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So I'm about a week or two late to this party but holy crap is Day Z fun (and terrifying!).

I've got about 9 hours into playing it this weekend and it has been amazing. I can't tell a story as well as the professionals so I would start by reading the three diaries the Jim Rossignol wrote on RPS if you want a taste...

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05 ... part-zero/
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05 ... -part-two/
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05 ... e-musings/

Extra credit interview with the mod's developer:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05 ... -of-day-z/

What I can say for myself is that the last three hours I've played were absolute gaming magic (and the first 6 weren't half bad either ), working with a couple friends to do nothing but survive was so intense. At one point I was nearly dead and parked myself prone under a pine tree for 45mins while they went off in search of a blood bag to heal me. I had the unique advantage of being able to walk over and watch their screens while they went on the mission of necessity. Of course I could have just let myself die but thats not how we wanted to play and it was all the more fun for it. After I was patched up we headed out again only to encounter a small town and some dead zombies that let us know someone had gotten there before us. We picked a perch in a tall building before we made contact and declared our good intentions. We met them and traded, helped them take out some zombies, and then suddenly I was shot in the back and all hell broke loose as my teammates tracked down the bandits that had attacked us unprovoked and then got revenge for my death. Completely unscripted and brutally compelling.

Honestly it can be downright stressful but its the game that many of you have always wanted to play - but no one had made it until now. It makes something like L4D look like a child's plaything and I have to say that having no previous knowledge about Arma II it seems the perfect engine to make a zombie survival simulation based on.

Oh god, and playing at night, yikes, just insane... The first game we played was last night and since the servers simulate real time by default it was literally pitch black - there were no survivors.

I can't believe the alpha version of the mod already offers so much, if you're not ready to bite yet then at least keep your eye on it. BTW, if you're looking to buy Arma II so you can install the mod check the top ten best sellers on Steam because this mod single handedly put it in the number one seller spot eariler last week.

...I have just barely, barely, scratched the surface... Persistent saves across servers, repairable vehicles, 200+ square kilometer map, 50+ players in a server, searching for supplies, hunting, so much win... I am still such a noob...

yea, im definitly getting this mod as soon as i have a few days off.

Really? Two weekends have passed and no one from TR has played Day Z yet?

Interesting. I'll have to look into Arma II's price, see if it's feasible to play this mod. It certainly sounds fun.

Edit: Hmmm, Arma2 is still 30$. Must pass.

I'm like Forge: Mighta given it a try, but I don't have Arma2. Maybe if the mod gets some more development I may look into it.

ArmA2 was like $15 recently as an Amazon download...

Edit: hmm, looks like they have increased the price very recently, probably because of all DayZ players...

Yeah, nothing says "hike the price" to a publisher like a spike in sales. Too bad that hike kills the spike most times.

Game publishing: The only industry that encourages a shorter 'long term view' than FOX TV programming.

JohnC wrote:

ArmA2 was like $15 recently as an Amazon download...

Edit: hmm, looks like they have increased the price very recently, probably because of all DayZ players...

The $15 WAS the sale price. A lot of people holding out for Arma II to go on sale but FWIW I think its worth it right now. Arma II is still in the top ten on Steam (#1 again right now) so a lot of people agree.

I still have games from the steam Xmas on standby, I must still pass.

I just bought ARMA II:CO and played Day Z for a few hours for the first time. It's an intense game and really challenging. After a few hours in most PC games nowadays I feel like I've practically mastered the game, but in Day Z I still feel like a helpless noob.

It reminds me a lot of STALKER actually, which is also one of my favorite games. The multiplayer and ruthless dog-eat-dog world makes it an even more daunting proposition than STALKER though. When you die in Day Z you lose all the loot, weapons, and equipment you've gathered (which you may have spent many hours gathering) and start back at square one on the coastline. This kind of brutal consequences may not appeal to some, but it's right up my alley. The map is absolutely massive too at 225km² (more than 5x the size of Skyrim, and you have to be a lot more cautious/slow when moving)

Obviously it's not terribly polished yet being an ALPHA, but there's no show-stopping bugs or anything. On that note, I heard one of the creators of DAY Z is actually from the Arma 3 team, and created Day Z as a side project. Considering it has an official developer working on it and the big sales numbers on Steam hopefully that will give them an incentive to keep developing it further.

