By John Walker on June 12th, 2013.
VG247 seem to be saying they have the “world’s first look at the standalone version of DayZ”. Perhaps they mean from this year’s E3? Of course creator Dean Hall has been showing footage for ages, not least twenty minutes of it back in March. However, what VG do have is ten minutes of the very latest build that’s being shown at E3, featuring new animations, weapons and features, and is well worth a look.
By Nathan Grayson on June 12th, 2013.
DayZ creator Dean “Rocket” Hall recently climbed a very big mountain. Many game developers take time off by going on lavish-ish tropical vacations or catching up on two-year game/movie/strained family relationships backlogs, but Rocket – true to his nickname – ascended Mount Everest. (OK, maybe not many real rockets specifically shoot for mountains, but you get the idea. IGNORE MY FLIMSY METAPHOR.) It turns out, however, that he wasn’t just on holiday. Sure, DayZ’s still got a bit of a way to go, but Rocket has his sights set on something new. And no, there won’t be any zombies this time.
By Nathan Grayson on May 29th, 2013.
DayZ will make money… or continue to be dead trying. But in order to do that, its standalone has to first become, well, existent. We’ve seen bits and snippets stumbling around in YouTube’s muddiest brush, but Bohemia has yet to pull the trigger on anything the succulent-brained masses can play. Good news, though! A closed alpha test is now underway, and the Rocket man/myth/legend himself has a pretty good idea of how we’ll be paying for it. The short version: ever hear of a game called Minecraft?
By Jim Rossignol on April 26th, 2013.
Something about today’s sunny countenance has left me longing to spend some time in DayZ‘s threat-filled bleakness. I have an almost overwhelming need to get back there and indulge in tension and horror. I’ll wait for the standalone, though, as it sounds like something from another planet, or a parallel world where dream-games are forged.
What am I wittering about? Well, Team DayZee have been talking to PAX, and you can see that below.
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By Nathan Grayson on March 12th, 2013.
DayZ‘s latest dev log features a man ingesting and then allegedly defecating a tin can, at which point Dean “Rocket” Hall nonchalantly decides to bend over, pick it up, and save it for later. This has led me to the following earth-shatteringly profound revelation: videogames are weird, you guys. Really weird. I doubt anyone else noticed, but I’m being totally honest! Most of the time, people don’t procure their cans that way in real life. Also, zombies don’t exist. The latest batch of Rocket-narrated DayZ footage, however, has those too! What’s next, I ask you? Men ignoring the iron-etched laws of common decency and discarding their trousers with reckless abandon? Like filthy, brief-flaunting savages?
…Oh. Oh god.
By John Walker on February 21st, 2013.
If you’re me, and you’ve tried to install the DayZ mod into Arma II, then you made a real hash of it. Fortunately for all the me out there, there’s a simpler way. The mod has been made available directly over Steam, meaning you can just click a couple of buttons and all the scary work is done for you.
By Jim Rossignol on February 5th, 2013.
“Matt, if you maybe take your clothes off over here,” is something Rocket says in this devblog, which perhaps suggests something of the flavour of the piece. The DayZ devs have rolled out a dev video with a fairly lighthearted overview of the work they’ve been doing to get the standalone version of the game out. The environmental details are interesting – no more just searching for piles of loot, you’ll actually have to go and look for stuff in the buildings, and they can even be hidden behind other objects, meaning you’ll have to search. Anyway, go watch below, it’s got some interesting reveals.
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By Nathan Grayson on January 26th, 2013.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Rocket “Dean” Hall was rocketing through DayZ standalone‘s development in order to stop rabid fans from sinking overeager fangs into his heels. But now I do know better! Rocket explained in a recent (and completely massive) dev blog: “We don’t know [when it's coming out]. We’re going to take our time. I feel fantastic about the situation, more than ever I feel like we’re doing something really interesting with this development. Now is not the time to rush things, but we do need to ensure our pace is kept up.” He then proceeded to discuss all of the things – chief among them anti-cheat server technology, character customization, and the current closed test. Find out heaps more about the Z-est of days after the break.
By Nathan Grayson on January 17th, 2013.
DayZ‘s standalone version continues to be shrouded in real life’s most potent zombie fog – aka, mystery – but Rocket’s not the type to intentionally keep people in the dark. So he’s been trickling out details where he has them, and now we know that a closed test is “imminent.” But how exactly will it work? And what lies beyond – for instance, once players start flooding into nebulous “endgame” territory or. further, when ArmA III reawakens the ancient modder kraken currently sleeping in Rocket’s soul? Thanks to Reddit‘s eternally inquisitive hivemind, we now have answers.
By Nathan Grayson on January 8th, 2013.
It is 2013. If you’re still alive, congratulations (or sorry, I guess, depending on your perspective)! You made it. But while this techno-neo-cyber-space-face year is going quite swimmingly so far, there’s one thing missing from society’s collective vision of a utopian ultrafuture: DayZ‘s standalone version. It was supposed to come crawling out of the woodwork at the tail end of 2012, but Bohemia’s camp didn’t make a peep as we all made our annual holiday sacrifices to our respective Blood Gods, as per cataclysm-averting tradition. So then, what’s the deal? Why the delay? Rocket took to DayZ’s dev log to provide answers.
Fighting Zombies For Fun... And Profit?
By Nathan Grayson on November 8th, 2012.
DayZ Bounty‘s made a positively deafening amount of noise over the past couple days – and with good reason. In short, it’s a private server that players will eventually buy into using real money. Then they’ll get the chance to win it all back – and more – by killing zombies, survivors, and bandits. And while DayZ exists to encourage crazy emergent behavior, creator Dean “Rocket” Hall and the DayZ team think this is taking it a few steps (and dollars) too far. As such, the brains behind the wildly popular zombie mod have publicly stated that they plan to “ask that [DayZ Bounty] cease their activities in their current form.” However, speaking with RPS, Bounty’s creators were quick to point out a few key arguments in their favor: 1) no one from Bohemia/DayZ’s reached out to them, even though they’ve hollered in the DayZ team’s direction multiple times, 2) they’re not charging real money yet, and 3) their goal is to mod DayZ into an entirely different, more PVP-focused form. Apparently, this is only just the beginning.
