DayZ Standalone suffered through what many players consider a painfully slow alpha phase. The game released via early access on Steam in late 2013, and to this day zombies are able to run through walls, attack you from different floors and even hit you after they’ve already been put down. If you’ve spent time playing the game recently, you’ve no doubt encountered some of these frustrations.
According to the official website, some of that game related stress may come to an end within a week, and for those brave enough to hop on experimental servers, the future of Chernarus seems brighter than it has in quite some time. Early feedback is positive, with stories of zombies no longer being able to walk through doors seeming almost too good to be true, prompting us to do a little digging to find out exactly what Bohemia Interactive has been up to. Here’s what we discovered.
Zombies Follow the Laws of Physics
According to our good buddy ChalkOne, a man who’s spent a bit of time messing around in the 0.49 experimental servers, zombies are indeed behaving much better than before, as anyone who played the game has almost certainly been attacked by a zed that can pass through walls. Although we’re not sure if it was actually him or if he was just there when it happened, ChalkOne tells a story of seeing two zombies trapped in a building by closing the door to lock them in.
We couldn’t believe what we were hearing, so we hit the Official DayZ Website to check for updates ourselves. According to Lead Gameplay Designer, Mirek, A major update came in from the Bratislava team (thanks to Marek Zeman) for path finding, so a good amount of issues with zombies clipping through doors have been addressed.
That may only be one small step for zombies, but it’s one giant leap for gamers playing DayZ.
Melee System Overhaul
Almost all of your melee interactions will occur while trying to kill an approaching zombie, or if you decide to engage in a boxing match with another fresh spawn. Either way, the melee system currently works about as well as trying to eat soup with a fork, but all that could change within the next few days as well.
A Lead Designer going by the name of Peter recently posted to the official DayZ website that what recently got so much love and I’m very happy with the outcome of that effort is the melee system which was re-factored from the base by our programmers.
Peter also stated there will be some additional animations coming to the melee system very soon. Once again, we’ll believe it when we see it, but we can’t wait for the day when we can actually direct our axe at a zombie’s head, rather than five feet to their right when they’re 10 feet away.
Introducing Horticulture
One of the long standing problems in DayZ is that it’s basically a third-person shooter running simulator with buggy zombies scattered over a gigantic map. When the development team at Bohemia Interactive introduced Hunting and Fishing things got a little bit better, but gunfights in Berezino remain one of the most popular past times.
All of that could change rather quickly with the introduction of horticulture, a fancy word for farming and gardening. While details are scarce and the concept is in its infancy, the hope is that this will encourage players to use more of the map by giving them something else to do besides shoot at one another. We’ll see how that goes.
To find out more about update 0.49 and what the development team is working on, check out the Official Blog Post. You can also get your hands on some of the unconfirmed features supposedly making their way into the game by stopping by the DayZTV Website. They even have pretty pictures.