Rezzed DayZ Presentation

[attorney1977 311]

Just got the time to write up my impressions from the Rezzed DayZ presentation. Posted on the main Arma 2 forums, but I wanted to give you guys some info too.

The presentation hall for DayZ was packed out. I didn't get any audio or video, but here's a summary of what Dean talked about in the presentation. Please bear in mind that this is my recollection of the presentation, but I hope to be unbiased in my scribblings. Please also note that he was very courteous in his answers and didn't belittle anyones questions.

Firstly, Dean introduced himself and gave us a bit of personal background. He went over time spent in the NZ air force, army and then previous jobs with other xbox software companies. He mentioned he hated most of the games he was involved with and wanted to camp outside stores on the release dates and put people off buying them! (That got a few laughs)

He then gave us an overview of the mod (presumably for people not familiar with DayZ), and then opened the floor up to questions. The questions have been abbreviated here and are may not be listed here in the correct order they were asked..

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Q - The banditry mechanic (humanity) has been removed. How are you intending to replace this in future iterations of DayZ?

A - Dean explained he will support banditry and will not be removing it as a feature of the mod. The KSK skin mechanic wasn't working and he pulled it because players were being skinned as bandits when they fired in self defence. He said that currently, he's experimenting with the heartbeat and also wanted to look into possibly changing facial features, to make players scowl if they have low humanity. It's a WIP so he might add a system, let the players test it and then pull it or modify it if it's not working out.

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Q - Will you stick with the Arma 2 (RV) engine or look at other engines for DayZ?

A - Dean said that the Arma 2 engine provides the flexibility he needs to make DayZ work. He said that ultimately he wants to explore DayZ as a standalone release, but the framework provided by Arma 2 is enough for the moment to use. There are things he would like it to do that it wasn't designed for and at some point, the needs of DayZ might require it's own core code.

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Q - The zombies can move really erratically sometimes and do weird things like clip through walls. Have you got plans to sort it out?

A - Dean said he's recorded some new anims with Marek Spanel as the mocap guy. The anims need to be cleaned up and put in the game but it wouldn't be immediate as he has other priorities like stability to consider first. He said it was because a designer (Dean) was doing an animators job and just basically turned up the anim value in the config rather than going through the whole anim process. He also mentioned that the speed will need to stay reasonably high so that if the zombies go the wrong way, they can catch back up to the player. It's primarily a pathfinding issue.

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Q - Some other games (like L4D) feature super zombies that can spit venom and do other weird things. Will you add those kind of things into DayZ?

A - No. He said that he wanted them to be infected, not classic reanimation zombies and there wouldn't be any variation in the types of zombies. Although they provide a big risk to survivors, other (hostile) players should always be the main threat.

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Q - Some people log on to have fun whereas I play DayZ for the hardcore survival aspect. What can you do to make it more interesting? Maybe natural predators?

A - Dean explained you should be able to play the game any way you want to (and that you should have fun too)! He's considering adding in dangerous animals but it's not just a case of getting a (bear) model and porting into the game. There's a lot of issues like anims, pathfinding, scripting in the attacks etc to consider.

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Q - Will you expand DayZ to new maps?

A - One of the issues with Chernarus is that it was never designed with this type of game in mind, so there's lots of un-enterable buildings. He wants to look into this in the future as Arma 2 can support maps up to 500 sq km and Chernarus is only 225 sq km, so there's lots of possibilities for expansion in the future. (To be honest, I wasn't sure if he was thinking aloud about Arma 3, given that BIS recently mentioned they want to re-visit Chernarus for Arma 3).

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Q - Will you add in some kind of currency/bartering system for DayZ? Also, if somebody does set up a safe zone, then devious players can spawn into the safe zone on that server to kill everyone. Can you look at that?

A - Dean said that if the zombie apocalypse happened, then the first question on everyone's mind wouldn't be "let's get some cash". He doesn't want to add in any kind of system for money and would rather leave it to players. He touched on the issue of 'safe zones' and said it's difficult to enforce currently, but they are looking at ways to stop people exploiting the game like that.

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Q - Will there be any kind of higher purpose/quests for players?

A - Dean got very candid in his reply and talked about a few things he wanted to look into. He doesn't want to have scripted events happen, but he wants to provide the framework for the players so they can do their own thing like construct a fortress/camp and guard it (no specifics on things like power grids etc). He conceded that the game doesn't do this currently, but it is on the list and he's looking into it. He said that the barbed wire and sandbags were added to see if the game could cope with lots of spawned objects (stress test) and they aren't ideal but it's given him some data to work with for the future.

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Q - With the removal of global chat, players can't communicate and organise themselves like they could do in the past. Have you got any solutions, like adding in radios/CB's?

A - Global chat was removed because Dean felt it broke the immersion. He referenced his 'Anyone in Cherno?' T-Shirt and stated that he will add in a mechanic for communication, but it's hard to do and so won't be in the immediate future. He mentioned ACRE and said he'd like to something like that so that players could communicate effectively (if desired).

