f13.net

Anyone playing this? Was thinking of picking it up, the features are rather deep.

http://www.arma2.com/game-features/arma-2-operation-arrowhead-features_en.html

Well.

ARMA 2 is now free to play.

Arma 2 Free Launch Trailer (http://youtu.be/3Mgao249jNg?hd=1)

http://www.arma2.com/free


Hot on the heals of this, is the ARMA 3 announcement:  http://www.arma3.com/

E3 2011 - ARMA 3 (In-game footage, etc.)  (http://youtu.be/2R8hWxgFMfY)

(http://www.bistudio.com/images/stories/arma3/screenshots/scr01.jpg)

(http://www.bistudio.com/images/stories/arma3/screenshots/scr02.jpg)

(http://www.bistudio.com/images/stories/arma3/screenshots/scr03.jpg)



Dude, Subs and SCUBA now, all in a giant sandboxy world. Amazing.

Might be worth dinking around with for the low low price of zero.  I tried the demo at some point and I thought it wasn't ok but it didn't  draw me in.

Ah, depth of field - what developers add when they decide faux-cinematic visual effects are more important than allowing the player to look where they want.

If you give me a game with a horizon, you must allow me to look at the horizon without getting eyestrain. Particularly if, in your game, there may be a sniper out in the blur waiting to blow my head off.

Thats what scopes are for. The land map of this title is 2.4 x the 400sqkm of the previous one. That DOF is comparable to BF3 from what I have seen.

Depth of Field sucks in games since it mimics what cameras do, not what our eyes do. It makes screenshots look great but it makes gameplay shittier. It's anti-immersive and needs to fuck off.

You can disable DoF in Arma2.

Our eyes do the same as a camera does. The only difference is that the reaaaaaaaaaaally short focal length of our eyes creates a pretty huge depth of field (the area that's perceived sharply). Hold your a finger up close to your face and look at it. You'll notice that anything further away is blurred.

I'm glad to hear you can turn it off.


But DoF in a game imposes the designer/artist's decisions about where the player's eyes should be. It's the developer dictating to the player, "You shouldn't look at anything on the screen but what I choose for you to look at." I tend to look to the horizons and enjoy long-range landscape panoramas. When I first encountered DoF in City of Heroes, it drove me fucking insane until I looked up how to turn it off - I was looking into the distance and getting eyestrain from everything being artificially blurred.

Dude, it's a pretty screenshot. Don't read too much into it.

Be that as it may, it's still automatic and you can't really look at the OOF parts of your FOV. I've got it in sniper: ghost warrior, and it's pissing me off whenever it messes up what to focus on, or you're lying still and looking around on your monitor. It's still a feature which needs to die a quick death.

Having said that: ArmA3? SQUEE!

Is ARMA2 any good? I thought it got savaged? Or was that ARMA1, or Op Flashpoint 2? I never followed those games closely, so which ones are good and bad always confuses me...

 

ARMA2 is more or less a declassified version of Virtual Battlespace (VBS), a professional infantry combat simulator. It's as hardcore and realistic as you feasibly get on the civilian market, and punishingly unforgiving of typical FPS IMMA SUPAHERO behavior. Use tactics and cover or you will die very quickly.

If that excites you, try it. If it sounds frustrating and neckbeardy, avoid it.

That's good, I approve!

Sigh.

OK, when I said "our eyes" I meant "our entire biological and psychological visual system". Yes, our eyes have depth of field, it's an inherent feature of lenses, of which our eyes contain one each. However, DoF in our eyes is, as with a lens, affected by the aperture. The greater the aperture (which is a reciprocal function of opening diameter and lens focal length) the lower the DoF. The aperture in our eyes is our iris, the diameter of which varies rapidly and constantly in response to a number of factors. Plus our eyes focus at different distances extremely quickly and efficiently, dependent on many factors including age and focal distance. On top of that we actually only have good visual acuity over a small fraction of our retina. The centre has tightly packed rods which give us colour vision and the cell density in that area gives us good resolving power. The rest of the retina contains more cones which are more efficient at light gathering but don't differentiate between different colours. There is also an area near the centre (the fovea centralis) where the optic nerve joins which has little or no vision (the blindspot). Our visual processing systems in our brains are highly adept at constructing composite images from the sensory inputs from our eyes, which are varied and imperfect. If you want to know more about the specifics and the degree to which we construct complete images then look up gestalt psychology for starters.

SO. At the kind of distances being depicted in a video game of modern warfare, such as the one being discussed in this thread, we don't usually perceive the kind of depth of field effects that those screenshots posted in this thread show.

Happy?

You lot are so stupidly fucking pedantic most of the times I wonder how you get through life without being regularly punched in the face by people who are just trying to have a conversation.

I would say it depends. ArmA2 is pretty unforgiving, has lean, has the ability to look away from where you're travelling etc etc etc, whereas what I remember of OpFlash2 (the little I played it before I quit in disgust) was that it didn't have lean, it didn't have the ability to look in a different direction from where you were travelling, and your squadmates kept respawning on each savepoint.

ArmA2 should be more or less bug-free at this point though.

Quick edit: this was pretty much a few of the main selling points (for me at least) when OpFlash1 was released, and OpFlash2 would probably have been received a bit better if it hadn't been a "successor" to OpFlash1 and NOT have these things. I'm not so sure about whether or not to call OpFlash2 a sandbox, as I didn't spend much time on it, I ragequit it after 2 missions because it was so disappointing compared to what it was based on.

Hmm.  The A2F version is not actually available yet, but Steam has free demos of the full game.

Its also a huge sandbox.

Yeah, I had a look also. Maybe I'll just wait till ARMA3 comes out. and gets patched up. and then goes on sale. hrm. Looks like Rangers in ARMA3 as well. Nice to be able to play something besides USMC.

Sandbox how?  The trailers made it look like a fairly realistic millitary game, and they're generally pretty picky about where you drive your tank.  Do you mean, like, the mission areas are big, or that it's really an open world game?

I think it's stretching the definition a bit, but I believe that technically you can setup the whole island and just run around doing whatever you like.

That is if you're talking about ArmA2, I've no idea how OpFlash2 is in that regard.

Set it up with enemies and such? Then run around sniping them from the bushes and running away?

I mean that the entire country is available to play in ( 400sqkm ) , complete with citizens, towns, factions, destructible environments, base building ETC... Coletrial damage will shift populations view on you, the world lve and breathes with movement, advancements, and migrations. You can also make your own missions. This is not a session based game like others where you load up a map, there is only one map, depending on DLC and version of course. However you can, if you want, limit missions area scope, but its not required.

There are NO classes, what you can and can't do is completely up to the gear you load out and or the vehicles you jump into, every vehicle is drivable, from tankers to bicycles. There are over 300+ Items, Weapons and vehicles all recreated from real world measurements.

Feel free to get 120 of your friends together and do this: http://youtu.be/DecIhVlaPMk Or this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN6kOig7WW4&feature=related

You can have AI on or off, you can have a squad of 4 friends AI on, and roll into town and claim you run barter town.

Arma 2 "Battlefield"  (http://youtu.be/2WXxVAcg-ME)[HD] [/url]


Make sure to go to boot camp, alo some of the AI is dumb at time, the demos are a bit buggy too. If you let it, the video settings can bring any machine to it knees by shear scope. Launching the ArmA 2 full client with all updates is a brilliant move for them.

Exactly that. The world is enormous and thenvehicles are fun enough to sometimes spawn an empty world just to fly around in.

ArmA 2 warfare tutorial (http://youtu.be/vNwqRTZT_7o)

Goes over some basics, building, guns, command, RTS elements ETC....

The single player campaign was bugged to hell and uncompletable when I played it - I ended up using cheat codes after several levels never completed themselves correctly. If it's free, that's about what it would be worth.

That's why I said "ArmA2 should be more or less bug-free at this point though.". This is something they always go through, with releasing it buggy as all hell, and fixing it over the next 6 months. Not exactly the best scenario, but I'll live with it if it means getting a better game in the end.

For those interested, Arma2 free version is now available (http://www.arma2.com/free).

Awe sweet, if you own the full version, you can play with free players too.

Hm, I reckon I'll start downloading as soon as I get home. Last day of the month before my downloads reset themselves for the month, as well...
 :grin:

They then give me the choice of signing in using Facebook, Windows Live ID, Steam, Google/Gmail or some other thing called OpenID.

http://free.arma2.com/activation/

 :oh_i_see:

Didn't want those users anyways.

The Steam one looked like it might have been ok.. it sent me to a Steam page which told me it wouldn't share anything with Bohemia except for my Arma play stats. I'll let one of you guys do it first, though...  :grin:

Why would it be any different than any other steam login?

I own the title, using steam, I don't see an issue.

Because I usually only have one Steam login. Which is associated with Steam. "Log in via steam to claim your Bohemia game" is a bit ...different. But it's the other stuff they offer that give me pause. Maybe I should use my fake facebook account?

I guess I don't see what the issue is. Then again, I am not sure why its not on steam in the free section. Maybe that is to come.

Arma 3 & Underpants (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/09/13/arma-3-underpants/#more-73727)

Game has an amazing amount of features.

So this is this week's Midweek Madness on Steam in a variety of configurations. To buy everything ARMA2 a la carte will cost you $30, though or $25 if you buy the combined Ops version for $15 + the 2 DLC packs for $5 each. - so they naturally have a $30 pack that includes ARMA1 as well.

Oh, ARMA 2: Free is up on steam as well now, hidden in the ARMA II entry. I'm downloading that. If I have time, I'll check it out and decide on the other stuff. But then again, I picked up MW3 yesterday and my BF3 arrived in the post today. So it's going to be a busy time...

They've also released Project Reality (http://www.realitymod.com/) for ARMA2, which is awesome.

One thing I wish they'd work on next, is the driving physics etc, because that's always been atrocious.

Tried. It-Out. The. Awful. Stilted. Audio-Sounds. When. People. Talk. Was-Too. Much. For. Me.

Uninstalled.

Well, thats... ok.

The graphics looked like arse, but that's undertsandable - low-res textures for the free version, and if I upgraded I'd get the spiffy hi-rez ones. I didn't play it for long, but it just felt really ...unpolished. Like the base of something that could be great but just never got properly finished.

I dunno. Was glad I was able to give it a try, though.

I did not want to make another thread for ARMA 3 so, ill just leave this here.

Arma 3 - 'Stratis Showcase' Trailer  (http://youtu.be/I0untAgEncI?hd=1)

Large maps and realistic visibility just seem like they'll inevitably lead to vehicle destruction derbies and tedious K/D obsessive snipers... or are there some mechanics that actually limit that in practice?

The main limiting factor against this seems to lie in the playerbase itself. I haven't played this online much, but what I've seen of it seems to have a larger portion of people who take it very seriously as a simulator, not as a game just to be K/D'ed to death.

In fact, I don't think there's much in the way of K/D registering anywhere, so if anything I think that'd be the limit you're looking for.

Day Z (http://www.dayzmod.com/) - Zombie mod for ArmA2 Combined Ops!

If these videos (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL68854CD9F0A0C4A7&feature=plcp) don't intrigue, I don't know what will.

That looks awesome, I have to say..

You have to be a part of an FPS community to play effectively.  Places like SimHQ, TacticalGamer, and Dyslexi's group (shack tactical).  Dyslexi's actually in the vids... nice to see him still playing. (he parlayed his fps skillz into a sweet VBS2 gig evidently, and helped with Arma2)
So yah, as you can see the community is pretty small but it'll be some of the best "gaming" you ever do.

I love the idea of what I see there.  Do I actually need to pay money to get ARMA2 to the point where it can run that mod or is the F2P version enough?

Be advised.  It's totally open-world sandbox survival-pvp on a persistent server (so good luck dealing with the trigger happy tweenies in town).  DayZ will hold all your stats, etc. even if you log off (unlike most arma servers) and there are leaderboards. (time survived, distance walked, etc.)  Seems very HungerGamesish, only with zeds.   :awesome_for_real:

I'd play if Arrowhead was on sale, but it's $20 right now.  I dont want to play an Alpha that badly.  Some forum investigation is revealing that the mod is really seeing a good showing, and it's likely to be published in some form soon.

I watched all 6 of his videos and all I could think of was "this ... this is awesome."

Playing this now. (Zeds)

His girlish squeals every time zombies appeared made those videos oddly compelling to watch.

Agreed, his audibly being so "into it" certainly added to the atmosphere in those vids.

Poop! Having issues finding a server this morning playing the newest version....

To be fair, he's a 'ShackTactical' guy, meaning he's one of Dyslecxi's crew.  Which means he's a BI fanbois pretty much.  Ultimately the object was to get more people to buy the game/expansions and Mods.

Oh, and looks like the survival record is at 40+ hrs as of yesterday.

It's an amazing mod, regardless of what you think a "fanboi" is doing to generate interest. I rarely have "Just a few more minutes.." moments anymore, but this game has done it. Last night I intended to go to bed at 11... 1 AM. So addictive, especially when you start to group up with other people. Shit can go sour really quick even if you have numbers.

Video of some bandits (what you become if you kill too many players) raiding buildings with a helicopter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxbrFa3dPqk&feature=player_embedded

Apparently this gets updated quite often. So, user error on my part.

I wish I could host my own server. But it seems they keep that stuff to themselves and only give it out by request.


EDIT: also apparently ARMA 2 hit the top sellers list on steam due to people picking up this mod.

They're keeping it to themselves because they were just testing the idea and the servers currently require access to their main server for loading character data. Apparently it's in the plan to work on a private server option for people.

Yeah, I figured.

I have played on a few servers at this point. Some start you with equipment, some do not. Some all spawn you in the one spot, some randomly on the world.

The best one I have played on so far seems to have made some of its own mission scripting using the mod. Things they added were base overruns, where zombies would infest an abandoned area or compound. I found it funny, because when this mission triggers, everyone see it. So not only do you need to contend with the zombies in the area, but other users. There was another where some "military" CDC like force was moving across the country side, killing all zombie and players alike, some sort of clean up and containment crew.

Cool stuff.

Great site with some good info you may want out in the wastelands.

http://www.dayzmod.info

DayZ - The Survivors (http://youtu.be/A7Q8c8jnL3s)






(http://www.dayzmod.com/images/gallery/dayz-gallery_p1.jpg)

(http://www.dayzmod.com/images/gallery/dayz-gallery_p3.jpg)

(http://www.dayzmod.com/images/gallery/dayz-gallery_p7.jpg)

Some guy in rpgcodex printed the whole map of the world and pasted it on his wall.


Also:


High barrier of entry. Fuck it. I'm playing FPS, not a flight sim.

Uh. I generally use the standard fps controls to move around, zxc to control prone position, v to jump fences, b to use a binocular and alt to swivel my head. It's not such a high barrier of entry control-wise, the problem is more that you aren't invincible.

Umm... Like, most of that is the NPC commands and orders, not used in the mod. The rest is rather standard stuff. Also, completely mappable. The radio commands are as easy as they were in Tribes...... F1 + 1 + 8 = "Bob find cover".

I mean..Dam...



See, the difference being, Team based games require communication between others. Just saying  ;D You didn't even GET to the aircraft controls!

Day Z interview — how zombies + Arma 2 created gaming’s best story machine (http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/05/16/day-z-interview-how-zombies-arma-2-created-gamings-best-story-machine/) - PcGamer


A Chat With Rocket, Creator Of Day Z (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05/16/an-interview-with-rocket-creator-of-day-z/) - RPS

I've been playing this a bunch with a few dudes from the office. Playing together makes the game really shine; we all survived about five real-time days. Until today.

Today, during lunchtime, we met up and headed for a small town. On the outskirts of town, while doing some routine spotting to plan our route, we spotted a man sneaking through the village, occasionally popping zeds with his pistol. We closed in and stalked him from building to building until he holed up in a church. He brought in a horde and laid them out while we watched. Once he'd finished the zeds and the town had gone quiet, we encircled him and closed in. Instead of bothering to communicate, we did a coordinated (and, in retrospect, idiotic) bum-rush through the door. We cut him down with the sweet automatic weapons we'd looted from the countryside, but I and another guy were gutshot before he went down and we both bled out too fast to save.

Turns out that automatic weapons are really loud, so every zed in town headed in to feast on our remaining two companions. We were all back on the beach 5 minutes later and logged out as lunch break was ending.

Cannot wait to get more guns and do it all over again.

How do you guys group up? I tried to get together with a friend, but man, the world is large and we are unfamiliar with the map.

We're all pretty decent with orienteering. Look for landmarks and patterns. Places where roads meet, distinctive hills, etc. It also helps that we're physically in the same room, so if someone has no clue, we can all cluster around his monitor for a few minutes to figure it out.

Also, topographical maps (http://i596.photobucket.com/albums/tt46/Neothief/1336724661389.jpg) help a lot.

Linking for reference.

http://www.teamfackin.com/moocow/dayz/map/

Also, Patch:

This is simply sandbox gaming at its finest, tech roughness included  :awesome_for_real:

A couple days ago, I installed the mod after only a vague read (I've been playing ArmA 2 on and off for the last 1.5 years). I found myself stranded on a beach, at night, basically blind to everything that was surrounding me. I checked my equipment, and I noted that I got some flares; so I thought: "hell, let's shed some light into this!"  :grin: . After a minute and a half or so, I started hearing screams and the noise of quick footsteps coming at me. I turned around and suddenly I see this fuckin' zombie getting at me: I quickly took out my Makarov, shot it dead, and I immediately realized I actually had to get away from that source of light as soon as I could;  I found a road getting I don't know where, so I followed for a bit...And got disconnected  :grin:

But even for a few minutes, I can easily categorize it as one of the most intense gaming experiences I've ever had. While the novelty and the "fear factor" might soon fade, I think that with proper enhancements and support this can become a really unique experience, both as a loner, survivor group or a bandit one.

Hey, we should open a F13 server, with a password like...I don't know "schildlovessalvatore" or something?

EDIT: Aaaand..."Day Z: In Real Life"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYft9Kd8nIQ

Eurogamer is praising it too.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-25-day-z-the-best-zombie-game-ever-made (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-25-day-z-the-best-zombie-game-ever-made)

After watching the videos I'd really like to try it out, in fact it looks so awesome I never thought possible. But I guess going at it alone would be suicide? Would it be possible to organise a F13 team for it?

I think we need to. Because as much as a I like being the loner, this would require some backup.

Be aware that the engine is janky as fuck, the UI is nightmarish, the servers are jammed 24/7 and you'll be accosted by bugs as often as other players. If you elect not to participate in the bean wars, be prepared for long jogs through the forest interrupted by adrenaline-drenched moments of sheer terror.

You can survive pretty easily as a loner, but you just won't be able to take on some of the larger challenges. Dicking around as a group is where it shines, but your group better have a decent sense of direction. My group had one of its new arrivals walking literally in a circle for two hours until he starved to death.

I'll share a small tale that happened last night.

Myself and a buddy had both recently been killed in a gank-gone-wrong; we met up southeast of Pavlovo, having found not much more than a M1014 shotgun and an ACU pack. From there we met up with a third guy, a new arrival who didn't know how to crouch, much less survive. We headed north to Zelenogorsk to hit the supermarket there.

Along the way, we hit a few deer stands and my buddy found an M16A2 with two clips. Sweet, real firepower. On the edge of Zeleno, we entered a barn and found a Lee Enfield and a bunch of Makarov ammo. Common stuff, but an upgrade for me; shotguns are worthless.

We hear a few Makarov shots in the distance, and scan the horizon. Nothing apparent, no running zeds. From the barn, we could see clear down to the supermarket, so we decide to take the chance.

The fields were swarming with zombies, but having lived through two airfield raids so far, I figured we could do it easily. We start crouch-walking our way down the hill and are soon in the middle of the zed-pocket, with all the Zs moving in comfortably-angled diffuse directions.

Then I notice our newbie is standing. Just as I yell to him to hit X and crouch, I hear the first zombie scream and see a shambler start running for us. Myself and the M16 guy hit the deck and I tell the newbie to Yakety Sax for the supermarket. He hauls ass, and immediately has twenty zombies on his trail. Myself and M16 start crouch-running along through the newly cleared fields and I calmly instruct the newbie to use his Makarov to shoot the zombies in the head, one shot at a time, as they shamble through the door of the supermarket.

By the time we're down there, twenty Zs are lying dead on the floor and our newbie is pretty proud of himself. We rummage through the supermarket and replenish our food and first aid supplies, as well as finding him a Lee Enfield. At that point, we notice a bunch of tents out behind the building. With M16 and the newbie covering me, I crawl out there and check them. All empty.

We decide to head southwest out of town so we can wheel around and hit the airfield again for some better weapons. On our way through the parking lot, M16 spots a bandit heading into the supermarket from the rear. Newbie and I return to the front of the supermarket as M16 heads through the back.

The newbie holds the door while I go deeper in. As I'm turning the corner around the service desk, I come face-to-face with the bandit, who's got an AK-74 drawn and pointed at my face. I raise my Lee Enfield and we both open up. I go down instantly; black screen, You Are Dead.

Over voice comms, I hear M16 swearing as every zombie in the town comes running. Newbie gets swarmed at the door and Yakety Saxes his way out of town, being trailed by damn near every zed in the city. M16 searches through the store and finds both my corpse and the bandit's; apparently we killed each other.

On his way out of the store, he gets shot at by another survivor in a blue top. Bleeding profusely, he bolts for the treeline and hides. The newbie hits the coast and swims out to sea to shake off the zeds, losing all his gear in the process, and then proceeds to get shot by some newbie with a Makarov.

