DayZ - To be released in 2016

[Hank]

I really don't think we'll have to wait too long. They keep emphasizing the desire to follow the Minecraft model. So we're not waiting for a finished game, just a working game.

[djzombie]

The game already looks and plays like it should have been out in 2007 at best

Graphics are top notch imo, its some of the animations that seem out of place or clunky, for instance the vault animation. another would be prone, my character usually takes two sprinting steps forward before going prone, on the tops of buildings this can prove problematic. and then of course the zombie animations look like crackheads sprinting at you for their next fix, but they can't decide whether they want to run at you from the left or the right.

zombies hungry for brains i think would take the shortest path to said brains

no complaints at all with the graphics of the game, most of my complaints are animations, which can be fixed by the dayz team.

i really can't wait for the standalone though. i really hope they have a better system than battleeye in place to deal with hax. that is the biggest threat to a game like this where your death means starting over.

[Lucavi]

Top notch? You haven't seen top notch, then. Day Z has terrible graphics compared to anything modern on a PC. To be fair, though, the more open-ended and expansive a game, the worse the graphics; sandbox games pretty much always look fuglier than smaller, more focused games (GTA V looks to want to punch that concept out the window, though).

The game is still stiff, the animations of the zombies are terrible, the physics need work, and the environment could use a good sprucing up, but this is all based on a mod of an already dated game that was never graphically superior when it came out, so subjective shit is subjective.

Its still the brightest star we have in the open-world free-range zombie survival genre we have, though, so I support it 100%.

[djzombie]

Day Z has terrible graphics compared to anything modern on a PC.

Better graphics than black ops 2 imo. cod still running the same dated engine from years ago i think.

i've never really been a graphics whore though, even despite all the pc master gaming race and what not, the concept of the game is what really interested me, open world multiplayer zombie apocalypse simulator, gives me a murder boner just thinking about the standalone.

[Kuishen]

I'd rather have a shitty looking game that is amazing than a super pretty game that is shitty.

[Lucavi]

Better graphics than black ops 2 imo. cod still running the same dated engine from years ago i think.

i've never really been a graphics whore though, even despite all the pc master gaming race and what not, the concept of the game is what really interested me, open world multiplayer zombie apocalypse simulator, gives me a murder boner just thinking about the standalone.

Duh. Its why fallout has sold so much, and why Grand Theft has sold so much. The problem with open world is that it tends to look inferior and have more bugs, both of which can be solved through additional testing and effort, but more often than not its not done. Just look at how fucking buggy Fallout 3 (and its expansions) was. Then take a game like Gears, which has nearly no bugs. Gears also looks better. Its not a surprise why; there's a shit-ton more land to traverse in Fallout and more room for bugs, and everything has to be visually designed in 3D, not simply wrapped as a skin and blended here and there in linear fashion like in Gears.

Its common and routine. Everyone knows this. I just don't want them spending too much time trying to perfect everything, because its going to be a buggy mess. Its going to look average (and if you really think that Blops 2 looks worse than DayZ, you really need a new computer), and that's okay. Bugs and inferior graphics are the price you pay for delicious open-world freedom.

[Kuishen]

Fallout 3 was pretty damn amazing looking, even on Xbox when it first came out. Also 3 wasn't terribly glitchy, it was New Vegas that was the unplayable mess, a byproduct of being developed by Obsidian. Skyrim has more glitches than Fallout 3 ever did.

[kuronosan]

You do know the only reason that black ops looks remotely good is because the q3 engine allows for unlimited use of shared and portals right? If you've never made a map for it you might wanna be quiet about how great the graphics look, because that's all thanks to the engine and not because of anything else.

[Lucavi]

Fallout 3 was pretty damn amazing looking, even on Xbox when it first came out. Also 3 wasn't terribly glitchy, it was New Vegas that was the unplayable mess, a byproduct of being developed by Obsidian. Skyrim has more glitches than Fallout 3 ever did.

