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DayZ Alpha

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By CameronW17-01-2014
MrJenssen (editor)
StuntmanLT (editor)
DayZ Alpha

The Defence

Developer:
Bohemia Interactive
Publisher:
Bohemia Interactive
Genre:
Shooter, Simulator
Release Date:
TBA

The Prosecution

CPU:
Intel Core i5 2.8 GHz
AMD Phenom II X4 3.0 GHz
VGA:
Nvidia GeForce GTX 560
AMD Radeon HD 7750
RAM:
4 GB
HDD:
14 GB
DirectX:
9.0c

Since DayZ’s launch as a mod for ARMA 2 back in 2012, the rapidly aging military sim had been the experience’s biggest frustration point, with numerous issues relating to zombies, weapons and interacting with the world. The problems were due to ARMA 2 simply not being the intimate game that DayZ desperately needed in order to make it work the way that it meant to. With DayZ’s standalone release, it’s casting off its ARMA 2 shackles and attempts to move forward on its own, more advanced branch of the same Real Virtuality 3 engine. Will the new technology be enough though?

I’d be hard pressed to find a PC gamer completely unaware of DayZ. But for the uninitiated, DayZ came along when Bohemia Interactive developer Dean “Rocket” Hall had the idea of mocking together a zombie mod for the studio’s then latest entry into the ARMA series - ARMA 2. Eventually it was released to the public, and spread like wildfire. Within days, DayZ was all over every zombie game fan’s must play list. Content updates were flying out the door left and right, adding weapons and tools as well as survival mechanics like hunger, thirst, and even body temperature.

The building exteriors are vastly improved.

The building exteriors are vastly improved.

DayZ was a fresh take on the zombie survival genre, where instead of playing as someone armed to the teeth slaughtering hordes of undead, you’re left alone in an atmospheric post-societal fictional Eastern Bloc countryside to manage your health and keeping yourself from getting eaten by zombies. As well as, of course, interacting with other players that may or may not be willing to murder you for a can of beans. This is where DayZ shines. No other game on the market puts such weight behind hearing another player’s footsteps as they approach you, unknowing of if their intentions are to be your friend, or to murder you and send you back to the beach, forcing you to start the process all over again. This situation breds a very paranoid sort of player interaction where even if you weren’t the sort of player to shoot someone on sight, you still had the temptation to do it anyway, often out of fear for the other player’s intentions.

It didn’t take long for it to become obvious that DayZ was growing out of its trousers and was simply too much for ARMA 2’s engine to handle. While updates continued happening, it was made clear that the ultimate version of the mod would have to become its own standalone game. So, the world played the waiting game for a year and a half, until the DayZ standalone finally released on Steam Early Access on December 16th 2013.

Where the current version of the DayZ standalone lacks in quantity of content compared to the mod, the quality of what is there is leagues better. The inventory system is completely redesigned for a more simple “drag’n’drop” system seen in a lot of old-school RPGs rather than the mod’s confusing jumble of menus and hidden controls that left a lot of new players scratching their heads. Where your character in the DayZ mod looked largely just like everyone else aside from a few basic variations, you can now pick up individual articles of clothing that look wildly different from one another. They also provide added protection as well as serving as more space to put items in: a military jacket has more pockets to fill with loot than a T-shirt, for example.

The interiors are more detailed as well.

The interiors are more detailed as well.

The improved inventory isn’t the only thing that the new DayZ offers. The lighting, textures, shadows, animations and pretty much every aesthetic feature you could think of is improved across the board. Sure, it may still not look phenomenal, or even good in comparison to many other modern games. But this is an alpha build after all, and the added tech already makes Chernarus more atmospheric and immersive than ever. The best part is that even with all of these visual upgrades, Bohemia has still actually managed to make the game run smoother than the ARMA 2 mod. Impressive indeed.

A major issue that the DayZ mod had, was the zombie AI’s pathing. Zombies ran in crazy zig-zag patterns and could walk through closed doors or even walls. With the clunky gun controls, encountering the “Z” in DayZ was more often than not frustrating for all the wrong reasons. Thankfully, the AI pathing in the standalone is much better. When you’re spotted by a zombie, they make a straight dash towards you, giving you ample opportunity to shoot them down or prepare your melee weapon. The issue arises when they follow you in a straight line while phasing through fences, walls, and pretty much any other solid object to get to you, which still hasn’t been fixed.

Gunplay has seen a massive improvement as well. Where in ARMA 2 the guns felt floaty and inaccurate, the guns in the standalone are better detailed and have a lot more satisfying ‘oomf’ to them that really makes combat as a whole feel like it has more weight behind than before.

