DAY Z : Mod for ARMA II (Zombie Apocalypse Survivalist FPS/RPG)
polycounter lvl 18
So I stumbled on this mod this morning called Day Z. It runs off of ARMA II with the Operation Arrowhead Expansion. You can buy the two as ARMA II: Combined Operations off of STEAM for $29.99 USD currently or if you have ARMA II you can buy Operation Arrowhead for $19.99. You need that and then just download the free mod files from the Day Z website, www.dayzmod.com
The way it works is you get spawned into the world as a survivalist during the zombie apocalypse. The world is persistent, so anything you do effectively remains once you log out. There is permanent death, so if you mess up and die you don't just respawn with all of the gear/weapons and loot you acquired during play. Hopefully you were in a group and somebody was kind enough or even able to get your stuff back to give to you later on...if you find them again. The night time game play can be pretty intense. You use road flares, flashlights and NVG to hopefully not get swarmed from the dark. Just know though that if you use flares or lights or glowsticks even that you also draw attention from other players in the game, not just zombies. I've now see players grouping up and acting as bandits robbing single players at gunpoint of their gear. I've seen lone wolf players setting up ambush points with sniper fire in small towns against other players. I've seen groups that took over small towns or buildings and using them as a base of operations for surviving. It is really interesting to see the social aspects of it play out. You go thru houses, buildings, industrial structures looking for weapons/ammo/food/gear. It is definitely a fun mod and they keep adding servers frequently. I'll be playing off of Dallas servers mostly. There are a ton of good Youtube videos up showing people playing as groups using team speak and skype. Definitely seems to pay off to use these when playing as a group.
The way it works is you get spawned into the world as a survivalist during the zombie apocalypse. The world is persistent, so anything you do effectively remains once you log out. There is permanent death, so if you mess up and die you don't just respawn with all of the gear/weapons and loot you acquired during play. Hopefully you were in a group and somebody was kind enough or even able to get your stuff back to give to you later on...if you find them again. The night time game play can be pretty intense. You use road flares, flashlights and NVG to hopefully not get swarmed from the dark. Just know though that if you use flares or lights or glowsticks even that you also draw attention from other players in the game, not just zombies. I've now see players grouping up and acting as bandits robbing single players at gunpoint of their gear. I've seen lone wolf players setting up ambush points with sniper fire in small towns against other players. I've seen groups that took over small towns or buildings and using them as a base of operations for surviving. It is really interesting to see the social aspects of it play out. You go thru houses, buildings, industrial structures looking for weapons/ammo/food/gear. It is definitely a fun mod and they keep adding servers frequently. I'll be playing off of Dallas servers mostly. There are a ton of good Youtube videos up showing people playing as groups using team speak and skype. Definitely seems to pay off to use these when playing as a group.
Replies
been looking for a new online fix lately.
do people more often then not just shoot first and ask questions later, or are they keen to team up in random encounters?
Play with a group of friends, all from SA, did some damage on a US server the one night, took one of the castles, held it, gathered some loot, and left again.
Also, some great weapons to be found at the NE airfield, but often bandits around there (I myself was a bandit, then i got killed)
I jump around, between the EU servers, and the US servers, depending on whether it's day or night, and which i feel like playing int. Username burga, if ever you guys see me online - just burga, and that spelling, there is another guy playing using the name burgerlol
whats the overall objective? from what i gather it's to get to an airfield somewhere in the north, or just survive as long as possible?
i dont have a copy of arma, but i'm really thinking about picking it up if there's some decent replay.
Next steam sale if this is a deal I'll be grabbing it for sure.
It's good to see that this mod put ARMA back onto the top sellers list on steam.
I've been in the server menus for hours now...
First thing is are you installing it properly?
http://www.armafiles.info/dayz/
All of those files are to be extracted, then create a folder called:
@dayz, and inside that folder a another folder called: "addons" all lower case. Copy all the files extracted from the .rars, and put them into the addons folder.
Put the @dayz folder inside your arma directory, create a shortcut, and add the modfolder to the shortcuts pathline, so
mod="@dayz" at the end of it. There are other methods of loading the mod, you could download a launcher, and tick the @dayz modfolder, you could create a batch file(what i use - as i run a number of other mods(separate batch file), and batch file are easier for me to make changes to etc, gives me more control).
Don't run any mods in addition to dayz, ensure that you're only running the latest version of the game (some servers are using the beta Arma 2 update) and that you haven't installed any mods, by putting them into the addons folder, best method is using a modfolder. e.g. @modname.
I even more hope that Valve gets it and makes it into a Left 4 Dead 3 or something. I just want to see it getting the proper attention instead of staying as a mod.
[ame="
Also night time, bloody hell.
Yeah same thought as well. I love how the people present their dayZ videos in youtube like some kind of diary/short story. I love this one especially the moment they got zerged by zombies
Pretty intense even if I'm just watching it.
-Do I need to set up my controls/video settings in ArmaII first or can I just download this on Steam and put the mod on right away?
Then again, I'm not sure how much I trust any of you gentlemen. I guess this will let me know for sure.
Most likely not, their architecture relies on extra systems and databases beyond their servers that keep track over characters so that they're persistent over servers, I think people have approached and have been denied before.
Additionally, if anyone is into this kind of stuff, there's also cataclysm roguelike:
http://whalesdev.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
a singleplayer but very survival/scavenging/zombie-apocalyptic roguelike.
Thanks but I think it's on their side(server). Everyone in chat had the same problem. Managed to get into a server a while later but then it was dark in the game and I made something to upset the controls and my character sprinted/ran in the middle of a zombie pack... After that I decided I should start playing during the day.
