Day Z, the online multiplayer zombie survival game you've been waiting for (a mod for Arma II on PC)

Looks pretty tight! I'd be down for some survivalism and pillaging with my fellow chewers.

For those interested in trying the mod, taken from the Steam Forums on getting this up and running.

Grab the Files HERE! You're going to want to check these daily. The files I downloaded two days ago were already out of date and not knowing that I couldn't connect to any games or worse, I'd connect and see a never ending loading screen.

My first playthrough reminded me of Journey. I was fumbling around through the dark and get to a shell of a building and see a guy hanging out in the dark. I toss out my flare and he sees me. I don't enter his space, not knowing if he was hostile or trying to defend his little lair. I continue walking down the road and see the guy is now following me around. Made decent progress until we came to a hospital, and just got swarmed.

Just some pointers. Hitting the F key multiple times will cycle you through your weapons and flares. After popping out my flare I still had them equipped, and when a lone zombie came running to me, it was nice having that random guy at my side to take it out as I got to know the controls better.

Game is so dark, literally dark. Maneuvering interiors is also janky, not as smooth as L4D, the animations/running speed of your guy will have you missing open doorways.

Was in a 50 person server, and only met the aforementioned random guy. Need to play some more later.

I've been playing on the Chicago 5 server... Having a blast.

 

I met up with a small group because they were looking for some windshield glass I looted from a gas station. They seemed okay, they didn't kill me despite one of them having killed enough players to have the 'bandit' player model. A couple of lag spikes and zed attacks later and we were all separated in the town of Elecktro-something. It was all well and good until I went up the stairwell of a tower to log off and found two people waiting to shoot me in the face without provocation.

Holy shit this game.  As immersive an online experience as I can remember.  Each bullet, each bandage, each can of sardines, each box of matches could be the difference between life or death.  I've never been so excited to find and use a compass!     

 

My most recent experience: made my way, solo, up to some castle ruins in the hills along the south-east shoreline.  Goodies were plentiful, and I was also able to get my hands on a Winchester and a couple boxes of ammo.  I then proceeded to try and explore Elektrozavudsk on my own.  Terrible idea.  Tried to be as stealthy as possible, but got cornered and was forced to fire off a shot.  Then the zombies came.  So many zombies.  I tried to run and get clear of the city, but they just keep coming.  After depleting all my ammo, I still had at least 10-15 zombies trying to chase me down.  

 

After a minute or two of nonstop sprinting, I see a guy on the horizon, crouched, probably looting a body.  I'm desperately yelling for help into the voice channel, but as I get closer, much to my dismay, I realize he is a bandit.  As soon as he spots the sizeable horde chasing after me, realizing my loot probably isn't worth all the bullets it would take to get to it, he whips out his rifle and shoots me twice in the gut from about 20 feet.  I see a steady stream of blood gushing out of me, and my screen starts to blur.  I stop to bandage myself, but I knew I wouldn't have the time to finish.  The horde was on me a second later, and the last thing I see before my screen fades to black is the damn bandit, slinking away into the woods as all the zombies gather around to eat me.      

 

So yeah... Is anybody still playing this?  

So I can only see so much through my company firewall, but I'm intrigued by what you're saying.  It essentially sounds like an unforgiving multiplayer online experience.  You start over from scratch after each death?  What is your average lifespan (do you have characters that last days/weeks or is it essentially a death each time you play)?

For me, its a death each time I play.  But I'm not very good.  And far too trusting.

 

But yeah, you start from scratch each time you die (pistol, a couple mags, some food, some water, a couple bandages, flares).  

The controls are the biggest challenge for me. Any tips?

You kinda just have to get used to them.  As is the case with most ultra-realistic tactical shooters, the interface and controls are super clunky.  Staying in 3rd person helps a bit.  

hi

...You can go into third person!?

Finally gave in a purchased Arma II (.....at full price) so I could play this.