Fallout 3 on PC was pretty glitchy; New Vegas was a singularity of glitches fused together; Skyrim on PC (for me, at least), had 0 glitches. We're 1/3 in our comparisons, presumably across different platforms.

@Kuronosan: Thank you for confirming that Black Ops II, a relatively linear game, looks better than Day Z, a completely non-linear game. That's exactly what I said. The whys and hows are irrelevant. It is what it is.

If you want to get technical, however, Battlefield 3 looks leagues ahead of Arma II, even though they both share a pretty wide-open map design. You've got to take budget into consideration for that one, however, as EA can out-bankroll nearly anyone. That's also why Rockstar games, despite being absurdly non-linear, tend to look good for their time. Massive bankroll, massive crews to work on the games. All obvious stuff.

[kuronosan]

They are perfectly relevant. If you removed shader engines and added large scale worlds to COD do you think it would look great?

All they have to do is take advantage of pixel shading and DayZ could go to Crysis levels of detail.

It helps the COD games to have portals and buildings that only need fronts.

Sorry, friend, but map design and world objects play a large role in how good a game can look. Turn BF3 on high quality and turn Black Ops on high on the same PC and see how an engine makes all the difference.

You're trying to downplay the relevance of something that makes a pretty big difference.

[djzombie]

i think you think blops 2 graphics are better because you've seen a much wider variety of the graphics that are available in that game. all you really see in dayz is your character, zombies, interiors and exteriors of buildings, unless you've actually played long enough to fix vehicles and find explosives and things.

the reason i say arma has better graphics are just the subtle things, light a campfire at night sometime next to a lake, looks almost photorealistic on a darker night.

flares and chemlights at night are also really good examples of quality graphics. theres just really not as much as far as special effects that you would see in dayz compared to what you see what see in blops.

the other thing is that most dayz servers has the draw distance so ridiculously low that it looks like the entire world is in a fog. go check out single player arma and max the view distance, its really stunning.

[Waraji]

New Standalone Update
Click Original link for Images.

This is the first update when I have sat down and thought “where do I start?” There has been so much going on with the development this month that it is hard to fit it all in a post here. Through the month we have steadily moved from working on our architectural changes, through to preparing for our first public test. The risks and gambles we took last year, are now beginning to pay serious dividends for us.

I’ll be covering the following in this update:

Lighting and material improvements
Volumetric Cloud system
New Server Architecture
Clothing/Inventory status
Closed Test Status
Art/World updates
Customizing your character
Customizing your weapon

Lighting and material improvements

One of our Lead Artists, Mario Kurty, has been working with some of the ArmA3 artists to ensure that DayZ Standalone has the best visuals possible. The result is pretty striking when combined with some of the other improvements we have made in the engine. These improvements make the world really come to life, improving the visuals overall. A comparison screenshot is included and demonstrates the effect of this.

Volumetric Cloud system

This has now been fully configured for use within DayZ, used to great effect in Bohemia’s previous product Take on Helicopters (and coming in ArmA3 also). There are several pictures of this included in the screenshots for this blog update. Running around the world taking pictures, it was hard to resist really. It adds a real sense of realism when compared with the previous result.

New Server Architecture

Our lead programmer, Ondřej Španěl, continues his work on redeveloping our server architecture. Contrary to some who say DayZ will be releasing with no anti-hack mechanisms, one of the key things we are doing with development is entirely redeveloping how the engine works. I can’t stress enough just how fundamental this change is. DayZ’s game servers will function like servers in other MMO style games, that is the server will control the behavior and the sending of updates. No longer will your machine receive all the updates allowing their analysis by various cheats.

We are exploring spawning all zombies and loot at the start of server initialization, again a huge departure from the previous mechanism. This solves many design and technical issues with the spawning and respawning of equipment, such as being able to metagame by telling whether players are in a village by seeing zombie’s have spawned.