M16 bandages up and heads for the barn to restock and see if he can find the blue-shirted guy. I hear him scream over voice comms; he rounded the corner into the barn, only to find a third stranger lying in wait. Before he could get a shot off, he's dead.

Lessons learned: Don't fire a Lee Enfield in town. Leave someone on overwatch when entering a major building like a supermarket. Teach newbies to stealth in less-exposed conditions than a major city.

I'm down for group play, just tell me when and where (server).


One of the last patches added the ability, or requirement rather, to open your Inv and simply right click for Context menu. So right click beans to eat type of stuff. Its a marked improvement. But yes, over all UI is nightmarish in places.

Why the hell did I open this thread. Damn you.

 :grin:

I've been playing with a group from NeoGAF. My advice: Keep your group small and tightly knit. Avoid leaders and just stick to a common goal.

Janky, fun, would like an f13 server.

Tough to join up with people, lots of ganking.

I was hungover as fuck today, so I spent literally the entire day playing DayZ. It was glorious. One good story sticks out.

Today it was myself and two buddies; the guy with the M4 from the previous story now had a CZ 550 scoped hunting rifle, making him the group sniper. Another buddy had an AK-74K and I had an AKM. We'd all collected ALICE packs from Elektro on Friday and stuffed them full of ammo, medical supplies and rations. We were pretty well kitted out, lacking only a hunting knife to make full-on wilderness survival possible.

We made our way up the coast from Elektro towards the south of Novy Sobor, picking through deer blinds and barns on the way, accumulating a ridiculous amount of ammunition. We stopped a few times to familiarize ourselves with our weapons and got to be pretty decent shots, thanks to the sacrifice of a few zombies.

As we pass Novy Sobor, we hear gunshots in town - the distinctive burp of Kalashnikov fire - and decide to swing wide and avoid it. We track through the trees to the south and are coming up south of Stary Sobor when we get separated by accident. Myself and AK-74K are about 100 meters ahead, moving through a narrow line of trees up a hill when our sniper yells "HIT THE DECK!" over voice chat.

We both hug dirt and a single shot rings out. "Got him."

Standing up, we both see, not twenty meters away, a fresh survivor corpse. The sniper explains that he was belly-crawling through the bushes and had raised his Winchester at us when he received a CZ550 bullet in the temple. The fortune of being separated meant the two of us hadn't been pocked with Winchester slugs; indeed, it probably saved all our lives.

Once we stopped shitting ourselves, we stripped his corpse and found, on him, the last of the survival supplies we need - a compass, watch, knife, spare matches and so on. Thank you, random bandit.

A few hours later, we find our first helicopter crash site. No loot, unfortunately.

Apparently playing at night on a low ping server ends up me playing in total darkness. Fuck yeah,  :oh_i_see:

And too much work for the little fun gained. It's like EVE Online.

OT but going through Kilroy's vids I see Mount and Blade has "mount and musket" mods. I didn't think much of its multiplayer potential when it first came out but that looked pretty good.

I suck at this. Horribly. And I'm usually pretty good at shooters. I can't seem to get my mouse sensitivity right or something, because my aim is all over the place. Never mind the fact that I get lit up long before I ever tend to see the enemy.

Are you running everywhere? Because, there is no bar for it, but if you run everywhere, then the two parts of the cross hair widen, its your stamina. IF you shoot, it will be anywhere in there.

One thing I think bohemia's engine doesn't deal with well, is mouse smoothing. I think mouse smoothing in conjunction with lowish FPS or something muck up everything. You could try switching that off and see if that doesn't help.

Did you turn smoothing all the way down? That helped a lot for me. My main problems seem to be inventory-related, trying to pick stuff up is kind of hit or miss, got killed trying to pick up a bigger backpack. And that I'm too nice and get shot in the face a lot. It's the only way I've died so far.

Fake edit - what tgr said. I should probably notch stuff back, most is on very high and it's running around 50fps but the shadows are weird and I had a bad experience with a rain front (I think) in the second city over, the whole rainy (?) area was a giant flashing graphical distortion.

Anyone else tried the standalone mod Iron Front 1944? I bought it on an impulse, tried it a bit and it first impressions are that it's glorious and bug-ridden.

This and what Sky said. TURN SMOOTHING OFF! It's painful and unnecessary. You may also want to turn down headbob as it seems to fuck with some peoples ability to aim after bobbing around for a bit.

Turned smoothing off, that helped a bit. Headbob will be next because my aim is still for shit in this game.

This is getting interesting: more and more people are joining, and the official mod forums are starting to heat up with opinions about the general direction of the mod: the author is now starting to feel the same pressure/issues of all the others who tried to implement a FFA PvP/full loot approach. We'll see what his approach is going to be. A lot of topics are strongly resembling what I read during UO back in pre-trammel era (no repercussion for killing other people? "if your heart is true, don't kill blue" ? :D)

The difference between here and UO being that it's still an FPS and FFA PvP makes more sense than it ever did or will in an MMORPG. It also fits the setting. Though, I would say if there should be any repercussions, they should be along the lines of, "you killed everyone, good for you, now you're the only survivor of the zombie apocalypse, let's see how long you last by yourself while the hordes keep coming."

Oh, here is what Rocket (developer's nickname) is currently saying on the subject:

Now THAT makes me want to check this out.

That's a mod developer attitude I can get behind, simply because it does get so much better when you're in a group, stalking another group through the forest etc.

Yep. Had that happen during my lunchtime group-up today:

Four of us high-tailing it through the woods, sprinting around like newbs despite carrying an SVD Dragunov, M16, AKM and AK74K. We're wheeling around the international airport, heading over to check out a heli crash site we saw yesterday.

The pointman, carrying his Dragunov, gets sick of swinging wide around the open fields through the trees and decides to make a break for it over 300 meters of open terrain. On voice chat, the rest of us groan and tell him he's asking for bullets in the face, but we follow anyway.

As we cross the last few meters before the next treeline, the AKM guy yells "I'm hit!" Bullets go whizzing by us and we all hit the dirt and spin around.

I spot a lone survivor directly behind us, crouching out in the open, pocking away at us with his AK. I get my M16 up and return fire, forcing him to dive for cover. AKM is moaning over voice that he's bleeding out, AK74K is generally losing his shit, and Dragunov is unshouldering his weapon and trying to find our assailant.

The second that the sniper rifle starts firing, our assailant decides he's made a terrible mistake and starts heading for the trees, STANAG rounds raising dust at his feet. Another few shots from the Dragunov and he goes down behind a rock in the opposite treeline. I crawl up and begin bandaging and transfusing AKM, then crouch-run towards the bandit's last known location.

More shots, the bandit's back up and firing at me. He misses, and another Dragunov round through the chest drops him for good. I reach his corpse and feast on his beans. He has little else - standard newbie gear plus an AKM. We strip him of ammo and make fun of him in global chat.

We're shaken and down two blood bags, but we've survived an ambush. Having just unleashed several clips worth of automatic weapons fire right next to a bandit hotspot, we decide to get the fuck out of dodge. Through the trees this time. Always through the trees.

Yeah, forgot that one. It's an automatic reflex to turn it off, even if I was all "They still make that?"

Had one round as the fiancee came over yesterday, started me in the middle of nowhere, and given the roving bands of humans, it only took me two deaths to figure out Yoru's strategy of sticking to the treeline (plus I played OpFlash in the day, so I just reverted to telepathic enemy mode). Made my way over to a little seaport, what I thought was a barn..nope. (Insert wish that more buildings were real) Place was crawling with Zed.

I move out to the seawall/pier thing to get some hard cover and there's a dude out there. I quickly duckwalk the length of the wall and duck back to the Zed side. I must've somehow stopped crouching at that point, some Zed mariachas over and start gnawing on my arm. I just see myself suddenly taking damage, turn around and there are three munching away on human snack (my arm, and I think maybe a knee). Reflexively pop them in the head, attracting another five or so that were in the road, curse and run for the survivor, hoping he's friendly.

He was just kind of prone/crouch/prone on the pier, spinning around looking in different direction. Panicked or lagged, I dunno. Panic goes with my immersion, so I figure I'll bring him some friends to play with and we can use up his ammo taking them out. As I flat out run around a corner, I see a little 2-door shed at the land end of the pier, duck in there and close the doors. Lookee, some bandages. Tidy up that bloody arm (hey, THAT's what the blood stat in the debug window means) and look out the window. Panic guy has run over and he's crouched behind the building, I can hear the Zed swarm on the blind side.

As I sit trying to decide whether to pop open the door and trust (or kill) this guy, it's time to go make dinner.


Overall, it's a bitch of a solo game, but even as frustrating as that is the dev kid is right. The best zombie movies weren't about zombies, it was what dire situations brought out in your human soul. Also, we really need to get an f13 group together (since my ping to Iceland probably isn't great :)

I've moved south recently, but your ping to Malta probably isn't much better. I'm usually on EU1, 11, 12 or 13 when my group's playing. We prefer Veteran mode/crosshair-off servers.

That seems to be what I've been on mostly. First day I was on Chicago 6, but I've been bopping around the NYC servers since. I sit at around 31-50 on those two sets.

Getting 120-145 to the EU servers.

Another new feature of the latest patch is female characters.

I can see the corpse raping already.

Anyone foolish enough to hang around a fresh corpse for more than a few minutes deserves the bullets through the head that they'll get.

The Goons have a bus...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bpAkAkLFTE&feature=related

Gama and brightness looks adjusted to extremes in that.

Night is one of my major complaints right now. Also, apparently the next patch ( server/client ) is told to reduce the "loading" and and log in time down to nill. Personally, for me the sting of death hasn't been that I need to start over, but that death has meant 3-10 minutes to even log in.

I've seen vids of helicopters as well

I was wondering about vehicles. At one point I ran across a broken motor or something and thought there was some crafting systemish thing for vehicles.

AFAIK, there are Cars, SUV's, Helicopters and buses. ( So not the 200+ from ArmA2, yet ) You have to gather all the parts ( They take lots of Gear space ) and of course, find fuel. You also need a tool box.


The above is in extremely limited testing right now.

:yahoo:

Played for a few hours yesterday on a hardcore server with no reticles or third-person. Got a fever and the shakes, managed to headshot a few zeds and then ran out of food, ammo and water. Got desperate and ran up a mountain and found the ruin of an old keep, in which I found more ammo, a flashlight, a can of coke and some pasta. Of course, when I picked up the flashlight, I somehow lost my pistol, making my newfound ammo kinda useless. Then, in my somewhat desperate search for said pistol, I fell down the stairs of the keep and broke my leg. I crawled back to the top of the keep and camped.

This shit is bananas.

I wish you could search by player tags. Is there a friend feature in the server browser? It's no DICE browser, but meh.

Need to update and play a bit more. I see it as more of a 'how long can I stay hidden and survive away from the rampaging human apocalypse' as a solo experience. I've met two people who didn't shoot me in the face, I guess at some point you just have to if you aren't with a group.

The server browser is a hold over from the long lost past. You have to go old school. Sadly, not even steams "join game" is supported.

I know and I KNOW  :grin:

On the one hand, I love more grognardy type games with cool detail levels, on the other hand fucking grognards and their obscure complexity.

Well, if anyone's looking for me, I tend to hang on the NY1 server. I average a ping of about 20-50, so not a bad deal, latency-wise.

Unrelated to Dayz, but, I lold hard. I have zero idea where it came from.

Tonight, some poor schmuck fell and broke his leg somewhere near Cherno. His friend went to find him some morphine so he could walk with the bad leg. His friend died. The guy then crawled from Cherno to Stary, somehow managing to avoid zeds and bandits the whole way. He runs into another guy there and asks if he has morphine. "No, the guy says, but my friends do and I'm going to meet them at the outskirts of town" Crawling guy follows new guy to his friends and one of them promptly shoots the crawler.

Bananas.

In Soviet Russia...  :awesome_for_real:

I admin on Dallas 19 and I run TX 8, I'm told the servers are some of the most stable and well run.

Why you not run 1.7?

probably 'cause it's still buggy as shit.

I've been running 1.7 since it came out, with the latest Arma2OA beta patches, and it's been a much improved experience for me. Way lower loading times, better FPS. It's definitely no buggier than 1.6.0.1.

Day 1: Exposure (Day Z Zombie Apocalypse) (http://youtu.be/9isjtzE2iUA?hd=1)

Arma 3 Demonstration  (http://e3.gamespot.com/video/6381268/arma-3-demonstration)

This isn't twitter. Could you at least tell us something about the link?

Well, the reason I do that is so I'm not Dinged for "fanboying" a game. But sure.


Arma 3 Demonstration  (http://e3.gamespot.com/video/6381268/arma-3-demonstration)

Highlights:

Added stances.
True Physics.
They are adopting a mentality of "More Accessible", less clunky. Heavy emphasis on more fluid than ArmA 2.
Underwater, and underwater combat.
Even the cross hair has been changed to be more "standard".
Large AI changes.
Better, more extensive tutorial missions.
GUI revamp.

My fiancee was laughing her ass off at the Arma2 tutorial where you have to do first aid on a guy. I couldn't seem to find the sweet spot to get the stupid heal option, so I kept picking him up and flinging him around. My feeling about DayZ is the same, janky but fun. But really janky. I'm sure the series die-hards will bemoan 'mainstreaming', but the series REALLY needs some quality of life improvements.

However, I hope they can add them without sacrificing all the detail that makes it a great series...I just want to be able to have an enjoyable playing experience.

From what I can tell in that video, and others I have watched. Its like night and day as far as fluidity between ArmA 2 and 3. This is nothing but good for them.

Also, as far as I can tell, it looks like DayZ is going to be an official offering for ArmA 2.

Fanboy.  :awesome_for_real:

Indeed.

Yeah, rumor has it Bohemia pulled Rocket off of ArmA 3 so he could work on DayZ full time with the goal of making it a full fledged product.

There's a follow up with someone who played ArmA 3 and they said the main city was 2 to 2.5 x larger than Cherno with about ~80% of the buildings being enterable and more variety (Enterable airport terminal, basketball court with flood lights..etc.) Getting DayZ ported to ArmA 3 has become a lot more appealing.

Did anyone who attended E3 give this a try? I'd love to hear how the ArmA 3 differences felt.

Now, if they could only make Cherno less of a haven for assholes...

Capped two and a half today, I'd count three, but the third one died the same way I did, to the grenade I dropped to keep him from surviving killing me.

Can anybody run a server yet?

Pretty much, but the wait list is long.

There's a wait list?

So I read the whole thread. I watch videos. I decide that $20 is no big deal if it means an awesome zombie game. The Day Z mod site is not letting me grab the mod. Are there any other sources?

Site look up to me. Was it down or something?

EDIT: Ah, us Mirror down. Just use one of the others.

For some silly reason, I assumed that downloading from a non-Amercia-fcuk-yeah server would net me a localized version of the mod. I jus t dropped $20 on  the operation arrowhead install on steam. Do also need to buy ArmA2?

Looks like yes.
TUTORIAL - How to install DayZ  (http://youtu.be/UX9u_UbOJH8?hd=1)

Today, I took a little trip to the Northwest airfield. Generally a dangerous journey, but I got up there no problem, using the cover of darkness as my friend. I'd found an Alice pack along the way and filled it with four water bottles, a ton of food, and a spare revolver, in case I ran out of ammo for my 1911. Of course, the best long arm I'd found up to this point was that M104, so I'm looking for anything better and headed to the military hardware promised land.

I make it through the forest, get up to the barracks and start searching, hoping not to make too much noise and let anyone else, alive or undead know I'm up there. The place has been completely cleaned out, not even an empty tin can to be found, somewhat discouraged, I start to move out toward the next set of buildings when I aggro a zed, i run back to the barracks and headshoot him as he comes through the door. The shot of course, brings more zeds and I end up taking out nine of them before they stop coming. Thinking the coast clear, I start to move out again, when I look back behind me into the barracks and notice gear has started to repop. Thinking it's a lucky break, I start going through the rooms looking for goodies. Out of the last door comes a guy who had apparently just logged in to the server in that room. He's just looted an M4 and he makes me his first victim with it.

Half an hour later, someone else takes him out and he complains rather verbosely in chat about how unfair it was, especially after he's gotten that shiny new M4. I laughed my ass off.

Since then, I managed to make my way back to the airfield one more time and pick up an M4 CCO, an M24 and a micro uzi. Now, let's see how long I can hold on to them...

That PDW can take all types of ammo. M9(SD) and a few others along with PDW ammo.

Good to know, I'll start grabbing 9mm ammo and seeing what sticks.

I managed to connect to a server over the weekend. It had no zombies. Someone in chat noted it, then asked people to not PK so that everyone could farm loot. I found almost nothing before jumping off a loft in a barn. I then bled out because I could not figure out how to heal myself.

So yes, I suck at these games. Added realism is unfair to some. I need to spend more time studying the keyboard commands. You don't need a partner to get healed, right?

That request not to PK on zombieless servers often goes unheeded I've noticed.

You bandage yourself to stop bleeding by opening your inventory and right clicking on an available bandage. As for healing, for big heals, yes, you need a partner to transfuse you with a blood pack. You also heal incrementally by eating food, but a can of beans only restores about 250 health. You'll also need painkillers to steady your aim and morphine to walk if you break any bones. The game's a bitch, but I can't stop playing.

Yeah, found a useful wiki. I must remember to link it when not on the iPad. The UI is definitely non-helpful, even when looking at key bindings.

Now I want to go back and give it a go now that I have read a bit about the controls. I have to admit that I wouldn't mind finding a glitched zombie-free server again to see what I can do without zombies.

They all do. Anything 9mm works in it. I'm pissed I didn't realize this when I first had one.

Shot my first non-zombie in anger today. Actually shot six of them.

Some guy was looking for help to get out of sticky zed situation as they had him pinned down in a supermarket. He manages to extract himself at the cost of all his enfield and .45 ammo. He then starts talking in side channel to a couple of other guys who are also in the same town, asking if they're friendly, etc... during this time, I've managed to get to the outskirts and I'm watching the situation through my sniper scope like the paranoid survivor I've now become. The "friendly" two guys meet up with the now ammo-less guy and promptly shoot him. One of them quips in side channel, "Protip, don't trust anyone in this game"

I put a .308 in both of their heads, plus a body shot into their buddy who was lurking on a nearby roof and say, on the same channel, "noted. Protip number two, don't be an unnecessary douche, you never know who's watching."

The guys I shot didn't take it too well. I told 'em I'd take the best of their gear and give it to the guy they shot.

So I take it that 1) I suck at aiming without a crosshairs and 2) the Makarov is a bb gun?

I tried this and sadly had to give up on it.  I am not pro enough to handle all this realism.   The concept is still great though.   I look forward to it in 4 or 5 years when it's applied to some of the different types of shooters.

U shd start a radicalthon journal, i'd read it every day. No homo.

The Makarov (and anything else) can kill a zombie in one hit to the head; it takes 3 to the body and far more to the arms/legs. I've killed 60+ zeds in my current life, and my Z-killing sidearm is the Mak. It's quiet and ammo is abundant. Most pistols take 2-3 body shots to kill zombies, but their ammo is much rarer. The only one-shot zombie killing guns are the M1911 and revolver, and both of those are loud as fuck, meaning you'll probably draw in more zombies than you have bullets with each shot.

Click (not hold) RMB to raise the iron sights. Trying to shoot things without iron sights is an exercise in futility. Note that, once you get up to rifles, you'll also have to deal with zeroing and ballistic physics: aiming lower for shorter distances, higher for longer ones.

Yoru's right, no scoping will get you killed or run you out of ammo in no time. There is indeed Mak ammo -everywhere- though, I find there's a lot of revolver ammo out there as well. But like he said, loud and more attention than you sometimes need, from both the dead and the undead. If you are going to swap out the Mak for another weapon, either have a bag big enough that you can throw it in there as a backup, or make sure you've got enough ammo for the haul. Too many times in the past I've found myself with a cool sidearm and quickly out of ammo. (I'm looking at you, Glock 17 and M9SD.)

Pistols in terms of how practical they are: Makarov > M1911 > Revolver > Everything else

The M1911 is marginally quieter than the revolver. The only problem is that you have to seek out ammo, which really isn't that rare, but does require you to go into towns more often. You can find M1911 ammo in most places with a lot showing up in apartments.

Fun fact about killing zombies: If you kill them in 1 shot, they're less likely to alert zombies around them. Always go for the head shot if you're not out of breath.

Finally found a ghillie suit after being destroyed by two bandits on a dirt bike. Then I stupidly ventured into Balota Airfield thinking it looked like no one was there. I hear footsteps, aim at the staircase leading up to the middle floor, hear more footsteps and then get shot in the back. Did not think they would be in the top of the comm tower, which was stupid of me.

Pro-tip: Stay the fuck away from airfields. You may get lucky there once or twice, but more often than not it will get you killed. This goes for all 3 of them.

Fake Edit: If you desperately want to find a nice weapon then you want to go to Berezino's army camp. It's at the NE side of the town on a soccer field that can be seen on the in-game map if you zoom in a bit.

No, come to the airfields. I need more beans. BEANS FOR THE BEAN GOD.

If I can master crouch walking without being constantly ganked from behind by zeds, I might just make it more than a few miles from the beach. You are then free to kill me for my beans. In the alternative, come down to the beach and save me the trip.

Holding shift seems to work sometimes, but I will admit that I am still getting used to the various keyboard commands. I am tempted to start crawling everywhere.

