By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor), OnRPG Journalist
It has been around a year since the ArmA 2 mod DayZ exploded and showed the world what a basic mod with an inspired developer was able to do. It's been a long year. While the modification is still being updated regularly by the community, and a lot of similar mods have risen up, the big question to the true fans is, where is the Standalone? Originally the plan was to launch it in the end of 2012, but here we are in the summer of 2013 and we haven't seen nor heard that much about the game.
What do we know and what is different compared to the mod?
As a big fan and close follower of DayZ and the team behind it, I can say with confidence that it has been a really long year for Dean ‘Rocket' Hall, the lead developer behind the DayZ Standalone. Dean never expected this side project of his to explode so quickly. What started out as a hobby changed his whole life. Since the original plan was to launch the game back in December, a lot of things were changed and most of the initial plans were scrapped or greatly reworked.
Let's start at what might be the biggest change in the whole game, the architecture. Initially the plan was to create a standalone game of the mod, with not many major changes to the engine or code itself. This plan was changed, and they decided to build up the game from the ground up. What big game studios do in years, they are doing it in just a few months. They have changed the architecture from being just a first-person-shooter to a fleshed out MMORPG. And the uninitiated might be wondering how that's even possible on Bohemia Studios' ArmA 3 engine. Well it isn't. They're tweaking it into a separate engine while splicing in elements of the Take on Helicopters game, and upgraded the graphical areas in the areas required to make a believable zombie survival title.
The world map also has undergone a lot of major changes, and the old Chernarus is a lot different than what the current DayZ players are familiar with. Rest assured the map itself is made by people that worked on the original Chernarus, so skillful hands will deliver our new village of zombies. From what I've seen so far, it feels like a much larger and more populated city. Chernarus now welcomes a real apocalypse world, where the visual images tell you the story, the events that might've happened, and what kind of people lived there. Beyond the township, a foreboding swamp also awaits adventurous players seeking to live outside the bounds of society. But that isn't the only eye candy that we are able to expect from the standalone. A lot of the buildings were overhauled and nearly all have interior access. Expect plenty of looting and player versus player confrontations to occur in-doors as a result.
The interior of …read more
Source: onRPG News
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