DayZ HQ - News

DayZ is In The Air

Jesse — 2013-06-09 04:56:05

Hello and welcome survivors! If it hasn't been obvious to you, we've been on a bit of a hiatus here at DayZ HQ. But things will be changing soon since we are just entering what I'd like to call the pre-season. For those of you that haven't been following DayZ news, we are in the middle of an important time in the Standalone's development. You see, Dean "Rocket" Hall, creator and lead developer for DayZ over at Bohemia Interactive, has alluded that the DayZ Standalone is on the precipice of open Alpha. I know what you are all thinking - ABOUT TIME! Now before we cash in our work sick days, let's take a second and look at the facts. Rocket has thus far only given vague timeframes regarding open Alpha and there still happens to be much speculation regarding a firm announcement date.

"We're going to review the situation in June," Hall says. "So there'll be no release between now and June. And we're quite hopeful that we'll go then. I know that people get really frustrated because they want to play, but I just think this is the best option."

With this information it was assumed that June would be the harbinger for Standalone, but from what we know of the Standalone, which isn't quite a lot. We can speculate that the Standalone Alpha will be here within the next six months. In an interview between Rocket and Twitch Streamer Bikeman, they tamped down a bit more on the release date. Rocket says himself within the next Six Months.

If you don't have two hours to spare, this serves as a great synopsis.

With everything stated up to this point, it's safe to say that DayZ pre-season is upon us. Just like in sports, everyone is preparing their skills for Standalone. Players are practicing their squad combat, their ability to gear up efficiently, and the very important skill of zombie evasion. Those of you that practice vile banditry ways are surely involved in mischievous shenanigans. All to prepare for the Standalone. If it's been awhile since you've visited Chernarus, now that it's "Pre-Season" you should jump on and get back in the groove. I don't know about you, but I personally wouldn't want to be rusty in this new dog-eat-dog world.

For those of you that may be slightly "tired" or "bored" with the current version of DayZ, I would recommend a separately developed version of DayZ called Breaking Point. This version of DayZ adds many new features and bug fixes to the game which will surely satisfy your hunger for a new Chernarus experience. Breaking Point includes dozens of new weapons, zombie sounds, towns, and much, much more. It can be quite terrifying at first, which is why I would highly recommend that you take a look. I'll talk more about Breaking Point in a future post.

New Screenshots - DayZ Standalone is Looking Good!

Fantikerz — 2012-10-20 02:49:41

Heads up! The team has just released another batch of standalone screenshots, continuing the theme of enterable buildings. These window overlays are fantastic!

Make the jump to see them!

New Standalone Screenshots

Fantikerz — 2012-10-15 15:47:39

The team has just released the first batch of in-progress screenshots, showcasing the structures in the game. They appear to have the same aesthetic as the current DayZ mod, which makes sense as the setting is still Chernarus.

Read the official post here.

What We Know About the Standalone

Fantikerz — 2012-08-13 11:59:40

Dean "Rocket" Hall did an AMA (ask me anything) on /r/dayz, and is being quite open about a lot of the planned DayZ standalone features. Below I'll be piecing together the confirmed* information in a concise format. I recommend reading the full AMA for context and extra tidbits of information.

Please remember that a lot of this information is paraphrased, and obviously nothing is set in stone. A lot of the AMA is casual discussion, so keep that in mind.

General Information

Target for release is by the end of the 2012 working year.
The release will be for the public alpha version, i.e. not the stable release.
The standalone will provide the dev team with absolute freedom, and they will utilize many aspects of the Real Virtuality engine, not limited to the ArmA 3 version. It will be their own branch of the engine.
Alpha will be heavily discounted, and the end product will never be a fully priced retail product. Rocket mentions that he can't picture a price over 25 euro (30 USD) for the final.
No pre-ordering, but there will be a premium/collector's edition available with swag like art prints and concept work.
The game mechanics will stay as they are now.
Focus will be on re-developing game architecture first, and then development of new features.
There will be no "endgame", but rather continued gameplay decided by the individual player. Kind of like Minecraft before The End was introduced.

New features

A new map, "Chernarus Plus".
Chernarus Plus will have more interactive (enter-able) buildings. Non-interactive buildings will be easier to spot.
Hand combat, in addition to the melee weapons we already have.
Dogs can be a survivor's companion. "Expect them to track, to warn you of danger, and to follow you. And then get shot. And then you QQ."
There will be no safe areas on the map.
A quiver for crossbow bolts.
Weapon and gear degradation.
A diary system, allowing other players to see notes left by you when you're offline, not around, or dead.
A robust web interface, as previewed at Rezzed earlier this summer.
Narrative that will describe the virus background.

