The DayZ Experimental branch is now available to server owners and server files release soon

Three weeks after the first DayZ server owner newsletter, the DayZ developers have released the second newsletter, supported by a forum post and are finally updating us with info on the 0.63 Experimental release and server hosting details. We’re bringing it all together for you:

“Dear DayZ server owners,

Today, together with our Game Server Providers, we are finally enabling the switch of your servers to 0.63 Experimental.

We know that it’s been a couple of tough months for DayZ communities, so we’re happy to have some good news for you. The first piece of news is that today, together with our Game Server Providers, we are finally enabling the switch of your servers to 0.63 Experimental – we’ll also do our best to answer any questions you may have.”

The DayzUnderground server is now updated to the 0.63 Experimental build! Check the announcement or Discord for more info: www.discord.dayzunderground.com and connect to our 60 slot first-person only DayZ private hive server with reduced HUD and slightly accelerated day and night cycle with the IP: playUS.dayzunderground.com:2502 and begin your survival story. PSA: Due to a bug, the server currently appears under the “official servers” tab in the in-game server browser.

The Update to 0.63 Experimental

“The switch to 0.63 servers is happening with the release of the Experimental Content Update today (September 11, 2018). Moving to a new version of the game means you will lose compatibility with the previous persistence file from version 0.62, as well as characters associated with that shard.

The switch is a fresh start in many ways, but in case you, for some reason, want to roll back to 0.62, the option will still be there. GSPs and their support teams should be able to get you back to the previous state of things on your 0.62 servers.

In general, all the commands for server management that were available to you up until now are still there:

The DUG community is gearing up and switching to 0.63

ability to use functional limitation on maxping is back
whitelisting, send message and ban are all in
dart and BEC are compatible just like in 0.62, with new tools to be made available later”

“One of the very important topics for you when running servers has been logging. To understand what that means from our side I’ll dive in on a bit more technical level.

The idea is simple. The more we log, the higher the performance tax is on the server.

Currently, we offer two logs: an admin log, and a server log. They can be amplified to show all the possible entries by using -dologs start parameter on a server. However, this might cause some performance drops, depending on the I/O it’s creating.

We tried to accommodate a lot of new entries and their detail, and a lot more things can be done. As far as reliability goes, this has increased significantly as these are tied to performance first and foremost. All calls are done from the script and I believe we can do anything together.”

At the moment, game server providers haven’t fully prepared the switch. Multiplay Game Servers are currently working on making the switch available to private hives. Our Admin team has prepared for the changes to deliver feature parity for our custom server security tools.

Releasing server files and server control

“There’s also something else that we’ve got in store for you: while we’ve originally had that scheduled for BETA, we’ve decided to release the DayZ Server Files already during the 0.63 Experimental phase.”

On the 18th of September, everyone will be able to download the 0.63 Server Files from Steam, and host their own DayZ server.

“To be specific, we want to make that release happen as soon as next week – unless we hit some unexpected issues, on the 18th of September, everyone will be able to download the 0.63 Server Files from Steam, and host their own DayZ server.

Both options will still be available to you after that – you can keep things simple and just get a vanilla DayZ server from one of our GSPs, but if you want to have a more direct control of your costs, server settings, or gameplay experience, you can host your own servers.”

“We’ll go through the Server Files release implications in detail in the next newsletter, but for now, it basically means two things for all Server Owners:

hosting a server on your own terms with any providers, but also on your own hardware if you choose to do so
ability to have custom settings, missions and even mods on community servers

Especially the customization option is very exciting, and while we’re not fully ready to support modding with all the necessary tools, having server files released will already open a lot of new ways how to enjoy DayZ beyond the vanilla experience.

We also don’t want to stop you from figuring things out. We will offer basic documentation to server installation and its configuration, including startup parameters on the day of the Server Files release.

“The ability to create the backend for the community hive and toolset will be released at a later date around BETA patch release. We have however structured server functionality in a way that it can scale:

you can turn persistence off and on locally
you can save/load characters from a local storage
that means that this local storage is the most important part of the server package to backup regularly

Once the community hive is released, you’ll be able to use a server configuration option to point it at a specific hive/installation and have multiple servers serving the same economy/characters on a larger scale. For those hosting with our providers, you’ll benefit from cross server persistence based on our hive. This is achieved in the same as before – by using the same ShardID on all your servers hosted.

When not using hive and relying on an offline database implementation on a server install, we offer the same on server functionality as when using the hive. All information centralized in a database and stored locally, keeping it accessible. Any economy changes can be done by modifying local files.

We hope you’re as excited about the news as we are – see you on your 0.63 community servers, Survivors!

DayZ Development Team”

Conclusions

0.63 Experimental will release to community servers today
Game server providers are currently working on the rollout
The 0.63 Experimental update wipes all 0.62 persistence and character files
A server rollback to 0.62 is possible
The EXP branch includes the first content update
Previous server commands are still available (e.g. whitelist, ban, kick etc.)
Logging has changed but should offer more insights
Server files will release on the 18th
Server files give a few more server setup options
full hive backend control will follow later