was sent to the server demanding the player was killed.

There was an old failsafe in the "save character" system on the central server, that when asked to save a character where no alive one existed, it would make a new one. What this meant was, the respawned character would be killed, then saved new, then killed again. The problem occurs that when a server comes under heavy load... both kill messages occur first. This means that a cloned, already dead, character then exists - trapping the player in a cycle of death. This complex logic state issue was identified and fixed yesterday.

What does this mean?

This means three things:

The 0.34 will not be as extensive as we wanted it to be (just hotfixing)
There is increased risk of new bugs creeping in to stable as 0.34 has not been tested long
Today the whole stable network will be dropped to deploy the update

Why not wait until the scheduled update?

We feel that the impact of the bug is too high, and affecting too many players, to wait until we have tested the update more extensively and deploy it during our scheduled maintenance periods (wednesdays). Leading into the weekend, there is the potential for the problem to become worse as the server performance drops as more and more character have the issue and connect/disconnect trying to fix it.

When will this happen?

7 February 12PM GMT, the stable branch network will be taken down to deploy the update. Please note: it can take game server providers up to 30 minutes to drop their servers. Players who are connected to a game server while the central server drops, are at risk of losing their progress.

How long will the downtime last?

We expect it stable to be down for three hours.

Will Experimental Branch go down too?

No, Experimental Branch will not be affected, although only a small number of servers run this branch.

CHANGELOG
http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/171660-pending-changelog-experimental-branch-034xxxxx/

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A LIVING DOCUMENT AND CHANGES VERY OFTEN. AS NEW ITEMS ARE FIXED THEY WILL BE ADDED.

ETA to Experimental: 2 builds likely, one Thursday 6 Feb, another on Friday 7 Feb. Possibly another on Monday 10 Feb.

ETA to Stable: We will most likely do an update to stable on Wednesday 12 February during the scheduled maintenance period.
An important feature of this update is logic changes to how the player character is processed on connection and disconnection. Some serious errors were identified by the new penalty timeout system relating to how the character is processed when they are not in control of their character. This included a serious bug with the respawn button on an unconscious player. Additionally, more bugfixing is included in this update.

Known Issues:

New:

Animations: Ruger 10/22 hand pose
Animations: It's now possible to blend directly between various gesticulation states (pointing,finger,greeting...)
Crafting: Can repair clothes, weapons, and items using specialist items (such as sewing kit)
Gear: Configured sewing kit and its recipes
Gear: Added configuration for durable riders jacket
Gear: Added Cowboy hats to the loot spawns (multiple colors)
Gear: Added Sewing kit to the loot spawns
Gear: Added B95 and 762 speedloader to loot spawns
Gear: Added configuration for durable riders jacket
Gear: Added durable leather jacket to loot spawns
Gestures: Thumbs Up gesture added with default F7 key binding
Server: Optimization of synchronization of textures/materials (minor improvement to server FPS)
Systems: Falling now causes dynamic damage (roughly, fall of >5m break legs depending on equipment, >15m probably death)

Fixed:

Actions: Could not cover another players head with a burlap sack
Actions: No longer spawns clones of sack after Remove Head Cover action
Actions: Removing Head Cover (burlap sack) while inventory is full won't leave you blind and without burlap sack anymore
Art: Duplicate geometry in lower resolution LODs of flannel shirt resulted in visual bug at distance.
Animations: Fixed an issue where the player would stay zoomed-in in sights for reload while aiming in prone
Animations: Player should now be force-disarmed when clapping while holding a single-handed weapon.
Animations: Pointing and clapping now works even when initiated from aimed states
Animations: Fixed an issue where the left hand would stay glued to the FNX45 for aimed prone reload
Animations: Default rifle aim stance (stand and crouch) slightly changed to better fit different guns
Crafting: Cannot combine ruined stacked objects (such as ammo, rags)
Crafting: Cannot chamber/load magazine with ruined ammunition
Crafting: Motorbike helmet visors didn't retain their type when spray-painting the helmet
Medical: Cleaning wounds with alcohol tincture doesn't add last stage of infected wounds
Crash: Game Crash when using FLUSH command
Spawns: Lowered probability of Weapon cleaning kit spawns
Systems: Healing system was double processing for blood regeneration
Systems: Notifier messages were not being cleared/reset on within-state changes
Systems: Players position was not saving on disconnect
Systems: Players could get continually stuck in a dead character during load from central server
Systems: Players would not receive any falling damage
Weapons: Ballistic parameters of all projectiles tweaked for more realism (special thanks to Gews for his great analysis on weapon characteristics)

UPDATED

Changelog: Stable Branch: 0.34.115106
CHANGELOG
http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/172051-changelog-stable-branch-034115106/

Branch: Stable

ETA: Complete

Version: 0.34.115106

This update was released to Stable as a critical update outside of scheduled maintenance. This was because of a serious issue with the connection logic that could trap some players in the "dead" state. There was also a critical bug with looting other players inventory. These have been fixed.