As a general rule, touble tapping a keyboard command toggles it while holding is temporary (apart from stance changes).  So: hold shift = walk OR touble tap shift to switch walk/run. 

Another somewhat safe place to pick up military weapons is the camp east-northeast of Stary Sobor, horribly exposed but not often frequented by humans in my experience.

Just hit X and walk like that. ( Z prone, X kneel, C stand up )

Using X still made me really noisy. Or maybe it was just me. This is the same play session where my daughter woke up, came shambling into the living room, made a general "Uhrrrr" sound, and I screamed like a little girl.

lol.

Yeah, Crouch walk is a bit noisier than crawl, but I find it fits most of my needs. The advice about the toggle keys are also good too.

:drillf:

I'd really like to hear more about the wait list, because though I love dishing out the ocassional bit of zombie apocalypse justice on the pubbie douchebags, most of the time I'm outnumbered and outgunned. I'd sure as shit shell out for a server for a while where our newbs need only worry about zeds and the ocassional fall from a high place.

This. It seems like this would be more fun running about with people than treating everyone as a person most likely to kill me and then emote *assrape* over my corpse.


Even more  :drillf: is that her actual zombie impression is extremely awesome and creepy. This was just the general "I just woke up from a bad dream" moan that small people make.

Another pro-tip: Unbind Fast Forward. Everyone should do this. This is the death key. Sometimes you will get stuck on something and tap forward twice to move, which the system queues as a double tap. This makes you sprint the minute you become free of whatever is blocking you.

Sadly, servers have to run within a very specific set of rules, or else get swiftly blocked from the DayZ central server. Included among these is no kicking people to make room for clanmates/friends, no passworded servers, and no reserved slots. You're basically just running a slave box for the DayZ staff; there's no real benefit to having your own.

Yeah, I read the rules last night.

I Kind of understand where they're coming from, in the wrong hands, a locked server could wreak havoc on the balance of things. A less-than-scrupulous clan could use it to farm weapons, food and gear and then go to other servers and grief the shit out of people and then retreat back to the locked server to stock up and recover. The occasional ganking we see is probably the lesser of the two evils.

When did I become so goddamn understanding of shit like that?

I stole an M16A4 with an ACOG (4x scope) from a tent about a week ago. Today, I shot and killed a survivor at 600 meters with it. Quite proud of the marksmanship.

His beans were delicious, by the way.

Too bad they can't lock gear to the server. Play your guy on any server, but your gear stays on the server it dropped on.

Because I would be 1000% more interested if it were more of an f13, less of a faceless internet hardcore shooter pwnage bean rape thing. That aspect of 'survival' is fun in small doses, but gets old pretty quick imo.

Did he shoot first? Or are you one of those guys I need to look out for?

Yes, however at 600 meters you are probably not going to see him.

That's what my M24 and NVGs are for. I only travel at night now and I'll recon an area for a long time before I move into the open.

Don Cheadle brings wisdom, even if you do not understand it at first.

(http://movieactors.com/photos-stars/don-cheadle-oceans13-3.jpg)

Neither of us shot first. My buddy, who has quite the bloodthirst, shot first. I finished him off while my buddy was dealing with the zombies that his DMR attracted.

But yeah, the smart thing to do is not to sit around in the open. Most of the kills I get involve idiots sitting/running in the middle of the open. I consider it more like euthanasia.

To avoid bandits, follow treelines and hedgerows where-ever possible. If you have to go through the open, scan all the nearby hills and treelines carefully, preferably with binoculars or a scoped rifle. If you fire a weapon, get the fuck away from where-ever you were ASAP. If you start a fire, get far away from it as soon as you're done cooking/warming up. Don't light flares or chemlights except if you're trying to attract attention. (I use flares as honeypots for bandits. Have a newbie friend toss a bunch of flares into aircraft hangars. Wait 5 minutes. Kill the inevitable bandit who comes poking around.)

Also, use the zombies to your recon advantage. Zombies spawn when someone comes within about 200-300 meters of a structure (enterable or otherwise). If you see zombies off in the distance, you know someone's there - take cover and watch carefully. Scanning towns for zombies from a distance is one of the ways bandits find their targets; you can use the same trick to avoid survivors and bandits.

Edit: Also, where did you find the NVGs? They're supposedly super rare and only spawn in the International Airport barracks, but I've heard a few reports of finding them in deer blinds.

I'm a godDAMN American icon!

That said, I will Radicalize this biznatch. Just looking for a format. Do I start over with a fresh post? Or do I drag over my previous posts?

I found the NVGs on one of the douchebags I shot.

Well, here's tonight's adventure...

M4s are fucking loud. Effective as fuck, but loud.

Hot off the heels of my douche killing a few nights back, I log in to: Chern-R-Us: Guglovo, day 2. I'm hungry and thirsty as hell. Camping out for a day-and-a-half can apparently do that to you. I un-shoulder the M24 and scope out the nearby town, half a dozen zeds milling about and no sign of any survivors. Throw back my last canteen and at least the thirst goes away. I need to get some food, town looks relatively safe, so I crab walk my way around the perimeter and ransack a house, looking for some food. Nothing, a bunch of empty cans, a heat pack and some Mak ammo. all pretty inedible. The hunger is starting to get to me now, my health is dropping steadily and my vision is starting to go to shit. Poke my head back out and see a nearby shed and edge my way to that, my hunger impaired vision means I missed the zed edging around the corner of the house I just ran out of. I sure as fuck hear him, and the shades of grey my vision has taken on flash into brilliant color every time the sumbitch hits me. I duck into the shed, turn around and let fly. Zed's dead, baby, zed's dead. But, My M4 brings all the zeds to the yard and his buddies follow and I empty a mag finishing off the added attention. Didn't kill enough of them, because as I'm trying to bandage myself, more walk in and finish me off before I can reload. Final score on this run, 124 dead zeds, seven dead bandits and one dead me.

Day 0, bean coast. Fucking Balota, of all places. I'm pissed but determined. I've managed to memorize a decent amount of the map at this point, so I scoot my ass over to the med camp and look for anything that'll at least give me a small edge as I try to head back up to Guglovo and try to reclaim my shit before anyone else finds it. The first thing I find is another player's corpse with, of all things, a PDW, three glock mags, a STANAG mag and an M24 mag. Really? Are the server gods taunting me? I grab what I can, pop a few zeds and head northeast, sticking to the treeline the whole way, avoiding the remnants of the major population centers. The server informs me that five people die during my journey. The server is lightly populated though, because I never see or hear signs of anyone else, the whole way. No chat, no flares, no gunshots. Eery. I find a deer stand along the way with three more STANAG mags and an M107 mag. What? There's a fucking .50 cal in this game? Holy shit. I grab the mag just in case. about a half hour and some wrong turns taken later, I find the shed where I died and make a beeline for it from the trees. I hit the shed and hear the familiar sound of flies over a corpse, duck in and there's my corpse with all my shit. I grab the pack and drop the Winchester I'd found along the way to pick up the M4 and then go into the ALICE pack to re-arrange some shit when I notice the FOUR FUCKING CANS OF FOOD I'd left in it.

Moral of the story, if you're going to log out for a couple of days, do a quick inventory when you log back in so you don't waste the better part of two hours on an unnecessarily dangerous and potentially fruitless corpse run.

Yeah, also, if you fire at someone and hit, but don't get the kill, then be prepared to run the fuck away if you lose sight of them.

I failed to heed this advice during lunch - okay, to be fair, I didn't shoot, I was on guard duty for my sniper buddy - and paid with the life of my 3-week-old character. Fortunately, my buddy managed to drive the bandits off my corpse after only a few minutes.

Twenty minutes later, I was back in gear. What I lost were my camo pants, two blood bags and a compass. For some reason, the dude who got me didn't take the M16 ACOG or 15 clips of STANAG/STANAG SD I'd accumulated. Lucky!

Next task, raid supermarkets and churches until I get a ghillie suit and a new compass.

Looking good. If they can fix the log in issues and such, maybe I can get a few more friends to play it with me.

Shirleybob, are you still on NY1? I could run distractions for you :)

Last time I played was on Nix's server.

I try to, but half the time, either I can't find it or it's full.

If I see you on steam, I'll send you a quick message telling you which server I'm on.

There is talk about users starting with out a gun, and only a bandage, flair, and can of food.

Thoughts?


Thread OP:

Oooh, I get to start with a shotgun and axe!

I have a suspicion his "Hardcore merit badge" is going to ruin this concept.

Fuck that noise. Gankers will still be gankers regardless. It'll be a little harder, but where there's a will, there's a fucking way.

Give us a melee attack with the hatchet, hunting knife or trenching tool if you're gonna start shit like that.

Authenticity? Who the fuck wakes up on beach in the middle of a zombie apocalypse either?

Oh, ANZAC players.  :drillf:

The Battle-eye ( Anti-cheat ) just banned a F-ton of users ( legitimately it seems ). Forums imploded.


In other news, I'm going to try to get a game going tonight with some friends, you guys mainly on NY1 you say?


Thankfully, he just posted this. I retract my "Hardcore merit badge" comment.



Also:

Creepy Dude Stalks and Terrorizes DayZ Players.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CVFHQsWPMhU#!)

 :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real:

And:

DayZ - Nerf Bikes (http://youtu.be/V9lb7WwvRsk?hd=1)

Nononononononononono

I love it.

I now have a new goal. Find a bike. That could be all kinds of stupid fun, kind of like training D'vinn to the GFay zone line.

And I need to dig out my headset.

I'm thinking of running around singing 80s power ballads.

If I had the skills to do all of the machinima stuff, I'd get several of us with bikes and set it to this (http://youtu.be/IVGkGxp1gvU).

DayZ - Bicycle  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTa5m5UVQV8)

 :grin:


Arma 2 Dayz. Epic Tractor ! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDxbKS_YffE&feature=related)

Some asshat was singing in Korean and faking orgasm sounds the other night in side channel voice chat. Very off-putting

First game earlier, died but took out 8 z's. Second game ran wrong way and ended up running for 20 minutes over wilderness til I gave in and respawned. Third game teamed up with another guy to take out some z's was fun.

Yeah that sucks.

Hit "P", find the name, click mute.

Discussing games with some friends and Day-Z came up at which point I told this story resulting in much laughter.... resulting in the wife offering to buy me the game so she could see it played, score.

Is it worth waiting for an Arma-3 version? Don't know how soon that's out or whether this platform will be abandoned when it is.

They recently announced that Arma3 was delayed until 2013. You could conceivably wait for a Steam sale, but that may be a long time coming seeing as how Arma2:CO is pegging the sales charts again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVFHQsWPMhU

No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No

Glad that I could be of assistance.

There is talk about porting Dayz to ArmA 3, however this will take a deal of time, even after ArmA 3 ships.

Thanks, I remembered watching the developers showing off Arma-3, which looked great, but had no idea about release dates or mod intentions.

(= gunless)



http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=10353&pid=120650#pid120650

 :ye_gods:

The difference between paid and unpaid games is right there.

Welp. Order of the day now is to murder as many people as possible and fill a tent with Makarovs to prepare for the coming 1.7.1 pistocalypse.

Edit: It's out, and it's terrible. The zombies can now detect you from over 10 meters away even while prone and motionless in tall grass. Forget about crouch-running or even crouch-walking. And since detection radii are up, the moment a single one screams as it sees you, every zombie in a 100 meter radius comes running.

Since the spawn times are still at the same ridiculous near-instant rate, you kill the ones chasing you, and as you kill the last of them, you aggro the ones that have started respawning. If you manage to clear a horde on your way into a building, be prepared for the same sort of chase on your way out.

I used to be able to competently get into buildings without aggroing anything, most of the time. I pulled off some pretty ballsy zombie-avoidance runs, weaving in between swarms while sweating my ass off in fear. Now you either have to use bait (players, smoke grenades) or be prepared to burn through a ton of ammo.

Respawning without a pack, beans or water means you're forced to go immediately to the nearest town and start scavenging. Anyone with any sort of weapon is a tiny god, as there's swarms of entirely helpless survivors running around.

Might need to take a break from this until 1.7.2 to see if either the aggro mechanics or spawning loot eases up.

This is a terrible patch, even on premise. I now believe he cares more about creating drama and trolling his users more than he cares about developing a fun game.

Wow, this is so disappointing. This shits unplayable now.

I logged in and eight of the nine STANAG mags I had are now gone. As are three of the seven M1911 mags.

The fuck?

No doubt related to the new recombining mechanic (http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=10353&pid=120372#pid120372) mentioned in the patch notes.

I've seen that happen before; seems to be that some character-server combinations don't save nicely. I lost a ton of great stuff (before dying) yesterday; several blood bags, tons of STANAG, etc. The game seemed to save my pack at some point in the afternoon when I was clearing trash out of a supermarket, so instead of whatever I put in the pack, my pack was full of tin cans and bandages every time I logged back in.

Fixed itself when I died and got a new ALICE pack.

I got lucky when I spawned in today; I was intending to just have a swift run-around to see how bad being a naked survivor was. There was a 1.7.0 corpse spawned right next to me, so I immediately got the old starting gear off it. Raided deer blinds, one supermarket (Zeleno, easiest one on the map to stealth into/out of) and barns. I lost 5000 blood to chain-spawning zombies in the process, but ended up with an M16 and most of the basic survival gear. No pack, though.

A lucky tent find later, and I had my own tent and a M4A3 CCO with some STANAG SD clips.

I did discover an exploity way around the new escape/stealth mechanics. You need a larger building with at least two doorways, and preferably with a rear exit. Yakety-Sax your way in. Your milkshake brings all the zeds to the yard.

Once inside, crouch-run around one corner. Dropping to a crouch-run reduces noise and visibility to one pip when inside buildings. Next, drop to a crouch-walk, and crouch-walk around another. This means you're still somewhat visible, but totally silent, so the zeds that followed you through the door won't hear you moving around. Drop prone. Inside a building, prone is still Invisibility Mode for all zombies.

Note that, if you're in attack range, they will attack you. However, if you back off, they won't follow; attacking doesn't seem to count as "seeing" for purposes of pursuit. You'll end up with a big clump of zeds in one doorway somewhere. You can generally just headshot them while prone; I haven't had them "see" me again when firing a Makarov from prone.

It's not foolproof, but it beats dying to an unending horde.

The other odd bit is that a building's visibility-reducing effect seems to apply to a rectangle that doesn't necessarily correspond to the building's interior. Some of the smaller buildings might as well be made of glass; some larger buidings (e.g. supermarkets) have "safety zones" along the outer walls as much as 1-2 meters wide. In these, you have the same visibility and audibility ratings as if you were indoors.

This means, when running around in castles or towns, you're best off hugging walls; many enterable buildings will drop your visibility rating from 3 to 1 bar if you're flush against the wall, allowing you to crouch-run a lot farther than you otherwise would. I managed to get out of a supermarket and into/out of a castle entirely undetected this way.

I can see why this game never sold too well before Day-Z. It's really rough, including spelling mistakes and a cannot progress bug in the tutorials, a crude UI and game-spy. Though the second tutorial, operation arrowhead I presume, is a lot better than the first. But with all the crawling around and focus on detail of the simulation putting some game mode to make use of all that effort seems obvious in retrospect.

Thankfully looks like there's lots of servers in Australia, but any attempt to join them is "You cannot play this game as it depends on content that has been deleted @Dayz_code, ...". Possibly a version mis-match but who'd know.

I also notice a lot of the @Day-Z servers seem to be running @hive, but no idea what that is. Mess with it again tomorrow.

Logged in a little while ago and now my debug monitor is gone and I can't see myself in third person. Figuring it might be the server, i logged out and logged back in on another server. Same thing. I tried moving around and could move alright, so I walked around a bit, found another place to hide and logged out. Logged in on a third server and was back where I'd started from.

Unplayable? You bet your ass.

The "content deleted" thing is due to a version problem. You may be jumping onto a server with the wrong beta patch. Have you installed the latest one?

@hive is, as I understand it, part of the backend server package that does persistence.

Melee, now I don't have to get desperate when I run out of ammo.

I think the main reason he didn't add the hatchet/crowbar before removing the gun was just to troll the gamers for a bit, but it makes sense to have a melee weapon of some sort to at least start your playtime with.

No guarantee it wont be useless, or starting gear.

missed the need for an addons subfolder in @dayz, old installation guide didn't mention beta code is required and the steps to get it to run with the beta under steam are impressive.

I got into a game with a solidly black screen, but that might be working as intended.

I'm having flashbacks to getting dos games running :)

Use the recommended six launcher. Easy, and it has a better browser.

Now it seems that the go to trolling thing is to lay razor wire around all the key loot spots in Cherno and Elektro. Plus ca change...

Seems to have crapware involved as well. WTF?

No crapware when I downloaded it.

Yeah, downloader beware, there's  other links that are not the vanilla downloader.

DayZ 1.7.1.2 Melee Epic Kill - Hatchet  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4BYmrnO7Z8&feature=youtu.be)

Also, 1.7.1.2 is broken. Do not even try to log in. Most servers have an up time of about 5 minutes right now.

Oh, ok then.

I just got banned from the forums for reporting a suggestion thread to add rape.

... how unexpected.

No bad ideas in brainstorming I guess.

Only if the person that suggested it is the first victim.

Oh, and the aggro mechanic is still all sorts of fucked up.

I just stumbled across this link:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/06/18/realism-theater-watch-a-93-man-attack-in-arma/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

I know it's not DayZ related, but 93 people in the same assault!

Since someone posted that DayZ vid I've been watching a lot of Shacktactical stuff but that's the first time I've seen one with "God view".

ArmA 2 can do some crazy shit.

http://www.cityliferpg.com/


To Protect and Serve (http://youtu.be/c1RMpL1KtMQ?hd=1)  :grin: :grin: :grin: :drill:

WTF Is... : DayZ ? (Hyper WTF Edition)  (http://youtu.be/Sj9Tih-esfw)

I like how he started TB with a gun.  :oh_i_see:

So, given that I haven't played anything shooterly lately (with my honeymoon with Tribes: Ascend being officially over), I've been thinking about this more and more.  Basically, my question is do I need to be anything other than someone who loves the shit out of zombie apocalypse scenarios to love this DayZ mod?

A metric fuckton of patience.

A love of crawling through grass and wandering lonely through forests...

Feels much better now, and stable.

The aggro mechanic is still a bit off though. Zeds are still sensing me through walls.

It is disappointing how few of the buildings seem to be searchable. It means that effectively you need a map with places worth searching marked, or have memorized the spawns. And in practice those spawns become camping grounds for bored veterans looking for kills. Partly because this is how open-PvP games always go, but also because it's an efficient way to gather loot and some even believe that such a crisis would result in bean-fueled murder spree's.

Not really a fun game, but interesting and the potential to evolve into something even more so. Hopefully with some sort of co-operative progression as well, though not sure how that would work with the persistence model... what is the ultimate goal for a zombie apocalypse anyway, escape?

Eradicate the zombie hordes, or perhaps discovering an antivirus.

I'd say "stay alive for more than 30 minutes" is an apt first goal. :why_so_serious:

That's too easy, just find a wooded hill and go prone for thirty minutes. Not much fun though.

I ran into the hills and kept going for 30-60 minutes before I realized I was unlikely to find anything, had no idea where I was, and killed myself.

Those maps are big.

My goal has always been to survive both zombies and other asshole players and not devolve to the state of camping spawns and killing newbs and helping out other survivors when I can. So far, so good. Is the game fun? Not anywhere near the traditional sense, no. But I find it really hard to stop playing.

Even with the new weaponless starts, I keep playing. Now if only I could find a weapon before becoming zombie food. The spawns inside buildings are a bit  :ye_gods: when you generally need to get into a building to find anything useful.

It became a lot more possible with the x.5 patch that put the zombies back down to "relatively stupid" mode. Though the gear spawns confuse me. Go through a row of houses and find ammo and flares on the doorstep but food and water is super rare. That said static spawns are terrible.

I believe the bandit skin mechanic had gone, which is a shame, I thought that was good.

Last night's final attempt, I spawned near some industrial park on the coast. Searched two buildings that should have netted something worthwhile, found nothing. Managed to aggro a zed that spawned out of nowhere. I had some fun running up ladders inside the building only to find that they now climb ladders.

Finally got attacked by a swarm that also came out of nowhere.

Just as I am dying, I see a survivor fall to his death off the roof of a building not too far from me. This probably explains the lack of zeds and the lack of gear when I first arrived.

I really need to play earlier in the day, too. Finding servers where it's still daylight locally is just asking for random lag spikes.

I don't know why, but generally speaking I can't get into fps' but I love watching other people play

Welcome to Shack Tactical (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tf3ArH8ZNI)

Kilroy being Kilroy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwcANrCy8mA&feature=relmfu)

If you're bored while waiting for another Hotfix, drop "Insurgency" into your mission filter and find a server. Fun little "mod" that doesn't require any downloads except for a mission download when you join the server.

Dark Business is supposed to be fun too.

After a while, you get to know what building models you can go in. But yes, I believe its a problem with the scope of the mod, and that it would take a ton of work, and a ton of running pathing systems to edit the map. Some of the newer maps have many more enter-able buildings, but the setting is wrong.

As far as loot, and such.

http://dayzdb.com/map

The "Bandit skin" removal was a good idea, it served no reason, as everyone at some point is a "Bandit" AKA, a Player killer. You could get the bandit skin purely by self defense. They added a heart beat that while looks good on paper, in practice, if you are close enough to target them, you already know if they are a "bandit". The entire separation of "survivors" and "Bandits" is flawed, people cling to it because of the only thing the skin did. Bragging rights and I belong to a "club" mentality.

