Day Z: a realistic open-world zombie mod for Arma 2 with PvP and persistent death

Man I hope the new engine doesn't put more drain on the performance, I'm struggling enough as it is with the current engine >_<
 
Seems like a poor idea. Arma doesn't work on consoles for obvious reasons, but even a game like Dayz with its differences could struggle as well. For example, surviving entails a lot of attention to tiny details: figures in the distance or highly concealed where only a handful of pixels are there. I'm picturing people squinting at their relatively low resolution screens (720p) trying to identify people that are more than 300 meters away. Console shooters don't have engagement ranges frequently above close-range. They also put in features that make precise shooting easier to compensate for less precise controls. I'd be pretty pissed if they added stuff like that, and I don't think BIS is going to do it.

And then there's the drawback of not being able to be frequently updated, or at least not as easily. Though I don't know much about how all that stuff works on consoles, admittedly.
 
Vegeta897 said:
Seems like a poor idea. Arma doesn't work on consoles for obvious reasons, but even a game like Dayz with its differences could struggle as well. For example, surviving entails a lot of attention to tiny details: figures in the distance or highly concealed where only a handful of pixels are there. I'm picturing people squinting at their relatively low resolution screens (720p) trying to identify people that are more than 300 meters away. Console shooters don't have engagement ranges frequently above close-range. They also put in features that make precise shooting easier to compensate for less precise controls. I'd be pretty pissed if they added stuff like that, and I don't think BIS is going to do it.

And then there's the drawback of not being able to be frequently updated, or at least not as easily. Though I don't know much about how all that stuff works on consoles, admittedly.
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None of those arguments have any substance.
DayZ going standalone will probably require some heavy reworking of the underlying arma 2 engine to compensate for the new features.

The standard resolution of consoles will have no impact on vision what so ever and even if it did everyone playing on a console would have the same disadvantage.

Your assuming that a stand alone DayZ console game would be developed and then ported to the PC. This is often a money grab practice of publishers like EA and UbiSoft. Any developer that puts some thought into their work and isn't under pressure from a major publisher knows that different platforms require different features and tweaks to gameplay.

And Finally your assuming that a release version of DayZ is gonna be frequently updated. You don't seem to understand the difference between a game that is in its alpha life cycle (which is dayz right now where its constantly being worked on) and its release (where it is finished). Sure there might still be bugs in release but once its in release state no new features or assets are developed unless they are DLC.
 
Kitfox said:
None of those arguments have any substance.
DayZ going standalone will probably require some heavy reworking of the underlying arma 2 engine to compensate for the new features.

The standard resolution of consoles will have no impact on vision what so ever and even if it did everyone playing on a console would have the same disadvantage.

Your assuming that a stand alone DayZ console game would be developed and then ported to the PC. This is often a money grab practice of publishers like EA and UbiSoft. Any developer that puts some thought into their work and isn't under pressure from a major publisher knows that different platforms require different features and tweaks to gameplay.

And Finally your assuming that a release version of DayZ is gonna be frequently updated. You don't seem to understand the difference between a game that is in its alpha life cycle (which is dayz right now where its constantly being worked on) and its release (where it is finished). Sure there might still be bugs in release but once its in release state no new features or assets are developed unless they are DLC.
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You think low resolution has no impact on vision what so ever? What are you talking about? It has a huge impact. Try playing arma or dayz at 1080p, try identifying some distant targets, and then switch to 720p and see if it's just as easy. It simply isn't. Less resolutions means less detail, it's simply more difficult to make out what something is when it's very small on the screen. Like I said, this is not an issue on most FPS games since your targets aren't tiny specs in the distance; they're usually quite close, relatively speaking. You argument about it being fair regardless is not only flawed but totally irrelevant. Playing on a 1080p display is going to be markedly different than on 720p, and even worse for those without HD displays. But it's not about being "fair", it's about how playable the game is. It's not exactly fun to have to scrutinize a tiny mess of pixels to be able to tell what something is, what it's doing, which direction it is looking, etc.

And no, I wasn't assuming it would be a console game ported to PC. I was merely talking about what I believe to be important to the design philosophy of Dayz; that the game doesn't help you or hold your hand to accomplish things. Of course features developed to make playing the game on a console easier are good, but there is a line to be drawn between making up for console drawbacks and actually changing the way the game is played.

