Fraggle (DayZ)

I think one thing we won't ever see is randomly spawned server events or anything that's scripted. Rocket seems pretty adamant that every event and any future stories in the DayZ world will be player driven. Basically, they'll set up the situation, map, backstory etc and then it's up to us as the player base to determine what happens next.

Whatever they decide I'm hoping they keep it to themselves so we can discover it as we play.

Now we're talking.

Yup, that's why you won't see many companies showing pre-alpha gameplay and if they do it's usually just a screenie or some highly edited footage to show off the best bits. Rocket can;t be accused of hyping the game up by showing it how it is but people will still jusdge before they should. Dat transparency.

Considering nobodies played it yet and it's still in early development it's probably a bit early to make a judgement call. The wise gamer will wait for it to be released and then judge for themselves. If I based my purchasing decisions on pre-alpha gameplay demos I probably wouldn't own many games. Derp.

As far as I know nothings changed so Utes is still going to be off of the sth coast. The most recent work has been on the north of the map.

I think the map overhaul is going to be a constant and ongoing process so it'll be interesting to see what's added to make it fit more with DayZ. There's already loads of nice little touches as well as the bigger things like the ship etc. It sounds like the dev team will be expanding soon, I don't know if that means they'll be dedicating more resources to the map design though but I guess we'll find out soon.

There was quite a lot of talk a while ago about backstory being added in. I'm not sure what was decided on or where they're going with it but it sounded like Dean wanted to make the backstory available to players that wanted to take the time to find out about it it. So you could receive the info via books, clues, articles etc. That's all I know about it and it was all discussed when the SA was first announced so since then I've no idea if that's still the plan or not, I think it is.

I guess any new mechanic could be described as a potential gamebreaker, it all depends on how they go about it. One thing I'm sure of though is that DayZ needs more depth and more for the player to consider in terms of long term survival. It's one of the main things missing from the mod IMO. Currently the actual survival elements of the game are very shallow due to the mod restrictions. Players that die every hour won't need to worry about it so much but there's many players who love to see how long they can stay alive, for many that was the initial draw of the mod. I'm sure there are many players that may view it as "too much" but if I'm brutally honest I'm not sure the initial concept of DaYz was aimed at those players anyway. The thing that made DayZ famous/infamous was the fact that it was a brutally hard survival game.

No idea mate. I think that's something being worked on further down the road, I might be wrong though. It's actually one of the things I'm most excited about because if it's even close to the way it was initially described it's something that no other game has ever come close to trying. I also think it has the potential to be one of the new gameplay aspects that change the way people play DayZ the most.

Is there anything from Armaholic that isn't in there? Please excuse my tone. Lets just say it's not for me.

I see no reason for the mod and variations of it not to keep going strong. Obviously when the SA does hit it'll go mad for a bit and it has the massive advantage of resources and access to the engine, including having peeps on the team that helped make the engine itself. But that doesn't mean people will just walk away from the mod, they may do temporarily but it's mods that extend the lifetime of a game for years. People like variation and the mods can offer that, it's because of modding that BIS are where they are today. It's a shame that initially the SA won't be moddable but I understand why they can't risk it. Lack of security is the one major thing that would kill the SA before it's even taken off, In the future though I'd be surprised if it didn't happen, it may just take while. Deans talked about the potential to give some of the map makers from the modding community the resources and any training they need to help expand the SA with new maps in the future, nothing's confirmed yet but I think there's a good possibility we'll see that happen further down the road. It's obviously not the same as opening it up to modding but it's a start. Also the RV4 engine Arma3 is using is only just finding it's feet so that'll open up a whole new box of tricks for the future of the mods and keep things current. Arma 2 mods are starting to look pretty dated, as stuff get's ported pver it'll get a new lease of life. I'm more excited about the mods for Arma 3 than Arma 3 itself although so far I'm really impressed with what they've done. Even at this stage of the Beta Arma 3 is looking leagues ahead of Arma 2. There's also a lot of peeps that won't buy the SA for various reasons (lacking faith in Rocket, feeling deceived etc) so there's a solid niche fanbase just waiting for new mod content. I've always viewed Arma as not so much a game but a toybox for milsim lovers, map makers, programmers, mission designers etc. and the work they're doing with Arma 3 is just like giving the community a massive new box of goodies. Over the years I've spent far more time playing the mods for Arma 2 than the game itself so I don't think you have too much to worry about in the long term.

