All Articles: DayZ

Dean Hall, the game designer from New Zealand who brought us the ArmA II mod DayZ, told Eurogamer he will be stepping down as the leader on the game. He plans to return home to New Zealand and create a game studio there, where he will “keep trying to create that elusive, perfect multiplayer game.” He knows the process won’t be overnight, so his people are going to “start it cooking” now.

It doesn’t hurt that Hall already has five ideas for games – three that are already written, and two that are rough. “‘A lot of them have similar DNA [to DayZ],’ he said, because he’s ‘fascinated’ by multiplayer games and because he’s ‘very interested’ in survival games.” But with DayZ, he feels like it’s “kind of like cooking in someone else’s kitchen: I don’t want to be constantly telling Bohemia that this is how I do it and this is the way we do it.” He’s not going to screw them over, though:

Much can change in a year, of course. Is Hall’s mind set? “Oh, it’s set. Definitely,” he nodded. But he won’t leave DayZ in the lurch – won’t leave at a crucial time. “I would extend my involvement here as long as Bohemia wanted – needed – me,” he stressed. In other words, there’s flexibility.

Check out the full interview over at Eurogamer.

After an Everest ascent and multiple development delays, Dean “Rocket” Hall’s standalone version of DayZ is now available through Steam. But there’s a catch, the game is still in the alpha stage and has been released through the online storefront’s Early Access program.

The Early Access version of DayZ has been priced at $29.99 and Hall estimates that the game will reach the beta stage in about a year. In the alpha version, players will have access to 40-player online play, customizable weapons and clothing, and a 230 sq. km game map known as “Chernarus.” Hall has big plans for DayZ and, as development on the Early Access version continues, he and his team at Bohemia Interactive plan to add drivable vehicles, a wide variety of native animal life, player-constructed buildings, upgraded graphics, and mod support.

But all of these additions will take time and Bohemia has cautioned: “DayZ Early Access is your chance to experience DayZ as it evolves throughout its development process. Be aware that our Early Access offer is a representation of our core pillars, and the framework we have created around them. It is a work in progress and therefore contains a variety of bugs. We strongly advise you not to buy and play the game at this stage unless you clearly understand what Early Access means and are interested in participating in the ongoing development cycle.”

You can get a taste of the Early Access version by viewing the “Launch Trailer” at the top of this post.

Project Leader Dean Hall and his team at Bohemia Interactive missed their planned 2012 release date for the standalone edition of DayZ. But they’ve got a good excuse. Hall’s latest development update has revealed that Bohemia has used the extra time to rebuild the game engine and “[make DayZ] the game […] we all dreamed it could be.”

Besides changes to the game engine and the user interface, Hall’s main focus has been on overhauling the inventory system. From the sounds of it, this new system could change the way we look at surviving the post-apocalyptic landscape of your average zombie game:

You scavenge for items now, as individual parts, picking up pieces rather than piles, looking for cans on shelves or under beds. The new system opens the door for durability of items, disease tracking (cholera lingering on clothes a player wears…), batteries, addon components, and much more. If you shoot a player in the head to take his night vision, you will damage the night vision. The changes to this inventory system are huge.

Hall has also revealed that Bohemia is planning an internal test of DayZ and that we can expect a new release date only after any issues discovered during the test are fixed.

The DayZ creators have been hard at work building their standalone game, and have just released the first screenshots from it. The shots are from in-progress work, “with only basic texture work and initial lighting passes.”

These buildings were made in the original ArmA 2 game with no thought about interiors, and the DayZ creators are going in and giving each building guts, to give the players more opportunities for scavenging for much-needed items. As it says on their development blog,

“The village I used to take the screenshot in now has all its buildings enterable, including the sheds. Most focus has so far been on the buildings that are situated outside of the center, but focus now is turning to doing interiors for the city buildings. This is complicated by our desire to dramatically increase performance, and given the scene complexity inside cities we need to balance this with the desire to increase building scavenging opportunities inside the cities.”

Check out the full post, as well as more screenshots, at the DayZ blog.