DayZ - ArmA2 Zombie survival

[friznit]

This is a fairly revolutionary mod for ArmA2 - one of the Developers at Bohemia Interactive has been working on a pet project in his spare time, which has been released in Alpha in the last couple of weeks.

DAYZ is a Multiplayer FFA Zombie Survival Game. It's a sandbox, where you can make (or break) your own relationships, in a persistent world, with real day/night cycles. All of the DAYZ servers read from one master config file, which means if you spend 8 hours today playing on one of the US Servers, and log in tomorrow on an EU Server - you will retain all of your gear, items along with your position on the game map. Only catch? You get shot, you're dead. You lose any shit that you've accumulated.

Inevitably some areas have turned into a headless chicken deathmatch fest with snipers griefing noobs from the rooftops, but those are mostly the big cities. Everywhere else (and Chernarus is a big place), people tend to band together and work to hunt wildlife for food, scavenge parts to fix up vehicles and scout out homesteads to find med supplies, blood packs, weapons and ammo. Of course, if you fix up a truck expect someone else to want it off you without paying (human killers get a 'bandit' skin and a negative rating so they're pretty easy to spot during the day at least).

What you require:

Armed Assault II (works with ArmA2Free)
Armed Assault II: Operation Arrowhead (not free!)
DAYZ mod files (http://www.dayzmod.com/)

**Useful Chernarus map**

[Dog Pants]

You've mentioned this before haven't you? Or is it a new version? Certainly does sound interesting.

[friznit]

There's a number of different zombie survival games for ArmA2. I think I mentioned Chernarus Apocalypse before, which is a very atmospheric zombie mission that's all scripted and doesn't didn't actually require any mods at all. It would be pretty fun for 5punky type game and I think it might run on ArmA2Free, though I'd have to check. DayZ is kinda like the MMO version, with all the shenanigans you'd expect in a free for all 'MMO' - no surprise that it's appealed to the Eve crowd.

[buzzmong]

I've seen murmorings about this that were positive. Might have a gander as I've still got Parmaham installed.

[Dog Pants]

RPS are doing a nice 'Lets Play' style report on this: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05 ... ore-107588

[friznit]

It's kicking up a storm on various gaming forums. Ironically probably the quietest is the Bohemia forum itself, but that's probably because similar concepts have been around in ArmA2 for a while now, but this one seems to have achieved critical mass (and the customisation and cross server persistence is pretty awesome too). It may yet become a victim of it's own success though. People are being pretty forgiving about poor performance and server drops because it's still in alpha. Unfortunately for anyone who knows a bit about scripting for MP ArmA2, the performance is an issue with the game engine, not the mod, so it's not likely to improve much.

My only hope is they resolve the notwork issues with ArmA3, because then we'll be able to do some really cool stuff with persistent battlefields.

[friznit]

Another report on RPS: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05 ... -part-two/

Apart from the gushing, it does raise an interesting point. How come a mod made in a dev's spare time for a 3 year old milsim game provides one of the best MMO RPG survival experiences to date? It's deceptively simple and yet it seems to have flicked all the right switches, almost by accident. For example, there's no fixed character progression, class system, special abilities, grouping or clan mechanic like every other MMO uses to try and enforce teamwork. But people are working together better than any other MMO I've seen -not because the game dictates they must (i.e. tank, healer, dps) but because you stand a better chance of survival.

Given that this mod has catapulted ArmA2 back into the top seller list 3 years after release, I imagine the BIS marketing dept is sitting up and taking notice. I hope the improved net code, physics engine and geographical size of ArmA3 will provide for even better persistent warfare mods in the same vein.

The MSO mod team that I've been working with for the past 6 months has been trying to produce something similar, albeit from a conventional warfare or counter insurgency perspective. Granted, we don't have the resources or expertise available to a BIS dev, but if/when they release these tools to the community, there's going to be some epic games.

[buzzmong]

Apart from the gushing, it does raise an interesting point. How come a mod made in a dev's spare time for a 3 year old milsim game provides one of the best MMO RPG survival experiences to date?

Easy: It's not been designed to make money or retain players, nor are the devs spending money on advertising, GM's, a big network of servers etc...

[Dog Pants]

Apart from the gushing, it does raise an interesting point. How come a mod made in a dev's spare time for a 3 year old milsim game provides one of the best MMO RPG survival experiences to date?

Easy: It's not been designed to make money or retain players, nor are the devs spending money on advertising, GM's, a big network of servers etc...

Good call. All the mechanics I've been griping about in MMOs are designed to keep people paying a subscription. I wonder how GW2 will affect this.

[buzzmong]

This is going to be a silly question, but how do you actually install this mod? Note, I've never modded ARMA before.

Edit: Possibly not too hard. The 3rd party installer seems quite good. Just have to wait for Steam to finish redownloading about half of it (despite it only failing to verify ONE file :S).

