phoenix_r

2009 May 13 • 905
17 ₧

Anybody on the zombie tip? Day Z is a mod for Arma 2. You can buy Arma 2: Combined Operations from the developer for a few bucks cheaper than it is on Steam, Bohemia Interactive is having a July Sale.

Looks coooool. I got interested when I read a few accounts of people's games. For those that don't know, it's a sprawling (approx. 250 sq. km. iirc) open-ended zombie survival game geared to be as realistic as possible within the given context. It has heavy biometrics, you can break a leg and no longer walk, for instance, until it's healed. You can log off at any time, and take your character from server to server, but when you die in the game that character is done, you lose your inventory and your spot. Well, if you have friends to raid your corpse when you die, and they have enough inventory space to hold all of your stuff in addition to all of theirs, you might be in luck. That's a much less likely scenario than it sounds.

It's online, and apparently most people you run into are jerks and/or super-paranoid, I've yet to interact with another human through the game though.

phoenix_r

2009 May 13 • 905
17 ₧

phoenix_r

2009 May 13 • 905
17 ₧

srs bsns this game is super-sweet.

Had my first two deaths last night, both terrible noob mistakes. First, I was up in a guard tower that was only like two stories tall, but when I went to climb down I flubbed the "climb down ladder" input and ended up just walking off the edge of the platform and falling. I broke my legs, and the sound of my crash had a swarm of zeds on me before I even lost consciousness, which wasn't long. I had been trying to meet up in-game with my room mate, so we had to make a new plan after I respawned in a different, random location. Thankfully I respawned much closer to him than I already was. We met up just north of Prigorodky but the place was crawling so we decided to try our luck further into the wilderness at Pusta. Shit, Pusta's also crawling, huh...we go prone and manage to low-crawl into a deserted house, but it only yielded some bandages and a couple sodas. We venture on, have a few close calls, and a tense couple of minutes where we're completely surrounded by 15 zombies (at least that we were able to see) within 50 yards of us. Eventually we get in to another house, not much more in that one. As I'm looting, my room mate tells me over ventrilo to stand still, to not back up. I slowly turn in place to see him crouched in the only entrance to the house, hatchet at the ready, two dead zeds at his feet. We wait for more to come, but it seemed like the coast was clear after a few minutes. Not much loot, but no injuries, and we didn't have to fire any shots, which would bring the whole town down on us. We figure out the next house we want to try and loot, and head out. Just as we left the house we were in, a zombie spawned literally on top of my room mate and started attacking him. I panicked and blasted the zed off him with my shotty. The sound brought many, many zombies, and our quick end along with it. It might have been survivable, if we hadn't both been in prone when I fired, if I had announced that I was going to fire and we had planned a hasty escape over vent. Of course, that's why they call it panic, because frightened instinct takes over...

Well, shit...room mate had an A.L.I.C.E pack, a map, hunting and cooking stuff, a canteen, guns...not stuff we wanted to lose. He bitches for a while about the setback, but eventually we decide to try and get our stuff back. Respawn, he's a lot closer to Pusta than I am. I, however, have both Rog and an anonymous medium-yield barn between there and my spawn, and I want to rearm before I get to my corpse. Got some fatloots at Rog, it's a really cool dilapidated old castle on a hill in the woods. I only saw two zeds there, one of which was a mythbuster who was standing on the roof of a small outbuilding, just bellowing into the wind and shaking his arms. It was pretty awesome. Not too long after that, my room mate hit Pusta and found our corpses. Damn, apparently somebody heard the gunshots, or maybe was just passing through and heard the flies, between when we respawned and when he got there. They took his backpack, map, and canteen; thankfully they left him his hatchet, his guns, his matches, and lots of survival stuff. I never even made it back to my corpse, I found better loot in the two spots between there and my spawn. Logged out on Day 0 of my third character, with a 1911, some ammo, a hatchet, a canteen, and some food/water/medicine. And I logged inside of a good building to loot, so hopefully tonight when I'm off work there will be more booty for me to plunder in there before heading out into the wilderness.

SRAW
Rocket Man

2007 Nov 6 • 2525
601 ₧

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious story, bro.

phoenix_r

2009 May 13 • 905
17 ₧

Had my best character so far murdered by a squad of bandits. Two friends and I were heading north, hitting dear stands on our way into the deep woods. We had just gotten found an excellent gun at one (an M4 with a flashlight and a red-dot sight) and were heading to another nearby stand. I was on overwatch with an m24 while my friends worked towards the objective, but everything seemed pretty sleepy.

Nobody was watching my 6, and out of nowhere I get double-tapped in the back of the head. I report OPFOR took me down, and that's when it goes to shit for my other two friends. They start hearing shots, but don't see the tangos. They ask if I want them to try and kill the bandits so we can salvage my stuff, but I tell them to GTFO if they can. My buddy takes one down before another of the bandits shoots him, and our third was my buddy's younger brother, who's kind of a bitch, he alt-f4'd (fled to the total safety of disconnection) instead of accepting his death like a man.

I had just gotten that character totally set up to be self-sufficient in the woods, too :((( I had a couple good weapons, two canteens, an ALICE pack, some steaksss, man, total bummer. Oh well, my new guy spawned on the beach just west of Three Valleys, not a total loss; too far to run back and recover whatever the bandits left on our bodies, but not a bad place as far as new beginnings are concerned...