Yeah, based on that map, I'm likely going to be scrounging for tree stands to get any weapon at all before heading towards buildings. I didn't realize that there were quite a few near the beach.

I personally avoid the major towns. Cherno and Electro ( as they are commonly called ) are the two major cities on the southern coast. They are also the most highly populated in terms of players, loot, and zombies.

I currently play with about 5-6 friends. Depending on the night. Would be fantastic to meet up up with some F13'ers,

PRO TIP!

When you first log in, the second name on the right hand side is the city/area you are in!

You wont, or maybe you will, believe how long it took my group to realize this.

Out of curiosity, does DayZ have localization?  I'd like to play it in Russian if possible given the setting.

I learned this from watching someone's newbie guide video on YouTube. I have been keeping a map open on my iPad so I can navigate (somewhat) based on my start location. It only sucks when the game dumps me in the wilderness. Now that you've linked a map with useful shit marked, I might actually find a gun before getting killed by zeds.

Be very careful with these. People like to go prone in them to catch others off guard and some like to camp in a nearby bush waiting for someone to climb the ladder.

The only thing that isn't in Russian is the chat and that's gone now. All the road signs, etc have always been in Russian

And as a bonus, that map I linked has the Russian and English spelling of all locations. So, you can match street signs with it.

One last question as I close in on buying this - if I am going to pay for ARMA 2 anyway I may as well give the actual game a go. Is it a pain to play with the DayZ mod installed, or can I switch between day Z and ARMA II without much issue?

It just lets you play on the mod servers, the underlying game is still there (having accidentally logged into a proper arma-II server).

I had some thoughts (yeah, I know, mod makers must be sooo happy to get long spiels telling them what they should do) but eh, I like playing arm-chair game designer and reckon there's something missing. I'll spoiler it because it's long (and posted on the official forums here (http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=18650) where I expect either it's too long or I get a bunch of PvP people telling me to "harden up").

I want a can of spray paint to paint messages on the wall.

It would appear that razor wire accomplishes that goal, so long as you want to say, "Fuck You."

What else could I possibly want to say?  :why_so_serious:

I've got enough gear to play hermit for a bit while I work things out. Cooked meat, snuck around / killed some zombies, found canteen's and water, worked out how to use the backpack and got an upgrade and at 8k blood with a decent stack of food that will heal it over time if I don't get hit to much. Had been enjoying hatcheting zombies but then one knocked me out (thankfully the same time I totaled him) which was a bit scary. Map and compass to help navigate.

While I'd like to find some more bits and pieces (mostly a tent and binoculars, plus meds would be nice) they seem pretty rare drops. So I guess my main goal now is explore / loot / learn the map and wait until I get randomly shot then start again. There's no real PvE end game other than looting and waiting for new patches to mess with. With all the PvP people focused on military base, cherno and electro because that's where the loot and action is. That said learning the map should keep me busy for a while... is big, and with no "you are here" market getting lost is surprisingly easy.

I do seem to have the shakes when I go into first person though. All my status icons look good, any ideas? I can't hear any coughing. I've also got no idea what to do with that exposure indicator... sitting in a hut sounds pretty dull.

This happens sometimes when you take damage; the only cure is to take painkillers.

Thank heavens for third person then... I still only have my starter pain-killers. Will skarf them down when I play next.

... which is late at night, when the server is less populated.

You won't see the shaking in third-person, but the shaking will still fuck up your aiming pretty badly. If you have a gun, that is.

I just wanted to address this.

ArmA 2 - Warfare, base construction (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkgmCj6ES1E)

EDIT: another: http://youtu.be/2bYZrpJZS6Y?hd=1&t=16m14s

As you can see, ArmA 2 Supports "Construction" of Forward bases. Its just disabled for this mod, and I would expect it to come back in some form.

Because that wouldn't be a spot to camp for bean carriers.

Alright, got this up and running.  So far I've died a bunch learning the controls  :why_so_serious: but enjoyable nonetheless.   It is a little on the janky side, but I like what I'm seeing overall. 

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=16786

I invented a mini-game yesterday, I basically spent a few hours trying to form up with some clanmates in their factory hideout in Cherno. First time I had a broken leg and crawled half across town avoiding sniper fire only to get nailed on the doorstep. Next time I made it through the door with a few scratches only to fall off one of the barrierless catwalks after popping up the top of a ladderhole, even I had to laugh at that one. So far my dead bodies have provided some good lootz for the team.

Earlier I managed to accumulate a Lee Enfield and a ton of ammo with an Alice Pack, knife, compass, watch and more assorted. But I only had 2k blood so I decided to make a break for the nearby hospital in Cherno but on the way I manage to trip on a water pipe break a leg and die from blood loss  :ye_gods:

Luckily I spawned about a mile from my body and it was nighttime on a very quiet server so I was able to retrieve all my stuff very quickly. I then broke into the hospital and now I have an Alice pack full of bloodbags, morphine and a shitton of fire-power. If I don't make it to the hideout tonight then I'll admit the game in it's current state has me beaten.

EDIT: Won't stop me from playing though :)

Yeah, the leg breaking needs to be toned down.

Maybe rocket had a bad experience with show folk.

Oh, holy shit, you may be wrong. More to come in the radicalthon.

That was mostly my thought. You effectively need some NPC presence to make up for the non-persistence of players. That and some identification for those who have chosen the PK lifestyle so the game can be somewhar self regulating. At the moment the PK's dream is hearing "Are you friendly?" as they line up their shot. And with the prevalence of scoped rifles you might not even to see it coming.

The game is ultimately very shallow as it is. The ambiance is amazing, the idea of a survival simulation is cool, but the foundation needs a lot of work.

Anyway, I was wandering around some where hopefully off the beaten track and realized someone camping a point of interest would be very difficult to spot or defend against a camper if there was one. Can you basically use the zombies as a perimeter alarm? How far do you have to be from a point not to spawn zombies yourself, and how long does it take for them to fade?

With the right weapon, you can be over half a klick away and pop people. Zeds won't spawn to give you away if you're that far away.

Yeah, I know. But there's absolutely nothing you can do about a determined sniper other than be lucky, not be spotted or hope he's a terrible shot. Which is part of the reason why sniper rifles are terrible in this game, they mean there's zero zombie threat from firing and no counter-measures. It's also part of the reason I'd never play Arma-II itself.

Also my suggestion for forward bases included watching some demo's and doing some of the tutorials and realising that a survivor base with NPC guards could use the capability already existing in Arma-II.

The mod forum pages seems to have evolved as all open-PvP games do, it's a pitched battle between "getting PK'd sucks" and the "cry more / l2p / your tears are delicious / we just represent a future without law" sides. It's a cess-pool and I can only imagine the designer gently weeping while looking at it. Minecraft had it a lot easier in that the scope was lower.

The joke continues after that with the idea of slowly crawling to one of the few places morphine might possibly spawn which are also almost certain to be camped by player killers.

...Not sure what I'm doing. Went in to a daylight server with an empty makarov, a can of beans and a pack of bandage plus ten flares...OK. Let's stay out of sight...for 3 minutes, then this zombie chased me for 5 minutes across hills and plains. How the fuck does anyone lose a zombie chase? I saw a huge power plant with the name TEC outside it...took my chance dashed in...there's a three door huge 'warehouse' of some sort with two doors blocked by barbed wire...somehow the zombie lost me on the chase..he's still outside and I'm inside. Decided to explore the 'warehouse' and climbed three stairs up. Found a remington with flash light. and 8 shells.  This is good. Except when I look out of the window there's more than 10 zombies about...  :uhrr:

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/829607/queen/08/00.jpg)

You can do it!

Use cans as a distraction, if you have any, or just book it out a back door.

That looks like Elektro. I should be on on tonight, if you need help still, I'll head south.

Do you guys frequently play on the same servers night after night, or just pick up on a random one every day?

I read something useful on the official forums today .... Loading up a SP game with the Chenarus map to learn the lay of the land.

You can do THAT?  :drill:
This game really does a good job to remind you that your achievements are nearly meaningless - a slight elation when the shotgun is found...and the drop back down to earth when I look at the window. No other game does it for me.

So I read that bandit skins were removed relatively recently and people mentioned a "heart-beat" as some sort of mechanism to detect humanity... is it actually in the game and how does it work?

After a bunch of utter failures in a row (who knew there were so many ways to meet death by zombie?)  I had my first breakthrough of success.  I spawned just northeast of Elektrozavodsk and carefully made my way just north of the city and found an old barn hoping to find a gun.  As luck would have it, I found an old bolt action rifle of some kind and about 5 clips worth of ammo, I equipped it just in time to fight of 5 or so zombies which had detected my presence.  I looted the rest of the barn, finding a can of food, a few cans of soda, and a few other items like flares.    After filling up my pack, I set off into the woods and took up a position that looked pretty safe and contemplated my next move.  I was able to scope out Elektro from long range, but decided against entering the city.   I logged off there - about an hour into the character's life.  I think I'm going to head further inland today...

If you focus your cross hair on a human character you will hear a rapid heartbeat. Not sure what the bandit sound is or if there is one.

... military simulations have Satchel Charges (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Luiq0WlzX9I&list=UUc1_R2nw6W05ds-javW8x2A&index=1&feature=plcp) in case you feel like redefining the map.

Yes, Bottles, cans, Flairs, Smoke grenades ( most effective ) will all attract zoms view when tossed. Use "F" to cycle through your weapons ( You see what in the upper right ). Just try make the item cross their sight.

So I decided to give this a shot. After taking a few hours downloading everything I installed the mod, joined a server and went at it. Went to change my controls: NOPE. Wont work. Well, it actually just wont let me bind my run keys on my n52te to what I like (But it did let me bind TWO KEYS TOGETHER!). Soooo I load the game up with mangled controls and have at it.

I spawn in a lovely field. Run a little bit and get assaulted by a lone zombie who charged me with the speed of Kenyans. I back-ran to get a look at the zombie chasing me (With yakkety sax playing in my head). This went on for quite a bit until I just alt F4'd out.

I guess the first hurdle of the zombie apocalypse is figuring out the ass backwards UI.

The UI is so primitive and badly designed it is almost a work of art.

Almost.

A curio from an earlier and more innocent age then?

I'm shocked with how bad it is really. I still don't know how to chat and aiming a gun doesn't feel good at all.
I suppose I'll login again tonight with the shotgun and see how far I can go.

You can't really chat anymore except in local.

And local has a range of 40m. In most cases someone who saw another player saw them further than that and has either fired or booked it (my interaction with other players so far). Also local audio chat attracts zombies I believe

The organized groups don't care, they were using out of game communication even before this change.

I was trying to work out why this game was so more-ish even though the mechanics are either shallow or absent. I think it's because it provides a meaningful single player experience, in a popular and recognizable genre, on top of a game that had lots of mechanics and little appeal. It provides a reason to play Arma-II more tempting than the one it shipped with and with a community where you don't have be hard-core into military tactics. It provides lots of threatening but relatively predictable computer controlled opponents and some fairly clear and immediate goals.

I also think it could very easily be a short-lived fame. The layer on top of Arma-II is very thin, it will take much more time to grow depth than the current fans think (and the underlying mechanisms provide their own scaling issues). The military combat foundation remains fairly niche once fully exposed and is pretty punishing to those who don't play along the lines the mechanics enforce (small unit tactics pretty much). Persistence also enables PK and griefing which attracts a certain audience who are a lot more motivated that the far more casual majority. Meanwhile the developer is convinced he has bottled magic.

It will be fascinating to watch the evolution of the mod (over months) and how it influences other games.... but I think it's going to be a rough ride taking this game to maturity. Possibly the first time someone has proposed growing a complex game from early alpha, in public and with an active player base?

I would say the a main reason ArmA isn't popular, compared to contemporary games, is the realistic shooting model ( Performance, UI, and graphics aside ). In Arma, the bullet leaves from the chamber, in other titles, the bullet leaves from the players view. This is why you have a small dot, that waggles all over when you are moving ( Tied to animations ), that's where the chamber, and tip of the gun, is pointing, even if the "Cross-hair" is stationary. You can even shoot yourself. Yes. It also has real, measured weapon modeling to the real world counterparts. No exceptions are made like in other titles to make sure nothing fires beyond the hard render distance, where hard render distance is used to baseline distances for the guns in other engines. This is like the debate between those in MMO's who prefer the damage to be dealt before the animation even fires, or completes, VS. those who do not. The Stamina, and breathing system is also a departure from most FPS games, so is simple turning, as the barrel and chamber lag if you turn to quickly.

You do need to stop moving to fire, but not only stop, but manage your breathing. Running full speed for 10 min, then trying to kneel and fire at a moving target 300 yards away is going to land you in problems. Also, that right click is not just a zoom, you are holding your breath. Saying the base game is lacking, is really misunderstanding the base game. Granted, the UI is cumbersome in places, but that does not mean the base game is shallow, it has more features, and capability then many "Modern FPS" games. Its the initial introductions, and unlearning what other titles have taught you that's the hard part. Something they mean to address in ArmA 3.

As for dayz itself. Shallow? To a point, yes, its intended. With the use of permadeth, you can't have a deep progression system. Many "high end" systems are there to mitigate permadeath, such as tents, and cars.

The complexity, and mechanics, and depth of systems already is more than say, Left4Dead. Left4Dead is, quite shallow. But its focus is on re-playability, quick entry, and story. There isn't much making it less "shallow" beyond that. Limited weapons, fudged weapon models, you can heal yourself and others, and explode a few things. Not many other base features I can think of, or that are not a derivative of those.

I would say, that you may perceive it ( DayZ ) as shallow, because you have not been exposed to all the possible combinations of activities and mechanics. It is a sanbox after all.


PS. I love left 4 dead.

It's a sandbox with very little sand other than what the ARMA engine and mechanics provide. And almost all of that is about shooting other players. That's why the zombies are not a long term threat unlike L4D, why co-operative mechanics are largely absent and why the game is dominated by PvP fans and some innocent fools thinking they're roleplaying a survival simulator, when many people are roleplaying "elite special forces team".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing ARMA-II, I even like the detail in the mechanics. But as a "military simulation" I avoided it as I assumed the single player was poor and the social aspect was being highly into accuracy and wanting to work as a tight knit squad doing activities that were often relatively boring but accurately mirrored the reality of real life military. Including being suddenly killed by a sniper you didn't see. And that's a relatively niche interest. In a lot of ways Day-Z has introduced a lot of people to the idea that a brutal military simulation can be quite intense, it's a great teaser for Arma-3.

The people who will dominate Day-Z are playing exactly the way Arma-II intended, as a tight organized military unit, with the advantage of persistence and full looting allowing them a gear advantage on top of their skill / organisational advantage. Which is cool in itself but is going to dominate and drive off the majority of the far more casual player base. Even the existence of NVG is cool but an immense balance disaster.

I think Arma-II is good at what it does, I think zombies and the idea of a realistic survival simulator is a cool concept, I think Day-Z is a foundation. But will he be able to retain his own enthusiasm and a supportive player base over time time it takes to flesh out the game? That will be an interesting challenge.

(edit)

heh, when you see a stranger you can shoot him at hundreds of meters (or run / alt-F4), talk to him at 40 or know if he's a PK at 15. Which of these is the safest option that most players will end up doing? Rocket probably is sympathetic to the PK brigade, they do they play the game the way he is used to after all.

It's the UI.

I'd say UI, buggy / unpolished, bad single player (according to reviews) and the specialised MP community plus a small developer. It certainly never occurred to me the shooting mechanics was a primary issue.

It'll ultimately break out to your last paragraph in your previous post. Casuals will get bored, then it'll just be the unorganized PK kiddies vs the organized groups. The PK kiddies will get tired of having their asses handed to them and look for some other uneven playing ground where they can find new Piggys to steal glasses from and drop boulders on.

NVM..



I do not think this list is complete at this time.

Good shit on the leg breakage. That's happening way too fucking often lately. But how does fog increase audibility?

Because your ears overcompensate for the decreased visual inputs? Maybe Rocket likes Daredevil.  :why_so_serious:

Because SCIENCE! (http://www.komonews.com/weather/faq/4348026.html)

I was thinking about posting some more suggestions. Like the fact that the game needs a challenge progression so they can scale zombies based on experience / gear. Otherwise every "realism" factor just increases the difficulty and reduces the fun of the new player experience, when they are already the ones facing the most challenge. Also that realistic injury recovery, such that if you get shot multiple times you can't just get a blood transfusion and be instantly 100%, would discourage rampant or professional PvP in a realistic fashion. Though that would probably just end up favoring the organized / skilled groups or getting people with buddies to hold their gear while they respawn.

But there's really no point. The game has so much potential that it's incredibly easy to think of things that would be cool additions, and no doubt Rocket has such a list himself. The challenge is going to be getting them in the game and working with a small dev team, limited resources and an iterative approach. It might work if he could really harness the community, possibly, but that will work against the control and possible productization of it.

It's going to be fun to watch... It makes you realize what an advantage Notch had in terms of total control of a much more scalable and malleable engine, plus putting the art expectations low.

 :why_so_serious:

Urgh...  I think Rocket and the media did a good sales job on this, but I feel for the people who can't see where the mechanics are going to lead.

They just passed their 1 million murder milestone. With about 1 in 5 players flagged as being a bandit. *surprise*.

Dear god no. You do not understand the experiment.

Feel free to try explaining it. I tend to interpret his version of "experiment" as "I'm just winging it".

Any attempt to make zombies challenging to grouped and geared players (which seems to be his focus at the moment) is going to make the game punitively unaccessible for new or un-geared players. You need some staggered progression of challenge to deal with that.

Pulling a Shane - DayZ Betrayal  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1145-xJIsg&feature=player_embedded)

Noob Zone - Veteran Zone separation would be nice. Noob zone will have very little loot, but very little risk. The odd pistol clip, the odd can of bean there and you have to start taking risk by venturing to higher reward areas where the zombies move faster?

It'd be nice instead of washing ashore in a beach with no gun - and spawning right next to a gunfight between veterans or dozens of zeds.

rk47 you're assuming that Rocket wants players to enjoy themselves. I see no evidence to support this theory.

Or you could always do this..

Find a reasonably empty daylight server, <20.
Respawn until you are near a big town, preferably Cherno.
Run like mad and ignore the Zombie horde behind you.
Get into one of the cafeteria/hostel/factory building and run upstairs.
Log off to de-spawn/de-aggro the horde of zombies behind you.
Log back in & pick up the equipment littered around the house, you will probably get a firearm.

Too meta. I really want to have some kind of perma-char server like Ultima shards. The way the multi-char server works is a little wonky now.

Very wonky I suspect. Lots of dupe bugs, lots of logoffski, people using movement on other servers to teleport behind targets. And those are only the ones being reported. But he's got no real choice since the servers are independently run and apparently reasonably demanding. The Arma-II foundation also seems to have very little protection against injection or attack which I guess was never an issue in a non persistent environment. The "cheat reporting" part of the official forums is hilarious to read.

Next time I die, if I play again (might just wait for a humanity system), I'm definitely going zombie training through Cherno.

Next time I die, I'm getting some friends together, finding hatchets and playing Night of the Living Axe Murderers in Cherno.

This game certainly dominates in the field of in-game hacks..

I don't mind the log-offs to avoid zombie aggro, the zombies cheat. I do admit one thing you shouldn't be allowed to log-off while bleeding and if you do, you should continue to bleed.

I haven't seen many actual hacks but there's definitely a lot of meta, which for me counteracts the alpha.

That would be because of the client side model it uses. They can use it, because 90% of the ArmA community player missions against AI. DayZ has attracted a different sort of user, on the whole.
All Zombies are handled client side as well, hence the log out working like that.

I personally have not seen anyone hacking.

More has been added to the pending update:


Explanation of the probability change:


Upcomming Zed concept changes:

Are most of the Arma-II mods player versus AI? I'd assumed they were squad vs squad in the form of military recreations. I heard mention of a "Chernorus Apocalypse" which is a multiplayer only set of zombie missions that sounded cool, but apparently pretty hard (and I don't have a squad of friends interested in Arma-II co-op).

The "cheating report" forum is very active. This hack is just sort of silly, the more serious one is people triggering invulnerability, invisibility, teleport, gear generation, artillery strikes (watched a youtube video of that one) and a nuke which kills all players and objects active on the map. Though at least the last reduces some of the duped goods stocked away in off-map tent cities.

A lot of that is not technically hacks, a number of those things are due to the dynamic missions system. Think, GM interface. Now, getting to that interface? Its ether unlocked, or stupidly pass-worded. Most of the stuff the ArmA 2 community plays are missions, missions require no mods, the editor is right in every client. There are a good number of PvP only mods, but its more of an exception. There are more Role play servers ( City life, Takastan life ) then Pure PvP servers, that are popular. To tell the truth, the community is so diverse, labeling them all as "PvP Hardcore" is silly. They are hardcore, hardcore about military games and realistic depictions, it is not the same breed as the typical "Please shock my balls on death" hardcore. DayZ is a special breed, in that it has attracted a huge number of users, in a short time, and has a mix of PvE and PvP as part of its point.

EDIT: I'm not saying hacking doesn't happen, it clearly does. Like the one that lifts all users in the air, and drops them.

