A new devblog video from Bohemia Interactive and Dean “Rocket” Hall (visible at the bottom of this post) offers details on the current state of the standalone version of DayZ, and details a few recent improvements – while explaining a little of why the game isn’t yet available to the public.
The neatest improvement, as far as I’m concerned, is a new bleeding system which “bleeds from the exact point that you’re shot at, and animates correctly.” Which is kinda nifty. There’s also some bits and bobs with regards to how the game will prevent hacking, how each weapon type will be made to “shine”, how the loot spawn system will work… Lots of stuff, basically.
But you’re interested in the alpha, aren’t you? Welp, following on from July’s testing, it apparently just wasn’t quite ready for a few reasons. One is a problem with what they call the “multiplayer network bubble” – in ArmA, the game client receives updates from the server on the positions of everything on the map, which works fine there but doesn’t work too well in DayZ considering the sheer number of players, objects, and zombies floating around and interacting with each other. At the moment, then, they’re making it so that players only receive updates on the things in their vicinity – which will also help prevent hacking, because there’s less information available to the client.
As for the rest… well, I’ll let Hall tell you himself:
“[Stability] has been greatly improved in the last weeks, and I’m sure those of you who’ve had a chance to talk to the people who’ve been testing, they will tell you the same thing. We’ve still got some way to go to accommodate the player levels that we feel is necessary for useful feedback.”
“And I guess that’s kinda the most important point to make in this development blog – everybody really wants it to be released, and we’re really happy with how it’s starting to look, but until we cover off on the very basic foundations of it, there’s just nothing there to play. There’s nothing there to really enjoy.”
“We feel we’re very close to that, but we want to take the time that’s necessary to deliver on that, and that is obviously frustrating for everyone involved – both on the project team as well as people wanting to play it – but really, without these things it’s just not possible. So we really appreciate people’s patience with that, and I’ll be posting more detail in text on the devblog over the weekend as well.”
You can have a watch of the video below to hear it for yourself and to see the stand-alone title in action. Oh! And this follows on from screenshots released, ooh, about 20 minutes ago. Give them a look here.
Source: Devblog