No posts in nearly a year... No one else on TR playing this? I've been playing again lately and really enjoying it. Even if I'm pretty much going solo after Sheldmaus ditched me for more skilled companions. Right now I'm stuck way up north on the map with no matches so I just run around killing wild boars and eating raw bacon until my health is high enough to risk going back into more populated areas to search for loot. Sounds a little strange I know, but I still haven't had more fun in an FPS in, well, maybe ever...

Day Z was one of the main reasons I ditched my 5870s for my shiny new GTX 780 and whoa what an improvement! I've got everything maxed except for post processing which I intentionally turned off because if I wanted everything to look fuzzy I would just take my glasses off and not have to deal with the framerate penalty. Now I'm thinking about completing the upgrade by finally getting a decent set of surround sound headphones. I'm eyeing the Corsair Vengeance 1500s ASUS XONAR DGX & Audio Technica ATH-AD700 combo but since those are virtual surround I should probably see if my sound card can teach my current set any new tricks first...

But anyway, Day Z - surely someone else here has played it since the last post in this thread...?

drfish wrote:

No posts in nearly a year... No one else on TR playing this? I've been playing again lately and really enjoying it. Even if I'm pretty much going solo after Sheldmaus ditched me for more skilled companions. Right now I'm stuck way up north on the map with no matches so I just run around killing wild boars and eating raw bacon until my health is high enough to risk going back into more populated areas to search for loot. Sounds a little strange I know, but I still haven't had more fun in an FPS in, well, maybe ever...

Day Z was one of the main reasons I ditched my 5870s for my shiny new GTX 780 and whoa what an improvement! I've got everything maxed except for post processing which I intentionally turned off because if I wanted everything to look fuzzy I would just take my glasses off and not have to deal with the framerate penalty. Now I'm thinking about completing the upgrade by finally getting a decent set of surround sound headphones. I'm eyeing the Corsair Vengeance 1500s but since those are virtual surround I should probably see if my sound card can teach my current set any new tricks first...

But anyway, Day Z - surely someone else here has played it since the last post in this thread...?

I've eyed it a few times... but due to Steam sales and Humble Bundles I have so much on my plate to try over the next year.
I like the pure survival aspect but was worried there would be too many dicks in the game.

How's the single player on it?

That's a tricky question. My first reaction is to say nonexistent. However you can certainly play the game 99% PVE if you pick a server without many people on it. the tension of running into someone will always be there but the odds are pretty slim if there are only a few people roaming the map.

I don't play, but I like to watch some streams... Like (shameless plug!) http://www.twitch.tv/lirik

All this talk is making me think I should smuggle a machine into work and start up an unofficial tr dayz server. Anybody have any info? Free dedicated server available? Bandwidth/CPU/ram needs?

I've got an i5 2400 with 32GB of ram but no real GPU at work already, would just have to hook it up and set it up.

Well my goal of healing up on raw pork backfired, I know, who could have guessed? I caught a sickness and though I did find matches before I died I couldn't take advantage of them because I never found the antibiotics I needed to cure myself.

So I started anew, found myself on the east coast of the map, a rare treat. I quickly outfitted myself with the basics and soon after happened across a fully functional tractor! Sadly after a few Benny Hill moments with about a dozen zombies I accidentally bumped a tree too hard and BOOM it blows up and takes me out with it. That was an atypically short life for me, I usually play it really careful but I couldn't resist the allure of a farm vehicle and its zombie smashing prowess.