I assumed they were PvP-hardcore based on the accuracy of the simulation and it's military focus. Most of what I know of Arma-II is from doing the tutorials. I can't even imagine what an Arma-II based roleplay server looks like, but since I own the game now I appreciate the reference. Like everything these communities are pretty opaque from the outside.

There's lots of inventory hacking too. Users suddenly finding their inventory is full of weapons not actually available in the game. And apparently some way you can clone your corpse and thus basically revive from death, dupe all your equipment. The main lesson is, I think, as soon as you add persistence of some attribute hacks have value and must be considered. In a straight PvP game you'd just ban the player and restart the round with no loss. Here people are losing or skipping a lot of effort, so it means more.

Persistence, and the open flood gates of more mainstream users definitely fuck up the mix.

Role play mods look like this: http://www.cityliferpg.com/

And yes, it has a PvP element, mostly in the vein of Cops and Robbers.

Yeah, PvP motivates hacks too. Cheating versus zombies would just be regarded as sort of sad.

Watching a stream of some Russian guy playing with hacks enabled. Some 40 tends worth of assorted gear and some hack that means player nameplates and extrended information are visisble map wide. From his camp in the mountains he can see where everyone is. Somewhat takes the challenge out of the game. Naturally he's in Ghillie suit and high powered sniper

From time to time he calls up a menu (probably the GM interface I assume) and he has some sort of auditory warning going too. Also some feedback hidden. Hm, zombie tracking and aim-assist too.

Watched that video, no that's not the editor UI. But it does look likes its using a true hack, to issues commands to the server as authoritative, but it is based off the inherent features of the editor, and ArmA ability to spawn...well anything.

Salyaris hacks (http://www.own3d.tv/Salyaris/live/334802)... but like Day-Z there's a lot of running or driving through not much. I just want to see him get into a fight, but it's taking a while.

That's a really common hack suite. I can't think of a FPS that does not have some variation of it.

In other news:


 :awesome_for_real:  :grin:

I highly condone bear traps (til I get caught in one of course).

If you found razor wire to be obnoxious just wait until the damage requires morphine instead of bandages to recover from!  And is invisible in long grass.  Oh boy.

I'm probably burned out for good on this mod, too many times starting from zero and not enough fun moments or connections with other players.

It seems like a mod you really MUST play with someone else preferably over voice chat.  Going off and adventuring with a friend during the zombie apocalypse is pretty amazing.  Logging in alone isn't half as fun in my experience so far.

I need to find a good headset that works with both the PC and the Xbox.

I know that they exist, but the thought of going into Best Buy or somewhere like that . . . meh.

I mainly play with friends myself, I highly recommend it.

I really need to hook up with you guys at some point.

It seems like the biggest obstacle is finding a server we can all play on without soul-crushing lag. When I get chances to play, I have to literally look up the time in the country where the server is located to find a daylight server. I generally get hit with a lag spike every few minutes.

If we could all get together on a weekend to play, it would make life simpler in that regard.

It could be fun with a group, though the idea of getting a group together from all over the map and finding a server with empty slots that's running out of timezone so you can see (about 4 Aussie servers) quickly goes into the too much work category I think.

I see evidence to the contrary. People pointing out that adding leg-breaking bear traps at the moment was possibly not a great idea. Response. "Where's your sense of adventure!".

Of course at this point the vocal parts of the community would cheer him on. There's a sub-community, which seems to overlap with the PvP community, who adore the idea of game that scares off the weak and proves how manly they are for being at the top of the pile.

I was being facetious, I should've put a smiley on the end of that (I thought I had actually).

I think however that his idea of what fun is will only appeal to a small minority in the long term. And that very sub-community that you talk about will eventually find themselves alone, but if that's who he wants to aim the mod at then fair enough, it's his mod after all :)

Personally I have very little interest in playing this. However, reading stories from it, and watching vids of other people doing cool/scary shit is highly entertaining. It means I get to see the awesome stuff without having to endure the nut-punching myself!  :awesome_for_real:

There is something to be said for PvP in general in the game.  It seems to me there is plenty of precedent for other survivors being just as big a threat as zombies in the zombie survival/apocalypse genre.  The bigger problem from a game is that there isn't any way for new characters to get settled when starting from 0 which can make starting over just plain not fun depending on how other people treat you.  Also, given that if you ARE part of a group that has lots of stuff stored to replenish new characters, it means that suddenly death is a lot less scary for those people as well.  The result is that the PvP side of the game isn't particularly interesting as it is currently designed.  But I don't have a problem with it in principle - to my mind it is a survival game more so than a shooter, so...not surviving.... is going to be a big part of the game too.

The problem is not that there is PvP in this game, it is appropriate. The problem is it has no controls so it becomes rampant, efficient and meaningless because it supplants the zombie game. If they removed some of the extreme military weapons so PvP had counters and some human aspect rather than being a headshot from extreme range (mostly sniper rifles and night vision gear, though ghillie suits may also be an issue) that would help. If they had some sort of mechanic that discouraged constant PK (say, a humanity or reputation system) or gathered social/casual/co-op players into groups where they might be able to counter (say a safe zone / common launching point, a political system or even the bandit skin) PvP might become a productive part of the game. Even some non-PvP content would help entertain all these extremely well armed survivors.

But having full loot, no consequences, one-sided, statistic resetting PK will just attract the people who focus only on that and they will over-run anyone trying to play it as primarily a game about zombies.

That said I could also imagine that the whole exercise is pretty much a "soft-entry" teaser for Arma-II / Arma-III to get people in and keep those who adapt  to a realistic shooter. After all the Arma-II mechanics are the core of the game. The additions are persistence, scavenging (ie. memorizing spawn points, which also happen to drive you to PvP) and unusually aggressive wild-life (which inflicts conditions driving you to PvP). Though this is also a function of it being really early in it's development cycle.

I'm pretty much done with the game for now. No more mechanics to explore, I've crossed the map from end-to-end, I'm well enough geared that the only threat is camping PK's and I'm not too interested in the very slow moving PvP this game has to offer. Plus way too many bugs, hacks and exploits. I'll mess with some of the other mods maybe and watch the patch notes to see how it matures.

(edit)

A PSA from the forums:

PC Gamer live stream with the devlopers ( Dayz and BI ).

http://www.twitch.tv/pcgamer

Before that one of the developers was "riding shotgun" on another guy streaming Day-Z who has attracted the attention of a hacker, to the extent of being stalked by him. For example last night he was dropping destroyers around him, set the sky on fire and had a flying radio towers. Plus the dev would revive them when the team got sniped from long range. They camped out as soon as he had to leave to focus on the PC-gamer streaming.

It would have been funny if the PC Gamer stream got hacked or PK'd, but I'm sure they lock that server down (forum confirms they played on a locked server with BI employee's and staff).

I think most of us casuals are waiting for something like this. I was on the giving end of clans vs pubs back in BF1942, it killed my interest in most shooters since (if you're not on the clan end, not fun). And really, it wasn't much fun to beat up on pubbies, either, though some guys got into it. We'd mostly just see how many snipers we could knife kill for screenshots to post to the appropriate thread in our forum.

I'm torn on this.  On the one hand, it would give us an easy way to all play in and contribute to the same version of the game world.  On the other hand, I do legitimately feel like a good portion of my interest in the game comes from not knowing how other people will react to seeing me (although, increasingly it is simply kill, which makes it less interesting).   I feel like that unknown element is important for a survival game, but I don't know a good way of keeping it without also just making it advantageous to always shoot first and ask questions later.  Newbies have nothing to offer veterans, so they aren't worth keeping alive, and it is always easier to take someone's gear after killing them than to work out some kind of sharing agreement.  If they could figure out a way to encourage people to work together (or even form de facto factions) in the game world, then I think it would be improved. 

I still find the game/mod entertaining in its current iteration, but I think it could be greatly improved.  I've also been playing Project Zomboid in its various alpha releases and from a game standpoint I prefer its mechanics to DayZ.  If/when PZ implements multiplayer I think it would eclipse DayZ for me as the must play zombie game.  Single player only is holding it back at the moment.

I've caught some shit for this in Blood Bowl (and ultimately quit the league because I'm a minority of one on it): Getting pk'd by some random jackass who plays Arma2 all day is not fun. Getting pkd at 600m by Shirleybob and his goddamned sniper rifle = friendly rivalry.

Well said and sums up my attitude pretty well myself. I'd like to want to play it, but I just don't have the time or inclination for that level of nut-punching.

At the moment most of the forum is trying to work out if the developer has burnt out already. There's an image of him posting something along those lines on hacking forum (eg an "I'm done, you killed it") and he hasn't posted on the forums since. After an average 15+ posts a day.

Though I'd expect he's just taking a weekend and accepting he can only invest so much energy in the project if he doesn't want to burn out. The scope of what he's attempting done as a mod, on a engine that hinders as much as it helps, is really pretty nuts.

Hes fine, likely just working on the patch or ArmA 3. There was a LOT of background stuff in this pending patch, including some hefty rewrites and a large chunk of stuff dependent on the ArmA 2 beta patch stuff. They are also going to this event: http://www.rezzed.com

He speaks:

Some back-end DB stuff:

This would be awesome, in particular if it means that I won't find as many useful item spawns randomly cockblocked by some asshat's razor wire.

I'm not sure that's to address that, not directly anyway. But I do think we will see a change in how deployables are handled and removed.

Well, I guess it depends on what it means by "legacy." I assume that means "shit deployed in a different patch version." I hope it also means "shit deployed by someone who subsequently died." That would be nice.

Day Z Part 1: Baked Beans - Yogscast (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a15bVDJwPtE&feature=plcp)

This game has more users than some MMO's.

Looks like 1.7.2 is live.

Yeah, it's getting amazing media. The interest will fade and the numbers will collapse though. The games half baked and will take a long time to mature, the play-style is punitive / PK heavy and the foundation is unstable.


And the developer is crazed.

Oddly enough, it's just non-punitive enough to be fun.

Yeah, fuck up once and you are normally dead. However, the game makes it feel as if, with just MOAR PRACTICE, you could survive to find the shit to unfuck a bad decision.

I've done it once. I made another bad decision, and well, no second chance.

The basics of survival seem to be:

1. Get the fuck away from the coast. Yes, you can try to use one of the video quickstarts and do the "sprint thru Elektro/Cherno" thing. To be honest, I've not had much luck as  I am prone to panic shots when I need to loot and then shoot to take down a horde of zeds that I just pulled to the supermarket in Cherno.

2. Find a weapon first. Then tools + canteen. Then spare food. Then get to the hills.

3. You can sometimes loot meds, including morphine, at deer stands. There's loads of deer stands.

4. Use a low-pop server to gear up. If you are playing solo, there's no incentive to stay on one server for a character's lifetime. If you want to learn the basics of DayZ, find a low pop server. It just makes sense.

5. Use the knowledge of the player base to help you figure out what works best for you. See my point about blitzing Cherno above -- that shit doesn't work for me.

You're right, the game won't appeal to most people. Hell, this is way harder than I'd normally tolerate. But there's something about it that triggers my Skinner Box response.

It's US$15 on Steam, correct? Ignoring those who may be pirating Arma2, it's not necessarily about how many people start playing a mod, but how many people keep playing it. Especially with a mod developer who at times seems to take glee in making life harder on the player base.

With that amount of growth, there is no chance people will not filter into the already existing community and mod base.

I bet the BI guys are really happy right now.

I use a combination of the above. If I die, and am not in a Patrick Bateman AxeMurdering mood, I head for a low-pop server. First order of business is the industrial spawns, where I get a hatchet - both a vital tool and an excellent starter weapon.

Next, I hit Cherno. There's a chain of pubs that people rarely hit in the south-central of the city, like 6 of them in a row. I hit those and try to find, in priority order: a Czech or Alice pack, a water bottle (preferably 2), a ranged weapon & ammo.

Once I have, at the very least, a 16-slot pack, 3 sodas or 2 canteens, 3 cans of food, and a weapon of some sort, I GTFO of Cherno and head for Berezino, hitting deer stands on the way. The deer stands usually provide a long gun and some meds.

In Berezino, I hit the southern supermarket and pub first, prioritizing the remaining survival tools: knife, matches, compass. These are usually easy to find. I "upgrade" my sidearm to a Makarov once I find one, and kit out my sidearm ammo slots with 2 bandages and 6 Mak mags, with 2 spare of each in the pack.

With those acquired, the Berezino hospital's roof is farmed to get 3-4 blood bags and 5 morphine injectors. Finally, I farm the two supermarkets and the office building until I have a full rack of survival tools (compass, watch, matches, knife, binocs) and 2 canteens, with occasional trips up to the military tents to try to find a silenced weapon and/or a STANAG weapon such as the M4A3 CCO or M16A2. Once either of those are acquired, the military tents are off-limits.

Fully kitted out, I go all Bear Grylls in the wilderness, accumulating a cache of 3+ steaks and begin hunting heli crash sites, vehicles, tent cities and other players. Occasionally I'll hit a supermarket or large house in the minor towns on the off-chance that I can find a ghillie suit, and deer stands on the off chance of finding a Coyote Elite pack.

Last weekend, I found a heli crash that yielded a coyote elite pack, two Bizons & six mags, a nightvision FN FAL & 3 mags and some standard guns. Pity my buddy got cocky and ran off into Berezino with a Bizon/3 mags and the FNFAL/3 mags, only to get sniped when running balls-out across an open field.

Still have my Bizon though, and it's quite sweet. Killed a dude silently whom I saw near a gas station. Poor bastard didn't know what hit him.

My pattern is similar.

Depending on where I spawn, I make a run either through those same pubs in cherno, followed by a run at the apartments, and then up to BZ. If I spawn outside of Elektro, I hit the power station at the outskirts and then head north, again toward BZ.

If I don't find anything in BZ, I'll head either for the NW airfield or the secret tent city that I found out in the wilds on a certain server. Once I've got a decent kit, I do the same thing, look for helicopter wreckage, etc. Once I've got a decent scoped weapon, I head back toward the coast and look for the occasional douchebag to snipe, or complete noob to help out.

Sadly playing "Hermit Survivalist" is insanely boring once you gear up.

The video interview of the designer telling a story in which a group of weaponless, careful, new players got crippled and then systematically capped by a silent veteran and summarising it as "cool emergent game-play" just makes me realize it's not the game for me.

Yeah, there's nothing particularly emergent about that, other than the potential emergence of psychopathy. That said, people that pull that kind of shit are my primary target at this point.

I find that once I get the to Hermit Survivalist stage, one or more of my buddies have died due to bugs or encounters gone wrong, so I always have someone to help gear up. Today we aborted a raid on the NW Airfield when one of our guys found a heli crash site.

We found a ghillie suit, another Bizon & two mags, and a box of medical supplies on it. I put on the ghillie suit, and it deleted my primary and secondary weapons, and their associated ammo inventories. Fortunately, I kept my toolbelt and backpack, and had nearly run out of ammo for my Bizon, so it's not too big of a loss. I was able to replace the medical supplies from the heli's box, replaced the Bizon with the M14 I had stashed in the pack, and I'll just have to hit up a few supermarkets/houses to find another sidearm and sidearm ammo.

Looks like ghillie suits are bugged at the moment, so be careful putting them on.

If we ever reach the theoretical "everyone geared up" stage, I imagine we'll just end up trying to murder people at the airfield for NVGs and get killed in the process. We rarely play for more than an hour at a time, so finding vehicles is mostly useless; they're always stolen before we log back on, and by the time we find one and repair/fuel it, it's time to log off.

I would dearly love to get an efficient offroad vehicle and troll the wastelands for tent cities though. Wrecking hoarders' careful work makes my day. I have raided many an in-map tent city for all its good gear.

I personally look forward to more organized group activities being added. I also mostly help friends that bit the big one on attempts to enter or scavenge areas, its been mostly what we do, also the search for ammo is always on going.

Right now, I'm trying to find the most abundant source of wild animals/location for finding them. I managed to get myself all of the basic survival gear (matches, knife, hatchet). Unfortunately, I also am down to about 3k blood. I have two blood bags, but nobody to transfuse me, so a hunting I will go, I guess.

Also pissed that I dropped my canteen somewhere. At least I have sodas.

If I can get on early enough tonight (i.e. before the wife gets home) I'll see if we can hook up and I'll do the blood thing.

I head up to the northernmost row of grids, just north of the treeline but before the map turns into The Beyond. It's generally empty of players, so it's relatively safe. You can see forever and easily spot goats/cows/sheep. Load up on steaks, hit a nearby copse, have a barbeque.

Wonder if ARMA:CO will be on sale at all for the Summer sale on Steam.  Reluctant to pickup at $30 since Day Z is still alpha and very buggy, but at half off I'd grab it in a heartbeat.

It's currently 25% off at the Bohemia Interactive online store; I would be surprised if there was a Steam sale, given that it's pegged the sales charts for 2 months straight.

I think that's a good bet. It really has enough people to stretch server capacity and test content anyway. And this way Bohemia gets a bigger cut.

It's pretty likely to become a stand-alone product at some point, if the popularity is sustained, at which point it might appear on steam and discounted.

Looks like we're sort-of wrong. ArmaII:CO is up on the Steam Summer Sale for 20% off at the moment.

But if they're 20% off, will the beans taste as good?

Russian beans > Wall-mart beans!

I look forward to dining on many beans for the Bean God.

Got killed at the NW Airfield trying to gear up some friends. Okay, we got greedy and farmed. Some dudes with DMRs dropped us, we got one of them to our four. Respawned. I found a hatchet almost immediately and ran into another dude at the military tents in Cherno.

He found out that it's hip to be square.

Wait for the daily deal. It will happen and all hell will break loose.

To warn potential buyers. It is buggy (both Arma-II and the mod, especially the current patch), in very early stages of development, primarily about PvP (with full loot) after the gearing process and the developer is crazed.

It comes with extra servings of "potential" though, there's nothing quite like what it could become.

Is anyone up for attempting to play together this weekend? I'm trying to figure out whether I should nab TS, mumble, skpye, or all three. I haven't had to do voice comm in a game in a long while.

I would be. But Yoru would just kill us all.

Tempted. Not sure I wanna pony up the cash just yet...maybe when I get my HC barb killed....

Unless we killed him. And took his beans. Retribution beans are the tastiest, I've heard.

Arma 2: CO $20 on Amazon today.  :oh_i_see:

Do I bite or gamble on a better sale on Steam....

I wouldn't mind trying a run with you gents at some point, but I'm UTC+2 and generally busy during weekends, which makes cross-continental play tricky.

How about another story from the Bean God's Altar?

I was running around Cherno today, taking a break from Bear Grylls-style play for the quicker pace of the cities. I, and my friends, had scrounged up some nice kits by farming the pubs and medical tents. We all had decent sidearms, but chose to mostly run around with hatchets. The silent death of the hatchet means you don't alert every jerk in the country when killing zombies.

With three of us together and hatchet-armed, we heard gunshots from a nearby pub. The slow, measured fire of a man shooting zombies, as opposed to the panicked pitter-patter of PVP. We stalk over and I hear a dude using a toolbox and eating beans upstairs. I have an idea and tell my friends to follow my lead.

I switch on my mic in Direct Chat. I put on my best "scared newbie" warble and greet the man. Turns out he's a taciturn German. I assure him that we're friendly and just looking for food and ask him if he's seen any. He says no and begins to leave. I send my friends around and they block the front door, with me behind him.

I ask him if I can ask him another question.

I ask him what he thinks of Huey Lewis and the News.

Three axemen charge, hatchets a-swinging. He raises his Lee Enfield.

Four men die in Cherno.

 :awesome_for_real:

You forgot your plastic suit there, Bateman.

I use six launcher because it's easy. I have no idea why it shows locked servers and whatnot, but hey, it's easy.

Today, I find a server that is locked, with two players. "Hosted by 1337 CR3W."

 :awesome_for_real:

Could be one of those servers that isn't connected to the HIVE.

And the "CR3W" are probably using it to farm gear to gank noobs with.

Just got this gifted from my brother (Thanks Zaljerem) - so I will be on tonight hopefully. I'm pretty pumped.

This.

ETA: It was a server running @hive. Obvious farmville.

You can report that sort of thing on the forums, and if it's not the admin's doing repair work they might well do something about it.

It constantly impresses me how much effort the PvP/PK crews will put into domination. I figure because their ego is directly connected to being "the best" and they will sink a lot of time (and grab any exploit) that allows them to get that rush.

Though it also means the casuals and zombie survival fans are going to get squeezed out. The official forums are an ongoing pitched battle between the two camps.

Just to throw it out there to anyone looking for some survival partners, there are a few guys playing here. PM me or post here and we'll sort it.

I've been following CHKilroy since I saw the video in this thread. Lots of people wanted to know why he was no longer making "Dayz Ahead" video, and he basically said he no longer plays it because it's gone from survival to deathmatch.

There's a fuckton of epeenage in this thing, yeah.

I think that's one of the other things that keeps me playing. The knowledge that I'm playing fair against shitheels that probably aren't and potentially ruining their day when I end them unceremoniously.

1st go found a grenade and some rifle ammo, wandered around for an hour, ended up running away from a zombie for 10 mins, then got jumped by another and died trying to figure out how to use the grenade.

Next time tried a town run and ended up crawling around/passing out after bandaging myself at 12 blood.  Still figuring the controls out but it's great so far, just wish you could make a club or something as a starter weapon.

So, I tried fruitlessly to get on and play with Slayerik and Slack, but kept getting "Waiting for Host" no matter what server I logged in to. I think it has something to do with my version, but I'm way too drunk tonight to be arsed to reinstall, so I'll do that on Sunday.