You just reached through a series of fiber optic tubes, reached into my brain, and as a dark tendril that went from my skull all the way from my spinal cord to my heart and wrapped its filthy slimy tentacles around it, forcing me to open my wallet and buy everything ARMA due to this beautiful mod that has rendered me a poor excuse for a self-thinking human being.
So yeah...damn you, damn you to hell!
As for the night day cycle, it's all real time, so if you're in the US, and it's night, then it'll be night in the game, so to get around that, you can just join an EU server at night, and the US server during the day.
For the sprint forward, you probably pressed W twice, that is the key to sprint, double tapping W. Holding shift, or double tapping shift will toggle jog/walk.
Been playing Arma 2 online everyday for the last 3 years, so i know most of what there is to know.
+1 for a polycount server, would be sweet, must join you guys sometime.
@Paradan, the black of the night is a bit severe in this mod, they've tweaked it, so that it's darker at night that usual, they probably chose a certain month / day where there is no moon, and is just naturally dark. But i think they've edited it to be that dark with scripts.
Normally, when not running this mod, your eyes do adjust to the light around you, but it doesn't seem to be very prevalent in this mod. One way is to adjust the brightness and gamma on your screen at night, or join a server where it's daytime (just look at timezones, and figure out which country its daylight in, and join a server from that country).
I agree with a polycount server but then again I am reminded, Trust no one!
The surge in popularity has been very taxing on those central auth servers, so I'm hoping when more servers pop up, things will smooth out some. Sometimes I can join a server and get ingame within 1-2 minutes, while other times it's taken 30minutes to join. Kinda wonky. But, it's alpha.
Nighttime is SCARY AS HELL, FYI. you're tempted to use flares, flashlights or chemlights, but those act as beacons for evil bandit players, who just want to kill you and take your shit. Very intense moments for sure. I'm loving it.
It's not even possible to run a private server, running a server means running one for everyone.
And yes, big part of the game is the paranoia related to other players.
Spent 10 minutes trying to loot stuff from the players corpse and still don't quite understand how it works.
Also couldn't figure out how to chat
Any hints ? :c
Oh, and this game uses my windows login for ingame name. Any way to change it?
The UI is fine for me. It's not great, but it's certainly not horrible. The problem is that this mod adds more functionality to the inventory system, without really changing the way it looks to suit, which adds some confusion (the pack system, for instance) some mods (like ACE) do it really well.
In the menu, #'s of items on the left side is what's in the object you're searching. The # on the right is how many you have in your inventory. Click the arrow to the left to remove an item, click the right arrow to add it. Pretty straight forward.
It also makes meeting up with friends very difficult, at least until one of us finds a map
I want to print that out huge, hang it on my wall, and mark stuff off with red thumbtacks - TACTICAL!!
But I seriously hope (thanks to the forums announcement) that they go indie and make a separate game, because in it's current state, the game really requires patience, and patience isn't something I want to waste on grinding with 'technical issues'.
The lag sometimes is utterly impossible to work with when it comes to shooting, unless you backtrack and shoot a runner in the face, side way shooting doesn't seem to work. The jitterbugging of the characters also doesn't help, and the 'hacking' zombies where they literally pop out of houses is ridiculous to say the least.
This is made worse on how characters need a startup, but the zombies seem to go from 0-60 in under 1 second.
The AI is also very bad, sometimes you will be literally crawling, and the runners will spot you a mile ahead, while other times, you bump right into them and they don't even see you, not to mention, the sound of the screaming sometimes doesn't respect depth between you and objects. Being on top of a tower = zombie screaming right next to you when they're in the next village over, it doesn't make sense.
This is also made worse by the fact that sometimes a scream will attract zombies near by while other times, nothing happens, not to mention, crawling zombies don't even crawl, half of the time they 'flail' on the ground, making me waste precious ammo because I'm unsure if they're dead or not.
The clunky inventory also doesn't help, it not optimized for this mod clearly, ARMA2's inventory works well as it is, but a mod where sometimes your friends kite an enemy, and you need to sneak in to steal stuff and run away ends up me in dropping my weapon before I found out about the limit is silly to say the least. A simplified 'Take All' or Drag and Drop system with simple boxes and space area would have been enough.
The inventory system remind me of ME's system, where there was no sense or reason on how things are organized, this made the progress counter-productive to say the least.
The reward system is also very unbalanced, I can respect sometimes killing an entire hoarde of zombies only to find nothing in the building, that's how life is, but more times then not, if you see a bunch of zombies in a corner, you know there is an item around the corner, but here is where the system breaks down.
Stealthy players will never get compensated if they avoid battles, which goes against the basic idea of 'chance', to make things worse, you spend hours doing nothing, you get nothing in return including exploration reward. Also wasting all of your ammo on a hoarde, only to find a new weapon, which while good, only ends up being served as the 'next' checkpoint till the next weapon.
There isn't a sense of 'Should I keep weapon X or take Weapon Y' taking into account ammo amount, power, conditions, etc it comes down to 'Oh, I just wasted all of my ammo, look, another weapon, checkpoint please!', so I'm really not happy with this at all.
The night system is also silly to say the least, I understand night-time is dark, but it's pitch black during dusk or dawn times, before the sun goes down or up due to horizon blinding, not during midnight.
Even without the moon, there should a small amount of 'light' on which people can use to navigate.
Overall, the game is fun, but the amount of 'issues' which the Dev's don't seem to want to fix or cannot fix due to A2's limitation, I have to say, I'll pass up on this. I'll play it at a friends house, but I'm not willing to drop 30$ for a broken mod which brings in unfair issues at hand.
I saw a demo version of Operation Arrowhead, but I'm not gonna download it if it wont work. I will not justify spending 30 bucks on a mod, especially if I won't ever play the real game. War simulators are not my kind of game.
If the game could work on a demo, it would be awesome, then many of the issues at hand could be 'excused' on the account of being free.