[spoodie]

[friznit]

Aye, it's pretty spectacular result from an alpha mod. He was expecting 150 or so players, got over 50 thousand. Central servers are crying.

You need Combined Ops - either buy it, or if you already have ArmA2 you can just get Op Arrowhead expansion for less monies, or if you don't own ArmA2 and don't mind shitty textures you can use ArmA2Free and buy just Op Arrowhead.

The go here: http://dayzmod.com/index.php

Press button, receive download, read readme. It explains the rest.

[buzzmong]

Aye, it's pretty spectacular result from an alpha mod. He was expecting 150 or so players, got over 50 thousand. Central servers are crying.

You need Combined Ops - either buy it, or if you already have ArmA2 you can just get Op Arrowhead expansion for less monies, or if you don't own ArmA2 and don't mind shitty textures you can use ArmA2Free and buy just Op Arrowhead.

The go here: http://dayzmod.com/index.php

Press button, receive download, read readme. It explains the rest.

Or, go http://www.worrom.com/ and download the 3rd party installer as recommended on the DayZ forums. Easy.

[buzzmong]

Oh wow. Apart from it being on the Arma engine and therefore a bit flakey, it doesn't seem too bad.

My first life was short lived.

After remembering how to holster my gun and managing to open my backpack in soul crushing darkness I clambered up from a sandy beach and illuminated the area in the comforting glow of a road flare. Finding myself on a rough road with burnt out car wreck upon it and a small wooden house to the side I was rather suprised when I felt something try to grab a hold of me, presumably in order to get a taste of the sweet pink blamange within my noggin.

This, combined with the inky black of night and knowing I was only armed with a shitty Makarov Pistol, didn't see me responding in a calm and controlled manner. Spraying bullets wildly at the zombie while backpedalling towards the house nonetheless proved to be a somewhat effective way to ensure I didn't die on the spot.

Via the red glow of the flare I spotted more zombies charging towards me, prompting a quick vault over the picket fence surrounding the house and scrambling up some outside stairs in the vague hope to find somewhere to hide, only to find myself trapped in a small alcove with a blocked door to my side. Turning around and seeing four ghouls clambering over the picket fence and attempting to ascend the stairs resulted in a hail of roughly aimed bullets smacking into the undead flesh.

Managing to put down the zombies for good, although at the cost of a couple of nasty bites and gashes to my legs, gave me a brief respite and a chance to take stock of the situation.

My panic firing had left me with half a magazine in the pistol and one spare, although after a quick search I did find some cans of soda and a couple of cans of Heinz Beans in the alcove which I looked forward to enjoying later on as a reward for surviving my first encounter with the zombie menance. However my musing was cut short when a fellow survivor was illumated in red by my flare, himself being chased by a zombie which he was ineffectively firing at.

After watching a small Benny Hill moment involving the car wreck, I decided to intervene from my elevated vantage point only it didn't quite go as I'd planned.
My first few shots pinged uselessly off the side of the car and now using my last magazine of 8 rounds, I managed to not only miss the zombie but also put a bullet into the side of the survivor's head, dropping him instantly.

With the possibilty of at least replenishing my supplies of bullets and flares along with the prospect of being able to eat those victory beans in my near future, I pushed aside the guilt of accidently murdering a fellow human, finished off the remaining zombie with my last rounds and edged foward.

Tonight was proving to not be my night as out of the darkness I saw in the corner of my eye a zombie wearing a black hoodie galloping on all fours in my direction. Scrambling back over the picket fence and up to the alcove showed that the zombie might not have seen me as he didn't make a beeline for my hidey hole.

However, feeling woozy, I realised that in all the excitement from the original attack and the events after I'd fogotton to bandage my wounds and promptly bled to death in the alcove while trying to remove a field dressing from its packaging.

I never got to eat those beans.

[Pnut]

I'm liking the sounds of this, might give it a go tonight

[fabyak]

£9.43 for Combined Operations

http://savygamer.co.uk/2012/05/17/arma- ... s-pc-9-43/

OR

$9.99 for just Operation Arrowhead (assume you can get it the same way as above)

[Pnut]

If you don't want to be scared shitless and looking round thinking something is about to jump on you, turn the music off.

EDIT. Possibly not being stoned and playing in a dark house on your own might help too.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Fancy a 5punky bash at this tonight? once it's nice and dark, ofc.

[buzzmong]

Fancy a 5punky bash at this tonight? once it's nice and dark, ofc.

Pnut and I were already going to have a go on it tonight anyway, so yus

[friznit]

Massive lols. Pandemic Legion, an infamous and highly aggressive Eve corp have just declared an Eve style war another clan in DayZ. I guess the ArmA2 community isn't used to this sort of theatre, because massive tears ensued: http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=3409