I've tried to recreate the cool flare in town at night scene, but it looked best one specific way, and that way is dangeroussss, and I'm kind of a pussy...at least I'm not a DC'ing bitch though...

SRAW
Rocket Man

2007 Nov 6 • 2525
601 ₧

So are these bandits the ai or other people?

phoenix_r

2009 May 13 • 905
17 ₧

Ahh yes, sorry. The bandits are other people. The only NPCs in the game are the zombies, and once you are equipped past a certain basic point they are fairly trivial provided you exercise caution.

Players typically divide themselves into one of two groups, although it's far from static and there's no real way to differentiate one from the other until somebody kills you. People typically either align somewhere between 'bandit' and 'survivor/friendly' - personally I haven't murdered another player yet but that doesn't mean I wouldn't.

I'm fairly certain I witnessed the events leading up to a murder the other night. It was night in-game, the only time I feel comfortable raiding the big cities (even then it can be worse than day time - day time it's populated, but night a lot of the people who operate have gotten NVGs, a very rare drop, quality over quantity basically). In Cherno there is a hospital and four apartment building on the north end of town, a favorite haunt of mine. I was in the woods to the north, about to descend into lootsville. I saw a player crouched down, running towards the middle of the apartments. I debated following him or flanking; the city after dark is always shoot-on-sight, no questions. As I decided to flank around and keep watching him, I notice a second player following him, also crouch-running. Definitely want to keep my distance now, either it's a 2man squad (aka I die), or there is a bandit stalking a survivor (aka I probably die). While I was lurking in the shadows I noticed a death message, and started hearing flies buzz ahead of me (meaning there is a nearby player corpse). Let the bandit clear out before moving in for my loots; bandit had stripped his victim of goodies, but he left plenty of drops for me in the buildings themselves.

Another time, I encountered another player in a barn in the middle of the woods; I was looting the barn, he was running madly through a field towards me. He had zombie aggro, so he ran into the barn to deal with it. He definitely noticed me during this. I called 'friendly' over local voice chat (players within 60m of you in the game can hear it) and just kept watching him, not interfering with his loots. After he cleared the whole barn, he left without saying a word. I was counting down from 10 until I ran for the other door to give him time to get away from me, but about halfway he ran back in and shot me in the face. WTF, I THOUGHT U WERE COOL BRO.

srsly epic game, can't wait until it's not buggy as all get-out

SRAW
Rocket Man

2007 Nov 6 • 2525
601 ₧

So, how big are the servers? I looked up the mod and it says that the map is 255km2 or something, but it would not cool if the servers had like 64 players max

phoenix_r

2009 May 13 • 905
17 ₧

Biggest servers I've seen are around 80 players IIRC; but I've been on servers with six other players online and seen half of them, and also on servers with fifty other players and seen none of them. Luck and location are both big factors. A typical server population seems to be around 40. Again, some sessions I don't see anybody, sometimes I can't seem to get away from other players. I've yet to live a life as a hatchet psycho, but that's definitely on the books soon. Basically just run around one of the main towns armed only with a hatchet, trying to rack up as many PKs as possible.

the_cloud_system
polly pushy pants

2008 Aug 1 • 3081
-6 ₧

my online friends told me about this.

I would buy it but i already have too many addictions.

phoenix_r

2009 May 13 • 905
17 ₧

Real Talk™

phoenix_r

2009 May 13 • 905
17 ₧

aaronjer
*****'n Admin


2005 Mar 21 • 5105
1,227 ₧

Cool story, bro.

phoenix_r

2009 May 13 • 905
17 ₧

SHHHHH not so loud, you'll aggro all the zeds.

Here are all the best bits cut from the most popular DayZ videos, edited together a la Robot Chicken. The 25min seems daunting but there is a very high lulz-density. My favorites are 'ridin dirty' and 'partybus gauntlet.'

SRAW
Rocket Man

2007 Nov 6 • 2525
601 ₧

Why don't you record some gameplay footage of yourself, and who knows, you might become a youtube partner and use your money to help further the cause of superjer.com

phoenix_r

2009 May 13 • 905
17 ₧

Not a terrible idea. I've never Fraps'd or anything like that, could be cool to check out. MAYBE I WILL.

Is there a free alternative to Fraps that you guys like, or should I just buy/steal Fraps?

SRAW
Rocket Man

2007 Nov 6 • 2525
601 ₧

xfire comes with a ingame recorder, but I'm not sure if the quality would be as good as fraps, so it's best to just to torrent fraps, since all the mediafire links seem to contain viruses

phoenix_r

2009 May 13 • 905
17 ₧

I have an unexpected long weekend, and fraps, we'll see if I have enough juice in this rig to make a quality recording. Then comes the hard part, interesting content...

aaronjer
*****'n Admin


2005 Mar 21 • 5105
1,227 ₧

Just make a 100 minute long video of you teabagging a zombie and it'll probably be as interesting as most youtube videos.

Okay, my favorite part was the "no no no no no" guy following them around.

phoenix_r

2009 May 13 • 905
17 ₧

Teabagging is hilarious in ArmA, you have to spam two keys in coordinated conjunction instead of just tapping one repeatedly. Basically after I put my Bawlz™ in your mouth I have to manually stand back up. The wobble is infinitely superior, I'll have to get some footy of that the next time my buddies are on.

In the meantime I finally recreated the Elektro Church of Satan, although it was a cloudy night in the game so it doesn't look as epic w/o all the stars.

edit: de-huge-itized screenshot, click to embiggen!