Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Well everyone, DayZ has entered standalone alpha, YAAAAY!

For anyone who doesn't know what DayZ is, it originally started off as a zombie mod for Arma II. The mod was so great that it spawned a huge calling for a standalone game based on the mod, and the devs decided to go ahead with it. You're probably thinking "Another zombie game?". Trust me when I say this isn't like other zombie games. This game focuses primarily on survival, and PvP with others, the zombies serve as initial major threats when you first start off unarmed, and then turn into mere potential problems when big conflicts occur between players. Once you're armed, they're of little import. The setting is essentially a gigantic, gigantic open world where you just survive. That means finding food, drink, medicine, and not being eaten by zombies or hunted by other players. This game is not for the weak, though. When you die, you lose everything you have. Period. You respawn with zero kit except a t-shirt you can tear into bandages and a flashlight.

At the moment, it's a pretty stable version of the game, I haven't had a single major issue. There are a lot of features missing from the Arma mod that will likely be implemented at some point once they get it working with this new build. I'm particularly missing the sight and sound to enemy features - not that they're necessary, I actually prefer the practically zero UI we have right now.

Here's a story I have for some of you who may not be familiar with this game and want an idea of what it's like to play. It really is scary, atmospheric and visceral as you travel around the broken towns and small hamlets. It's late at night and it's pitch black with low visibility, I'm all alone and it's taken me about two hours to scrounge together a decent kit. I have found enough food and water to last me a good few hours of gameplay. I'm running along the road, and I see a girl, who runs up to me and says into the mic "Heeey! I'm about to die of thirst, can you pleeeease give me a drink?!", I say "Sure, one second", and as I pull up my menu, some a-hole runs out of nowhere and cuts me up with his axe. The girl stands over me and says "Thank you!" into the mic as they loot the hell outta my body. My jaw dropped, and I realized I can't trust anybody in this game.

Anything goes in DayZ. Are you one of the 180,000 (and counting) survivors?

I'm waiting until they fix the melee hit detection before I get it. Playing DayZ with fully functional zombies would also be a novel experience.

I played it extensively in the early days, I was off work for months due to an injury and I played DayZ for literally 8+ hours a day for about a month. The problem is that it gets a little samey after a while and the playerbase was becoming increasingly obnoxious so I simply stopped playing.

Playing with a large group and doing airfield and Stary raids is a fun gaming experience though.

I do find it interesting that DayZ has been consistently the highest selling game on Steam since its early access release, despite the Steam Chrismas sale.

I picked it up yesterday as something to play over my Christmas break from work. This is my first ever experience with Day Z. Currently rather enjoying myself, though my player to player interactions trying to make friends have so far resulted in them trying to take my stuff and me having to defend myself.
If anyone would like to play with me, and observe just how bad a noob I am, my steam username is the same as my Dakka forum name.

Did they license the Arma 2 engine or something?

It has been brought in house by Bohemia interactive (it was originally an ARMA 2 mod made by one of its developers) so there is no need to license the engine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Oshunai wrote:
I picked it up yesterday as something to play over my Christmas break from work. This is my first ever experience with Day Z. Currently rather enjoying myself, though my player to player interactions trying to make friends have so far resulted in them trying to take my stuff and me having to defend myself.
If anyone would like to play with me, and observe just how bad a noob I am, my steam username is the same as my Dakka forum name.

its always best to find a stable group to play with, there aren't that many people on here though so I suggest trying one of the larger PC gaming communities and joining them. Personally I used to play with the Rock Paper Shotgun community and I will undoubtably rejoin them once I start playing again.

Solo play is fun but you are limited to what you can do and raiding the really good loot sites is extremely difficult on your own, once player built structures are in the game there will be even more incentive to group up.

Think so, but its not a straight port of the engine, they've modified it somewhat. Some of the devs from ARMA are working on it too (considering how small the original mod's team was).

Currently I'm playing with only one friend, who also has a Chaos Space Marine army. I told him about possibly joining with others here on Dakka (he isn't a lurker here), and he said hell yeah.

Oshunai, I've sent you an invite to be on my friends list on Steam. He and I will be playing for most of this evening, so about 5 hours from this message's timestamp (not sure where your time zone is, heh).

We are pretty decked out right now, and I'm sure we have some stuff we can spare for you.

I'm pretty excited about this game, but I'm going to wait for a retail release before I try it. I love the concept of it, but have ruined previous games because I burned myself out by overplaying them in the beta/prerelease.

Once the basic gameplay is functional then the game should be fine, its main attraction is player interaction anyway.

I played the mod the week after its release and I went back to it for a look around a couple of months ago (after over a year of development) and it was much the same game with a bit of polish and some added features.

Basically there is no real need to wait for a release build (which will be a long way off as the beta is scheduled for next Christmas).

Oshunai and I have hooked up for some gaming nights in the near future. Anybody else wanna get in on this? This game is all about strength in numbers, we should totally form a Dakka clan, we already have three people, join us, folks!

We will be playing tonight, shortly. If there are any folks who want to give it a spin with some seasoned players, PM me or drop a message here, we can sort out info. Don't be intimidated by the unique concept of this game, once you get the hang of it, you'll love it.

The fact that it has entered alpha stage is not enough to get exited. Its gonna take another few months for the game to be finished.

Someone got it for me for Christmas, so I started playing it briefly tonight. It seems pretty nice in the hour or so I explored it for.