Then before I called it a day I started up one more go, this time I'm in the far west of the map in Kamenka. I head north on the main road after getting a ton of food and drinks right in town. I stop and loot Pavlovo and then Zelenogorsk but by that point I'm a little hurt because my only weapon has been my hatchet and I got in a little over my head with it. Luckily I found a double barreled shotgun in the last barn I found and with that I took off even further west and then north. The only thing I wanted was an animal to kill, cook, and consume. After 20 minutes or so I take out a cow (can't help but feel bad about it) and after a little work to hide I start a fire, cook it, eat and log out. I figure I'm north about as far as Vybor but further west. Might head for the northwest airfield next if I get really brave but it's not a great place for solo players - none of the major sites are really. This is a great online map BTW.

Forge wrote:

All this talk is making me think I should smuggle a machine into work and start up an unofficial tr dayz server. Anybody have any info? Free dedicated server available? Bandwidth/CPU/ram needs?

I've got an i5 2400 with 32GB of ram but no real GPU at work already, would just have to hook it up and set it up.

Take a look at official forums - you'll find all that info there.
http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/for ... r-general/

Well, I guess that ends that. That seems to be a very excessive amount of restriction for a mod, no real adminning, no reserved slots, no deviation from the "official" naming convention, can't even ban cheaters??? Sorry, but interest went from high to zero on reading that last part. I'd rather run a curated, passworded, private server and be "blacklisted (so what, the cheaters won't come??) Than follow those community rules, quote unquote.

Utter nonsense.

Forge wrote:

Well, I guess that ends that. That seems to be a very excessive amount of restriction for a mod, no real adminning, no reserved slots, no deviation from the "official" naming convention, can't even ban cheaters??? Sorry, but interest went from high to zero on reading that last part. I'd rather run a curated, passworded, private server and be "blacklisted (so what, the cheaters won't come??) Than follow those community rules, quote unquote.

Utter nonsense.

Have you looked at this post:
http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/top ... %2Bdummies
This way allows you to use all kind of custom **** and do proper administrating like kicking/banning people.

Thanks for the links, John. I have to ponder. I see the appeal of the fully hands-off stock experience, but I wouldn't tolerate some simian from the internet coming on and griefing all the TR people with aimbots/noclip/itemspawn/etc.

I'll do some thinking and some mission-statement-ing, and fire up my spare machines at work, see how possible it is.

Forge wrote:

Thanks for the links, John. I have to ponder. I see the appeal of the fully hands-off stock experience, but I wouldn't tolerate some simian from the internet coming on and griefing all the TR people with aimbots/noclip/itemspawn/etc.

I played Eve Online for years so I'm very familiar with how the GIFT applies to lose-your-stuff online games, and while Day Z sounds interesting I have no particular desire to play it unless/until private servers are more of a thing or there's a single player option. If memory serves there was something about ARMA 2 that I wasn't okay with, though I can't remember what it was.

If I run one, and it's still if, there will be no outright GIFT allowed. I think that's pretty much all I have to ponder. Hunting newbies is an accepted part of the game, but harassment doesn't have to be allowed. I just need to make a decision about where that line gets drawn.

I had the "I must run my own server bug" at first too. Bad. I wanted a nice place for just friends and I was PISSED about how Rocket mandated servers be managed. The problem with a private server full of awesome loot and no zombies where you build a character up and then take them to a public server is obvious but I just didn't see why it couldn't be setup so that a character didn't move from server to server if it was ever on a private server... Private server = locked character. Simple, right?

Now that there are other options I find that I don't really care anymore, at least not for the work involved. Honestly the game benefits from the unknown that strangers bring to the table. The best way to ruin your friendships on TR is probably to play Day Z against them. We couldn't all be protagonists... Better to team up on another server and fight the rest of the world (since even with a private hive server you couldn't reserve slots anyway)... Speaking of which a TR Teamspeak or Ventrilo server would be a nice thing to have if one doesn't already exist.

I suppose that's an idea too, just get voice chat going and gank any PKs we meet.