A collection of ideas

[Woofington 4]

Hey, I am a creative developer for an independent studio that focuses on post-apocalyptic games. I actually recently purchased ARMAII and the expansion solely to play Day Z as it tickles my very specific fancy.

I love it, so far my experience has been great, one of the best most immersive post-apocalyptic zombie experiences. I had some ideas that would be interesting to see fleshed out. However I would like to state I do not know what modding ARMA II entails and what can, and what can't be done.

1) Chat needs to be revamped. This game is great, it feels huge, landmarks are distant, and encounters with other human beings are rare, but extremely tense. However chat shatters this illusion. I am new to ARMA II so I don't necessarily understand all the different chat modes but it seems like most are a form of global chat. I think global chat shatters the illusion of isolation, and makes it feel much more like a game than it does a post apocalyptic simulation. Now if friends want to play together, there will always be means, mumble, steam chat, etc. But what instead should be in place is a form of chat which only speaks to players x amount of meters around them. Basically there should be a:

-"say" chat which would address people directly near the player.

-"yell" chat which would address people still close to a player but further out, say maybe 300 meters?

-"Walkie Talkie chat" I believe that walkie talkies should be added to the game, and once a player has found one, he gets access to 12 different chat channels, illustrating different walkie talkie channel presets. This would allow a team of players to break up but still remain in contact. Whether or not this has a distance cut off remains to be decided.

I believe that doing it this way would add to the sense of immediecy. If someone says something in chat, you can be damn sure that person is nearby. This is the apocalypse and some oniscient all chat has no place in this game.

2) Further player interactions. This may have been brought up already but players need to be able to surrender, give up, and drop their weapons, but make it apparent they are doing so. Furthermore other players need to be able to frisk, and remove weapons from a player should he enter a surrender state so as to ensure that the surrendering player isn't holding out just to shoot the others when their back is turned (unless they find a new weapon on teh way). Player interactions are by far the most dynamic and interesting mechnic in this game, lets utilize that further.

3) Remove the timer from being knocked out. This game tries for a rather intense, and realistic approach to the apocalypse. One shot will kill. Being knocked down should be a dynamic event, that can differ in length from rather short to rather long (maybe not too much of a difference) but the player should recieve no timer. Much like when someone is knocked unconcious in real life, they should not know exactly WHEN they will get back up.

More ideas to come as I am able to put them a bit more eloquently.

[MasLegio (DayZ) 0]

in regards to chat it could be a clientside.setting for those who want to do global and those who dont.

Also the constant server messages about people connecting, disconnecting, trying to connect etc. need to go. Players do not need them and they totally ruin the immersion during the dark hours.

[Shit 0]

Furthermore other players need to be able to frisk' date=' and remove weapons from a player

[/quote']

You can already do that. Just go behind someone and MM their backpack.

[Leechman 8]

1. Let's get Direct Chat working first. Then lets worry about 'fixing' chat.

Also "Walkie Talkie" chat has been brought up before. I recall rocket mentioning the way that the engine registers communication radios made it heavily difficult to implement.

2. There are options for this. You can lower your weapon. You can drop your weapon. You can inspect another player's Backpack. What these kinds of interactions needs to be mroe effective is Direct Chat.

3. I like.

[oktyabr 53]

You can already do all of that in this mod, with the possible exception of the "yelling". Single channel radios can be simulated with existing channels, radios with more channels will need an external addon like A.C.R.E.

[samjwbrowne@gmail.com 15]

I haven't thought this through really at all, so just putting a possible idea out there to discuss/be shot down because of stupidity etc.

Without introducing something like ACRE, an easy alpha-friendly workaround (while something substantial is developed) could include some kind of rare item drop that gives a password to a TeamSpeak server/channel associated with the server you're currently on (essentially finding a radio). Not sure what kind of load TS servers are capable of, so given the huge popularity of Day Z recently (with AusArma putting up new/bigger servers seemingly all the time) it may not be feasible at all.

First obvious obstacle would be everybody telling everybody the password over side. Not sure how you'd deal with that. Maybe it would only work if direct chat is fixed, then side/global/command/everything else disabled. Obviously you could then magically 'duplicate' the radio by giving it to your friends...

Also, what's to stop everybody just jumping on a TS server of their choosing beforehand... I'm not sure. But this might give an incentive for player communication with strangers on the same server which you would otherwise not bother to do. You could set up sub-channels to simulate radio channels, and switch between them etc.

Anyway, silly idea and I'm rambling. But could be expanded on if anything is salvagable!