PC DayZ

[NeoKubrick]

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http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/01/07/dayz- ... -detailed/

The standalone release of DayZ was supposed to be out before the end of 2012. With 2013 now upon us, and no sight of the open-world survival horror, you’d be forgiven for thinking that zombies had pounced on it while it was trying to vault over the ArmA 2 engine. Not so, according to Dean “Rocket” Hall, who has updated the DayZ development blog with info on the status of the project.

“Put simply, DayZ Standalone isn’t here because we had the chance to go from making a game that was just the mod improved slightly, packaged simply, and sold – to actually redeveloping the engine and making the game the way we all dreamed it could be,” Hall wrote. The plan now, he says, is to “immanently” release a closed test for 500 – 1,000 people, before rescheduling the date for the public release.

As to what the team has been doing with the redeveloped engine, Hall outlined many of the improvements you can expect to see. If you were worried that the standalone release would take away the complexity of the mod version, the team’s plans for the newly implemented inventory should put your mind to rest.

“You scavenge for items now, as individual parts, picking up pieces rather than piles, looking for cans on shelves or under beds. The new system opens the door for durability of items, disease tracking (cholera lingering on clothes a player wears…), batteries, addon components, and much more. If you shoot a player in the head to take his night vision, you will damage the night vision. The changes to this inventory system are huge.”

Despite the extra info it carries (cholera? Really?) the new system should at least be more intuitive for users, switching from ArmA’s mess of clicking to a simpler drag and drop interface.

The UI is also receiving an overhaul, thanks to the efforts of community member Kju. “He has been working with our CEO (Marek) and me to develop the DayZ UI. We have been greatly inspired by Minecraft to make the UI simple and effective, rather than flashy and complex.”

Hall does note that progress on revising DayZ’s island home of Chernarus has been slowed, due to the arrest and imprisonment of Ivan Buchta on charges of espionage in Greece. “Luckily,” he notes, “through letters, Ivan is able to provide some input and insight into the development of the map. Regardless, the continued imprisonment of him and Martin Pezlar has a significant impact on our ability to redevelop Chernarus.”

Finally the team have been putting “a huge amount of work” into updating the game’s art assets. Hall posted a selection of screenshots, including pictures of the new interiors, which I’ve added below.

Dev Blog February 5th: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_SKBJaJBcI
Official Blog: http://dayzdev.tumblr.com

[Fudge]

Dean Hall talks about some of the improvements they're making over the mod:
http://dayzdev.tumblr.com/post/44886721 ... irty-video

Inventory System

One of the biggest improvement areas has been the inventory system, now almost ready for a public display. This new inventory system supports crafting, interchangeable clothing, degradation, tracking, weapon customization, and much more. It’s really a revolutionary system for us and we’re extremely proud of the results that Jirka (our programmer assigned to this) has achieved.

Crafting

Not touched on in the video, but what we will be showing soon is the basics of how users can interact with items in the world - this is the next step in development of our inventory system beyond where it is now. This is not a traditional crafting system, but one that encourages layers to explore the ways in which items can be crafted.

Zombie pathfinding

In the video, towards the end, some before and after footage of work on the zombie AI pathfinding. Not only has this changed the role, threat, and speed of the zombies - but it has also yielded performance improvements. The increased accuracy of the zombies movement allows their movement to be slowed down to more sensible values, in line with those of the players themselves. We still have some other avenues to explore in this regard, but we’re very pleased with the results so far.

Mass zombie spawning server side

Now all zombies are spawned directly on the server and their movement is governed directly on the server itself. This has allowed us to provide increased security and hack prevention mechanisms by disabling functionality at the client level. It also means that zombies no longer “pop” in and out of the world, previously used as a mechanism to tell if someone was in the area. It also paves the way for us to allow migrating zombies and zombies traversing open areas in search for their next meal.

We still have some way to go in performance, the initial tests of 4000 zombies spawned reduced the server FPS to 4. After performance optimizations this increased up to 21. We’re now confident we can have the server FPS back up to 30+ with maximum numbers of zombies in the near future.

Expanding health system

Health is extending far beyond just blood, into a system that incorporates health, blood, and consciousness level. How these are all interrelating will be touched on in its own devblog in future. Some of the exciting developments coming include longterm play effects such as poor diet affecting your long term health levels. All this translates into the importance of a longterm plan for survival of your character, and we’re sure the role of medical specialists will become very important - hopefully emphasizing social interaction opportunities.

Chernarus Expansion

This continues at a huge pace. The two new villages in expand Cherno and provide it a true city feeling. Also expanding is the top (north) map area and the continued development of our large-scale features being added to the map. More to follow on this! (we can’t wait to show some more of this!)

Loot spawning

Finding loot now involves scavenging inside of vehicles, looking for items stuck between furniture, prying open car boots, or strewn in the wasteland itself. Consuming your bounty now results in rubbish, such as empty cans after consuming your beans. This is no mere gimick, because your trash can be used to track you.

Conclusion

There is a great deal more that can be covered, but we’re really deeply in the thick of development at the moment and we just wanted to get something quick and dirty to all those waiting for standalone. We know that you want it released, and we know you want to know when this will be - but we’re 100% committed to making this a great game, and that means we are making sure to do things properly. We’re happy and confident about the progress, so it’s one foot after another and soon we’ll be at the finish line.

And the accompanying video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 8xcv51C2ug

[icycalm]

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spec ... lo/7550812

DayZ solo most of the time you walk around on a server and look for loot. That's 99% of your gameplay. If I encounter players 9/10 times it's just other people that want to loot and don't want to be shot at and then there is some guy sitting somewhere in a bush sniping people close to the military bases. Aka the PVP hotspots.

DayZ is mostly a walking/looting and avoid being seen by zombies game.

Maybe it's a difference between EU and US servers I don't know where you are coming from. But I found DayZ to be super boring even because I never encounter that. It's just an ugly game with weird stiff controls. You loot shit for hours and then you either logout or after having a few encounters finally get sniped from some unseen guy.

I played a few of these games like H1Z1 and the copycats. It was the same on all of them.

If I go watch Let's Play it's the same. Guy walks for 20 episodes and then dies to a zombie because he lost patience to be sneaky.