Clothing/Inventory status

This has now been completed to a basic level, you can put on and drop various items of clothing. These items can have diseases on them, and they have durability and other attributes. We need to make some models that represent the clothes when they are on the ground (currently they look as they are when on the ground!) Once this is done, we will be releasing some video outlining what it looks like to change your clothes.

Closed Test Status

We have begun our internal closed testing (yes!) and have been working with Valve to ensure our new server browser system is working (we utilize Steam for this purpose rather than Gamespy as for ArmA2). The Server/Client architecture needs to be fully implemented before we will begin our public testing.

We have not initiated our closed test that includes external people yet (such as streamers).

Art/World updates

A huge quantity of changes are flowing into the world. New areas, a mass of new objects (such as wrecked vehicles, buses, etc…) that are all designed with DayZ in mind - such as having good areas for loot to spawn. It is really impossible to list all the changes here, from bug fixing to redesigning of buildings such as the general store, and onto entirely new buildings and areas. One of our texture artists has been going through existing work and making them look more damaged and used.

Customizing your Character

The design has now really ramped up. This is really the entire focus of our efforts for the next few months, prior to starting on vehicle customization and finally on base building at the end of the year. The obvious starting point for us is to allow players to select the gender and race of their character. Beyond this, allowing ways for your character to become your own are key for us; from getting tattoo’s to finding unique clothing items, trying to deal with your own health aliments, etc…

This is an area of very active development, we’re exploring all sorts of ways to make your character change in the world as you play. When you first create your character, the options will be simple. As you go along in the world, your character will change as a result of their interactions with the environment and the decisions you make, through items such as clothing choices.

Social aspects are extremely important to us, and we’ve taken a number of idea’s and participated in the discussions on reddit and the forums about what we can do in this area. Expect more on these area’s in the next tumblr update. We want to support the organic development and operation of groups within the game, through the development of their own symbology in game (tattoo’s, markings on the world, on weapons, etc…). We feel that these redeveloped social experiences told through the game will be a compelling part of the standalone.

Customizing your weapon

Weapon attachments are a great bi-product of our entire redesign of every aspect of the inventory system. Nothing is available to show on this yet, currently the only attachment we have fully configured in the game is the magazine. You must load the magazine with ammunition and then it is considered an attachment to the weapon. The quantity and condition of your magazines will be particularly important in the standalone. Look after them!

When is it releasing?

We don’t know. We’re going to take our time. I feel fantastic about the situation, more than ever I feel like we’re doing something really interesting with this development. Now is not the time to rush things, but we do need to ensure our pace is kept up. Our development blog and getting players in and testing as soon as possible will be key in ensuring we succeed in making this a great game.

Concluding words

At no point in development, have I been as excited as I am right now. The risks we took with the direction have paid off. The engine and approach of the game is now entirely DayZ’s own, it is striking out into it’s own territory as a project. This is very exciting for all the team.

I do need to caution though, it is a bad idea to overhype the project. We know that there are many challenges that we will face from deciding to effectively write a new engine tailored to DayZ. But we are now entirely confident, that this decision will prove to have been the best decision we could make. Now we will be able to make the game that we’ve all always wanted.

[Deadgye]

>Magazine reloading

If this ammo system steps up the current "realistic" ammo scheme and allows you to save magazines and refill them with bullets or move bullets in between magazines... I will be using my food money to pre-order this game.

[Kuishen]

Yes I loved that a game finally did something realistic with magazines (yes I realize it was Arma that actually did it) and if they add on to that it would be fantastic.

[Waraji]

Except you know, if it's going to be realistic, the magazine capacity is probably going to be for about 5 bullets. Hope you can aim good mf'rs.

[Deadgye]

Except you know, if it's going to be realistic, the magazine capacity is probably going to be for about 5 bullets. Hope you can aim good mf'rs.

All the magazine sizes in DayZ/Arma2 are the magazine sizes for the guns in real life?

[Insanecyclone]

[Waraji]

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...Q4FiOlegphi5gs

[Insanecyclone]

[Brill Weave]

Looking good.