DayZ (standalone)

[Art Blade]

Survival Horror, Multiplayer Only.

DayZ was originally an ARMAII mod and is currently going to be a game by itself, as in it is already possible to buy and play it as an early access option which means you can play while it's still being developed. This alpha version 0.44 that is currently the one you can play and the latest stable release is already very nice.

Courtesy of Abletile, who gave it to me as a gift so he could make me play it (as a team) I am currently.. surviving. The game is basically still ARMAII except that you spawn with nothing but shoes, jeans, shirt and a torch plus alkaline battery that you have to combine with the torch ("craft") in order to make it w@&k. The rest is to be looted or, if and when you're lucky, traded. Since it's MP only, there are good guys ("heroes") and a lot more bad guys ("bandits") and of course zombies. With the latest iteration of game updates, the zombies have turned into a serious threat that will follow you until they get killed. If you can't kill them, you'll end up dead. If you die, you lose everything and start over as a fresh respawn also known as "Bambi."

Your major problems are preventing yourself from starving and dehydrating and obviously, from bleeding to death. You need to find food and beverages which isn't easy as there is no abundance of items plus other players have the same goal and may have looted the house before you got there, leaving you nothing. You can find more or less everything you can think of, useful or useless stuff. The game is extreme with regards to those details, there are even blood transfusions to be had but there are blood types to consider, as you would have to in real life.

Weapons and ammo and armour and backpacks, all there, but never all of it in one place. You need to walk from town to town or village, military bases, industrial zones.. just to get your gear together. If you survive that long, that is.

I got surprised by a zombie when checking a lone barn, ran upstairs and he knocked me off the stairs. He, funny as it might sound, died falling on the floor (about one storey high) while I "just" broke my leg. Night fell, I was alone in the dark, couldn't walk but crouch, didn't know where I was, and Abletile knew he was at an airfield. I decided to leave the barn, crawled out, in the middle of the night, thought I'd better crawl uphill, saw a pole so there might be a road, and saw a shape of something that looked like the Greek letter pi, hoped it was a place-name sign, fiddled with my torch and saw this:
[smg id=6759 type=preview align=center caption="DayZ 001"]
[smg id=6760 type=preview align=center caption="DayZ 002"]
Lucky me, I can read Cyrillic so I could read, "Tshernaya Polyana" -- Able said, "can you google it?" and turns out the English word is "Polana" so I could find it on the Chernarus map. That is how I knew exactly where I was.

http://dayzdb.com/map#5.103.079

Crazy.  :-D

[Dweller_Benthos]

I've seen some videos of people playing this. I would be interested, again, if my connection could handle it. It seems from what I've seen that teaming up with someone that you can speak with over skype or something greatly increases your chances of survival. I guess there's also some type of local speak where you can talk to people nearby you through the game itself? That seemed pretty cool.

Most of the videos I've seen though, are of a guy lasting 5 minutes before he gets jumped by someone who leaves him in his underwear in a field. Another guy was so thirsty all he had to drink was some kind of window washer fluid and it made him sick. He crawled for 10 minutes to find his friend who could only stand by and watch him die of thirst as there was no water around.

Funny stuff.

[Art Blade]

There is an option (Caps Lock) to enable voice chat on the sever, to be heard by nearby players. I use steam voice chat to talk to Abletile.

I think you can only survive with at least one more player teaming up with you, preferably someone you can trust. I survived badly injured, crawling around for a long time, barely able to find stuff to eat or drink. Took six hours real time to survive and meet with Abletile.
[smg id=6761 type=preview align=center caption="DayZ 003"]
Abletile and I, next to a pond where to drink from and for replenishing water bottles. Trying not to be too colourful so you can't be spotted that easily..

I've still got that broken leg and need help. He found someone in Chernaya Polyana where I was which happens to be a newly added town that doesn't have a name on the map yet, it's North of the North-Eastern airfield, shaped like a triangle or a shark's tooth. The confusion with another settlement called Polana very far to the South is based on these circumstances, particularly because the English spelling of Polana doesn't match the Russian spelling.

[PZ]

Looks like an interesting game.  Not sure I would have the patience to wait 6 real-time hours to heal up though

[Art Blade]

Heh heh, I was actually very interested in dying so I could start over but I couldn't stand up, leaving me to my crouching around, as in Art Blade eye to eye with grass blades, so I was involuntarily sneaking around extremely stealthily because I could never get up and that meant zombies didn't notice me hence I didn't receive any more injuries. So, couldn't die, couldn't live, might as well crouch around. I managed to enter houses ONLY IF they didn't have any bloody door steps because I couldn't "vault" over those let alone get upstairs anywhere. Which means I couldn't even drop myself to death from a door step. Yet I still kept finding stuff and food, and a water bottle, and a pond.. which is where Able and I finally met. He brought two sticks, I had a bandage, and I crafted a splint, Abletile applied that to me and wow, my leg healed instantly. So it paid off :) We're now both fit and in a properly good mood  :-()
[smg id=6762 type=preview align=center caption="DayZ 004"]
Background is dark because the screenshot was taken at night.

