zombieland78

I make no bones about being vocal when it comes to my opinions on reddit. I get a deluge of downvotes the minute I step 1mm out of line. But recently, after some very simple posts or some carefully thought out/worded posts, they haven't had so much as a flicker of response. Even something simple like asking if there'll be any boats in SA, which I posted twice. Not even a sarcastic teenage put-down. So I created a new account and pasted the URL of a previous post from my original account and it says [content deleted]. For all my recent posts. And I swear the content isn't questionable or controversial.

see, something inane like this. I don't even get that.

Ok, must choose words carefully on this. The basic gist is that there are fundamental differences between the mod zombies and the SA zombies. Let us rule out bugs as a differentiating factor and focus on style and application. Because whenever I bring up the issue of the old vs the new, everyone raves about how bad the old zombies were but only in the context of bugs etc. That being said I was never hit through a floor once from a mod zombie. And even today the new ones can hit through walls and at large distances. But that's not the focus here. The focus here is on animations, textures, speed and behaviour. I personally believe that the mod zombies trump the SA zombies on each of those fronts. Here's why: Animations I played some mod yesterday. I ended up backed into the far end of a military barracks (the long ones with the little corridor). Zombies come lumbering in with that trademark sway. Very creepy and unsettling. It conveys that the human is very sick, unlike the almost camp and pointless gate of the SA zombies. They literally walk like an old person going to the shops rather than someone possessed by a sick and violent virus. Speed Fast out in the open, slow indoors. Big debate here. Forget about the usual debate and let's focus on game mechanics. Combine good animation with numbers and behaviour and having a larger number of slow zombies indoors, while you try to take care of them, aiming, missing, they're getting closer, your gunfire is drawing more and more. Very tense, very good game mechanics. And let's talk about behaviour while on that note... Behaviour So in my example above in the barracks, it combined all of these points in one great experience, including behaviour - it was VERY clear that with every gunshot, there was a scream, followed by another zombie or two. Awesome. Just think about how that shapes gameplay. It's quite immediate. I think they even spawn in for gun-fire. You have a situation that is quite common, where your back is against the wall, the zombies are coming forward, ignoring any shots that don't make the head, and shit gets tense! But behaviour shouldn't just stop here. Why don't zombies bang on/damage doors/barricades (once decent door barricading is in)? Why don't they grab you? why do they sort of gently swipe at you in between doing the little old lady shuffle? Not remotely scary or intimidating. Often it's just annoying. Textures/appearance Finally, let's talk about textures (and to some degree models). Here's your typical zombie face from the mod. Really grim and inhuman. I really find them to be quite disturbing and along with the great sounds, I often find myself trying to get away from them because of just feeling uncomfortable around them, which is a very necessary aspect to a zombie. and another... New zombies Here's a typical SA zombie: And here's another: You can see that there's no focus on fear or intimidation here. They're just designed to look a bit unwell, even slightly sad. In fact, I'd say the above one just looks like a normal dude with a skin condition. Great quality model/textures though, in this there is no debate. Here's an example of a zombie design for Rust: Not sure if this is in the game (as the image above is from an old article) but it also goes in the right direction of looking unpleasant and scary etc. although I think that the zombies that made it into rust are likely very poor in quality. So in conclusion. I know we'll never see such attention given to the SA zombies but just hope we can do something in a mod of SA. Hell, I'd even be happy to reinstate the old zombies models/animations in a future SA mod!

don't forget, the vast majority of the DayZ community hate anything resembling traditional zombies, they will go as far as to say the Z in dayZ stands for 'zero' instead of zombies. So these are infected who just hit stuff and don't eat folk. this game has almost nothing to do with zombies really. But that's where a good mod will come in.

I'm very sorry.

Fair enough. I wasn't quite aware of the intricacies of making weapons in games. Still though, we've slowly become used to more and more and more guns without really asking if it's making the game any better. While all along the very initial draw of the game way way back was - survival + zombies. And now I'd say survival has been reduced to topping up on beans and water (yes there's a ton of other stuff but it almost never comes into play) and zombies - yes, they're STILL IN DEVELOPMENT - but so are the weapons and how much attention has been spent on each proportionately. I'd say WAY more attention has been given to clothes than zombies.

in-dev or no, improve eventually or no, the SA zombies will NEVER be scary. In fact, vanilla DayZ will NEVER be scary. It's a game designed, partially or maybe primarily to market guns for gun manufacturers (I have some proof/evidence of this, not just pulling it out of my ass - the DayZ dev team have to liaise with the arms manufacturers as part of their job description. Although maybe this is just because they don't want their guns badly represented, but I've never heard of that being a thing before in games ). hence why I'm going to hold out for a mod.

Since SA, I've always thought the dev team regretted the day they added that 'Z'. Because it's pretty obvious they don't want zombies in the game. It's so so funny that pretty much all dayz players don't like zombies and are in it for the guns. I've seen this countless times.

I've had my experience of dayz nights (on the mod mainly) and the best solution is to have the weather affect how dark it gets. if it's pitch black I've known seasoned Dayz players just rage quit. If you don't have a medium dark night then all the night-haters (which is around 90% of dayz players) will just server hop or never go to that server again.

