Day Z alpha: How the zombie apocalypse should be

[schneiderguy]

I started playing at around 2PM this afternoon (finals finished yesterday ). The next time I looked at the clock it was 6:45PM D:

I managed to make it to the northern airfield, picking up a surpressed M4 and a 1911 along the way. Killed one bandit and now am out of ammo for the M4... I shall resume tomorrow :awe:

 

[pontifex]

interesting to note:

4. Don't disconnect before at least 10 minutes have gone by if you are joining a server that's more than half full or you are playing in peek hours. People disconnecting and connecting leaving a really heavy burden on the back-end and its a big no-no! This will not help you join faster it will actually make it worse for everyone and you somewhat simplified go into the back of a queue. If you make it to "Requesting data from server" chances are you are probably going to make it into game.


This is from the DayZ forums. Never would have guessed that. I have never run into any game where it takes 10 minutes to join a server. they really need to fix that.

 

[DeckardBlade]

Well, since patch 1.58.2, you can't use scrolling to select items in your inventory anymore (you must open your inventory and right-click on your items instead). However, for interactions that are outside of your inventory - such as opening doors - you still can use scrolling.

The scrolling buttons can be completely remapped though, so yes. Like you, my mouse doesn't have a scrollwheel either (I use a trackball), so I have scroll up/down mapped to the extra G-keys on my Logitech G105 keyboard. It works nicely.

How can they be remapped? I can't find any setting within the game to select another key for replacing the mouse wheel. I just spent 30 minutes staring at an alice pack I couldn't pickup since I can't cycle through the inventory menu which was my initial fear about buying the game from the get go.

Hoping there's a simple way to remap this, I couldn't find a way how in the control settings on the game though.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Finally got in and playing. Huge time sink...

Got on with a friend and we spent like 30 minutes running toward each other on the coast. Then we went on an excursion into the smaller towns inland. I needed to refill my canteen. went in water didn't see the prompt to refill so I kept going. Went in and lost all my stuff in the water...

Anways we made it to the town we were aiming for and I found some new things. A backpack, lee enfield some makarov mags. I decided to try out the Lee Enfield. HUGE MISTAKE. Every zombie for 2 miles swarmed us and I died and my friend disconnected lol.

 

[Ganeedi]

First time playing last night...managed to stumble on a reverse daylight server. Ran around scavenging for awhile, broke legs at least once, got munched on a couple times, and cured a bunch of zombies with my starter pistol and a crossbow. Lost my 2 or 3 crossbow bolts in the piles of zombies somehow.

About 2 hours in, i found a massive M24 sniper rifle and a bunch of rounds. I was excited at first, but then i felt like i just have a HUGE target on my back. Logged out to sleep finally while i plan my next step...

 

[Whirlwind]

This is the best online game I have played since DoD,

I am sinking a huge ammount of time in this.

 

[MrGlobe]

Man, I almost forgot about DoD. I quit playing that right before they updated it to DoD: Source. That was by far one of my favorite games at the time.

This mod looks awesome from the all the vids and pics I've seen. I'd like to get ArmA on sale though

EDIT: I have looked around online and have seen conflicting information, does DayZ require BOTH ArmA 2 AND Operation Arrowhead? I have read that it requires both, and I also have read that you can buy OA and use the FREE Arma 2. TIA

 

[pontifex]

Man, I almost forgot about DoD. I quit playing that right before they updated it to DoD: Source. That was by far one of my favorite games at the time.

This mod looks awesome from the all the vids and pics I've seen. I'd like to get ArmA on sale though

EDIT: I have looked around online and have seen conflicting information, does DayZ require BOTH ArmA 2 AND Operation Arrowhead? I have read that it requires both, and I also have read that you can buy OA and use the FREE Arma 2. TIA

I think it requires OA, which is like an expansion or DLC for ARMA2 if i'm not mistaken. you need ARMA2. Whether the free edition works or not, I dunno.
only reason I bought ARMA2 was for this mod.


Logged in today after like 45 minutes of trying. had 2 debug forests, 2 server diconnects, logged into like 3 servers that were night time even though they are us east coast srvers.