While you are correct about DayZ being in alpha and thus being frequently updated with features, that does not hold true for the engine itself. BIS has been updating Arma 2 frequently since its release. There are constantly new problems being brought to light, DayZ brought even more. You can bet your last baseball card that DayZ is going to need a ton of patching when it's released, no matter how "finished" it is. It's un-treaded territory for an online FPS, and a new engine to boot. Being able to receive frequent updates is essential to keep the game stable.
 
I could not play Arma at 720, it's hard enough to see stuff over 50 meters away on 1080. Any form of Arma on console sounds horrendous. Mind you, if people are happy to purchase the gimped version on minecraft on Xbox I'm sure they'll eat this up.
 
Vegeta897 said:
You think low resolution has no impact on vision what so ever? What are you talking about? It has a huge impact. Try playing arma or dayz at 1080p, try identifying some distant targets, and then switch to 720p and see if it's just as easy. It simply isn't. Less resolutions means less detail, it's simply more difficult to make out what something is when it's very small on the screen. Like I said, this is not an issue on most FPS games since your targets aren't tiny specs in the distance; they're usually quite close, relatively speaking. You argument about it being fair regardless is not only flawed but totally irrelevant. Playing on a 1080p display is going to be markedly different than on 720p, and even worse for those without HD displays. But it's not about being "fair", it's about how playable the game is. It's not exactly fun to have to scrutinize a tiny mess of pixels to be able to tell what something is, what it's doing, which direction it is looking, etc.
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Your correct about 1080p vs 720p. Regardless this entire concern baffles me cause if you think about the current state DayZ the game specifically has image filtering effects that make it hard to see objects at a distance anyway (and i'm sure this is an intended feature so 1080p or 720p shouldn't make any difference). You probably haven't notice because you like most players fiddle around with the settings to make sure you can get the max advantage by turning off the distance bluring and post processing effects . The PC platform is by no means fair people play at different resolutions and at different graphics settings.


Vegeta897 said:
And no, I wasn't assuming it would be a console game ported to PC. I was merely talking about what I believe to be important to the design philosophy of Dayz; that the game doesn't help you or hold your hand to accomplish things. Of course features developed to make playing the game on a console easier are good, but there is a line to be drawn between making up for console drawbacks and actually changing the way the game is played.
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Why are you assuming that the game can't be hard to play and accommodate console draw backs? I'm sure both can be done.

Vegeta897 said:
While you are correct about DayZ being in alpha and thus being frequently updated with features, that does not hold true for the engine itself. BIS has been updating Arma 2 frequently since its release. There are constantly new problems being brought to light, DayZ brought even more. You can bet your last baseball card that DayZ is going to need a ton of patching when it's released, no matter how "finished" it is. It's un-treaded territory for an online FPS, and a new engine to boot. Being able to receive frequent updates is essential to keep the game stable.
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Take any Bethesda game that was ever developed for a console. Yet some how they are still playable and people have fun.
 
I'm so sick of people bringing Bethesda into an argument as some weird trump card either for or against
 
Man I hope the new engine doesn't put more drain on the performance, I'm struggling enough as it is with the current engine >_<
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Why does everybody keep talking about the standalone being produced on a different/modified engine? I was under the understanding that the standalone will merely be the current mod with the fixed bugs/additional features, kind of how Counter-Strike was just a mod and then one day was on shelves.
 
Because they're talking about developing it alongside the mod. If it was the same thing as the mod, that wouldn't make sense. The main motivation Rocket had for making a standalone game was to get around the engine limitations of Arma 2. If he has the power to modify the engine, with a standalone game, then he can implement all the features he couldn't with a mod.
 
Vegeta897 said:
And then there's the drawback of not being able to be frequently updated, or at least not as easily. Though I don't know much about how all that stuff works on consoles, admittedly.
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It's easy, just pay Microsoft like $50,000.

Per update.
 
Prove to me that Skyrim and ArmA are in any way comparable gaming experiences.
 
Or that Bethesda and Bohemia Interactive are comparable game studios.

Kitfox, the reason for my comment was that I'm here speaking from vast experience with the series and some knowledge of how BIS operates and how DayZ has been developed, and you're bringing up references to a totally unrelated game studio as some kind of argument.
 