My first murder. It was glorious loots! Story when I gots time :)

Slayerik and I haven't even managed to connect in-game yet. We were partially able to use TS to chat -- if you count one guy unable to hear the other as partial. Sooner or later, we'll get it right.

I was way too tired to play by the time I had time to get on yesterday. Based on the Steam PMs, Slay had someone bring the NWAF to him.

My journey began on a familiar coast, between Balota airfield and Cherno. I decided to head east to sweep the supermarket and a few of the better spots on the west side. I, of course, aggro a train of zombies and end up losing a few thousand blood in the process. Good news is, I make my way back west out of Cherno with an Enfield and even some ammo for it. My plan was to raid the military stands south of the airfield, then have enough ammo/weapons to check the Balota hotspot.

That's not going to happen. Too many Zeds, not enough ammo, and the Enfield invites all sorts of people to the party. I decide to go straight for my objective, the medium value military spawn at the airfield. With three rounds lift in the mag, I need to avoid as many as possible and just get inside.  I do fairly well, only aggroing a few and end up with two rounds as I make my way up the stairs of the military building, in search of Enfield ammo. I see the packpack of another survivor, looking the other way - pistol out. He turns on me......we stare at each other and he says "friendly" in chat. We begin talking on voice, swapped some m9 ammo for some Enfield when he called out "You hear that motorcycle?"

We look out from the 2nd story to see a guy doing figure 8's, messing with zombies, having fun. I say in voice (and probably heard by the motorcycle guy) "I'm gonna pop that guy!"

CRACK! I miss badly behind the bike, rack a round, kneel and pick a spot where I think he will be.
CRACK! Another miss.
He slows down right in my sights...
CRACK!

The bike comes to a stop, and the rider falls to the ground. Nearby zombies begin maiming the guy, and I put a final round into his prone body. Murders: 1

We excitedly finish the remaining zombies, and I sprint down to loot. Big score. Alice pack, m4 silenced, m9 silenced, matches, knife, map, compass, assorted food/drinks. And a guillie suit. My partner, while looted is assaulted by a zed...and he somehow ends up with a broken leg. We have no morphine. We search the nearby area, but it is getting late. I am now armed and dangerous. In hindsight, I think motorcycle guy musta been drink. He hung out being fired at WAY too long. The motorcycle was trashed, or else broken leg guy mighta had a chance. I hope he rolled his way to some morphine. I think had I murdered the first guy, I never would have pulled off the actual good kill. Thanks, broken leg friend.

Day Z tells us that in the event of a zombie apocalypse, don't skimp on your daily calcium intake.

Found barn with a Winchester shotgun & an axe, then found another barn with 4 weapons, some hunting rifle with a scope, enfield, another winchester and a double barrelled shotgun.  Am I correct in thinking you can only carry one rifle type weapon?  I kept the Winchester as it's fun popping zombies and I have lots of ammo now.

Rifle/primary weapons take 10 backpack slots. Starter pack has 8 slots. With the starter pack, you can have a primary and an axe on your belt, or just an axe.

Secondary/pistol weapons take 5 (I think) backpack slots. You can therefore keep one pistol on your person and one in your pack if you are so inclined.

Ok got it thanks, I'll resist asking more silly questions.

Ask away. There is no good one stop shop for info, IMO. 

We've got a good number of vets at this point. Ask away.

Well third go ended with 33 zombies dead, I just ran out of blood, was playing with a black and white shakey screen for ages.  I assume the only way to get more blood solo is to eat (I don't group in these types of games, just explore and defend myself is possible), also where's best place for food?  I'd taken pain pills, plus a morphine thing I found but at 3000 blood with the icon showing red they didn't seem to help.

Painkillers are for shock.  Morphine is for broken bones. Antibiotics are for when you are sick. The only way to restore blood is by eating or via a blood transfusion.

The most effective way to use food to restore blood is to kill animals and then cook their meat. Cooked meat restores 800 blood.

That clearly wouldn't be realistic.  :oh_i_see:

I love running round town with an axe, sod this sneaking everywhere.  Been player killed twice now.

I have had one "blitz into a city and get shit and get out" run work. That was on a low-pop server on a weekday in the morning.

There is a decent route for Cherno, and an "ok" route for Elektro.


Quick start Cherno (http://youtu.be/HIfiOyQsJD8)

Quick start Elektro (http://youtu.be/Q8oiJ8VD_lo)

Now, I endeavor to do that, but end up just hitting the medium to large farm, resi and industrial spawns as I make my way towards one of the cities. Once I have an axe and either a gun (pistol or long arm doesn't matter to me) or some of the other basic survival tools (hunting knife, matches, water bottle), I just head north and try not to do anything stupid.

I also rather like deer stands. I believe BW has already linked this map, but it's handy to have open if you have an iPad/tablet or a laptop or a second monitor.

DayZDB Map (http://dayzdb.com/map)

I hadn't seen those videos before but that house in Elektro is where I ran in unarmed found a revolver, then turned and killed the zombies that trailed me.   That map is great already using it, thanks for the advice.  I haven't gone to the hospital yet but ended up on the southern airfield last time with only an axe, had to run everywhere then as had a fever or something from swimming too long to escape.  It's definitely more fun to just go for broke and try to tool up fast, so going to try his Cherno run next time.

Be careful with swimming. It can cause you to drop your gear.

For some stupid reason, I am considering trying to host a server for this. It seems as if they've really relaxed on "who gets a server."

Why would I consider this? Because of a thread like this (http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/37040-fort-friendly-social-experiment/).

I have no idea why owning my own server would make this any more worthwhile, but yeah. Granted, I also caught wind of a bunch of fucked up hacking on various servers the last day or so (teleporting all players to one location, then shooting them all) and that has me blowing off playing tonight.

The hacking sounds entirely out of control, and the admin tools to deal with it more or less non-existent (people parsing logs to recover GUID's they can ban). Plus it's fairly resource intensive on the server side. You'd have to be pretty keen to host a server now.

Interesting talk  (http://youtu.be/lAXqwewejwU)at some indie gaming convention with Rocket.

It drags at the beginning, but picks up steam after the first fifteen minutes.

I would play on your server.

Heh, I was looking at the various server hosting threads last night. I have no idea what server would cost hosting-wise. I'm tempted to ask our IT dude to set me up with something on the cheap.

ArmA servers are rather pricy due to the bandwidth and high user counts.

I was headed to Stary for a final fill-up of supplies before my trek to deep woods, to live out my life in peace...foraging off the land, hopeful I would never see another zombie again. I needed to fill some water on the way when I was attacked by a couple zeds. One, of course, lands a bleeder shot on me before I take him down. I stabilize myself at around 4500 blood...no biggie, I have a hunting knife, matches, and a hatchet. I can kill some wildlife, and easily restore my blood. Things are going to be alright! I kill a rabbit, fumble around and make a campfire, and apparently pop a squat right on top of it.

I went unconscience and I burned to death. No big deal, I can get back there and recover my stuff. I have a map!

Come to find out my navigation skills aren't what I thought they were. I followed the wrong powerlines, crested the wrong hill, and went down the wrong valley all the way to the Balota Airfield. I made My way all the way back north to near my loot when it happened "Session Lost". I couldn't reconnect to the server. My stuff was officially gone.

When I reconnected on a different server, I wasn't too far from Stary so I hit a couple deer blinds and a residential, and made my way down the power lines to the Stary stash! I had an ax, and that's about it. I made it to the military tents without much hassle, and began looting. AKM, and a clip. I am now armed and dangerous. Next tent, nothing. Next tent, some dude laying on the ground. I, not being used to seeing many people in game, did not recognize that he was a bandit. He turned towards me, and I put the reticle on his head.... I could tell I was hit so I unloaded on him. Bandits killed: 1

I got hit hard. I thought we might die together there....I was down to 1500 blood when I finally stabilized. I looted some morphine stuff, blood bags, etc off the guy and actually left an AS-50 (?) sniper rifle on his body because there was no ammo anywhere for it. I hid the body (if it wasn't a bandit it wouldn't have, but to me that's karma). Every 50 feet or so, I fall down due to lack of blood. I'm pretty sure I'm never gonna make it out of here alive. I need a transfusion bad, and Stary is a slight bitch to get to from anywhere....



Also, found a sweet launcher for Day-z

http://www.dayzcommander.com/

Playing at night is crazy, I thought should be fewer players stealing all the equipment, I'm sure I can find my way around.  Pitch black running from zombies, turn my torch on to quickly get my bearings at exactly the right time to see a zombie 3ft in front of me coming the other way snarling.

If we had a server where I didn't have to worry about getting murdered by the Russian version of Slayerik I would actually think about getting/trying this...

Yes I was thinking about setting up an F13 server (hence my question earlier in this thread) but then I heard about the rules about running a server and dropped the idea. If I could run a server with PKing turned off completely and run it as just a zombie survival mod I would do it.

You can crank your brightness, gamma, and one other setting to give better night vision. Thing is that right now we are coming up on a new moon. This means that night is gonna be DARK till we're back towards a quarter and half moon.

The forum user-base goes crazy ape-shit if you suggest anything like that. Since that would allow you to either avoid PvP or cheat at PvP and neither can be countenanced.

That said I believe you can do it if you run your own hive (the back end database that provides persistency) server. Still, a lot of effort and cost. I don't imagine the server side tools are any more elegant than the client side.

I would also like to see the mod go a bit more in the zombie survival direction.  I actually don't mind PK part of the game so much in principle, but a bigger issue is that zombies basically just aren't a big part of the game right now unless you've just spawned and have absolutely nothing.  I'd definitely like to see survival itself actually require a bit more cooperation (perhaps by making surviving zombies more difficult? More of them? More difficult? I don't have specific answers!).  Then people would be encouraged to cooperate naturally.  Right now unless you just don't like PKing, there is basically no reason not to kill everyone you see and take their best stuff. It is simply the best survival technique at the moment.

The rules that I've seen seem to be:

1) Must have 40 slots unless you're in a developing nation, then 30 slots.
2) Limited reasons to ban, etc. I'm not 100% sure why.
3) No locking/private servers for your clan/friends/etc.

The loophole that I see -- rules are more lax for server admins. On a server that is open to THE WORLD, one might need a squad of several server admins. If those admins need to get on the server to be admins, there may be a plausible deniability reason for kicking asshats to make room.

It is also worth noting that there appears to be plenty of abuse with very little reprisal from the DayZ folks.

That said, it's pretty easy to justify having a core group that loots the server for a few hours before public launch as a "testing" measure. This would leave an f13 server with a small advantage as it would be possible to have a stockpile started when the server is opened to the unwashed masses. Even if a small stockpile, with no vehicles, it would be possible to gear up several folks with the beginning of a decent camp before someone would call shenanigans.

I guess the TL;DR is that while there are loads of rules that won't let you make the server exclusive, there's plenty of grey area in the rules that would allow one to establish a nice starting stockpile before the unwashed masses arrive.

Non-hive servers seem to allow the flexibility of what you want to do. We'd be able to play on that server, but our characters would not be playable on others. The thing is that I have no idea how to establish a non-hive server.

I'm all for PKing and griefing in multiplayer games, but I think you really hit the issue on the head.  It takes away from the "Zombie horror" when it's really just degrading into another PvP FPS.

Starting at a random beach spawn with no weapon is tough for a new player, I imagine there will be a lot of pressure to change that which I hope is resisted.  I also think the zombies work because they are stupid, just like PVE AI, tinkering to make them tougher risks turning something that adds atmosphere into a gimmick that breaks immersion.  

As for pk's, we appear to be in an an early UO thread, different server rulesets is the way to go, otherwise people are going to endlessly argue about this.

Edit to add, they could add roaming zombie groups and give more player crafting options, barriers, etc, I just don't want to see AI zombies getting smart enough to not seem like zombies anymore, if that makes sense.

The rules against banning are because some of the servers are run by clans, so there's endless reports of "Killed the admin, was banned immediately" on the server forum.

The PK aspect destroys the game for me. Not just because it moves the "threat" from zombies to a player threat with very limited counters but also because it removes the complexity and opportunity of meeting other survivors. I was skulking around and got the drop on some guy shooting zombies, with the current mechanics the correct answer is shoot him or run away, both of which are very short and simple interactions.

But 99% of the game mechanics are from Arma-II which is all about shooting people, the designer seems to be extremely pro-PvP and angling for a standalone release / Day-Z project to replace the current mod. So I don't think any of that is changing with the current structure of it.

Of course he may also like PvP because it helps hide the lack of goals the game offers once you gather the basic survival gear.

My Dayz Story (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQQ4N1kMv9o&feature=player_embedded)   :awesome_for_real:

I want to try this but I'm unsure of what to do after buying and downloading Arma 2:CO from Steam.

http://www.dayzmod.com/?SixUpdater Is what I did

I also use six updater.

Just run that, let it patch and such, and you should be good to go once you pick a server.

Is it updating to the most recent ARMA 2 beta patch?

Sixupdater does update you with the latest ArmA engine patch ( beta releases ), and Dayz mod. If that's what you were asking.


ArmA 2, itself just had an official patch ( Non beta ). Steam should take care of that.

http://www.dayzcommander.com/

Went from 6 to this....

Has recent servers...time of day in game, good filtering...

That sounds good.

Time of day in game is key. I just guess light or dark based on the occasional +/- GMT in the server description. I may have to grab that tonight.

If you aren't using it, SHAME ON YOU.

Also, there is some kind of friends function. Let's test that out tonight....Also, an RL friend of mine is hooked now so that's three around our playtime :)

I've got it installed, just haven't gotten around to getting it to actually work and run.  Hoping to put a little time into it tonight.

Ok, open invite to F13ers and friends. Tonight at 10:00pm EST, barring continued wifey/baby aggro, we head to Stary Sobor and possibly the big airfield.

If you want in, please try to be somewhere in the circle below at that time. I have a Mumble server up, PM for info or hit me up on Steam.

(http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll177/edog420420/meeting.jpg)

If I don't die by then, I have a spare pistol and clips if you are hurting really bad for a weapon!


Itinerary


(http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll177/edog420420/triptostary.jpg)

1. Head from Mogilevka to Castle Zub!
2. Check for Car spawn in Vyshnoye
3. Hit Deer stand to arm someone
4. Hit HV farm and MV residential for supplies
5. Loot HV and MV Novy spawns, and deer blind
6. Approach the hotspot Stary Sobor from the hill, sweeping for snipers.


If everyone, by some miracle, is armed and ready we'll skip 4 and 5 and go directly to 6.

I'm just outside the circle, pretty much where I was when I'd proposed the route to NWAF that took us thru the supermarket, etc. It is likely safer for me to meet people at Zub, as that gives me forest cover the entire way.

No need to worry about equipping me with gear, although we'll be well and truly fucked if someone can't bring some morphine, epi pens, and blood bags. There may be a medical spawn at Stary, I forget.

Moreover, if anyone planning to play has a spare box of matches, I'd appreciate the help.

Damn matches, I can't ever seem to find any!

Medical supplies is a must for sure. Hmmmmm. Maybe raid cherno before we go if we are really hurting for some.

Live action newbies!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7hIeNPkvqQ&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMp8LNFLEXI

So, the trip didn't go too well. I fell in a barn, maiming myself then a zombie broke my leg. My friend was murdered right when we met up.

On the plus side, we got 3 people on the same server (4 if Surly wasn't so busy loading up on the phats). We'll try again tonight! The noobs ride again!

Sums it up.

Got it running and working last night.  I had watched a few videos on ways to start and get going without dying instantly.  They all became completely useless as the videos start you with a gun and apparently you no longer start with any weapon?  So last night was figuring out that the default controls are terrible and I need to do some remapping, then walking in a direction until I found a zombie I had no way of killing and it runs me down.  :uhrr:

Ah yes, bet you are hooked now!

Use X to crouch run.
Many times to quick loot I full out run past zombies and run into building and dive to prone. They really aren't all that bright. You can jump fences using V, that usually loses em pretty good. Overall, you'll die a lot. Hell, a couple weeks in and I still do...I just know how to re-equip decently fast.

Oh, and when you find a hatchet you will need to Right click on it in  the inventory, and "remove from toolbelt" . This will allow you to reload it (lol) and you can then start whacking Zeds!

Bandages are key. Keep an eye on your blood. The inventory is horrible.

Hope ya stick it out bro.

Avoidance and sneak is a hug part of this game mod.

My first target is always a barn, to find a hatchet. Industrial areas have crowbars.

Never fire a Lee-Enfield :)

Also always fire from iron sights (right mouse click to sight, not right mouse hold -- holding is for zoom once you're sighting). I burned an M9 mag last night panic shooting a zombie that had snuck up on me. Now I'm out of food and down more blood than I was before I fucked up and aggroed a zed I couldn't see.

Granted, someone chose a server without third-person view......but I should have been going slower and using freelook.

Ok fine, you pick the server tonight :P I'll find some blood bags before we try and fail miserably at meeting up. :)

I personally require regular mode, with 3ed person and sights. My group has a "home" server, just forget what that is right now.

For sure, just bad timing with finals and crap next week.  Really my biggest worry right now from reading about the game is apparently hacking is getting really out of control.  People that are invincible, be able to kill/wound/teleport everyone on a server, etc...

I have yet to see hacking occur while playing. I almost logged into a server the other day, and noticed two guys in the lobby. I can't recall the first name, but the other was something like "l33t hax" or whatever. I decided to find a different server.

So, same plan for tonight. I have an Enfield, a bad pistol, I Czech backpack, and a buncha medical supplies near Cherno. Shooting for 10:00pm EST again...

Cool, I'll message you on Steam.

I'm gonna need blood and am still somewhere on the outskirts of Nadzwhatever.

Nadezhdino.

I got shot at on the way out of the airfield and attracted some zed aggro in the ensuing firefight. I'm down to about 3k blood and blacking out occasionally. Should make meeting you guys interesting.

I have 4 blood bags, I can get ya both fixed up. Surly, hang tough we can come to you. Get on that mumble from last night :)

Here's a nice steam overlay with dayzcommander link (http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/45720-tutorial-dayz-setup-and-enabling-steam-overlay/).

It's a bit of a kludgy process, but seems legit.

Day 1: Food is INTENSE

Well, after a night of horrible fail we decided we were going to try to make the Stary Sobor run again. My friend Silenus ,CmdrSlck, and I pick a meeting place at a pond called Ozerko. Sil and I meet after I play a quick game of 'Escape from Cherno'. I am loaded with medical supplies, and the usual Enfield. Silenus, armed with a Winchester 1866 and nearly starving, makes it to the location with few problems. Slackdaddy gets turned around, and catches some out of game aggro...so we proceed to one of our objectives...Castle Zub.

Silenus' food situation is becoming dire. We have searched all of the nearby buildings and zombie corpses, with no signs of beans anywhere! His food light begins flashing, and we know something needs to be done soon. We finally have met up, and now this curveball! There's gotta be some food at the Castle, we think, and sift through piles of junk, ammo, and drinks...basically everything but food. On our way out, lady luck finally throws us a bone...a set of matches. We take stock of our hunting gear, and luckily I have a hunting knife that will allow us to gut an animal...if we can find one. Neither of us have a hatchet, but we remember seeing a random woodpile at a nearby residence.

On our way to get the firewood, we see a wild boar foraging....completely unconcerned with our presence. I whip out my Makarov, and put about three shots into em. I do my best Ted Nugent impression, gut and load up the four piles of uncooked meat. Silenus informs me his starvation is now causing him to lose blood. We salvage the firewood, I fumble with the UI for a sec, and get the fire started with our newfound matches. Bacon never smelled so good! Silenus will live to die another day! It was pretty intense, for what is completely ignored (or poorly done) in most games...hunger. We were pumped. And to make things better, Cmdrslck had found his bearings and we spotted him coming up the hill. We were only missing one of our party, the survivalist Surlyboi who was busy navigating the Debug Forest, and we knew he'd never get to us on time this evening.

GF aggro causes me to log for an hour, and when I come back the boys are still hanging out, looting Zub and the nearby homes to the fullest. I come back just in time to hear Silenus has mysteriously broke his leg and started bleeding from being to close to Slack inside a building, or some other buggy shit...though if you ask me I bet Slack whacked him with a crowbar all Goodfellas style. Fortunately for Sil, I had come prepared with morphine and blood bags and he is no worse for wear.

Tonight we leave Castle Awesome for Stary Sobor. I know at least one of us is going to die. My money is on Slack, karma for crowbar'n my bro. ;) Anyway, I was pretty impressed at how the hunger system caused some adventures in itself. It was such a feeling of victory coming through with some food to save him. I've always found in life that food you kill yourself always tastes better. The same is true in Day-Z.

Dude that whole battle for the steak dinner 1 hour epic mission was the coolest thing I've done in a video game in YEARS!

Thanks for the awesome heals too after that weird Slack / Silenus / Barndoor fiasco... I wonder if we should report that or anything, or are doors a known hazard or whatever?

Fuckin DayZ man, awesome.

Haha, and yea, I wonder if Slack wasnt filming another one of his gun safety videos when I suffered my injury. I swear I didnt hear any shots go off though. Too funny.

The game is just that buggy when it comes to leg breaking. Doors can crush you and break your legs, cause bleeding, knock you out, etc.

I think the broken bone may have happened because I collided with your character. Which makes no sense. But, in DayZ, it's totally plausible.

My game playing time evaporated this week. This sounds awesome.

How do you mend a broken leg?

College football style. You rub some dirt on it, take a shot of morphine, and get back in the game.