Hi. You've done the right thing by contacting BE, besides that there really is nothing to be done. It's not a process we're involved in so we can offer you no help. BE ban if they detect certain hacks being run on your system, if you're 100% sure you haven't been up to no good then it's possible you've installed a keystealer on your system. If that's the case there's many previous topics explaining what you need to do but be aware the the BE ban will still stand as keeping your key safe is your responsibility. Basic internet security such as only downloading files from trusted sources is one of the things that will protect you from from being in this situation again in the future. Locked.

Yeh it's a tricky one to get right. So far there's been no mention from the devs about messing with the spawn locations but I guess it could always change in the future.

I agree. I'm hoping that over time the big cities will become so riddled with disease that only geared up players will dare venture there.

The whole spawn system has bee re-written so you'll find the gameplay very different. Don't forget there's new places of interest being added, I'm hoping that those will draw some players away fromm the usual Cherno/Electro runs to gear up although I guess they'll always be a natural draw for players. If that doesn't work then high traffic areas becoming riddled with disease might I guess.

You can lol, it's just not as easy as visiting three places and being good to go. You have to scavenge a lot more in the buildings etc.

I know lol but if someone says the SA is using "tons" of assets from previous projects I'm just interest to know what those are.

Excluding the map for now, what assets have been imported from previous BIS projects?

Hi mate, lovin your work. As I say I've got endless respect for peeps that can mod games, especially using the RV engine so keep up the good work. It's peeps like you that have kept Arma and now DayZ alive for longer than anyone could have expected.

Yeh, as I say I didn't want to dis-respect someone elses work, I just wanted to highlight the fundamental difference between how it would work in the mod compared to the SA. In this case I'm sure it's all his own work but often I see comments saying "Wow, look what this guy's managed to do with his mod!" when really he's just popped over to Armaholic and grabbed someone elses code. The point I'm trying to make is that people have been modding Arma for over a decade so if there's something you need or want to incorporate into your mod you can usually go and find then use it yourself as long as you credit the original author. It's when that pre-existing work is used and passed off as original code that peoples jimmies get rustled.

I think the key thing with what they've done engine side in the SA is that each weapon is now an individual entity, meaning it can carry it's own stats. So the attachment system is very cool but more importantly it allows for weapon degredation, customsation and each individual weapon to have it's own traits, for example it could pass on a disease/infection to another player that picks it up if the previous user had that infection. That can't be achieved in the mod because it's an actual change to the way the engine handles information, as I understand it anyway. I'm not dissing that other guy's work btw, I'm in awe of anyone with any modding skills especially if it's true that he's written a weapon modification system within a week not using someone elses work. I just wanted to clarify the difference between modding something and changing the fundamental way an engine works. People have been making mods that allow for weapon modification in Arma 2 for years, here's one example from 2011: And here's their website:http://warmod.webs.com/ascweaponpack.htm There's many other examples too so really if someone wanted to implement that into their own mod they just need to pop over to Armaholic. So that in itself is nothing new or ground breaking. It's changes to the engine itself that will have a massive impact in the game and how we play it, none of the mods will be able to do that by their nature of only ever being able to modify and tweak other peoples work.

That's a good point. Whenever a new mod (or spin-off of DayZ appears) people say "look what these guys have achieved already and we're still waiting for the SA!!! Rockets team sucks!" need to understand some basic facts. Most of the mods we see literally just tweak DayZ a bit (it's still Deans work that provides the meat of the game) and then pluck community made assets from the Armaholic website that have been around for years and squish them all into a new mod, or at least mod of a mod. The actual "new" content is very thin in the ground. Every single item you will see in the SA is new and has been created for the SA. There's already quite a few and the list is growing fast. I saw a lot of comments about the zed noises being the same as the mod. Well those zed noises are placeholders because they already have that asset so may as well use it in development. I've played games in alpha that have no sound at all, litarally. When everything's in place they're going into the sound studio and recording a completely new sound catalogue for the zeds, but there's no point in doing that until the zeds are near to complete. That's just one example. Excluding the map you'll be looking at a completely new game and even the map is having hundreds of man hours spent on it. Saying it's a polished up mod is a massive understatement.

Give it time, it'll go viral.

Make that 16, I'm getting two in case I get banned for using my hax.