We know that DayZ, the popular mod for Arma II, is now getting a standalone and it's expected to land roughly on the net waves sometime in October or late November. What a lot of us probably didn't know was that the game would be taking on a sort of MineCraft-esque or Red Faction flavor, enabling gamers to build, destroy and construct things underground.
In a very lengthy interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun (because they seem to care about this mod more than any other gaming site out there), Dean “Rocket” Hall talks extensively about the DayZ standalone game, the release schedule, the plans for the mod and more.
Since there's so much to cover, I'll only pull a brief exert from when Hall talks about the building mechanics for DayZ, saying...
So in Skyrim you walk up to a dungeon entrance, you look at the door, hit the button, and it transports you to that instance, that’s kind of what we are looking at for underground construction. So you would go up to the grate in the ground, go up to this hole, and you’d dig out that hole yourself. That instanced-style construction offers us maximum flexibility without too many strings. Also, having the construction occur in a separate world to the battleground is a good idea because it allows us to be a lot more creative. You could dig things out, Red Faction style, and expand that structure over time, maybe build a hydroponics lab, have a generator, air conditioning, concrete it, have it collapse, those kinds of things.
That's cool.
Moving on, the dogs in the game will be able to be used as pets. Players who have some spare meat can “capture” a dog and use it to track zombies, human players or help spot out potential threats. Dogs will level and grow with the player, becoming more reliable or chasing the player down if you get split up or whatever. There will also be pet commands. The only thing I'm concerned about is if you can have a sheep for a pet. That is all.
Moving on...the standalone DayZ will also have a very base implementation of ragdoll physics. That's a smart move. According to Hall the game won't be utilizing the very complex ragdoll structure of Arma III but instead will have something slightly more complex than what's in Arma II at the moment. When asked if DayZ as a standalone will be close to Arma II or Arma III, Hall stated that it's more like “Arma 2.5” and that it doesn't quite have as complex a system as Arma III, but real-time weather, lighting and other atmospheric elements will play a role in DayZ.
Most notably is that DayZ (the standalone version) will not have mod support out of the gate. Why? They have to “lockdown” the game initially for stability and expediency purposes. They want to nullify early hackers and cheaters and make sure that the network code is up to par so people can get in and start playing and having fun (or being riddled with tension) right out of the gate.
Now, to compensate for the lack of mod support in a standalone version of a mod (and that sounds really weird even typing that out), Rocket Man Hall stated that the original DayZ mod for Arma II will be opened-up for gamers and that it will be given to the public, so to speak. This means player-ran servers and additional mods for the mod (and that seems about as weird typing that out as it sounds) will be made available.
Overall DayZ as a standalone game is coming along nicely and is scheduled to release either this October or in late November for PC at a budget-price. Their main goal is just to get the game into the hands of the people as fast and conveniently as possible. You can check out the entire interview with Dean “Rocket Man” Hall over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