 

After spending most of the night figuring out how to tweak the graphics to get it to be a relatively smooth experience, I was able to sink a hour or two into it. Spent the first hour wondering aimlessly around trying not to attract much zombie attention. Spent another hour solely devoted to slipping into town under the cover of darkness so I could investigate a church. My reward was a revolver with 7 bullets. I feel a bit safer with it but I'm afraid to waste any bullets. Found an abandoned house and felt it would be a proper place to log out and call it a night.

 

Looking forward to actually figuring out how to play and possibly getting a group together.

All that I can say right now is that losing a kitted-up character to some asshole you never see is actually painful.

Yeah...

 

Some buddies and myself made it all the way to the northern airfield, which is supposedly where the best loot spawns.  There's a firehouse, a military barracks, 8 hangars.  After spending over an hour (and just about every bullet we had) clearing the place of zombies, between the 3 of us, we managed to collect a silenced mp5 with 3 clips, a remmington shotgun with no ammo, and an ak-74 with one clip.  What a bust.  

I was totally kitted out and then got snared by those cheaters who rob you, teleport you, and kill you. Fuck that shit.

I don't know how you'd ever get a group of people together. You'd have to navigate through the thousands of servers, and then navigate the entire map to find each other. Ridiculous. 

 

The most appealing aspect of Day-Z would be meeting up with a group and trying to survive as you make your way through other groups of people, and of course zombies, as you scavenge for supplies....

 

Which is why I'm more excited for War Z, the MMO. 

 

I'm surprised you guys consider it a multiplayer game because my experiences have been utterly insular. No one uses the chat system, and if I'm lucky I'll see one person every twenty minutes or so.

 

Whenever I'm playing, I'm logging in with a couple of friends.  We set up a voice chat on Steam and use map images via imgur to figure out where we are and where to meet up, and we go from there.  Outside of the first two or three times I played the game, way back when it was first released, I have yet to meet a random person who didn't just try to kill me immediately.

 

I love DayZ quite a bit, but its one of the buggiest games I've ever played; the interface is clunky and awful, hackers and exploiters roam freely, and simple stuff like just getting the game patched is a monumental task.  Its frustratingly sloppy.  In fairness, a lot of the game's limitations can probably be traced back to Arma II itself, but if I can get a slick professionally made sandbox zombie game that builds on the massive amounts of potential put forth by DayZ, I'm all for it. So yeah, I am also eagerly anticipating War Z.  

 

Having said that, when DayZ works, it just works.  Its still the most immersive and thrilling gaming experiences I've had in a long long time.  

 

This. DayZ is the only game that has ever literally gotten my adrenaline pumping.

Had my first run in with another human being last night. I was preparing to sneak into a town when suddenly a group of about 6 or 7 zombies dart past me. I scramble for the closest bush to try and stay hidden. Its then that I notice a lone survivor leading the pack. No idea if he was friend or foe and the SMG he was carrying wasn't making him look very approachable. A zombie breaks off from the group and makes a break for me. Its then I decide that my chances might be better with the stranger.

 

I catch up to him and as we are being chased he asks if I need help. He tells me to just keep running and that he will take care of the zombies. He makes quick work of them with his SMG. I wonder to myself how much ammo he just wasted on saving me. He tells me that he got separated from his friends and he is on his way to meet up with them. Says that its O.k. if I follow him and he will try to get me some supplies. We run for a bit, getting close to a town, when suddenly we see a truck a short distance ahead. We both immediately freeze and hit the ground. The truck roars past, seemingly not noticing us. We stay down for a bit, making sure the driver doesn't double back for us. The stranger gets up and continues to move on, commenting on how that was a close one...........

 

It was at that point where I scramble for my mic. Start flipping out with the dude about how awesome all that was. He seems really friendly but a bit cautious. We get into the town, find me a weapon and supplies. End up getting cornered in a small house. Things don't go very well. I glitch out and teleport through a wall and break some bones. I give a exaggerated yell for the dude to save himself, and he replies with a equally as epic "Noooo". No idea if he ever made it out alive.

The in-game narratives you end up with after an intense session of DayZ are better than most zombie movies.

how do you download it?

how do i play

They're adding in dogs... I just don't know if I could handle some asshole shooting my virtual dog...