So back in the day, I used to use DayZ Commander to find a mod. Now it's all screwy: - when I start commander it says I don't have any of the mods, but when I click on install it then goes, oh yeah sorry, you do have them. - when I try to find a server it doesn't show any Panthera results. - when I choose 'any mod' the results are greyed out, implying incompatibility. Likely Commander if borked, so then there's Launcher. For some messed up reason, Launcher thinkgs I also don't have any of the mods installed, despite having the correct path. But it really DOES want me to install everything all over again. Gigs of stuff I already have. Finally.. I'm mainly trying to get on a good, busy, Panthera server. I have FOUR version of panthera in my mod directory. What's that all about!? - @dayzepochpanthera - @dayzepochpanthera_panthera - @dayzepochpanthera_epoch - @dayzpanthera Hope there's still a good mod community coz the mod will almost always beat SA.

anyone?

Having a heated debate with a few people on this one. When I get hit by anything in DayZ my screen goes COMPLETELY blurry and stays that way. I have to emphasise this - it doesn't just get slightly desaturated (although that too obviously) or flash blurry, it stays totally blurred after one single hit. So I can hardly see. To get it to stop, I have to go into video settings and back out again. I've never seen a single youtube video where this happens to anyone. (i.e. they get hit and it stays blurry but they're cool with it as part of the game) Everyone on Reddit says it's 100% intentional and if you want to get rid of it you have to basically be a cheating scumbag and disable it in post. Ergo, every single streamer, even the ones who refuse to up their gamma for night, is a cheat in this department. Anyone know this for sure?

someone above linked it. So I get it now. but everyone on reddit thinks that it should stay blurry and if you take it off it's a cheat. although a lot of reddit users are extremely dumb and get the idea of being hit once and staying blurry - confused with - getting shot half to death and staying blurry. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the ONLY time you should stay blurry is if you're on your last drop of blood.

again, are you talking about being totally fresh and getting hit ONCE?

Thanks. Most of these reports treats it like it's by design and the video settings/escape thing is a work-around. But apparently, if you don't use the work-around, you'll stay blurry indefinitely and it won't restore.

it's under post-processing. If you disable that it stops the blurring. But you're very sure it's an old bug? Don't suppose you have any links that confirm it?

my question is - is it supposed to stay blurry after one hit?

So we have books currently, but the books are existing fiction. I'm sure one or two people read them but largely they're discarded. I wonder if it would then be possible to have blank books, known as diaries, where players can write their own text. I know there's currently paper and you then need a pen to write on them, but they're few and far between. The diaries could have a pen slotted in the spine. I feel that this kind of execution could lead to some player-driven content that might be fun to interact with. The same could work for audio equipment.

I recently was playing and noticed that when I typed in side my name came up as some random russian name. Then I tried to get on a bicycle and every bike I used was not letting me get off and was sort of moving of its own accord. Logged into a different server a few days later and had no icons, no zombies spawning and no loot spawning around me. I typed this into side and asked why this was happening (as it was my first time on the server) and they said it was because I was hacking, and would I please leave. My name was back to normal this time though. Were they just tooling me? is there a way to know if my account has been hacked?

Man, I can't play the mod any more because I have an invisible cursor. If I roll over various menu items they highlight but I have to swipe all over the place until the mouse-over state of a button appears. I've seen a handful of 'resolutions' on the internet but none of them work for me. e.g. making the menu/text normal/100% rather than small.

That's it! I often have the magnifier tool minimised. If so, the cursor disappears. When I close the magnifier tool and restart arma, the cursor comes back. Thanks!

yeah, existing texts with zombie lore in would be useful. Could end the heated debate about what exactly a zombie is!

It seems that just about everywhere I look these days I'm getting the impression the DayZ community would rather the whole game just be called Day. I've been out of the mod world for 6 months after the gamespy problem and upon returning yesterday I found that a lot of servers had a new thing called 'slow zombies'. Which is just a convoluted way of making zombies irrelevant. And the overall vibe I get from players is that zombies are just a pain and they'd much rather indulge in the military aspect of the game. The majority of people don't want any kind of night time play either. I find that baffling too. It's rare to find a server that has any night at all. Overall, the impression is that people just want to plug in, and shoot each other. Now, that is fine, but surely go elsewhere for it!? or find an arma military mod or something? it would be good to see a mod that took care of that area so there could be some separation - they could get their military fix and the zombie fans could get their zombie fix. Anyone else feel that zombies (including Standalone) are just poorly represented? Also, would it be good to see zombies focused on even more, with the occasional swarms/hoards as seen in dead rising 3? (not that that's possible yet, but in theory).

Cool, sounds like a good server. Care to let me know how to find it?

THIS is the kind of remark that makes me laugh. There's only 4 fucking letters in the title of this game, and one of them is 'Z'. The devs recently announced: 2015, the year we put the Z back into DayZ. Get over it, you're playing a game that has zombies in it. Unless all this time you've been playing arma and thinking it's DayZ?