-Epoch

Thanks for the heads up!

You guessed it

Wow, Zombies Ate My Neighbors....I haven't thought about that game in ages. Who remembers Toejam and Earl? That's what I was thinking

Stamina is a tricky mechanic to get "right". Stamina is certainly a factor in the mod at its current stage, in that if you run for an extended period of time your aim will be terrible until you get your breath back. It also depletes your thirst/hunger more quickly. This I like very much since it feels authentic. Running "forever" feels very inauthentic and has been something that has always stood out to me as a bit of an oversight despite the breath mechanic as far as the realism in DayZ is concerned. It would stand to reason that your character could not run at full speed indefinitely. Though I also feel you shouldn't be forced to revert to walking speed when your character "runs out of stamina" or becomes tired. I have done some long distance running in my time, and during a race you would not see me walking regardless of how tired I am, I would simply slow down to a jog to get my stamina back and then resume my pace. I think it would be reasonable that your character is forced into a jog similar to or slightly slower than the current crouch run speed when your stamina is depleted. In this jogging state your stamina would regenerate at a relatively slow rate and would allow you to resume running for a period of time relative to how long you rested in the jogging state. Completely stopping and resting would obviously regenerate your ability to run at full speed much faster, just as it allows you to regain your breath much faster than reverting to crouch running. If this type of system is implemented I feel it would mitigate the, "too much realism isn't fun" argument to a certain degree since you wouldn't be slowed to a crawl or be forced to stop after running for a long period of time; while still providing a good level of realism, which is what sets DayZ apart from most games in the first place. Bottom line, running for an extended period of time should have more drawbacks than just making your character breath heavily and increasing your food/water consumption. The trick is to find something that feels reasonable without punishing the player too heavily. Though I think Rocket might disagree with that last sentence. xD I am very interesting to see how Rocket handles this mechanic in the standalone. I definitely think this is something that will see some changes from the mod to the standalone. Oh yeah, and no stamina bar goes without saying, less UI is more.

I've had my Razer Lycosa keyboard and Deathadder mouse for close to four years now and haven't had a single problem until recently with the mouse. I personally love the Lycosa, its like a cross between a mechanical keyboard and a laptop keyboard, almost flat keys with a short button press. I have been considering replacing the Deathadder with a steelseries mouse or the Logitech G500. I'll be using my Lycosa until it dies.

I can understand wanting to know your blood, though I also agree that being given a number on the screen ruins immersion. Its certainly not as convenient not having the debug screen but the in-game cues and your own common sense are enough to be able to guesstimate how much blood you have. If you start to grey out your in trouble, if you still have full color but have taken damage from zombies or been shot, its time to transfuse or go hunting. The only bind then is that you don't "know" when your at full blood unless you've just been given a blood bag. The player who is relying on cooked meat/beans to replenish their blood doesn't know when they're topped off. What is one to do you ask? Liberally apply common sense, assess the amount of damage you've taken using the aforementioned cues and a dash of intuition and start eating! General rule: If your are passing out due to low blood, you will need to eat at least 10-12 cooked meat to hit 11-12k blood. Easy peezy lemon squeezy. To be honest I'm surprised to see so many people commenting about humanity. I don't understand why a numerical value is so important...you should know to what extent you are humane towards other players. If you see someone wearing a ghillie/camo/warm clothes and really want to know if he is a bad guy or not you're just gonna have to investigate. Its reasonable to assume that if they fires at you while "investigating" they're not all that friendly. :rolleyes: Less is more when it comes to the UI imo.

Yup seeing this in the standalone would really make me happy. I'll guard the studio while your broadcasting 9103, as long as I get my own time slot. xD

Great interview, thanks for posting! The story about the first days of infection implementation is hilarious, the fact that it spread so quickly once people started moving to other servers is really amazing. I get more excited for standalone everyday! I want that anti-accessibility shirt :P

Beans! This mentality produces much more interesting bandits. When you spot a player, instead of shooting at your first chance take a moment to delve into your imagination, exercise a little creativity, and see what happens. You might be surprised at the results. Now I'm not saying you shouldn't kill people for their loot or kill people because your scared because in DayZ, lets face it, that's just the way it goes sometimes. Shit you can even kill people for the sport/ fun of it, I don't discourage that. But please, for the games sake, for your sake, for the communities sake, make it interesting! Even if you only do this in 2 of 10 encounters with players due to circumstances it will make DayZ an even better diverse experience. It'll probably make you a better player too, who knows, <--- thats the fun of it. "Sandbox" games are a thinking mans game. Lets see what we can create, yeah? I <3 Bandits/Carebears! Without each other what would we do?

Great analysis and epic intro, I'd love to see more of these! When coming from the town, I do the same route. If I'm approaching Stary from the north I'll check the usual sniper locations before moving through the thin trees down the hill to the tents.

I feel your pain Jaberwoky, I've had more encounters with scripters/hackers over the last couple months than I'd care to remember. I've been experimenting with private hive servers for a couple weeks now and the overall experience has been great. It took a little work to find a hive that I really liked but, its more than worth it in the end! I haven't had a run in with a scripter since I started playing on private hives, and thats really saying something considering the current state of the public hive. (no offense dayz team >.<) Some private hives also have modified loot tables removing certain guns like the AS50 and the L85, while adding other more balanced guns to fill the void, which I really enjoy. Just spend a little time researching and testing a couple private hives until you find one that suits your fancy. Thats honestly the best way to improve your DayZ experience and avoid a majority of the script kiddies. Good luck, and don't let the scripters get you down man!

Best: Its a split between my first kill and helping my first random bambie gear up in elektro. Worst: Being insta-killed proning in between two pine trees an hour after acquiring my first MK48 and M24 NE of the NWAF. (that corpse was recovered lol)

You know you've played too much DayZ when... You find yourself checking for lines of sight and assessing cover while walking through town. >.<

You are correct about the zombie's being a significant cause for lag in cities. Since the zombies are controlled client side (by your computer, not the server) and are currently poorly optimized, its safe to assume that the more zombies you spawn the more you will notice a decrease in performance. Rocket talks about this at the presentation he made at Eurogamer 2012. Skip to 55:08 if you are only interested in the part where he talks about how zombies currently effect performance, and how they aim to remedy the problem in the standalone. I hope that clears things up a bit. :D

That is some really exciting news!! The future of DayZ is looking very bright these dayz, thanks so much for all your hard work Rocket and the DayZ Dev Team! You sir, are da' man! Please take this coyote pack full of :beans: as a token of my gratitude. :P