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Day Z, a zombie survival mod for ARMA2

tofupunk

Grizzled Veteran
Nov 2, 2010
457
187
Sweden
http://dayzmod.com/

I just got this running and played a couple of hours, and besides some ARMA2 engine shenanigans it has been one of the most immersive multiplayer experiences I've had so far.

You basically spawn on chernarus with a revolver, some food, water and flares. There are no objectives except surviving. You have to eat and drink, so you have to scavenge.

There is a 24 hour day/night cycle. Zombies react to sound, movement, and light in the dark, so you have to chose if you want to move in the dark, with less vision but more stealth(unless you pop a flare) or in broad sunlight when the zombies are more likely to see you.

Zombies are not your only enemies. Some players want your guns, ammo or food, so every encounter with other players is really tense. All player interaction is done through 3D VOIP.

It's still very early and has some bugs, but it's still a great experience.

TL;DR version:

Zombie mod for arma, good stuff, motion picture:

The Days Ahead - Part 1 - Welcome to New Chernarus - YouTube
 
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Luv it but finding decent people IE not bandits is near impossible so far or even just finding people full stop. OHH BTW if you enter a big town or city you will get alot of good gear but you need to crouch walk ill say again CROUCH WALK if you don't you will have 20 zombies chasing you! :).

Im a bandit now because two dudes started shooting at me when I went up onto the big building in Cherno the one that towers above everything else in Cherno, the first guy was a bandit I killed him because he opened up on me and then his mate done the same but he was a survivor so now because of that idiot im a bandit 8(.

Bandits btw have desert (Flecktarn I think) on and are wearing full head scarfs BUT not all bandits are bad just remember that if you come across a slightly drunk Scotmans on voip with a head scarf.....

28 Weeks Later - 28 Days Later Theme Song - In A Heartbeat by John Murphy - YouTube
 
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It needs combined ops, so both.

I played one of the early alphas last week for 4 hours (the has been releasing several versions daily). It's actually one of the best uses of ArmA 2 engine ever.

So basically the game gives you a pistol, some food and dumps you to the shore of Chernarus. No compass, no maps, no GPS, no night vision. You're supposed to find your way from there, either going alone or finding a group. Other gamers are not always friendly though, most of them will kill you straight away for your equipment.

I was lucky for my first two spawns, as the other players accepted me into their groups and sharing their food with me. In my third spawn I found some good loot, and while picking that up someone came and put the gun to my neck. I was furious. That's when it clicked for me, that this is not one of those games that you have to work with other players. Other players are dangerous. Now everybody basically shouts "ARE YOU FRIENDLY?" before someone ever comes 50m from them. If you keep coming you'll be shot.

You have to eat food and drink water with regular intervals, so it makes you cautious taking off into the forests. There are some great loot in the inner cities because nobody ever goes there. You need to have a map of Chernarus handy though, because in-game maps are very rare. There are no vehicles, and if you ever find one, you have to repair it and it's parts are again, rare. This mod made me learn Chernarus step by step, it's incredible.

Zombies though, are the weakest part of this mod. They have those weird pathing of ArmA AI, so when they run at you they come zig-zagging and that makes them very hard to shoot. Creators of the mod gave them a huge speed bonus, so you can't outrun them. Because of ArmA's stupid limitations they can only shoot you while you're still, so basically you can just run throught the map and they can't reach you. They spawn at random intervals literally ON TOP of you, and when it happens, you can't get away. You can't hide, you can't run.

One of the other good features is that you can just leave the server, and join a different server the other day, and you'll pick up where you left off. Servers fetch your equipment and location data from a master server, so it's kind of a small scale MMO.

So I think this mod is a nice "Wild West" mod with zombies thrown in for good measure. It's not scary, but it's a good "PvP" experiment. Now if only "Micro AI" was as micro as advertised, so you could get the zombies behave like they should . . .
 
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Yeah the ARMA2 engine is the mods biggest curse and blessing at the same time. The sheer size of the map, especially when vehicles are extremely rare, is just mind blowing. The lighting and day/night cycle are spot on. On the other hand AI pathing and other stupid ARMA2 legacies can be really annoying.