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Q - Do you envisage the servers being ran by the community (current model) or moved to in-house?

A - Dean said that he never thought it would get this huge, this quick. The current model is the one he wants to run with as any changes would be hard to implement and might not be a step in the right direction. He's killed too many servers updating the central database to think about it right now! He also said that he would love to add in an underground tunnel network that would be shared by all servers! Personal opinion: Arma 3 maybe?!

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Q - Will you look at a SP/co-op mode?

A - No. Dean felt it would dilute the game and remove some of the more interesting gameplay (see banditry answer above). Essentially, it would become boring and besides, there's many other games (some of them being demoed at Rezzed) that provide a better SP/co-op experience.

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Q - A while ago, you were talking about adding Dogs (DogZ) as a player companion. Is that still happening?

A - It's in progress. Dean said he's mainly thinking about all the posts on the DayZ forums with players lamenting the death of their beloved pet He said it's not done, but he is thinking about it. He also said there should be some cool missions in the new Czech DLC for A2 featuring dogs. I got the impression that he can't go forward with it until some code has been patched into the main game when the Czech DLC comes out. (My personal opinion).

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Q - There's some hacking going on that ruins it for genuine players. What are you doing to combat that?

A - Dean said that hacking is ALWAYS going to be an issue but he and his team are working flat out to minimise the threat. In fact, hacking very nearly killed the mod recently so he had to spend lots of time that he could have spent on developing the mod, making it secure. He stated that the RV engine traditionally lets players (clients) run scripts that can have effects globally but it hasn't been much of an issue in the past because it's normally like-minded groups of players getting together and playing. He said that if DayZ ever moves to a stand-alone release, then he could have more freedom to lock parts of the code down.

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Q - I recently heard about some guys who kidnapped a player, disarmed him, and made him run into houses to check for zombies. Are you surprised about the weird things players are doing to each other?

A - Dean - I heard about some new guys who started together and went up to the airfield to find loot. First mistake... They then ran into a guy with a hatchet who wouldn't reply on comms and kneecapped them. They were trying to crawl away and saying "Why did you kneecap us?". Second mistake... He then executed them all. I love that story.

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Q - Are you thinking about adding in skills for the players?

A - Dean said he believes that if you have a skill in real life, then it should be applicable to the game. If it's night and you can read the stars to work out North IRL, then you can do it in game. He said that he didn't want to artificially add skills or classes, like "I will spawn as a medic, or I will spawn as a Hillbilly"

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Summary:

As I mentioned, this is what I can remember to the best of my ability. I hope I'm not putting words into Deans mouth, so please clarify anything with him if you need to He went to great lengths to thank everyone who's spent money on Arma 2 so they could play DayZ and also was very appreciative of the support he's received from BIS - I hope he gets a pay rise for the unexpected business he's bought in!

He was aware that it's not an original idea and said that probably most people in the room have though of making/playing a game like this. IMO, he was the right man at the right time (with the right skills).

Last of all though, he said that everyone playing this sends out a message to the games industry and thanks everyone for voting with their wallet.

I really enjoyed the presentation and it was good to see the "BrainZ" behind it in person. In fact, the whole day was doubleplusgood, with lots of interesting games on display and some thought provoking lectures. The Paul Wedgwood and Gamejam shows being my other personal favourites.

EDIT: one of the questioners (radio question I think) referred to players who like to group up as 'Carebears'. It seemed to me Dean was pained at the expression and referred to it as "The C word". I intimate that he doesn't want to get into player politics and values people who like to play co-operatively as much as he does people who like to attack them. They aren't supported as much as bandits at the moment, but as mentioned above, it is on his mind and it seems he has plans to make it playing co-operatively worthwhile. Again, just my opinion but that's what I got from what he was saying.

Link to original thread:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?135849-im-looking-for-Proponents-and-Opponents-of-the-DAYZ-mod&p=2185370&viewfull=1#post2185370

[Max Planck 7174]

Good Q&A, thanks for posting it. I think I like the sound of everything in it. You didn't touch upon this thing about adding public kill stats at all? He's been talking about that elsewhere and it has me worried.

I've added a link here from the Rezzed News thread, hope you won't mind.

[lvg 1690]

Read every word, good catch.

[dallas 5195]

Good read, thanks.

[Patient Zero 2]

Well thought out and nicely written. Cheers.

Christ, Am I on the correct forum ?

[Lukio (DayZ) 24]

Thanks for the report, very interesting and generally positive. I especially like the idea of providing frameworks for players to do things instead of forcing mechanisms on them.

Edit: Maybe this stuff could be added to the "The word of Rocket" thread.

[FaithLehaine 1]

Thanks for the coverage, really well written and great for someone who wanted to be at Rezzed but couldn't!

Thanks again!

[vanilladragon 1]

dogs were out right confirmed. german sheppards.

[vesmo 21]

Thanks for this, was a good read. All the punZ were kinda painful though :P

[livilaNic 13]

So he got the CEO to do the mocaps? Thats fucking awesome!

A lot of great info here. Thanks for the post. :)