Using the inventory doesn't require you to read a wiki guide to figure out anymore. That's good.

Using the inventory doesn't require you to read a wiki guide to figure out anymore. That's good.

While a lot of issues that the mod had have been fixed in its transition to a standalone product, DayZ is still no stranger to bugs and general jankyness. The Firefighter’s Axe seems to be the only actually effective melee weapon as most of the other ones have super broken hit detection, or just don’t do enough damage. While the game runs smoother than the mod it still suffers from a lot of performance issues, especially once you find yourself in dense city areas like Cherno. There are also some issues with zombies having the ability to push you through walls, sometimes resulting in your character being stuck in an area that he cannot escape, leaving you trapped as the respawn button in the menu doesn’t actually do anything yet, yikes.

There are some features that were in the mod that have yet to be implemented into the standalone like vehicles, construction, sickness, hunting, cooking and radios. All of this along with the lack of weapon choices is planned to be added in at a later date. The standalone isn’t just playing catch-up, though. You have some new tools in your arsenal like the ability to restrain other unsuspecting players with some handcuffs. This leads you to be able to do some helpful (or downright weird) things like syphoning blood to fill blood bags so that you can use them later, or force feeding the restrained player disinfectant spray or rotten fruit until they die.

The game world in the DayZ mod was simply the ARMA 2 map ‘Chernarus’ with weapon and equipment spawns stuck into a few specific building types that you could enter, with the majority of the cities being full of unenterable cubes. The game world in the standalone, however, is updated with more towns, added loot locations, and far more buildings with interiors to explore. The interiors themselves are now better furnished environments with loot in places like cupboards and on tables rather than it all just piled into a corner on the floor. Where ARMA 2’s Chernarus was clearly made for long distance gunfights and not much in the way of immersion, DayZ’s Chernarus is an incredibly detailed environment that actually feels believable and looks like it went through the fall of society rather than a map editor.

Night-time is still dark as hell.

Night-time is still dark as hell.

DayZ’s gameplay remains completely unstructured. It’s a social sandbox that plays on the trust and greed of the human condition in a way that few other games do. It gives you a massive, realistic world, and the tools needed to survive, leaving the rest up to you. The game is far from complete, with many bugs and issues making your survival efforts even harder, but it’s already fully playable. Not everyone will consider it worth the money in its current state, but the potential is there if Dean Hall and Bohemia live up to the challenge. This could potential be GOTY material. The question is just, which year that might be.

Comments (16)
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Posts: 1317

Net code, physics, texture quality... the Frostbite engine is all flash and very little substance. I seriously doubt you could make something like Arma (or DayZ) in the Frostbite engines.

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Posts: 3290

Honestly, Frostbite doesn't really do it for me. It's too focused on appearance, dangling keys in front of our faces to distract us from how mediocre everything else is

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Posts: 223

Imagine ARMA with Frostbite. Good god

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Posts: 1548

To answer XiDiO's question why use such a terrible engine (which I can't fully disagree with) is:
It's developed by Bohemia Interactive and was started by an employee of the said company (who probably new the engine well). So don't expect them to use Unreal engine, Cry engine or Frostbite.

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Posts: 223

The game does run horribly but on low settings it smooth and still looks great. And im with Bob, its about making your own stories. Also, the killing on sight is easily avoided if you work as a group and are careful. Ive played over 30 hours and im on my 3rd character

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Posts: 3290

You know, I don't do online multiplayer. Especially not of the kind that not only supports, but flat ou promotes griefers.

But...

Sometimes the best part is making your own stories

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Posts: 341

Forgot that it also runs like shit.

Why use such a bad engine in the first place, no matter your specs its gonna run like shit. And awkward movement will remain, still cant even move up a slope without moving sloooooooooowly like a crippled zombie.

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Posts: 341

Terrible ...game.
Been in dev for... over a year or something he said?
How can a standalone title have less content than a mod that is also still Alpha and had much more content than this? Why cant he just import assets from Arma 2/3 that fit. Bring back winchester etc.

So terribly boring so far and its a bandit game. Shoot/axe on sight, no questions asked.

All you do is run and look for clothing really, its a running for clothing simulator, seriously.

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Posts: 1317

Then join the server I play on! It restarts quite often, and doesn't have that many players on it despite good ping. It's called "Savage", something.

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Posts: 1548

The game sucks. It's VERY barebones. The worst thing is probably the non-respawning loot which makes scavenging almost impossible unless you server hop.