You made a comment about how DayZ is a large scale game that is bound to be buggy with poor console update support. I gave an example its possible to release large scale games that are buggy as hell yet still fun and successful and playable. Any other comparisons that you may think I was making in my statement are your own assumptions.
 
Where did I use the term "large scale" when talking about why DayZ is going to need a ton of bugfixing after release? Skyrim is nowhere near comparable, both in the type of game and the studio who makes it.
But that aside, when did I say that it wouldn't be fun and playable? I only said that it was going to need frrequent updating. They certainly can't catch all the bugs they're going to encounter with a few updates. Arma 2 released 3 years ago and BIS is still fixing things. And so I say again, I'm not sure how difficult/expensive it is to release frequent updates for a console game, but it certainly is more difficult than on the PC and it's going to be a major factor they have to consider when deciding whether releasing on consoles is a feasible option.
 
I guess I should give this one more shot and if you still don't understand me that's fine. A lot of released games have bugs, engine problems etc. One of the extreme examples of this is Bethesda games (try your best not to jump on the oh no you mentioned bethesda band wagon, maybe I should say Rockstar instead). The type of game and studio that produced it has nothing to do with what i'm saying. That said there is a point at which a release candidate for a game is stable enough to be released. If BIS decides to cough up the cash and do post release bug fixes then fine. If they don't tough shit that's the way it is on consoles.I do agree that its a major factor in the considering whether to release it on a console is feasible.

So basically your concern is that BIS will release a product so buggy that it will need major bug fix updates in its life cycle.
In which case it shouldn't have made it to the release stage and if BIS cannot get their shit together to get a game into an acceptable release stage for consoles then they have other problems to worry about as a company.

On the other hand there is an acceptable level of buggyness that a game can have and still be released.
 
Kitfox said:
If BIS decides to cough up the cash and do post release bug fixes then fine. If they don't tough shit that's the way it is on consoles.I do agree that its a major factor in the considering whether to release it on a console is feasible.
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This is literally all I was saying the whole time. I still don't see the relevance of any other game studios. You mentioning Bethesda did not supply anything to your argument.

And it's far easier to release a stable SP game than it is an MP game with a lot of experimental features (instanced towns) and large player counts and a huge map, especially for a company that hasn't done anything on consoles before. I think you can give them some leeway here, they're not a huge company like Bethesda. Releasing games on a console is not an easy thing for a small indie developer.
 
Kitfox said:
assumption
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7Nx1u.gif


Vegeta897 said:
And so I say again, I'm not sure how difficult/expensive it is to release frequent updates for a console game
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Not sure about PS3, but my last post about Xbox patching wasn't a joke. Although now I look it up again, it's actually only $40,000. Only.
 
It's why xbox tf2 hasn't updated, ever. Dayz on consoles would be pretty ridiculous, though. Pretty sure any current gen console would explode trying to run arma 2 (or whatever rocket will use for his standalone) and even next gen consoles would have difficulty.
 
Well the standalone can't come soon enough as the MOD has become a huge mess of late. Countless servers running ten different versions of either the mod or the beta executable.

I know its in-development and its up to individual people to maintain their installation, but with the sheer amount of interest that DayZ has attracted, it wouldn't hurt for them to maintain some kind of clear standardised version number on their front page. A mailing list or even a crappy twitter account to nudge server operators to update wouldn't exactly be Rocket science for them to do.
 
Lobster said:
Well the standalone can't come soon enough as the MOD has become a huge mess of late. Countless servers running ten different versions of either the mod or the beta executable.

I know its in-development and its up to individual people to maintain their installation, but with the sheer amount of interest that DayZ has attracted, it wouldn't hurt for them to maintain some kind of clear standardised version number on their front page. A mailing list or even a crappy twitter account to nudge server operators to update wouldn't exactly be Rocket science for them to do.
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Beta version you don't really need to worry about. Any newer client version of the beta can connect to an older beta server.
 
Any updates yet as to when the standalone will be launching? Last I heard was December. Depending on when I finally get my PC built Ill likely get ARMA 2 anyway, I loved Flashpoint.

As for what engine its running on, I would assume developing a standalone and continuing to update the mod version implies it will be the same map and game engine. I cant see them essentially developing the thing twice, once for the ARMA2 engine mod version, and again simultaneously for a standalone version running on some updated version of the engine or indeed the version powering ARMA 3.
 