Trying to play this. Stuck (or am I?) at the loading screen. How long does it typically take to load?

If it takes more than 90 seconds, it usually means you're not getting in.

After a two-week break, I played some today.

On my way to pick up a bro at Cherno, I spotted a heli crash site located - no shits - inside of Rogovo. Despite having a FN FAL with 6 mags, I got loot-hungry and decided to go check it out.

The FN FAL, by the way, sounds like, and acts like, a goddamn 120mm HEAT cannon. One shot through the center-of-mass and a zed drops like so many cans of beans off a newbie. I cleared out the zeds around the chopper, and then the area around the area around the chopper, and proceeded to search.

Now, most Heli Crashes are pretty decent. Some medical supplies, some rare ammo, usually at least one rare gun. Once I found a crash with three Bizons (with 2-3 mags each) and a nightvision FN FAL. This time? Some chemlights.

I decide that I've missed something and keep searching. Bad move, bro, as the zombies nearby respawn and, before I know it, I'm surrounded. I whip out the trusty one-shot M1911 and fire at the nearest zed. I mean, one shot, one kill, right?

He keeps coming.

Panicking, I squeeze off two more rounds and he goes down. Wait, the 1911 is now a multi-shot kill gun? Fuck. I'm in the open, there's angry zeds zeroing in on my location, and I'm stuck with a freshly-nerfed peashooter and not enough ammo.

Next z gets all up in my grill and I go down unconscious, and a minute later I'm staring at the bloody hand. "You are dead".

Great. Respawn in Cherno, time to find a hatchet...

Ok, I got it all installed and working and now I'm trying to figure out how it all works. Thanks for all of the information!

How do you end up finding the same map to play on together?

Do you get to keep your stuff if you don't die between play sessions?

Basically you just have to get in touch with other people and see which server they are playing on.  Yes, you keep your stuff between sessions, and between servers for that matter.

How do I pick things up?

I think the default is middle mouse

Thank you! Yes, that works much better than the space bar and all my other guesses.

Also, you may want to interact with various kinds of loot piles by using the mouse wheel (yes, I am a gamer who has a standard non-gaming mouse). For example, let's say that you find an ALICE pack or a 24-slot coyote backpack. You currently have a starter backpack that is full of gear. If you just select the default middle-mouse-command for that pack, you will likely lose that full newbie backpack and its contents.

However, if you use the mouse wheel to scroll through options, you'll discover that you can open the pack. My move is to open the pack, then select my newbie pack in the inventory screen and click on "open backpack." This allows me to swap items from my newbie bag to the new bag. I then select the new bag and "take" it via the same mouse wheel menu.

EDIT

Newish video: DayZ for Beginners Part 01 Survival (http://youtu.be/oinLYC1P4Dc)

Also, here's the best map by far: DayZDB Map (http://dayzdb.com/map)

And the wiki (http://www.dayzwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page).

In other news, come play with us. PM Slayerik for the mumble info.

What a fun game! Even though I never could get on your server. I ended up suiciding on zeds after getting sick of crawling around because I broke my leg walking down stairs. Stairs are treacherous!

If you think stairs are deadly, wait until you meet a door.

Or your friends just when you rendezvous with them, amirite, Slay?   :why_so_serious:

Lol

Day-Z: Night of the Drunken Dead

Our night began like so many before, Silenus and I decided to meet up at an HV farm near our Castle Awesome. We were headed to Stary, and this time we'd make it!!! Sil reported that he had to go get fresh beers a few times, so I suspected this could be an interesting night. It got even better when Slack logged on, already sounding a bit toasty. Long story short we eventually make it outside of Stary on the hills overlooking it. Slack is running at about half speed. I constantly have to wait up for him, and he confirm's his guy is in run mode. But his character in game is doing a moon-run. Regardless, we cautiously overlook the scene, take out a few zeds and began ze looting! Well, Sil and I do. Slack has wandered off to some nearby farm/industrial area and we stuff our bags with AKs and ammo. Full loaded, we hear Slack slur something about being surrounded in a farm so we go to look for him.

Silenus knows hislocation, and tell him torun around the left sideof the building and we'd take out the zeds as he came into sight. You probably see where this is going. I look over just in time to hear a crack and notice a guy in a baseball cap crumble into a lifeless ball.  Silenus had put one right in his domepiece.

"OH SHIT DUDE! IM SO FUCKIN SORRY!"

Slack took it pretty well, making sure I got his 24 slot bag...and I promised him an AK for his troubles. Sil and I decide we had to venture on to greater loots at the airfield! Silenus was an AKMing madman, taking out about 40 zeds before going down to some razor wire right before I could transfuse him. Too many loud shots brought a metric fuckton of zeds in, and I was low on good ammo. I managed to score an M-16A2 and an AK-74 kobra (for Slack, lost later to a backpack bug) and make it out alive, and back down to Castle Awesome to hand the unarmed Silenus my G17 with 3 mags. So, we are worse off than we started....but it was an adventure to say the least! It was worth it for all the jokes I made at the treacherous Silenus.

I may or may not have shot him in the foot once in the zombie craziness at NW airfield. Don't tell him, though.

Yep, don't drink and DayZ.

Neat - I am able now to log into the server I couldn't get on last night. I think it might be nighttime though.

That's pretty much the only way I play.

I shoot better hammered.

Btw, might want to update to latest version today:

http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/48598-server-side-hotfix-072-helicopter-status-and-server-info/

.08 and it's all good.

Though tempting, doubt I'll pick DayZ up anytime soon due to the various bugs and not fully fleshed-out parts of the system. I did end up having a great time watching some streams on Twitch TV though, I LOL'ed several times and was literally in tears at one point watching a guy named Towelliee goof around with his buddies.

More than anything DayZ has me excited that more games like this will be created. I really like survivial type games that are tough, I think there is a huge untapped demand for these multiplayer survivial things.

On the Beginner page on the wiki, it says:

"While cities are lucrative, avoid them whenever possible. If you need gear, you may be better off looking for a Deer Stand in the woods. "

Warning: They are infested by soldier zombies that are really mean and will swarm you.

If you have a rifle, drop those milspec zombies from a distance. As long as it's not an enfield, you've got a decent chance of dropping them from well outside their aggro range.

Here's another warning: zombies can swim.

And climb ladders to deer stands.

I have an MP5 with like 4 mags I'd REALLY like to clean out of my bag tonight....

I'll take it if you're looking to unload it. Though, I'm thinking of making another airfield run if we can get enough people.

Ok, plans changed. I found an M24 at Stary and now that's in the pack. I'd love to make an airfield/Stary run. I'm logged at Stary now.

I feel like I'm a lame duck in this game and it's just not clicking for me.  (enjoying it still though)  Granted I haven't had much time to play but I'm happy to have reached a point where I have a shotgun with a few rounds, a hunting knife a bunch of uncooked meat and some soda.  Meanwhile you guys are raiding military stuff for high end weapons.  :oh_i_see:

It's way better with friends.

On a side note, I haven't felt bad at a video game in a long time. This one did for a bit, but now I got my groove back!

Same here. I sucked at this when I started. The learning curve will eat you alive at the beginning.

Like Slay said though, it IS better with friends. You could totally join us Thrawn.

I'm hoping I get a chance to run with you guys this week or weekend; I'm 7-10 time zones ahead (UTC+2), though, so it's tough.

I'm not against joining you guys at all, my play times are just very short and random with school/work/personal crap I have going on right now.  :uhrr:

I'll third the learning curve. Most of the high end military stuff isn't really even worth having until you're past the worst of it.

I found a DMR in a tree stand once. It was glorious. Then I made the newbie mistake of trying to fill a water bottle (when I didn't need to do so) at a pond just north of Cherno. No more DMR.

If you have mid-range military gear (AKMs, M16s) and you know how to use it, you're just as deadly as any other dude (save the asshole with the AS50/M107). The difference is either in stealth (Bizons, MP5SDs), convenience of target acquisition (anything with a reflex sight) or accuracy at long range (ACOGs, sniper rifles).

You can make a pretty good life camping near the airfield or Stary and picking off whomever wins the scuffles within those hotspots. Moving slowly, using camouflage/cover, and being aware means you'll usually get the drop on someone. If you know how your weapon performs, and you have the element of surprise, you will usually win.

Unless they have friends.

Wait, what?

Never mind. Checked the wiki. Now I'm kicking myself for not taking the Kobra that one time I found one.

Even then, if you don't lose your cool and use the right tactics, you can win.

There is some nuance here. The Kobra is great, but ammo is scarcer than AKM ammo and you can't change the zeroing. If you're GOOD with the AKM, and know how to zero and estimate range visually, you can make some insane shots with it. That's a pretty high bar though; in most cases, I prefer the reflex sight. I've hit dudes at 400m using the M14's red dot, as it's zeroed at 500.

Ok, having done some research, it appears that it is now possible to host a non-hive server. The drawback is that I cannot figure out to have separate sanctuary server and hive server toons.

Balls-out run into a medium-size red house in a remote town. "Oh it'll be fine. We'll only draw a few zombies."

(http://i.imgur.com/FgyJd.jpg) (http://steamcommunity.com/id/yoru/screenshot/540682152515233085?tab=public)

Automatic weapons fire brings all the boys to the yard.

Surly and I took on my first Heli crash site last night. They just kept respawning to the point that I made the distraction run by buncha zeds and he looted. Got on M14 that we lost cause the server crashed. I went through about 5 clips of STANAG for jack shit. Was fun though, Surly was dropping em with the sniper rifle while I played double tap cleanup on the aggroed ones.

Silenus bit it earlier attempting to get an ALICE pack that I scouted in Vybor. I met him halfway just as he got one-shot by somebody he had spotted in a MV farm. He made the mistake of not killing first, and it came back to bite em. We got em back to Castle Zud, and after Surly logged we made a Stary run. I decided to switch out my M16A2 for an AKM (this way everyone in our team isn't using STANAG). Silenus found a nice pistol and an m4. Still no pack, though.

I am so noob that I haven't even died to a player yet. Just zombies (although once it was a suicide because I was tired of crawling around on broken legs).

If you guys ever get a nonpk server up, I'd love to join you. I'm really bad though, and don't want to slow you down on a regular pk server. I'd just be baiting the bad guys to you.

You'd be surprised. Besides, bait is useful for bandit hunting.  :why_so_serious:

Totally. You run into a suspected hive of douchebags and we'll shoot 'em in the face when they try to kill you.  :drill:

And I've still got those two pistols, so we'll hook someone up with those tonight.

Oh, and I found an M9 silenced...so if you guys find any of that ammo PLEASE pocket it for me. We need to get Silenus a bag, and we are pretty ready for an airfield raid. We both logged at Stary last night, FYI. I have about 6 mags for my AKM now, so I am ready to roll.

I'm outside Kamenka with like 6k blood (in a tree stand, ofc).

If we make an effort for all of us to meet up, perhaps Castle Awesome is a good meeting point? In a pinch, I can always just sprint it over to Stary and hope to not get shot in the face.  :why_so_serious:

IN all honesty, I may respawn simply because I have 6k blood and nothing to show for it. If I get lucky enough to end up near Cherno, I could try to crazy run, but I've heard zombie aggro is a bit crazier in this latest hotfix.

Yeah, that's where we met up last night (and scored Sil a Lee and a pistol). Surly logged there. It's our standard meeting place after dying :)

Going to try and meet you guys tonight. I am near death, so will respawn and run for the castle.

Glad to see we are back in order. After my super 10 minute loot run death last night, I popped on this morning and did another 15 min Elektro run and came out with:

Lee Enfield, 60 rounds
M1911 2 clips
ALICE bag
5 Blood Bags
5 Morphine
AK-74 Kobra, no ammo

and ...wait for it...wait for it...

A Mountain Dew Can!


See ya tonight at Castle Awesome :) I might get greedy and go looking for AK ammo...but NAH. 60 Enfield rounds will work for now.

Nice find on the Dew.

After you guys logged, I cleaned out the tower at Castle Awesome, then checked the other building. Apparently, this put me far enough away from the tower to spawn items. So I managed to swap the revolver for an M1911.

I could stand to hit the supermarket in Stary (or the mil tents) for a new pack, I guess.

Best place I have found for packs is HV residentials. But you know I'm always up for a Stary run. Need some ammo anyway, and that's where the big boy packs spawn :)

FFS, be careful with the AKM. It got Sil and I killed on different occasions last night.

I have a lowly M16.

My goal is to find noise suppressed weapons and call it a day.

Dammit. I found a Bizon with one clip today and tossed it in favor of an FNFAL. Would've given you that if I'd known. I'm geared up to helihunting level, so I'll see if I spot anything I can give you guys. Need to offload some other gear first to make room in the ol' ALICE.

So how do I hook up with you guys?

PM Slayerik for the mumble server info.

Pass or fail I'm done with classes for a while after Sunday.  You guys better still be active after that.  :awesome_for_real:

Hooked up with Amarr today on a Stary run. We scored him an M4, a G17 and a Kobra. He in turn, saved my life. Pretty good run, all told.

Just drowned after dragging myself into my PBX. Never should have tried to swim with a broken leg.

However, I had TWO boats. And it was epic. ON A BOAT!

How do you spell "Set For Life"?

(http://i.imgur.com/ReHdtl.jpg) (http://imgur.com/ReHdt)
(click for full-size, it's easier to see the other one over the tail of the front one)

Oh, that's how.

Two heli crashes within 200 meters of each other. SERIOUSLY. Loot:

• 2x Bizon PP-19SD / 3 clips
• 1x FNFAL AN/PVS4, 2 clips
• 1x M14 AIM, 2 clips
• 1x DMR, 3 clips
• Box of medical supplies

 :drill:

I thought you were a goner when I emptied my clip in to that Z that was chomping on you, he didn't die for about 5 seconds. Can't believe how many clips I got for that Kobra, cheers for pointing them out.

It was a massacre of our peeps last night. We were dumb and took on some Zeds in the open near a heli crash. Sil and I got mowed down. Slack was still in the castle, and took one of our murderers down before realizing he had buddies.

I got me an AK-74 Kobra with some clips, from Balota. Made my way to mid-cherno and did some night looting. Decently geared, going to try to scoop some medical supplies before heading back north.

I almost was. Especially since after I came to, the system glitched and set me to auto run while I tried to bandage myself. Very disconcerting when you're down to about 2k blood.

Paging Dr. Wasteland: One man's crusade to heal DayZ's zombie victims (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/the-healing-touch-dr-wasteland-brings-hope-to-day-zs-grim-world/)

I love that. I would love to get good enough at this to do that but I'm terrible!

Maybe I'll get together with you guys this weekend, if I can make it somewhere near your vicinity without dying first.

Dying is fun! At least, it's fun when you (once again) do something against your better judgment (e.g. only wait 5 minutes before looting a freshly killed bandit) and then get killed. Well, I guess that's fun when you end up on the coast with TWO GODDAMN BOATS.

Did I mention that dying and finding a boat was infinitely more fun than unloading an entire STANAG mag into someone? A BOAT (http://youtu.be/avaSdC0QOUM).

Even better was taking the PBX (zodiac raft thing) and finding a "small boat" to use once the gas ran out on the PBX.

So far, my vehicle experience has been bicycles and boats, not sure which I love more yet.

All that said, I'm sure to be dead on the coast again tonight, so jump on and we can attempt to not die together.

Machinima Live stream (http://www.youtube.com/user/machinima?v=y2ArIFO-v60) with Rocket ongoing right now.

Ok punks, y'all had the night off...its time for a Castle Zub reunion. I'll be on the usual time...

(http://i.imgur.com/ZYwlg.jpg)

I AM Legend.

Fucking be there?

So I found a bike. People have done Queen. But I am pretty darn sure that nobody has done Floyd yet. How do I take video from FRAPS and overdub my music? To THE GOOGLE!

Ummm sorry bout last night guys. Slept 11 straight hours. Guess I needed to catch up from the late night Day-Z sessions....

Why not set up your mic to mirror your speaker output, double-tap capslock, and ride around blasting Floyd via the in-game VOIP?

Well shit. Now I am going to have to try that. Cherno needs more Syd.

You could be like The Piper at the Gates of Dawn(on a bike).

I did the "Radio Free Cherno" thing for a while back in 0.1.5.x. 'Twas fun. Got shot a lot.

Follow up to my previous post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdfBlyhSo28

For some reason FRAPS was only recording super-short segments. I'm going to have to change the default "video start/stop" key to something else -- it looks like F9 brings up that side menu, which may then kill the video when I hit backspace. Not really sure.

At any rate, here's my shitty Pink Floyd -- DayZ video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAeL7QCvEPU&feature=youtu.be).

In other news, Rocket is asking the forums  (http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/888-if-this-was-an-actual-game/)what they want in a standalone DayZ as far as sales model, etc. goes.

Your video has already been blocked by EMI :P

weak.  :heartbreak:

It's probably because I used the entire song. The video itself is me just kinda riding on the coast, then going into a city. It's pretty boring until the end where I pan back and there's a horde of zeds behind me right as the song gets quiet and you can hear the shrieks.

So probably no big loss that EMI pwned my copyright violation.

Hey fuckers, we're gettin' the band back together tonight...usual place and time. Probably gonna check out Devil's castle...maybe a military spawn or two...or search for vehicles/camps.

I'm up at Green Mountain right now. It's a confusing place. The map makes it look as if there's two enterable buildings, but I can only seem to get up in the radio tower. From the looks of things, there's generally an ATV and a car that spawns up here.

You need to get outta there, man. Bad shit goes down at Green Mountain.


The military spawn is actually not an enterable building, just the little alcove next to the pile of rotting bodies.

I think we're gonna try to make it to Zub for the meetup, but wherever works.

I keep seeing this "bad shit goes down at Green Mountain" thing, but never any specifics. Aside from the massive and quick to repop zombie spawn, I'm not sure what to make of it.

Famous last words!

Well, personally I was there clearing mad spawns and getting no loots...I was just turning to leave and SNAP. Broken leg. No zombies anywhere.

I, luckily, had some morphine and got the fuck outta there. From what I've heard, I got off easy. Just get outta there, man!

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/08/07/dayz-being-developed-as-a-standalone-game-this-is-the-end-of-the-beginning/


Hmm, having shelled out for ARMA II already, I can't see myself paying again.

Would be nice if they discounted ARMA II owners, but we know that won't happen!

The final price could be 5$ for all we know. Or free.

I linked Rocket's forum post up above somewhere in regards to the standalone.

The fact that one of the models he was considering was monthly sub with initial box cost was a bit  :uhrr:.

I can see that running servers can get a bit expensive, so either a standalone needs to have much larger servers or it needs to have some kind of tools to protect users from idiot admins running private servers.

In a perfect world, I wouldn't mind seeing people able to host their own sandboxes, with no ability to play the sandbox characters on "official" servers.

MineZ, A DayZ inspired Minecraft server (http://www.minez.net/)

So what is War-Z (http://thewarz.com/) then?  Just a rip-off attempt?  I never looked into it and thought maybe it was their stand alone game they were working on.

MMO ripoff I guess. Competition is good, though!

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=22408.0

Derp...not even on the second page.  :uhrr:

Tonight, I shall play this! I will not fall asleep early AGAIN.

Anyone else that is down, 10pm EST Castle Zub if you can get there! PM me for mumble info...

Apparently, there's also one out there called Class 3, although its site is pretty lacking in the info department.

And Survivarium from the STALKER people looks to have similar, but not zombie focused, ambience.

I expect the stand-alone to be Arma-3 based with basically the Arma/mod content removed so it just plays Day-Z. I also think it's going to prove Rocket is too erratic, hard-core  and that day-z was mostly him getting lucky.

Pre-development alpha doomcasting?

DayZ Standalone: What Went Wrong

The shiny rubbed off the FFA PVP game when you had to pay for it, then all the sheep left.

Tried this tonight, seemed kind of lame.  You spawn with a wooden sword, I walked up to the first zombie I saw and killed it in a couple hits.  It dropped chain shirt, leggings, boots, iron sword, another wooden sword, two bows, arrows, food, water, potions, bandages, and more.  You can't do any mining or anything and the first thing I killed dropped stuff to keep me alive for a while, didn't see much point to playing more.

I believe you killed a zombie, that was once a player.

Ah, that would explain it then.  I just got really, really lucky I guess.

DayZ designer "Rocket" talks about standalone: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/08/from-mod-to-game-how-dayz-will-evolve-as-a-standalone-release/

After watching some streams of this this mod I realized that, when played with voice chat, it's not really a PvP deathmatch, nor a military sim, and definitely not a zombie survival game; there is so much running around it's mainly a landscape simulator that provides a mostly low-intensity backdrop for friends that like to voice chat and text chat.

You obviously haven't played it.

Yeah.  Low intensity really isn't how I'd describe the game.  I mean, sure, I suppose you could find a unused bit of the map and just sit there for 3 hours and the game would be as described above, but then I'm not sure why you'd bother firing up the gamein the first place.

You obviously haven't watched people streaming the game.

I'd estimate 3% of play time is generally spent doing things other than running/driving and scanning the landscape. I'm not putting the game down or saying there are not tense moments, but in practice that's what it is for all the streamers I've watched, mainly a landscape simulator / chat backdrop. So that 3% makes it otherwise? If you say so OK, whatever.

Oh, I see. Because watching some jackass stream the game is the same as playing it.

Noted.

Also of notes, your estimates still mean fuckall.

Last night, all I did was run around. There was loads of tension.

I log in at the top of the tower at the top of Green Mountain. This is apparently a place rife with bad juju.