Do you Know how i Can join
 

Why won't it let me play the game?

I want to believe.  I've been out of the game for months due to the rampant cheating / server hopping.  That, plus getting the goddamn thing patched and updated constantly was really turning me off to the whole thing.  

THIS A DOWNOAD GAME FOR FREE OR A DISC GAME YOU HAVE TO BUY.......I REAALLLY WANTT TO PLAY

Anyone have any insight on if they are still planning this as a stand alone release for consoles?  Yes, I tried Google, but no new news has been reported since last year.  Seems like my type of game.

I cannot even imagine it was seriously suggested.  ARMA II is a more ardently PC game than Skyrim's dreams, which had a massive company to at least help shoehorn it into the Xbox etal.  Even with a simplified interface compared to the mod  it's hard to see how they would make that work.  Maybe if it's a big enough hit they'll farm it out to some company to do the port.

Yeah, I mean I knew it would be a challenge to do it, but I know it was at least being worked on to see if it could actually work as a stand alone release.  Just seeing if anyone had an idea if anything was going on.

Ok.  So I just watched the two videos embedded in the first post of this thread and I have a couple questions for those who have played.

 

1)  What is the penalty if you die? 

 

2)  Why on earth would you willing give up your weapons at gunpoint?  Why wouldn't you just try and kill the bandits, considering that you would probably just be killed by zombies if you didn't have weapons anyways?

 

3)  Between the zombies, the lack of ammunition, and the gankers...it would be impossible to solo this game, no?

I'm not really experienced, but I can have a go at these:

 

1) you lose all your stuff and start somewhere potentially miles away/unfamiliar/worse etc

 

2)  if someone has the drop on you you're probably dead. Shoot back and you certainly will be.  But it's your call. You might have a stash nearby or know of one and be unable to get back to it if you die, so escaping with your life could be worthwhile.  You can always run from zombies, if you're careful

 

3)Pretty much.  Some people manage to have a fairly low key time of it though.  The landscape is that big you can wander around and not meet anyone.

 

The PvP hothouse of this game has developed a certain vibe that may not have been entirely intended in the design.  I'm kinda expecting the standalone to tilt the experience back to zombie survival as much as other players.

 

 

Yeah, it seems as if the true bad guys are the other players you encounter.  I would imagine it gets pretty tiresome to be ganked by guys just waiting in bushes for people to pass by.  If you did have a lot of stuff on your character, why would you ever play this game alone?  Conversely, if you have little or no equipment on you, dying doesn't seem like that big a deal. 

 

Well, even before it became quite the dedicated snake pit it apparently is these days, they said the average life span in the game was about half an hour.  But they keep coming back.  That hard survival vibe has a surprisingly large audience (where previously only things like Minecraft and Stalker touched upon it, there's an ever increasing number that do it in some way).

There's probably some guys who solo like proper hardasses still around.  It was a while ago but when Idle thumbs did their little group playthrough (you probably won't feel like wading through the whole thing, but I can't remember where it was) they met one for a while.  Ghillie suit, amazing sniper rifle he got from god knows where etc. And he pretty much just ghosted right up to them like in the movies and said "You know I could have killed all of you, you were making so much noise.  You're lucky someone hasn't"  and they hung out for a while until he vanished back into the bush again.

Haha, that's pretty good.

 

I really wish someone would do a good survival zombie game for a console.  Maybe a Dead Island/Fallout/Resident Evil/Minecraft hybrid.  Based on the popularity of this mod, I think it would do really well.  Obviously have multi-player, but also have have a single-player mode so you don't have to worry about dickheads impeding your progress.

 

A guy can dream, anyway.

State of Decay. From what I gather, it's a console based, open-world zombie apocolypse RPG. That's all I know about it.

Yeah, that's coming to Xbox Live Arcade pretty soon I believe.  The idea is pretty solid, but I've head it curently lacks polish (which isn't surprising if it needs time to finish).  Either way, I got my eye on that one.  Thanks.

But it's probably for PS3/4.  Sad for me, being an XBOX owner and all.