Improvements over the mod

More weapons. Many of which are custom, "find at home" style weaponry. Cricket bat, anyone?
Zombies will not switch to walking when indoors (once pathing for zambies is fixed and their lifecycle is implemented).
More clothing and player customization, including colors and face.
The humanity system will be fine tuned.
More robust weather system, redesigned from scratch.
Zombies will be much more frightening.
Improved broken limb system.
And entirely new hive syncing system.
Improved anti-cheat measures.
Improved player UI. The inventory is being reworked from scratch.
The female character will be feature complete.
Better performance, including faster loading.

Future plans

More islands other than Chernarus, created by either the dev team or the community. Players will travel to them by boat or air.
Increase max player count. 100-200 would be easily achievable, but any more would require a larger map.
More wildlife. "Horses would be cool too."
Animations will be improved.
There are vague mentions of a revised server hosting scheme.
Add "methods that allow players to create their own systems for things, so if they wanted to create such a system they could". So perhaps think about Garry's Mod and how players can program in aspects that affect their own gameplay. Not sure on this one.
Underground "bases" and other construction, but Rocket mentions that it's a pretty ambitious endeavor to develop.
Group play and faction support.

Current DayZ mod version

The current mod version of DayZ will continue to be updated, and will become more open.
Dogs will be coming to the mod (in the next update, v1.7.3) before the standalone.
The possibility of private hive servers.
Lingor Island may be coming to the mod.

It looks like Rocket is going to continue using the mod as a way to test new features before they're thrown into the standalone build. He also mentions that they already have an internal build of the standalone going around, which includes that Chernarus Plus map.

* Confirmed in the sense that Rocket is talking openly about the features. Anything and everything is subject to change.

Behold, the Hero Skin!

Fantikerz — 2012-08-12 17:27:24

Tucked away in yesterday's 1.7.2.5 was a perk just for players that like helping others. If you are wearing civilian clothing and have over 5,000 humanity points, your character will be wearing a blue, plaid shirt under his vest. It's not great for camouflage, but hopefully it'll be an effective way to sight friendly players from a distance.

There currently is no female character equivalent, and you'll need to own the Private Military Company DLC to see the high resolution skin.

Now's the time to start giving blood transfusions (they reward you with 1,000 humanity). That is, unless you're a stone-cold killer.

Source 1 Source 2

Journal Contest Winners Announced!

Fantikerz — 2012-08-07 14:16:20

Now that we've made contact with the winners and sent out the prizes, it's time for a formal announcement of the journal contest winners!

1st place - Shiiben with "Maybe I was born with it, Maybe it was Fate"

Shiiben picked out ArmA II: Combined Operations and Portal 2.

2nd place - Razek19 with "He was jus-..."

Razek19 went with Red Orchestra 2 and FarCry 2. We decided to award an extra game as he tied with first place.

3rd place - Spectre with "Close victory"

And lastly, Spectre received a copy of Garry's Mod.

Great job everyone, and excellent stories! We'll be holding more contests in the future, so make sure to subscribe to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, and like the DayZ HQ page on Facebook!

Standalone DayZ Confirmed

Fantikerz — 2012-08-07 12:20:53

It's the announcement we've all been waiting for, and it comes as no surprise - Rocket has been talking about a standalone version of DayZ for quite a while. The new standalone version will continue to be spearheaded by Rocket but is now officially backed by Bohemia Interactive.

No word yet as to pricing, although Rocket says that he's fond of the Minecraft model - users pay for the development version of the game and then receive the full version it's deemed complete. The current ArmA II mod will continue to be supported while the standalone is developed.

Below is Rocket's announcement, entitled "The End of the Beginning".

That’s right, this is actually happening - DayZ will be developed as a standalone game, with me as project lead, by Bohemia Interactive. This is the fairy-tale outcome for a mod that many would have said impossible four months ago.

Development and updates of the mod will continue in parallel with the development of the game, so anyone who is playing the mod now will be able to continue to do so. The project will follow the Minecraft development model; fast iterations with the community alpha available for a heavily discounted price.

I realize people will have many, many questions - but we wanted to let everyone know the announcement now. Over the coming weeks, these questions will be answered. The game will have it’s own site, www.dayzgame.com and the mod will continue at it’s present link.

Read the official announcement here! We're expecting more details in the coming weeks, but if you're in the mood for some speculation, check out this forum thread!

Remember where DayZ was just four months ago?

It initially appeared that the announcement of the standalone version may have been accidental. Only moments after it was announced on Twitter (automatically via Tumblr), was the link taken down and the tweet deleted.

Edit: the post has since been re-published and tweeted, so I'll move this to the bottom. For future reference, here are screenshots of the original post and the original tweet.