[Abletile]

I must say that I have run all over this map in search of Art! You cannot comprehend how satisfying it was to finaly him find and be equiped with the right things to mend his wonky leg 

[Art Blade]

It was thrilling just to wait for six hours just so someone would finally care about arriving at where I was limping around..  :-()

Seriously, thank you for the adventure and help and all that. +1  :-X mate, you're just a great bloke to hang out with in any game :) :-X

[Abletile]

Well if I had been told exactly where to locate the sick puppy, it wouldn't have taken 6 hours!  ;)
If it had been anyone else I would just have said f@#k him 

[PZ]

I must say that I have run all over this map in search of Art! You cannot comprehend how satisfying it was to finaly him find and be equiped with the right things to mend his wonky leg 

Because of the high level of attention to detail (e.g., crafting a splint out of sticks and a bandage, finding food, water, etc) I can believe that it is very satisfying hooking up with your comrade.  What happens if one of you dies?

[Binnatics]

And what happens if you decide it's bed time? Can you get out, save and return at a later moment? Or will it be bambie again?

And how big is this map exactly? I can imagine if all worldwide players start liking this game, it will fill up rather quick, no matter how big it is. And if it's only allowing a certain amount of players per game / live world, how can you meat eachother?

I guess it could be a cool game, if there is some kind of continuance so that 2 hours of effort looting and brawling will pay off during your next play. I'm usually not in the position to stay online for such large amounts of time, at least without a serious brake. But the concept is interesting, that's for sure :)

[Abletile]

You can exit at anytime and, if you don't die, you will respawn where you left off complete with you gear.
The map is 230 sq. km! :o

Night time is very quick to get dark, so unless you have eaten lots of carrots, it's very hard to see! A torch can help but it's a beacon for others to see and maybe shoot you!

[Binnatics]

230 sq KM's :o That's huge. I guess it takes quite a while to fill up. Good that there's zombies round ;)

Are there vehicles available for fast travel?

[Art Blade]

Able beat me to answering questions, too..  :-D Here my answers not influenced by his post.  :-()

If one of us dies, he's dead for good. It means to start over creating a new character and then you respawn at a random location, usually on the sever you died on. Then you'll have to figure out where that respawning took place and find each other anew.

If you decide it's bed time, you just hit ESC and quit. There is no savegame option. As long as you haven't died, you may start the game and choose "play" which will connect you to the last server you played on and it will remember the exact location you bailed out of as well as your exact stats. For instance, if you bail out in front of a tower while bleeding (or, with a broken leg) you will respawn exactly in front of the same tower still bleeding (or still with a broken leg). You will only be a Bambi when you start the game for the very first time and after you died.

The map you can see if you use the link at the end of the first post of this topic. It is huge.  :-D

Not the entire world plays on one server. You get a server list from the game menu and you select a server of your choice, there are usually servers with 30 or 40 players max. You can add servers to a favourites list and you can select "friends" to find servers with friends playing on them.

You find each other by joining the same server obviously ( :-D ) and then by finding out individually where you are (if you didn't die and if you quit while being close to each other both of you will spawn exactly where you quit) and then agreeing on a location where to meet.

So, survival pays off, as does team play. :)

No vehicles yet. :)

[Art Blade]

Night time is very quick to get dark, so unless you have eaten lots of carrots, it's very hard to see!

[durian]

Night time is very quick to get dark, so unless you have eaten lots of carrots, it's very hard to see! A torch can help but it's a beacon for others to see and maybe shoot you!

So we don't need night vision goggle ?  ;D

[Art Blade]

would be nice but the military gear isn't that advanced. There are only a few weapons out resembling very much WWII state of the art. Oh wait, it's Russian. So it's advanced contemporary stuff, then  :-D

Anyway. It's only alpha and very good already. Some bugs are to be expected and not to be whined about. For instance, both Abletile and I lost ALL of our gear and were forced to start out as freshies again without having died before. Or, zombies turned from silly puppets to really lethal and persistent monsters due to changes in the game. I hope that they reduce their strength and persistence a bit, they are bloody killing machines and no fun for a Bambi at all.

The game is very cool, how intense it is to feel the survival horror. Horror more due to not being able to get enough food and stuff rather than fearing monsters, which are still there and adding to that horror.