Once I finally got in, i got killed right away. I started over and someone started shooting at me as soon as I spawned. Started running, didn't get hit. Got into Elektro and tried to get some gear but the zombies were like super zombies and kept either hearing or seeing me. got hurt pretty bad, really low ammo so i just started over.

started out in the middle of nowhere this time. ran up over the mountain, found a small village but no enterable houses. kept going and followed the road from inside the woods.

found a warehouse and got a CZ550, some ammo, some food. saw a town a little way off and headed towards it. didn't see any enterable buildings.
kept going and found another bigger town. found a watch, a compass, matches, more food, mak ammo, ammo for other guns i didn't have, binoculars.

as i was trying to crawl into 1 of the buildings my character all of sudden stood up and starting running inside. this drew attention from zombies, so I had to take them out. they just kept coming and coming. i think i killed about 20 of them before they finally stopped.

i'm now out of inv. space and need a bigger backpack. crawled back out into the woods and logged out.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

WOW that sucked. I had an awesome pack some awesome gear. Winchester and a ton of ammo. I was on the hill overlooking Electro and I see a group of 3 players looting the power plant area. My plan was to sneak up kill them all and take their stuff. So I come down the hill and sneak through the fence. I know they are in the tower up ahead so I'm peaking around the corner trying to see them when all the sudden a 4th guy I didn't see comes out from behind the generators to my left. I sit there and say, "I'm new and I'm really bad please don't kill me." So he doesn't kill me. So then I turn and start to go into a building to loot. Guy shoots me in the back of the head like 4 times when I turned away from him.

This game is brutal and I learned an important lesson. SHOOT FIRST.

 

[pontifex]

oh i forgot when i was in elektro, some guy came into the house i was in and was behind me. he could have easily killed me but he didn't i quickly said i was friendly and left.

i'm kind of scared having the cz550 on me now since i'm sure it will make other players want to kill me even more.

anyone know how often loot respawns?

 

[pontifex]

no no no no no! i logged back in and EVERYTHING is gone! Also not where I logged out and there are 10 green heads on the bottom of my screen.

logging out and trying another server. i hope it's just a glitch on that server!


ok, i'm safe, ahaha

 

[Dankk]

Dumping pics from last night, going through the game with McLovin:

 

[Harrod]

^ I was there last night, found 2 crossbows in the farm house and barn.

 

[pontifex]

Dumping pics from last night, going through the game with McLovin:

whats the story on pic 2? looks like you shot that guy off the ladder?

 

[Dankk]

whats the story on pic 2? looks like you shot that guy off the ladder?

Hahah nope, that's McLovin. He was just climbing down. The climbing animations are really messed up.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Where did you guys end up? Must have played a while longer after I logged off at Bor.

I was Baseplate by the way.

 

[Dankk]

Where did you guys end up? Must have played a while longer after I logged off at Bor.

We ended up at the factory just above Solnichniy on the East coast. Was good times.

 

[McLovin]

^ I was there last night, found 2 crossbows in the farm house and barn.

Eyefinity?? You dog!

It was an awesome experience hanging out with Dan and Base (Harrod). Best moment though HAD to be when Dan and I were looting items in a barn, where I just happened to pick up a winchester with 25 rounds, and we both were on opposite sides of the barn up on the top level and we fended off about 35 zombies lol. We killed so many on my side of the barn that they were all piled up on top of each other. Although I have to say coming in a close second was the fact we both died twice on opposite sides of the map and yet when we respawned, we were less then 100m from each other lol.

Wish you all would join us on our steam group and play with us. Dan, Base, Talonmaster (guy from the server), and I were all in mumble chatting and trying to meet up on the map.

 

[xSkyDrAx]

How come those screen shots look like such low quality. I thought ARMA II had pretty steep graphics/requirements

 

[Harrod]

Eyefinity?? You dog!

It was an awesome experience hanging out with Dan and Base (Harrod). Best moment though HAD to be when Dan and I were looting items in a barn, where I just happened to pick up a winchester with 25 rounds, and we both were on opposite sides of the barn up on the top level and we fended off about 35 zombies lol. We killed so many on my side of the barn that they were all piled up on top of each other. Although I have to say coming in a close second was the fact we both died twice on opposite sides of the map and yet when we respawned, we were less then 100m from each other lol.

Wish you all would join us on our steam group and play with us. Dan, Base, Talonmaster (guy from the server), and I were all in mumble chatting and trying to meet up on the map.

