Dean Hall - DayZ Creator

[TheCommandTent]

This is an interesting article on the guy behind the DayZ mod for ARMA and its development.

Dean Hall was close to death in the jungles of Brunei. It was December 2010 and the officer cadet in the New Zealand army was alone on a survival-training mission. Given only two days' worth of food for 20 days, he supplemented his diet with raw fish and ferns. He slept on a bed of sticks, and by the end of the mission he'd lost 44 pounds from his already lean frame. There were other trainees out there, and he started to plot raids on their food supplies. He thought of himself as an honorable person, but he was too hungry for honor. As he approached one man's camp, the guy spotted him and tossed him some rancid ramen. Hall boiled the noodles and wolfed them down.

That night, as water pooled around his bed and ramen roiled his stomach, he imagined himself inside his favorite videogame, a military simulation for PCs called Arma 2. He had been playing it since its release in 2009 and often spent three to four hours a day on the game. Now, lying on the jungle floor, his feverish imagination turned Arma 2 into something different. He visualized a new kind of game, one in which there were no missions, no objectives, and no ability to simply be respawn when killed. You had one life, and if you lost it, you lost everything.

Physically, Hall was a mess when he emerged from the jungle — he underwent emergency surgery for an intestinal blockage. But intellectually, he was energized by his visions and inspired to build a new Arma 2 modification. Amateur game mods have been popular since the 1990s, when players adapted first-person shooters like Wolfenstein 3D and Quake to create entirely new games. Mods can't run on their own — they operate in conjunction with the underlying game — and are usually given away online by the \0xFCberfans who code them. The high-water mark came in 1999, when two gamers turned the science fiction world of Half-Life into a terrorist-versus-soldier battle zone called Counter-Strike. It was so popular, gamemaker Valve bought it in 2000 and released it as a stand-alone title, eventually selling more than 25 million units.

A savvy programmer, Hall had created lots of Arma 2 mods, adding new weapons and vehicles to the game, and even new missions. But what he had in mind now was fundamentally different. Typically, games try not to frustrate players; if your character is killed, you aren't forced to start over from the beginning. But Hall thought this stripped gaming of emotion and drama. He wanted to reproduce what he had experienced in the jungle, something filled with agony, frustration, and fear. "I wanted it to be brutal," he says.

In a hotel room in Singapore, Hall began coding. In his new game, players would begin with almost nothing, stranded in the middle of a barren land, forced to hunt for supplies. If they were killed, they'd lose everything and have to start over. The only mission: Survive.

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/08/ut_dayz/


More at the link.

[Toonces]

That is very cool.  DayZ is a brilliant game.  Really, it's not about the zombies at all, but about interacting with other players.

[Nefaro]

That is very cool.  DayZ is a brilliant game.  Really, it's not about the zombies at all, but about interacting with other players.

Which Arma 2 DLC packs are needed for it?  I saw it listed somewhere on Steam at one point, but haven't since. 

I had picked up the whole Arma 2 pack on the summer sale, but haven't even fired it up yet.  The DayZ mod will probably be the motivation that will eventually get me there (if it actually has inventory management gameplay, as I've heard).   I enjoyed Op Flashpoint years ago, but I'm just not all that into first-person shooters anymore, so it's not been high on my list.

[Toonces]

I'm sorry, I don't know anymore.  I think you only need to have Combined Operations (original and Arrowhead expansion).

It is (or was) kind of a pain to set up.  It might be easier now.

Be warned that there is a steep learning curve and it is a time sink like you won't believe.  It pays to do some research on it before you install and play.  It is very fun, and immersive, and even sort of scary, but it may also induce rage quitting.  Again, it's really more about player interaction than about zombies.

[LongBlade]

Great insight. Thanks.

[amun]

lolz...:D

[jomni]

Interacting with people? They just shoot you in the butt to get your loot.

Anyway, I stopped playing Dayz and play Wasteland maps instead.   Wasteland is like Dayz, survival and looting.  But you are part of factions (naturally lead to teamwork), no zombies, and lots of cars for easy travel around the map. Mini missions are given to have a sense of purpose. And it's all default ARMA2. Just type Wasteland in the server filter.