Known Issues:
- Animations: Right hand twitches during pointing, character twitches once when middle finger is activated/deactivated
- Actions: If player puts burlap sack from his head to ground his vision stays black

New:
- Animations: Ruger 10/22 hand pose
- Animations: It's now possible to blend directly between various gesticulation states (pointing,finger,greeting...)
- Crafting: Can repair clothes, weapons, and items using specialist items (such as sewing kit)
- Gear: Configured sewing kit and its recipes
- Gear: Added configuration for durable riders jacket
- Gear: Added Cowboy hats to the loot spawns (multiple colors)
- Gear: Added Sewing kit to the loot spawns
- Gear: Added B95 and 762 speedloader to loot spawns
- Gear: Added configuration for durable riders jacket
- Gear: Added durable leather jacket to loot spawns
- Gestures: Thumbs Up gesture added with default F7 key binding
- Server: Optimization of synchronization of textures/materials (minor improvement to server FPS)
- Systems: Falling now causes dynamic damage (roughly, fall of >5m break legs depending on equipment, >15m probably death)

Fixed:
- Actions: Could not cover another players head with a burlap sack
- Actions: No longer spawns clones of sack after Remove Head Cover action
- Actions: Removing Head Cover (burlap sack) while inventory is full won't leave you blind and without burlap sack anymore
- Art: Duplicate geometry in lower resolution LODs of flannel shirt resulted in visual bug at distance.
- Animations: Fixed an issue where the player would stay zoomed-in in sights for reload while aiming in prone
- Animations: Player should now be force-disarmed when clapping while holding a single-handed weapon.
- Animations: Pointing and clapping now works even when initiated from aimed states
- Animations: Fixed an issue where the left hand would stay glued to the FNX45 for aimed prone reload
- Animations: Default rifle aim stance (stand and crouch) slightly changed to better fit different guns
- Animations: Twitches on right hand fixed when holding an item while middle finger and pointing.
- Crafting: Cannot combine ruined stacked objects (such as ammo, rags)
- Crafting: Cannot chamber/load magazine with ruined ammunition
- Crafting: Motorbike helmet visors didn't retain their type when spray-painting the helmet
- Crash: Game Crash when using FLUSH command
- Crash: Out of bounds crash when no sounds defined
- Inventory: Loot would stay on dead character after it is picked up, causing teleporting loot and general chaos
- Medical: Cleaning wounds with alcohol tincture doesn't add last stage of infected wounds
- Medical: Vomiting/Stuffed was completely broken. Now simplified and streamlined
- Melee: Short melee weapons do damage now (hammer, screwdriver, hammer, hacksaw)
- Spawns: Lowered probability of Weapon cleaning kit spawns
- Systems: Healing system was double processing for blood regeneration
- Systems: Notifier messages were not being cleared/reset on within-state changes
- Systems: Players position was not saving on disconnect
- Systems: Players could get continually stuck in a dead character during load from central server
- Systems: Players would not receive any falling damage
- Systems: Disconnecting dead player would delete the body after ~30 seconds
- Systems: Damage was being equally applied to all objects inside inventory slot when shot/damaged (now items reduce the damage when they take damage)
- Systems: Notifier gets stuck on "stuffed"
- Weapons: Ballistic parameters of all projectiles tweaked for more realism (special thanks to Gews for his great analysis on weapon characteristics)

INFORMATION:

Earlier this week we identified the source of a "respawn" bug that would cause players to become stuck in the "you are dead" screen. Because of the extent of the problem, and the difficulty it causes players, we have decided to push the 0.34 update to stable very early.

What was the bug?

This was caused when two small bugs with existing systems combined together when another bug was fixed. When a player clicked "respawn" for an unconscious character, the game server immediately sends an urgent message to the database asking it to kill the players current character. The the server sets the players game character's damage to full, and proceeds to save the characters current inventory/position one last time to the database. Normally, by the time it has finished that the damage has been set for the character and, again, a message was sent to the server demanding the player was killed.

There was an old failsafe in the "save character" system on the central server, that when asked to save a character where no alive one existed, it would make a new one. What this meant was, the respawned character would be killed, then saved new, then killed again. The problem occurs that when a server comes under heavy load... both kill messages occur first. This means that a cloned, already dead, character then exists - trapping the player in a cycle of death. This complex logic state issue was identified and fixed yesterday.

What does this mean?

This means three things:

The 0.34 will not be as extensive as we wanted it to be (just hotfixing)
There is increased risk of new bugs creeping in to stable as 0.34 has not been tested long
Today the whole stable network will be dropped to deploy the update

Why not wait until the scheduled update?

We feel that the impact of the bug is too high, and affecting too many players, to wait until we have tested the update more extensively and deploy it during our scheduled maintenance periods (wednesdays). Leading into the weekend, there is the potential for the problem to become worse as the server performance drops as more and more character have the issue and connect/disconnect trying to fix it.

FIXED... A few we were experiencing...

Didnt know there was a flush command... Crash: Game Crash when using FLUSH command

Inventory: Loot would stay on dead character after it is picked up, causing teleporting loot and general chaos

- Medical: Vomiting/Stuffed was completely broken. Now simplified and streamlined

- Systems: Players position was not saving on disconnect

- Systems: Damage was being equally applied to all objects inside inventory slot when shot/damaged (now items reduce the damage when they take damage)

- Weapons: Ballistic parameters of all projectiles tweaked for more realism (special thanks to Gews for his great analysis on weapon characteristics)

» Changelog: Stable Branch 0.42.116181
» [Change Log] Stable Branch Update to .54 today
» changelog .53
» 0.59 going stable branch!
» Switching between Stable and Experimental