Vegeta897 said:
Beta version you don't really need to worry about. Any newer client version of the beta can connect to an older beta server.
Click to expand...

I didn't realise that, so it's not as bad as it seemed.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/08/17/day-z-standalone/#more-120637

In this interview it is mentioned that the engine will be an updated version of ARMA 2, with a revised version of Chernarus (more enterable buildings and some other changes).

Also this second interview is a little old now, but it talks about some of their long term goals for the game, which I think is an interesting read.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/06/23/d...-map-design-radios-porting-day-z-into-arma-3/
 
All sounds very promising. Even though its an alpha and hasn't been out very long, the sheer number of videos I have watched, and the massive popularity makes it feel like its been an eternity to get to the point we are at now, where things are kicking up a gear.
 
So, a very small closed test of the standalone version is going to be happening soon, purely to bug-fix the mechanics of the engine and such (as in, not the gameplay)


http://dayzdev.tumblr.com/post/39933141266/where-is-the-standalone-release-i-suppose

Some very awesome sounding improvements are in store:

One of the most profound and major architectural changes has had its initial implementation completed, this is the overhaul of the inventory system. In fact, the inventory and item management system was completely removed and rewritten from the ground by Jirka, one of the original engine programmers.
...
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.
An additional area of change has been to make the inventory system more intuitive along with a key focus on providing visceral feedback on your progress through what inventory you have. The use of drag-and-drop, 3D models rather than 2D pictures, and being able to add items/clothing to your character in 3D in the inventory screen - have all come out of months of design work and research.
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It sounds like all the things WarZ tried to do better than DayZ (while failing horribly) are going to be totally trumped by this.

The lead architect of the revised (and original) Chernarus map, Ivan Buchta, is still imprisoned in Greece on charges of espionage - and is a great loss to the team. Luckily, 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.
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Check the article for more pictures

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SG3wU.jpg


ZaVrj.jpg
 
I have high hopes for this, but you never know if their reach is exceeding their grasp, as it did with War Z (what a waste of money that was :( )
 
How dare you even compare whoever made War Z with BIS :p (and shame on you for buying it... wtf?)

War Z did not intend to make a great game. They intended to make a game that looked good enough to get a bunch of sales from the DayZ hype. Nothing more.

From reading the article, I'm pretty sure the new inventory system is already written. I'm sure they're hammering out the details and getting things to work right, but the fact they're launching a test imminently for the game mechanics (like the inventory) is a sign that it's as done as it needs to be to do some testing.

Rocket is not in this for the money, so he has no reason to rush or feign hype about features that won't even make it into the game. Do not even let WarZ enter your mind. Let it die.
 
WarZ is the kind of thing 'The Asylum' would release if they moved into game design instead of movies.

It's great to see DayZ pushing forward though! I don't care how long they take, as long as they don't stop.
 
Yea it was a huge lack in good judgement on my part when I bought WarZ.. I have been disappointed time and time again with zombie games up until this point (except Deadlight, that was pretty good aside from some cheesy dialogue :p), so I'm putting ALL of my money on DayZ Standalone. If it doesn't deliver, I give up completely in hoping for a good zombie game. Although the DayZ mod is still pretty good.
 
I am SO pumped for this game. The two things that kept me from really getting into DayZ were the inventory system and the movement model / world interaction. Even if they don't notably improve the latter, the new inventory is going to make everything so much smoother. Plus the scavenging sounds like it's on a totally different and far more interesting level.
 
Haven't been keeping up with this, and saw the thread bumped, but is there any ETA for the game yet? This year sometime?
 
It was supposed to be end of 2012. I would guess another month, no more than two.
 
I was a little disappointed that they pushed back the release as I had held off trying the mod when they announced the standalone but the game seems to be shaping up quite nicely.
 
Wasn't Rocket taking a break from development because of the whole War Z thing?
 
He didn't stop working on it, at least not completely. He just kept his head down for a while to get away from the whole War Z thing.
 
Well I assume the "imminent" internal test will be this month. He says they're making great progress on all the art assets, which I would imagine is the most time consuming part of the project. I'd say 3-6 months as a safe estimate. But a public test might be sooner than that? Not sure if he's going to do a public test before official release.
 
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