I wasn't in that game, I was in another server, if you see me, I'm playing using the name King Harrod. Eyefinity is pretty nice in the game, however, I've found the vanilla game to play much smoother than this mod with a 7970.

 

[McLovin]

How come those screen shots look like such low quality. I thought ARMA II had pretty steep graphics/requirements

To be fair, I sacrifice quality over smoothness. I don't know what Dan's got for hardware, but his doesn't look any worse then mine.

You just don't realize how much more important for this game to be smooth is over how "good" it looks. It;s absolutely terrifying watching 5-10 zombies come at you, much less not being able to react smoothly because you have all the gfx options turned up.

 

[Dankk]

How come those screen shots look like such low quality. I thought ARMA II had pretty steep graphics/requirements

Because I'm only running on Medium-High settings, with AA and post-processing completely disabled. It's a good-looking game, yes - and it's very resource intensive - but it's not worth the drop in framerate.

Also, the graphics can be really glitchy with certain settings. Turning on AA makes grass and bushes turn white for me. I think there's a fix for it, but I don't really care.

This is one of the few games where you don't need to max out the graphics to be completely immersed in. Which is weird, especially coming from a person like me who insists on being able to play every game on Ultra.

With Day Z, I just have no desire to crank up the graphics whatsoever.

 

[pontifex]

had a really odd experience.

i was near some train stattion/factory near the coast. there was like these huge grain towers with a building on top. no idea what or where it was.

anyway, explored in there a little bit but found nothing but empty cans and bottles. went to leave and i saw a crawler zombies coming towards me. there was a pile of pipes between us so i went prone and crawled around the opposite side and left through a hole in the fence.

i look back and the zombies appears to be following me. he's doing anything to make me think he saw me. so anyway, i crouch run up the mountain/hill side and run quite a bit away. i lay down to alt tab out to check something and when i go back to the game, there is a zombie crawling towards me.

again, it doesn't seem like hes trying to attack me, so i get up and run up and away some more and then stop. shortly i hear a zombie growling and here he comes crawling towards me.

I'm in the middle of the woods so i pop him in the head with the Mak. Totally weird that he followed me all that way. i'm afraid of what would have happened had i not got back to the game when i did.

 

[pontifex]

Because I'm only running on Medium-High settings, with AA and post-processing completely disabled. It's a good-looking game, yes - and it's very resource intensive - but it's not worth the drop in framerate.

Also, the graphics can be really glitchy with certain settings. Turning on AA makes grass and bushes turn white for me. I think there's a fix for it, but I don't really care.

This is one of the few games where you don't need to max out the graphics to be completely immersed in. Which is weird, especially coming from a person like me who insists on being able to play every game on Ultra.

With Day Z, I just have no desire to crank up the graphics whatsoever.

I have everything cranked up to max and it runs pretty well. some of the graphics do look pretty bad still, but there are some graphics that look pretty good. the graphics are still pretty decent though. there's other stuff like movement that kind of detracts from the game though. seems kind of herky jerky, especially when you compare it to a game like CoD where everything is so smooth and fluid.

 

[Dankk]

I have everything cranked up to max and it runs pretty well. some of the graphics do look pretty bad still, but there are some graphics that look pretty good. the graphics are still pretty decent though. there's other stuff like movement that kind of detracts from the game though. seems kind of herky jerky, especially when you compare it to a game like CoD where everything is so smooth and fluid.

To be fair, you're comparing two games that are on completely opposite ends of the spectrum (Arma II being a mil-sim that strives for realism, and CoD being an arcade game that resembles laser-tag more than actual war).

With Arma II they tried to replicate real-world physics and movement as closely as possible, hence the seemingly "clunky" feeling it has. You might say "Wrong, there's no way my head and body jerk around that much when moving in real life", but in reality, that's actually what happens (of course you're so used to it that you never think about it).

For example, in Day Z, just be in regular standing position, and hold (or double-tap) Shift to walk. It seems SSLLLOWWW, but no, that's about average walking pace in real life. It makes you realize just how unnaturally-fast the movement is in most other games.

It feels weird at first, yes; but to believe that in real life we fluidly hover around, heads completely fixed in position, and can stop and turn on a dime - similar to CoD - is a bit silly.

Edit: I think you can turn off head-bob actually