Able and I had a full 15-hours straight gaming day together with DayZ,  ??? :-X :-()

[Art Blade]

This is what it looks like when you're still a Bambi, almost no gear, but a team. We just finished off a zombie by clubbing him to death (if that makes any sense).

[smg id=6764 type=preview align=center caption="DayZ 005"]

[Dweller_Benthos]

So, a scenario comes to mind. Say that when Art was injured, he was able to tell Able where he was, and logs off in his injured state. Able then makes his way to where Art was, let's him know on Steam speak and Art logs back in, and pops up in front of Able who has the materials needed to heal him.

Possible? Of course, you'd have to be able to to tell exactly where each other are, and from the videos I've seen, isn't that easy.

"I'm near the water"
"Me too"
"Do you see a boat"
"Yeah, I'm standing on it"
"I don't see you, is there a metal building"
"Yeah, it's on the shore"
"No up the hill"
"Oh, no then"

Different coast, different boat. There doesn't seem to be any coordinate system in the game I guess? Where you can just tell your friend you're at a certain latitude & longitude?

[Art Blade]

it does w@&k as you think it might. Actually, it was what I did a couple of times. If you check the map link at the end of the first post, you'll notice that the mouse pointer creates x/y coordinates but there's no altitude. In my case, once I found out that I was in a yet unnamed spot on the map that in the virtual reality had name-signs reading Chernaya Polyana in Russian, it was easy to find a reference on google and youtube.

Abletile and I looked up the spot on the map and we decided to meet at the pond north of it. I crawled there, saw a zombie idling by a nearby road that didn't see me due to me being prone, and I disconnected. When Able got there, he let me know and I joined. At some point the zombie saw us, I disconnected and when I reconnected, the zombie was only inches away from my face which gave me quite a start so I immediately disconnected. Apparently the zombie went to where she (in this case it was a female) last saw me and when I rejoined, she apparently only didn't trigger because I didn't move and I disconnected again with a bit of horror. Able took her out and I reappeared to finally get fixed up.

The problem is, it works at any given place. I think I now know why we keep seeing players that look like coming straight from a military special units outfitter. I reckon those people go to a military base, loot everything and disconnect, then connect to a different server and are already at the looting spot so they can grab more gear and keep doing that until they are completely kitted out. The risk involved here is that they might materialise right in front of an unsuspecting player who will kill them because he wouldn't want to risk his own life. We'll have to see how this goes when the game is finished.

How all of this works is quite simple: all servers are connected to one master server called "the hive" that stores all player data. When Abletile and I entered a server once, after that broken leg story, both of us lost all our gear and started as Bambies for no apparent reason. I reckon that the hive lost our data. Well, it's still alpha and part of the experience :)

[Binnatics]

Interesting idea. Bringing up gear from one server to the other. They might fix that 'leak' by creating spawn points and random spawning when entering a different server than the one where they had their experience, and gear, from. That wouldn't be such a bad idea I guess, since there's no need for spawning at the same spot in a different game. I find it quite fascinating and am thinking about getting the game too. The graphics look cool, realistic :-X

[Art Blade]

the stress level is realistic, too :)

[Abletile]

I think that 'leak' ought to be fixed to stop that kind of play. But until they do I can live with it.
I agree the graphics are pretty, you will probably need quite a hefty graphics card to get the best out of it. I can only get full performance playing at 1920 X 1080 with my HD7970!  :o I did try running at higher res but I noticed a significant frame rate drop!

There are a few niggles but considering it's alpha it does show much promise. I hope they mange to get the game to its full potential.

[Art Blade]

Agree, about the need for fixing the respawning at the same spot and the pretty graphics.

[Binnatics]

Uhhh, what kind of display do you have, Able, that you try resolutions above HD quality? ???

Quite impressive. I would be happy to get the highest possible settings to w@&k smoothly in 1920 1080 config, that's all I desire.  ^-^

[Binnatics]

I reread a Dutch article about the game. Some whizz-kids tried it out and gave their comments. They stated that until now the world is far too empty, and (re-)spawning of items is still a bit weird. They gave the advice to start at a somewhat tranquil server to get comfortable with looting and preparing for battle before trying the more crowded servers where you may find a quick death due to various other advanced players who are obviously more effective and even teaming up, which makes you an easy target bambying around, so to speak ^-^
Anyway, this game is giving me the shivers, and I HAVE TO try it out. The idea is that the game will be much more entertaining and the world will be much more filled up by the time the devs are done creating it. There will be all sorts of missions you may pick up and who knows what else you may do and acquire. 

I'm desperately looking forward to play the role of the lone wanderer in the desolate post apocalyptic world that this promises to be. It actually sounds like a true adventure :-X :)