Though the DayZ stand-alone has way less content than the mod it's based off of at this point, it still offers a better experience, in my opinion. The cheaters are more or less completely gone, cowards can no longer log out in the middle of combat, most houses can be entered and looted, the customization and inventory systems are awesome and... so on. Read our preview if you are living under a rock and don't know what DayZ standalone offers already.

If you haven't been living under a rock, but just want to know what's in store for the game's future, then listen up! Lead designer Dean Hall just released a new dev blog update listing some of the improvements and new features we should expect to see implemented into the game in the coming months.

Going through it all would take ages, so here's a quick rundown instead:

-Lighting! It's gonna start to not suck!

-Physics! Objects will get bouncy and throwable.

-Animations! The ARMA games are famous for their animations, and how crappy they are. DayZ aims to improve the stock melee attack animations based on which weapon you're wielding.

-Hunting! Animals will be re-introduced, meat can be cooked on bonfires or portable stoves. Bows and arrows will make hunting more quiet (and probably a lot harder too).

-Zombie respawning! Zombies don't respawn until a server restarts in the current build, something the devs are looking to do something about. However, it's apparently important to them that zombies don't just spawn right up in players' faces out of the blue. Bohemia are currently throwing ideas around to figure out what will work best.

-Persistence! Some objects will become persistent on servers, and will not be removed upon server restart.

-Weather! Weather will be synchronized across all clients, so if it rains on your screen, you can bet your ass your friends will be piss wet at the same time too. And this wetness will affect your gear and clothing too.

-Vehicles! You won't be seeing them anytime soon!

There are tons of other additions and fixes in store as well. If you've got 17 minutes to spare, I suggest you check out the video blog embedded above for nice in-depth explanations of every new feature and every little improvement Hall is thinking of implementing. But in case you don't, check out the developer blog to read the full list of features at your own leisure.