Videos from a Tortured Soul — Meet the Seaweed Monster

Fantikerz — 2012-07-27 00:00:00

Gain a rare glimpse into the mind of a killer — I wouldn't want to cross this guy. Here are a few of his videos to keep you entertained while we work on some neat updates.

Attack of the Seaweed Monster!

Seaweed Monster Hears Psycho Violins

I saw someone walk into that house with zombies chasing him. I decide to go help him... Sometimes violin music plays in my head and makes me do crazy things.

Naked Seaweed Monster Terrorizes Two on Roof Top

The Seaweed Monster reacts to the murder of his friend in the only way he knows how.

What is DayZ HQ?

Fantikerz — 2012-07-23 00:00:00

This site has been in the works for the past two months. Our goal has been to develop new and unique ways to share user-submitted content within a community of people who enjoy DayZ.

We've shown this in our map, where we opted to go for a user-friendly way of displaying building types and landmarks rather than places to find loot. We believe the fun in the game is the adventure, and analyzing the game and turning it into a loot-finding simulator flies in the face of that. Now we're trying do the same thing for the new site.

Stories, videos, and discussion are what make the community unique. We intend to promote that. Thanks for checking DayZ HQ out and please keep in touch!

Share your story and forum contest!

Fantikerz — 2012-07-23 00:00:00

We love reading the stories the DayZ community puts out. Chance encounters, blood-pumping firefights, comical breaks in the tension, and even stories of humanity (if you can believe it). All of this comes together to make for an enthralling reading experience, even if you don't play the mod.

That's exactly why we put together the journals repository.

To kick off the launch of DayZ HQ, we're holding a contest that will reward the best storytellers with their pick from this stack of Steam games:

How can you win? Just submit a story and have it be one of the top-voted (measured by reaction votes) by July 30th, 2012 at 11:59PM PST. The first place will have first pick of two games, second place gets second pick of one game, and so on. If there is a large turnout, we'll increase the winner bracket to five places.

Conditions

Only one win per person
Gifts will be redeemable through Steam
Submissions after deadline will not be considered
All entries must be original work
Shenanigans will not be tolerated

Bonus forum contest!

If you don't own ArmA II, or otherwise cannot submit any stories, we are running another contest for forum activity. Simply be the person with the higest reputation (number of likes) by the deadline of July 30th, 2012 at 11:59PM PST and win your choice of game from whatever is left over!

The contest is now closed

Check out the winners here!

Sign in with Steam!

Fantikerz — 2012-07-22 00:00:00

Just a quick service note to let you know that you now have the option to use Steam's login system to authenticate your account, in addition to Twitter and Facebook.

Current users may also attach their Steam ID to their accounts via the user control panel. This serves no purpose currently, but we have some neat ideas for the future that we’ll outline once they've been fleshed out on our end.

We hope the additional methods for registering will make your DayZ HQ experience better! If you have yet to register, come right this way.

Thanks for checking DayZ HQ out — expect much more to come! We're currently developing new and innovative features for the site.

DayZ Commander, an Alternative to Six Updater

Fantikerz — 2012-07-10 15:21:49

If you've been playing DayZ for a while, you know how hard updating the mod used to be. Just as hard was picking through the ArmA II server browser for the best DayZ server — little details like time offsets, mod versions, and other criteria were just too hard to spot.

Then came the Six Launcher. It made updating DayZ easy, in addition to allowing the perusal of servers running the mod while outside of ArmA. But it hasn't been without a few faults. The interface is clunky, key information is hard to see, and servers don't appear until every server has been queried for information (which can take a while).

Redditor dotjosh has just released the first version of a DayZ server browser that gives the bulky Six Launcher a run for its money. It's faster, simpler, and easier to use — and although the launcher is still in infant stages, it shows potential to become a strong alternative.

The Commander scrapes the server names for information like the time offset, version numbers, and whether or not third person is enabled, then presents everything in a much more user-friendly and accessible way. There are also a bunch of handy filters that will help you narrow the results down to find the perfect server.

Scraping the server names isn't a perfect solution, however. Many admins still fail to follow the required naming conventions, which means the information displayed may be inaccurate or not available at all. The hope is if enough people use this launcher, server admins will be pressured into fixing their names and we'll finally be able to enjoy a better server browser.

Note that this early version does not have an automatic updater. So it may be a good idea to keep the Six Launcher around for when 1.7.2 finally rolls around.

You can grab DayZ Commander here and contribute on GitHub here.

So, this is a thing now!

Trigve — 2012-06-30 15:33:11

Hello and welcome to DayZ HQ!

Our goal is to be the most efficient, feature-driven, content-filled, and visually appealing DayZ fan site on the World Wide Web and collective consciousness of the game's burgeoning community. With great effort, and help from the users, we can and will aggregate everything from the most indespensible game mechanic down to the most meager fun fact.

We are glad you've come along for the ride.