Yesterday I accidentally picked up a M1911 without any ammo and dropped my revolver in a small hut, and it just disappeared. Now I'm stuck with a loud *** enfield in the middle of cherno. We'll see if I'll make it out alive.

Dropping my revolver led to a fun thing that happened later on. I raided the hospital in cherno, got a blood pack and a lot of meds. Also found a bandit sniping with a CZ550 on the roof. I didn't want to risk attracting all the zombies around the hospital with my enfield, so I sneaked behind him and grabbed all of his spare ammo and a flashlight from his backpack. Who knows, maybe I saved a couple of lives :D
 
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It is basically a game that provides the experience of Walking Dead the tv-series (and comics i suppose) best so far.

If u ever wanted to be in a zombie apocalypse scenario with huge area this is the mod to try. You can run for hours in woods and sneak in villages and shoot zombies and experience the thrill when u encounter other human players.

The mod is in alpha stage and about 1 week old and there is more players than in RO2 and i would bet over half or even if not more the Armaverse players are now out there surviving, shooting zombies, making survival groups, shooting other survivors, lost in the woods without a map and compass with just few bullets and still having fun. Heck a lot of ppl are buying Arma2 CO just for this single mod.

Don't get me wrong, the mod is bugged and u can't play always but when u can, u just can't stop. And all this just in an alpha stage mod. Amazing.

The mod requires Arma2 CO and balls...
 
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This has incredible potential. Just the premise of the game, multiplayer open world survival, has gold written all over it. I dunno, maybe a proper 'engine of the future' will be able to fully realise the ceiling this has. No pay to play however, I'm sure everyone agrees with that. MMO lite. One fully fleshed out main game, and then properly meaty expansion packs (cities, towns, general customizations etc). Oh, and of course the ability for the modders to add their goodies.

I prefer a more cerebral game, so the more scarce bullets are the better. Being able to build makeshift machines, traps, weapons, shelter, the ability to fix vehicles etc.. these all help the depth of the environment and gameplay so it isnt just about shooting everything. You've got to be able to give the players the ability to live like survivors to the furthest extent you can; this is what would make the game addictive and endlessly replayable. I'm also a fan of highly persistent shamblers as opposed to sprinting zombies, but whatever.

24-hour cycle, sweet. Needing to eat and rest, sweet. Human players as a totally unknown variable in the gameplay, sweet. Massive world to run around in, sweet. Persistent servers where the effects of the human players and AI on the environment remain persistent over time. If you move something, then that's where it will be until someone else comes and move it; if you dig a hole to hide in, that hole will be there.. that would be sweet (server owner having the ability to reset the map after all the structures have burned down :rolleyes:, people will do it, you know it). An overarching 'story' of sorts that is expressed to all of the survivors so as to lay out the scenario of their individual character and how he/she came to be in the world they inhabit. There's a ****load of things you could do.

Hell, you could go further than the zombies alone. It's roughly a month between full moons irl, so make it like every 5 nights in-game you get a full moon. Two werewolves populate the map during the full moon night and will disappear, if not killed, at morning. The werewolves can only be killed by silver; something you'd have to find or make yourself (arrowhead, bullet, silverware, jewlery etc). The wolves are hella fast and attack everything including zombies (which could be fun to watch), so sturdy shelter is a must on these nights. Blah blah blah, you could go anywhere with the basic premise of open world multiplayer survival. Though, the deeper you make the survival aspect the better imo; it can't just devolve into everybody carrying around massive weaponry. There's nothing to that. There needs to be things in the environment that are just too much for the humans to handle, whether that be large groups of zombies or tougher individual threats.. guns shouldnt be the 'solve everything' tool.

FPS - First Person Survival.
 
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This has incredible potential. Just the premise of the game, multiplayer open world survival, has gold written all over it. I dunno, maybe a proper 'engine of the future' will be able to fully realise the ceiling this has. No pay to play however, I'm sure everyone agrees with that. MMO lite. One fully fleshed out main game, and then properly meaty expansion packs (cities, towns, general customizations etc). Oh, and of course the ability for the modders to add their goodies.

