DayZ updates on “rapidly approaching” 0.56 experimental branch

The latest status report from DayZ’s dedicated development blog suggests that an experimental branch build of version 0.56 is “rapidly approaching”.

This release is expected to rebalance Infected damage thresholds, redistribute Infected spawns to higher population density areas, address bugs with Infected alert sound effects and movement, add new firearms and long-range optics attachment, and restrict various known duplication vulnerabilities. A Stary Sobor evacuation camp gets a mention as well.

On the engine side, DayZ 0.56 is promising “redesigned inventory tech” and “bugfixing on Per-Item-Quantity control.” This increasingly esoteric terminology hopefully means more to people who are still playing DayZ than it does to me.

There’s also an advance warning that when 0.56 is pushed to the stable branch (there’s no timeline for that actually happening yet, as the experimental one isn’t even released yet,) there will be a “hive wide reset.” Specifically: “Tied with the 0.56 update to Stable branch, we’ll see a hive wide reset (public/private) – including local storage data (player camps, vehicles).”

Much of the rest of the blog entry is about further development on the “hive side economy control” (which handles things like item spawn rates.) Indeed, the next major goal is given as “region control over item spawn types. (removing the restriction of structure types only in certain areas of the map).”

Here are some other features proposed for future updates.

– Support for AI and Vehicle Inventory.
– Removing limitation on “in hands” as a virtual slot (still occupying space in container).
– Dynamic changing of cargo capacity – eg: lowering when damaged, raising when repaired.
– Manual item rotation.
– Support for redesign of Inventory UI.
– Support for EnScript (Enfusion Scripting Language).

No date is given for the availability of 0.56 on the DayZ experimental branch, just the implication that it’ll be ready soon.