I manage to get back down the mountain, and finally sort of orient myself (ask everyone who plays, I have ZERO direction sense). What do I see? A tent. In the middle of a field. Just past an empty tree stand. I investigate the tree stand, nab some ammo. Against my better judgment, I hit the tent. Normally, this would be a perfect sniper trap, but my best piece of gear is a watch, so I'm not fearing death.

I loot an M4, a makarov, and a better pack. Now, I have a minor investment in not being shot to death. I am also horrible at navigating, and am getting very lost. I am now logged out between Nadezhino and Zub, but am unsure where the fuck I am.

This whole experience is nerve-wracking because it's very easy to blunder into some of the prime ambush spots closer to the coast. Let's also not forget that crossing an open field is an exercise in sphincter fortitude. (It's a pants-shitting moment at times.)

I rolled in to Stary today, which seems to be turning into the bean coast's older brother, where people with a little more sack than the noob shooters in the south come and try to start shit with more experienced players. Some fucktard emptied probably an entire mag shooting at me in the supermarket and missed entirely while I skedaddled out the back door. Partially my fault for not shooting him earlier when I saw him crawling by a bunch of zeds near the tents. The zeds up his ass after his shooting spree made him pay for his mistake though. I snuck back in later and looted his corpse with no remorse. Still, my live and let live attitude is gonna get me killed some day.

Emergent gameplay my ass though. All that's emerging is my sense that there's a bunch of shitheels out there with bad aim.

Pretty much a judgement on Rocket being the lead developer. I haven't seen so much self-delusion and gibberish since Richard Garriot in Tabula Rasa or Ghostcrawler in Cataclysm. He's convinced he's bottled lightning when he's really discovered that shit with zombies in it sells.

That said it's still a good investment for Bohemia Interactive I'd imagine. Having a more game oriented fringe series to get people into ARMA is a great idea and shouldn't cost that much since they have the tech and the people.

Yeah, I don't get enough into the "dev as celeb" mentality. That said, I did seek out and purchase an "Anyone In Cherno?" T-shirt after I saw Rocket giving a talk wearing one. However, that would have been my response had Facebook pushed an ad at me for the same. The week or two before, I impulse-bought a Vault Boy t-shirt based on a FB ad that pushed it at me.

I have a bad habit of buying t-shirts.

Rocket is very much in the early UO dev mindset in some ways. He's talking about bringing back the bandit skin stuff, but this time in a way that seems to work with player vs. zed kills. I forget the specifics, but he's basically working on the blue/red system.

To be honest, I hope he keeps working along those lines. I don't mind being PKed because someone is making the choice to play as a murderer. What I do mind is being PKed because people assume that everyone else is a fucking hacker out to ruin their day or that everyone else is a murderer because of those kids that play that way.

I've been killed in many ways, and only once by a douche who ghosted into the spot where I was. For the most part, I fuck up and die to zombies.

Rocket will fuck up the stand-alone version if he keeps players from talking to each other easily. There's been talk of radios in-game. There needs to be something. If I could loot a radio and then have to move about to get reception with others, that'd be rad. It would certainly add to the "run about" mechanic.

Holy shit, am I a mod fanboi now?

On tap tonight, vehicle hunt from Berezino!

(http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/ll177/edog420420/bereveh.jpg)

Day 3: HEY LOOK A JEEP

The night started like many before it, hopped on the Mumble server and tried to figure out where Silenus was. Turns out this time it wouldn't be Sil we were looking for, but his boy Ian. Ian was cricitally low on blood (under 2k) and was passing out when he attempted to walk. We knew he was close to a pond, and close to Nadezdhino, so we made our merry way down the hill from Castle Awesome (after I aggroed a couple five zeds with my loud ass rifle). I was feeling good about life. I was sporting a badass Ghillie suit, an M-14 rifle and a backup M-16 in my backpack with plenty of clips (coyote Backpack, biggest in game).

We neared the pond, and somehow (even with Sil able to view Ian's screen) it took us probably 5 minutes to find the near-dead Ian. I, being the man, had a blood bag in my pack, and finally was able to transfuse him back to full health. Success! Seemed we had me with some rifles, Sil with his tursty Winchester, and Ian with something or other that fired. We had a decent squad.

It was time to go find some better gear, so we decided to hit up a couple deer blinds on the way. We got to one after some solid compass navigating on my part (of course), so I decided to climb it and have a look. I had switched to my M-16 due to slightly less audible gunfire.

"VROOOOMMMMM" - As I am checking, a Jeep pulls up and stops in a nearby field. I just know they saw me. I tell Chris and Ian to get ready to open up on these fuckers, and my killer instinct kicks in and put the driver-side window in my iron sights and start popping off rounds, telling Sil and Ian to open up on these fuckers.  I only hear my gunfire, and rounds start rittling the jeep with holes. A lifeless body plops out of the passenger door, and the driver steps on the peddle. I frantically yell to them to open up on them, but it seems neither of them had a shot the whole time. The jeep disappears into the treeline, and I descend the ladder yelling to them to follow me to the powerlines to switch positions. Too late.

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT

I hear a lot of gunfire, Chris says he's bleeding bad but knows if he gets up to bandage it will seal his fate. He had to try, and it did. POP

Ian's already a corpse.

I run. I take cover for a couple minutes and switch over to my M-14, hoping to catch someone recovering stuff from the corpse in the middle of the field. The plan works, I see the dude running across the field. I fuckup bringing my gun up for a just a sec, he turns and pops me square in the forehead from a few hundred yards. I'm still not sure how he saw me so well in the Ghillie, but I imagine I fucked up.

Day 0: Kamenka

I do the Kamenka Gangbang.


Day 0: Cherno

YES! I loot a ton of good shit, get greedy on my way out and check the firestation. I put two Winchester slugs into some guy, and as I am looting him is friend comes down and introduces me to his double barrel. Greed kills in this game so much.


Day 0: Kamenka

I do the Kamenka Shuffle.


Day 0: Elektro

I find a Lee Enfield. It's looking good. I also find a crazed axe murderer that chased me down for like 3 minutes. I missed my shot, he landed his ax across my domepiece. Good times!

I'm aiming to be on tonight. I gotta figure out where the hell I am, so I'll probably get on around 7pm EST to see what I can do to get myself remotely near Zub.

We are still east coast over by berezino. With your navigation skills, I expect to see ya Sunday :) Also, Silenus put in his request for an official hive server, and he has the connection and machine to do it proper.

Found an AS50 today with a couple of mags. I was dicking around with it at the airfield, popping zombies for target practice.

A buddy of mine, who'd been inbound for 30 minutes after dying to a particularly unfortunate incapacitation at the hands of zombies, ran up. Right in front of the barrel as I was squeezing off a shot.

At least he took it in good humor, and learned a lesson about what not to do when someone is pointing a giant anti-tank rifle at something.

Just so long as I have the option to use 3rd person.  :awesome_for_real: I find that I'm a better navigator with 3rd person. I have no idea why.

Easier to pick out your relation to landmarks.

Did you loot both halves of him???  :awesome_for_real:

Still hoping one of these days we can roll out...my play time is stuck, though, at only after babies crash....

Dogs are in (http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/y0p2r/173_patch_spoiler/)?

Or is this some hoax?

That's been in the works for a bit ( not clicked your link though )

The rage when some asshole shoots your dog will be epic.

And you know there will be douchebags out there who will specifically go for dogs just to be assholes.

I dunno, dogs sound like they might quadruple the need for morphine.  :why_so_serious:

I never claimed to have played it. Also, my observation of how people were spending time in the game, that I clearly stated was based on streamers using voice chat, has noting to do with playing the game or not. Care to explain by what magic my observations of streamers are invalidated by not having played the game? - which is different from simply disagreeing with my assessment of time spent.


Haha, reread my post, explain the magic please.

Also, why the hostility?

OK look, maybe I should have phrased my post differently, like as a philisophical question or a speculation; At what point does an action game become a chat backdrop? If I'm spending the vast majority of time doing non-actiony things then at some point can't I consider that it really isn't an action game, regardless of what the box says?

When I wrote that initial post the top 10 streamers: 7 running through wilderness, 1 changing servers, 1 getting supplies in town, 1 riding atv down deserted road.

Right now: 6 running though wilderness, 1 helicopter traveling, 1 changing server, 1 running in town, 1 sniper. Pretty pretty much par for the course IMO, the DayZ streams are great for insomnia.

What they're getting at is that watching someone play a full unedited session of DayZ is like watching someone play an MMO while they're leveling: it looks really really boring to the outside observer because the outside observer isn't experiencing the same internal thought processes that the actual player is that keeps the player interested and... well... playing. The constant tension and having to stay mentally aware and alert while running through a dark forest or a town where gunshots or deaths were reported only minutes before, or slowly weaving your way through a field of zombies, are all things that're extremely difficult to communicate to someone just watching; even just thinking to yourself about what your next steps are and how you need to go about preparing for them can easily fill "downtime" during safe runs.

I've never played DayZ and even I  get it.

Well put. And hey guys, we got an ATV!  It actually rides two as well...more to come. If you see engine parts, grab em for us :)

No hostility, none at all. Just telling you that before you decide a game is whatever it is, based solely on the streams of a bunch of jackasses playing it, you should actually play it.

Koro put it quite well, if you haven't played it, don't tell us what your opinion of it is.

You need to buy the game to work out why you should not have bought the game.

That said, there's not much point looking getting into the game until the details on the stand-alone solidify. Buying Arma-II for a very early alpha mod likely to be a development dead end doesn't make too much sense.

Sometimes it's about being there. There is no guarantee that they will be able to replicate the feel this game has created. I'm enjoying the ride.

Thats' fine, and so is telling other people what you think of it (it doesn't look like it's for me). OTOH< i'm not going to tell the people playing what they should think of it, and it would take a special level of autism to not be able to empathise a little with the people playing and understand that what koro wrote is underpinning the user experience.

Last nights adventures started with me logging in to see just me on the voice chat at 10 EST so I figured I was going to be solo. I had ventured a little north of Berezino, the local of the previous nights escapades, to refill water bottles at Willow Lake. After doing so I figured I would head south back to Berezino in case people started logging in. I had climbed down from this rocky area surrounding the lake but a tree at the bottom of it that was wedged between 2 large rocks prevented me from doing so. The only course left was to climb back up the steep hill, but at the very top it was too steep and i was stalled. I tried to scoot left and right a bit and ended up losing my footing and slipped all the way back down to the tree, which broken bones and killed me instantly.
 
Fortune smiled upon me after such a cruel death and I was respawned for the first and only time so far at Solnichniy, so it was a short run north up the eastern shoreline to reclaim my hard faught, and some times easily lent to me by Slayerik, gear. This went down without eventuality, then I continued my intended hike to the south. No sooner than 5 minutes goes by and Slayerik gets on the voice chat. We discuss a meeting point at the military spawn at Berezino. Soon after that Darken logs on. Slayerik and I move out to find him at a Deerblind near what he thought was Dubrovka. When we arrived and didnt see him, we moved back east to what we assumed was the correct Deerblind. We find Darken pulling a Zeke Train up the west side of Berezino and assist him with such matters. After a few relogs to cure the graphics issues near military spawns, we raid the military near Berezino. Once again the lackluster loot of this particular military is found to be annoying. So on a whim Slayerik elects a move back toward starry, so we all 3 move out toward the west. Slayerik loves him some Deerblinds so we made an awesome tour of them all the way thru. We hit Novy on its eastern side and circumvent to the north, arriving at the famed Stary military spawn in our favorite spot in the treeline just north of it. I had already voiced my "bad feeling about this" in the form of mentioning the 100 fold increase in chances to see another survivor / bandit in this area. Slayerik says "we just have to be ready then". HOOAH.
 
We proceed to the military camp and it is seriously putting out like fucking prom date. Slayerik scores a coyote bag, M16 w/6 clips, MP5. I find plenty of AK ammo, we find another AK for Darken I think. It was definitely a zombie apocolypse Christmas event. Slayerik takes a few shots at encroaching Zekes with the new weapon and we remark at how loud the report is. Darken mentions he is on the other end of the camp arranging things in his inventory. Im in the northern line of tents about mid way down, and Slayerik is in the southern line of tents on the eastern end.

Several VERY LOUD M14 shots ring out, from what I can hear as coming from the direction which we had just come, in the tree line immediately north. Slayerik shouts out "SOMEONE'S SHOOTING AT ME, IM HIT". I crouch and back up into my tent. One more volley is shot towards Slayeriks tent and I can definitely make out the direction mentioned previously, I report this condition. Slayerik says "SHIT" and comes running out of the tent hes in to go across to my line of tents, like 2 down from me. The assailant fires another bunch of rounds at this tent. Then he starts walking down towards us, I can hear his footfalls coming closer so I report in voice chat, "Hes walking up behind us!" At this point I decide to crouch walk out of my tent and break left in an attempt draw fire away from Slayerik. About 2 seconds later Slayerik reports his death. I take another left around the back side of the tent and behold our bandit opponent, and a train of 12-15 zekes, which at first I thought were other bandits. I immediately start shooting in this direction. The bandit, who was still looking perpendicular to the tent line towards Slayerik, didnt even see the 3 bullets that hit him upper body from the side. 3 of the zekes also drop. Darken opens fire from the other direction, splitting up the zeke train. I break for the bushes toward the east, with 2 zekes in tow. Once dispatched I proceeded back to the north scanning the treeline for this bandit's friends. Darken returns to loot the bandit corpse while I cover from up high after waiting a sufficient amount of time to conclude he was operating on his own. Darken grabs the M14, I took his M9 SD. We fall back to a position well up in the trees with a vantage point on the camp still, and wait for Slayerik to hike it back. After 4 or 5 long-trek spawn location suicides, he decides to call it a night. Darken and I log hiding in the trees north of Stary.

Luckily it was me who died, cause I'm already completely re-geared and up there waiting for tonight's adventure ;) Sil laid that fucker out. Had I been smart, I mighta lived. He got the drop on me though, I was leaned over, looting, when I got doe popped. The bullet broke my leg and put me into shock. I had the wherewithall (sp) to shoot up the morphine and pop the painkillers, I shoulda just waited for him to have to search the tent and open up some fully auto m16 on his ass.

Instead I made a run for it to another set of tents where I was finished off. He got greedy, and Sil made him dead. The bandit didn't take the time to observe well enough, got a boner on an open shot at me, and paid the price. I think we both learned lessons that night.

On a side note, I'm an amazing navigator in this game. When I'm not high that is, ole Darken knows this.

How's the server coming along? I've been afraid to find cool vehicles since they don't cross servers.

Waiting for approval on a new request. Still, log on and join us. We are currently at Stary. Probably gonna try a vehicle run tonight....or if you log on a NW airfield run :)

Pretty sure I am coastal. Will do my best to get north with no delay.

I've played it a while ago and I don't see the appeal. It's like playing EVE on your own somewhere in nullsec.

Until you find a satchel charge, plant it in the supermarket at Elektro, and then sit in a nearby bush, giggling uncontrollably when three survivors rush into the store to grab an ALICE pack.

Turns out groceries will still spawn in a smoking crater, though!

And don't be anywhere near the fucker when the whole building decides to respawn.

Going to be playing this tonight if anyone is down....10pm EST. If you haven't rolled with us yet, PM me for voice server info.

I will do my best. I'm still catching up from being on vacation.

I got thrown back to the coast near Cherno. If I can get back up, I'll be there for a bit.

Last night soured me a bit. New lesson. You hear a sniper, just run and zig zag and RUN. Fuck thermal scopes. And fuck Stary Sobor. And fuck Kansas.

We shoulda bailed when we saw the chopper crash. I just knew it was trouble.

For the first time in my life, Comcast saved me. Surly and silenus got waxed by super sniper dude(s?) and I lost connection, otherwise I'm sure he woulda got me too. I felt bad as we haven't hung out with surly in a while, and whenever we do shit gets hairy some way or another. But I guess that's the game. I can only just survive for so long, I must find a way to danger!

Anyone tried the Lingor Island map? Looks like a TON of military spawns, and is a bit smaller. Might be interesting...

http://www.dayzwiki.com/wiki/Lingor_Island

http://map.dayzlingor.de/

I haven't because I'm too lazy to kludge out how to install and connect to servers running that map, etc.

Gentlemen, please welcome DayZ server ID US 2814.

Silenus finally got approved and it should be up tonight. Not sure on time zone yet...maybe GMT +11

Slack, you still play at all? Haven't seen you in ages. Surly, I keep missing you on Mumble. Hop on and help us grab a vehicle or two :)

I haven't played in ages. Had a vacation. Then had to catch up on work after the vacation. Now that school's back in session, I may be having more time to play. I haven't even used the Xbox for anything more than video streaming in the last week or two. It's kind of sucked, actually.

Now that you guys have a server, I'm all in for setting up some kind of semi-perm location for tents, etc. That big island off the coast would be ideal, in particular if we can nab a boat that actually has cargo  capacity.

http://db.dayzwiki.com/map/chernarus

Nice Sat Map with loot tables.

I am going to attempt to play again tonight -- hopefully my mysteriously slow running will have been cured by the magic of logging out.

In other news, I will probably discover a vehicle that needs an engine and a fuel tank the moment that I log in.

I passed out and didn't play last night, but silenus said the server was at 47/50 slots  :ye_gods:

Also, bug wiped me out and lost all that incredible bandit loot. Got an AK with some clips, a pistol and an ALICE again. So things aren't THAT bad.

Youtube: dayz slow running bug......guess you aren't the only one....

http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/86500-what-do-you-do-when-you-hit-endgame-status/page__st__40

Hey Surly, our new friend Cherno Journo posted a screenshot of ya!

Wonder if he'll post our interview on Youtube.....

Cool. I'm stuck up in the NW airfield at the moment, broken leg from a zed, bleeding because of a door hitting me and out of bandages and morphine. I log in periodically to see if any bandages spawn.

Wow, Cherno Journal has a very cool endgame. Please post the youtube link when it goes up?

(http://v.cdn.cad-comic.com/comics/cad-20120905-5a474.png)

Anyone that's still playing, we should have a pretty big crew tonight....hit me up.

That dayzmod.com site gets blocked for malware for me, just in case anyone paranoid about such things was thinking of clicking on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVLCGwAQvro&feature=youtu.be

Our interview is finally up!!!

Neat idea.... poor execution. And fix your mic!

"Let me tell you about my second Chernarus murder." *BANG*    :awesome_for_real:

Surly's first murder(s) had that epic touch, though, that "I shot some fool on a motorbike" didn't quite reach.  :grin:

Zero Punctuation on DayZ. He pretty much nails it, although I've never tried Minecraft, so maybe the ability to dig a hole is a vast improvement.

Here (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/6276-DayZ).

Hey Slayerik, is your server still going?

By the way, tonight I was just randomly strolling on the UK 01 server with a brand new character (female) and after some running I stumbled on three guys with camo suits and automatic rifles, and the first and pretty much thing they told me (in voice chat) has been "Suck my dick or die. Kneel and blow me. It's cool, everyone else had to do it. You'll love it. Then you can be part of the gang". After some reluctance and buying time, they went for a "Nah, it's ok we were just kidding, here... get this stuff you'll need it.." and handed me a backpack full of goods. Needless to say, the second I start equipping the stuff they executed me.

Fun times.

I was wondering when full on gang rape was going to be making it into PVP. Now I know.

We killed the server, rampant hacking/scripting/crap.

Found a new server community we have been successfully playing for maybe a week - http://survivedayz.com/

No signs of hacking, scripting, duping yet! You have to get whitelisted to join...but it's very easy to do. Surly, we miss ya :P

hawt. a/s/l ?  :awesome_for_real:

I might take you up on that offer Slayerik if I can find some free time.

Also, I keep getting "teleported" in fron of some guys that kill me. Is that a hack? I mean, I am doing my thing all alone and a second later I am somewhere else looking down the barrel of three guns. It looks like a cheatjob to me, but you never know about "features".

Total hack/script job, probably happened to me a few times total in like 3 months of playing. One of the many that has made us search for a better answer. So far, we have had a very positive experience at the SDZ servers. Hell, I even bumped into two guys in Elektro last night and we didn't even gun each other down. I saw the one dude only had a hatchet, and the other guy didn't seem to want to dance so I went on my merry way!

I'll try to join you guys again soon. The last massive hackfest sort of left me a bit cold. Cold to the point that even Lingor wasn't making shit better. A few more rounds of PS2 pissing me off and I'll try again.

As much as I hate Rhinocrunch, the words about Day Z standalone from Rocket's second-in-command Matt Lightfoot (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsVAEdwxZRk&feature=channel&list=UL) are pretty interesting.

EDIT: For example, it's going to be released before Christmas.

Still no hacking on these whitelisted servers that we have seen.

Ran into Cherno Journo in Elektro again, we ran around killing people that would take shots at our group... or basically surrounding them and forcing them to drop their guns.  Eventually it was down to me and Cherno, and got popped in the Firehouse during a transfusion. Had a blast, though. Think we may be playing our usual time, if you get bored hop on our mumble.

Looks like they have been focusing on the standalone interiors.

Not ground breaking or anything, but its good to know they are addressing this.

An update about DayZ standalone version:

http://dayzdev.tumblr.com/post/39933141266/where-is-the-standalone-release-i-suppose-i


Talking about the Mod, the latest version  is 1.7.4.4, released back on Nov 21st. Here's the changelog archive:

http://www.dayzwiki.com/wiki/Changelog