I prefer a more cerebral game, so the more scarce bullets are the better. Being able to build makeshift machines, traps, weapons, shelter, the ability to fix vehicles etc.. these all help the depth of the environment and gameplay so it isnt just about shooting everything. You've got to be able to give the players the ability to live like survivors to the furthest extent you can; this is what would make the game addictive and endlessly replayable. I'm also a fan of highly persistent shamblers as opposed to sprinting zombies, but whatever.

24-hour cycle, sweet. Needing to eat and rest, sweet. Human players as a totally unknown variable in the gameplay, sweet. Massive world to run around in, sweet. Persistent servers where the effects of the human players and AI on the environment remain persistent over time. If you move something, then that's where it will be until someone else comes and move it; if you dig a hole to hide in, that hole will be there.. that would be sweet (server owner having the ability to reset the map after all the structures have burned down :rolleyes:, people will do it, you know it). An overarching 'story' of sorts that is expressed to all of the survivors so as to lay out the scenario of their individual character and how he/she came to be in the world they inhabit. There's a ****load of things you could do.

Hell, you could go further than the zombies alone. It's roughly a month between full moons irl, so make it like every 5 nights in-game you get a full moon. Two werewolves populate the map during the full moon night and will disappear, if not killed, at morning. The werewolves can only be killed by silver; something you'd have to find or make yourself (arrowhead, bullet, silverware, jewlery etc). The wolves are hella fast and attack everything including zombies (which could be fun to watch), so sturdy shelter is a must on these nights. Blah blah blah, you could go anywhere with the basic premise of open world multiplayer survival. Though, the deeper you make the survival aspect the better imo; it can't just devolve into everybody carrying around massive weaponry. There's nothing to that. There needs to be things in the environment that are just too much for the humans to handle, whether that be large groups of zombies or tougher individual threats.. guns shouldnt be the 'solve everything' tool.

FPS - First Person Survival.

I like the way you think! I would be in heaven with what you described..maybe this mod will develop into something along those lines :)

On a side note I was itching to purchase ARMAII just to try this mod but I'm a bit hesitent. The gameplay videos with the zombie movement just seems kinda wonky and I'm afraid it would kill the immersion. Especially how they are standing still one second and then accelerate to warp speed towards you at the drop of a dime...lol...Just looks bad.
 
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I didn't want to risk attracting all the zombies around the hospital with my enfield, so I sneaked behind him and grabbed all of his spare ammo and a flashlight from his backpack. Who knows, maybe I saved a couple of lives :D

There's a whole platoon of snipers, some of which are coordinating with each other, deliberately targeting human players. I talked to one out of game. He said that when he first introduced himself as a Russian, he was killed by Americans who assumed he was a griefer right off the bat, so then he and his friends took to griefing on purpose. :rolleyes: They also control the northern airfield and Krasnostav.

This game feels like a STALKER MMO at times, and I love how there are actual factions that stick together and war with each other amongst the Z-apocalypse.
 
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I played for about 7 hrs yesterday, non stop.

I trust nobody, I'm surviving on my own.

I have helped a few guys who were in deep shyte and then left them to cope, while I discreetly disappeared into the woods.

I happened to bump into a pair of survivors, who led me to a couple of bodies (that I assume) they killed.
I picked up a shotgun and some other essential items, compass/map and binoculars from the corpses.
When I asked if I could stick around with them, they refused and promptly disappeared into the night.

This mod brings out something in people who play it, I'm not sure what that may be but it is definatly speicial.

Recommended.

Ok, you have to deal with ArmA mechanics and the mod is in Alpha but "I can deal with that...
 
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After a few stupid deaths I managed to survive for a couple of days with the Winchester shotgun, which seems to me to be the best all around weapon as far as power and ammo availability are concerned. Was scavving in the city when I got randomly one **** killed. Pretty gutted about that, but that's the beauty of the game, you just don't know what to expect.
 
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Got matches and a knife, I'm going to hike up to the far northern path and become a myth-building crazy man in the woods who sneaks down to the airport every month to snipe people.

I got a compass a 45. cal and a sniper riffle, beanz meanz Heinz; a can of soda and I'm up hiking North.

I saved one guy from 300m with a nice head shot to a Z and disappeared into the woods...
"Go in peace young Stalker".

Lots of connection issues since yesterdays update but hey, it's an Alpha build.
 
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